What Excellence Could Be

 

In my introductory blog, I suggested that four questions need asking about contemporary education and schooling . In an abridged form they are as follows:

• What is the purpose of education?
• How best can educational leaders support teachers in being genuine educators?
• How do structural features (e.g. school size and teacher load, etc.) either enhance or undermine the educative project?
• How do we best use the potential of Schools 2.0 in the service of education?

You will find that this blog is structured—by way of its categories—to pursue each of these different paths, although I hope you will also see that they are intimately inter-related.

I have, to date, been preoccupied with the “Purpose of Education” thread, as I think it is the necessary foundation for a principled consideration of everything that follows. In the preceding three blogs in this thread I have proposed, briefly, that the purpose of education is to “equip and inspire students to cultivate their humanity” and then went on to specify what I meant by that. In this blog, I look at the concept of “excellence” as a way to explore many of the same themes.

To begin, there are countless schools that invoke the term “excellence” as a description—sometimes located in mission statements—of what they think they ought to aspire to, or what they want their students ought to aspire to. The problem (perhaps the intended advantage?) of using the word “excellence”, however, is that it can mean so many different things to so many different people. For some it seems to be meant as a code word for high academic standards, which means, in turn, that students will get good grades and be accepted into prestigious universities. For others it may be intended as an exhortation to students to “do their best” in whatever interest they pursue. For a few others still it may be meant as an indication that issues of character will be paramount at a school.

The challenge, then, for a school to use this word with any sort of integrity is to first say what it means by excellence. And to say that “a school” first needs to say what it means by excellence is to say that its staff—its leaders and its teacher—need to come to a collective understanding—and affirmation—of what they are talking about.

As a way, perhaps, to stir up some interest and debate on the matter, I’d like to offer a draft picture of what “excellence” could mean in the context of a school. I think that excellence is a good word for capturing much of what schooling should be about, and you will soon see that much of what I have to say here follows from what I have already said about the purpose of education.

Some of the questions we are going to want to keep in mind while exploring the concept of excellence are as follows:

• What might constitute “excellence” in the 21st century?
• What is the picture of excellence that might be reasonably pursued within the context of a living, breathing school?
• What is the picture of excellence that many of us might agree is worthwhile?

The truth is that we have had different pictures of excellence at different times and places. Excellence for a man in ancient Sparta amounted to courage and ability in battle. In the time Pericles, it was to be found, partially, in the capacity for rhetoric. In Victorian times it expressed itself by attention paid to a certain set of manners. The question for us to consider is what might constitute excellence today. It seems to me that we need, as much as possible, to examine this with the widest imaginable lens, i.e. to consider not just what we have learned and what we aspire to in our own locality, but instead what humanity has learned and what, perhaps, humanity might aspire to given our collective and personal experience with tragedy, beauty, fear, and love.

Secondly, when thinking of excellence (i.e. in the context of a school’s mission statement), we will eventually need to be able to imagine how this picture we create can and should connect to our work as teachers. It may be that there are elements of excellence that cannot, strictly speaking, be expressed within the context of a school. Although I doubt this is the case, the point for the time being is that our picture of excellence must in some important way connect to our work within schools.

Finally, we need a picture of excellence about which many of us agree is worthwhile. While it might initially be assumed that such agreement is impossible, my own sense is that this might not be as difficult as it seems. What is needed, I think, is not so much a detailed justification of foundational premises, but instead their illumination and explication. It is because educators spend so little time putting our fingers on the touchstones of our beliefs and aspirations that we think we think these are mysterious and unequivocally personal. My sense is that if we spent some time together allowing these beliefs and aspirations to see the light of day, we would be surprised at how much we agree with one another on some pretty fundamental tenets—like, for example, a defensible picture of “excellence”.

Excellence – The Basic Picture

In the next couple of pages, I will offer a candidate for the meaning of “excellence “. Before reading this, however, it may be useful to first create a picture in your own mind of what you think excellence is and then, along the way, compare it against what I am proposing. One good way to create such a picture is to come up with a clear example of a person or an act that, for you, represents excellence in action and then see if you can extract what seem to be the essential elements of excellence from your example. In doing this, you will get a better sense of what is at stake here.

It seems to me that when we speak of “excellence , we are speaking, essentially, about the full cultivation of our human capacities in two distinct but related ways:

• The full cultivation of our capacities as an individual, i.e. the exercise of our particular talents, and the expression of our particular dreams and aspirations
• The full cultivation of our capacities as human beings, i.e. the expression of the very best of what it is to be a human being.

In the first place we are talking essentially about individuals discovering and then pursuing their own “calling”, a process which must necessarily be a very personal affair. In the second place we are talking about a set of virtues or achievements that are distinctive of us as humans (i.e. as opposed, say, to rocks and dogs) and which therefore describe the best that we can be. Some examples of these virtues or achievements include our ability to read, to reason, to compose music, to think abstractly, and to be moral agents. To describe excellence as the “full cultivation” of our human capacities in these two ways is essentially to say that we express excellence to the extent we find and pursue our individual talents, and to the extent we express the very best of what it is to be a human being.

Perhaps a few analogies and examples will make this clearer. Imagine that you have a computer that can perform 100 different functions, and that you have figured out how to use only five of those. In this case, you have not got the most out of your computer; you have used only 5% of its capacity. Now imagine that a colleague has figured out how to use 95% or even 100% of the functionality of her computer. We would say that she has enjoyed the full benefit of the resource at her disposal. Now imagine a “soul” being given a human body and a human life with all the potential that that entails, i.e. to discover and develop one’s own talents and at the same time to participate in the achievements of humanity (e.g. to read, to think, to enjoy beauty, to act morally, etc.). Excellence, in this picture, is to be found in the soul who “drinks deeply of the cup of life”, that is someone who discovers, pursues and develops his talents and at the same time expresses the very best of what it is to be a human being in the way they live and in their interactions with others. A soul that does not express excellence, on the other hand, is one that does not attempt to discover or pursue individual talent and one that does not strive to participate in, or express, the very best of what it is to be a human being.

Here are two examples which may put a little more meat on these skimpy conceptual bones. First up is Steve Nash who, at the time of this writing, is recognized as one of the best basketball players in the NBA. What is interesting and important about Nash is that in addition to having found and superbly developed his talent, he is also known—both on the court and off—as a thoroughly decent person. If we were to take an alien on a tour of humanity, we could, I am told, point to Steve Nash as someone who expresses the very best of what it is to be a human being.

As a second example, I would offer the local bus driver in the small community in which I live. This is an individual who, after ten years, managed to fulfill his dream of creating a local bus route on our small island. He is both very good at what he does in terms of driving the buses and managing his small company, and at the same time he is well known in our community for the help and support he continually offers to those in need. Here again, if our alien visitor wanted another example of human excellence, I would confidently point him in the direction of this particular individual.

A couple of observations about these examples are in order. In the first place, these examples should actually be understood as exemplars—i.e. ideal models—rather than 100% infallible representatives in flesh and blood. We should, in fact, speak of Steve Nash and my bus driver on a good day in the knowledge that mere mortals are going to do some things that neither they or we would be proud of. The point of an exemplar is to give us a picture of an ideal, i.e. as something we might aspire to. Steve Nash and the bus driver are good exemplars because they hit the mark a lot, not because they never make mistakes.

Secondly, I have offered the example of the bus driver, in part, because not everyone can be an NBA basketball player. (Nor can everyone be Martin Luther King, Ghandi, or Nelson Mandella.) This is an important point because excellence, in this formulation, does not necessarily imply that one will be the “best” (or most recognized) in some area, but instead that one has pursued and developed one’s talent to the best of his or her abilities. It also needs to be said, however, that not everyone can be the bus driver either. His achievements—in his work and the way he conducts his life—were both hard fought and thoughtfully pursued. Excellence is not something that one can come by easily. It requires—among other things—courage, skill, knowledge, and determination.

In order to put even more meat on these bones it is now time to describe some of these attributes that might be good candidates for expressing “the very best of what it is to be a human being”. These are attributes that are meant to make sense in the context of the 21st century and attributes that are also meant to be relevant to the work we do at school. The following, therefore, is an initial list of what educators might mean when we say we are interested in inspiring students toward excellence:

• We want students to “push the envelope” of their experience and engagement
• We want students to be intellectually curious (i.e. ask questions
• We want students to be creatively engaged
• We want students to try new things and move beyond their comfort zone
• We want students to “try their hardest”, i.e. to give it all they have
• We want students to uphold the dignity of persons
• We want students to be respectful & courteous of their colleagues, their teachers, and their mentors
• We want students to “do the right thing”, i.e. we want them to be moral agents and persons of integrity
• We want students to be compassionate
• We want students to develop both the confidence and capacity to listen to their heart.

It is important to note, first, that this is indeed an initial list that will need to be augmented, revised and otherwise made more robust. Part of the object of this inquiry is to have school communities say what they mean by excellence. This is going to require some very thoughtful exchanges on the part of multiple stakeholders if a school wants to end up with something that is credible.

Second, it is important to see that the version of excellence that is emerging here is not simply about “getting high marks” or “being the best” in everything. It is a bit more textured and nuanced than that. It is about setting students up so that they can cultivate their humanity in the sense of discovering and pursuing their gifts, and at the same time expressing the very best of what it is to be a human being.

Connecting Excellence to the Life of the School – What Does This Look Like?

I have proposed that excellence amounts to the cultivation of human capacities in the sense of discovering and developing one’s individual gifts and at the same time continually expressing the very best of what it is to be a human being. The question to answer now is what any of this might have to do with what teachers actually do in school.

To begin with, I think this picture of excellence provides a very profound justification for the teaching of individual subject matter. As an aside, I think that in modern philosophical talk about the value of education we quickly jump to the general attributes (e.g. persistence, diligence, moral sensibility, etc) that we want to cultivate without spending much time of the value of actual subject matter. While I too believe that these general attributes are important, I think as educators we need to say something substantive about subject matter.

The profound justification of subject matter, therefore, might be as follows: that areas of study like mathematics, literature, science, history, etc. are magnificent human achievements, and that in order to “drink deeply of the cup of life” we need in some way to participate in and taste of this bounty. A great educator once said that the job of teachers is “to initiate students into the great conversations of human inquiry”. When I hear this I immediately create a picture in my mind of a science teacher bringing a student to eavesdrop at the edge of a metaphorical table at which sit, for example, Galileo, Keplar, Copernius, and Newton. In this picture the teacher helps interpret what the student cannot understand and at the same time conveys something of the grandeur of the conversation. The ultimate justification for the teaching of certain subject matter, therefore, is that it gives students access to the achievements of humanity.

Consider how such a background justification might affect the way that we teachers understand our jobs, and how we convey the central project to their students. On one hand a teacher might think (and implicitly or explicitly project) that academic subjects are simply arbitrary sets of content that some external force has decided will serve as an accreditation requirement for admittance into university. The implicit justification for students “doing their work” therefore is a kind of pragmatic bargain: you do what you are told and we will bestow the necessary accreditation. On the other hand, imagine if we believed that the point of subject matter was to “initiate students into great conversations” or to allow them to participate in the achievements of humanity. Imagine further (to connect this back to the cultivation of individual gifts aspect of excellence) that there may be someone in our classroom who is a budding mathematician, or historian, or artist who just does not know it yet? Our calling as teachers—if we take something like this picture of excellence seriously—is to communicate our subject matter in a way that connects the day-to-day work that students do to the larger project of becoming a fully-formed human being.

To get down to practicalities, this does not mean that teachers must spend endless time talking to students about the “big picture” connections between subject matter and life to the neglect of things like multiplication tables. It means, rather, that things like multiplication tables need to be understood as a necessary prerequisite to full-blown practice, and that any worthwhile practice requires the discipline of understanding its fundamentals. We can, in other words, end up doing more or less the same thing we are currently doing in our classes; we (and our students) may just have a slightly different appreciation for what we are doing and why.

The second layer of excellence—i.e. cultivating in students the capacity to be the very best of what it is to be a human being—is, in a way, easier to see in the context of the day-to-day work as teachers. It emerges when we encourage students to ask questions in class (and when we teach them to ask intelligent questions); when we “force” them to try new things; when coaches implore teams to give it their all; when we demand courtesy and respect of our students; when we walk them carefully through a discipline procedure; when we provide opportunities for them to make a difference in the world; when we expose them (perhaps through literature) to beautiful examples of compassion, and when we otherwise provide a strong foundation for them to discover and develop their gifts and at the same time express the very best of what it is to be a human being. These things are easy to “see” because they happen in front of our noses every single day we are in school. What is perhaps less obvious is the way they support and confirm an implicit conception of excellence.

The challenge for schools, therefore, is to develop together a robust picture of what they mean by excellence and then to continually make explicit how that picture plays itself out in the goals, programs, teaching methods, culture, and day-to-day operation of the school.

A colleague of mine once said that teaching is heroic work, and I think he is right about that. When you think about it, teachers may be the only adults in society who are in a position to connect young people to a sense of their humanity, i.e. to an individual calling, to an appreciation of the achievements of humankind, and to an emerging picture of the very best of what it is to be a human being. Our responsibility here—if we choose to accept it—is enormous, for it amounts to leading a campaign against the stupidity and banality that can so quickly and easily characterize the human condition. If we choose to abdicate this responsibility—if we chose to see ourselves as mere technicians who deliver curricula devoid of meaning or context—then we belittle and devalue the heart of the profession. If, on the other hand, we embrace our responsibilities, then we will have the right, once again, to claim that we make a positive difference in students’ lives and, in so doing, make a positive difference in the world.

It is for this reason, more than any other, that schools need to come to grips with what they mean by “excellence” and then become more intentional and more effective at pursuing it as a central aim of the educative project.

Purpose of Education – Part II

 

In my introductory blog, I suggested that four questions need asking about contemporary education and schooling . In an abridged form they are as follows:

 

• What is the purpose of education?
• How best can educational leaders support teachers in being genuine educators?
• How do structural features (e.g. school size and teacher load, etc.) either enhance or undermine the educative project?
• How do we best use the potential of Schools 2.0 in the service of education?

 

You will find that this blog is structured—by way of its categories—to pursue each of these different paths, although I hope you will also see that they are intimately inter-related.

 

This particular blog is installment #3 in the “purpose of education” thread. In installment #2, I recommended the following as a good candidate for the purpose of education:  “to equip and inspire students to cultivate their humanity”.  I then proposed that “cultivating humanity” amounts to exercising our moral, intellectual, aesthetic and physical capacities, and perhaps our spiritual capacity as well.  In this installation, I would like to offer some introductory comments on what it might look like to “equip and inspire” students in relation to the project of cultivating our humanity.

 

Equipping Students to Cultivate Their Humanity

 

How does one “equip” students to cultivate their humanity?  We might first begin by celebrating the fact that this is both a beautiful and worthy question to ask of educators.  Think of the re-imagining we might do if we had this question foremost in our minds when we confront issues of curriculum and methodology.

 

But to return to the question proper, it seems to me that, once again, a look at the ideal of a liberal education might yield some initial sense of the potential landscape. In my research, I have found that there are usually four central themes or characteristics of a liberal education that emerge.

 

First, a liberal education is meant to offer its adherents certain emancipatory competencies, the possession of which are meant to open the way to further learning and eventual “freedom”. The most obvious contemporary examples are reading and basic reasoning, and then writing and speaking in relation to reasoning. The ancient Greek enkuklios paideia (verbal & quantitative literacy) and then the middle ages trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) seem to have been offered in this spirit. Insofar as computer and library research skills provide broader access to that which might be read, it may be possible to argue that these two also belong in the realm of emancipatory competencies. It is important to note, in any case, that to understand these “skills” as emancipatory competencies is to invest them with a much greater purpose than simply learning to read, write, think, or do math. One reads, writes, thinks, and does math, on this view, as an essential part of a larger project to gain an understanding of the world, and one’s place within it. It is also clear, however, that these competencies are necessary but not sufficient possessions for complete understanding. They form part of a liberal education, but not all of it.

 

Second, within most candidates for a liberal education there is typically some attempt to offer a broad familiarization – a broad acquaintance – with the major artistic and intellectual projects of humanity. This is sometimes expressed as the desire to have students acquire a “general education”[1]; sometimes it manifests itself in a call for “cultural literacy” on the part of students [2]; and sometimes it gets expressed as an attempt to initiate students into the “great conversations” of human inquiry[3]. To have an “educational acquaintance” with a broad range of knowledge is, in Aristotle’s terms, to have a universal (as opposed to a specialist) education:

 

Every systematic science, the humblest and the noblest alike, seems to admit of two distinct kinds of proficiency; one of which may be properly called scientific knowledge of the subject, while the other is a kind of educational acquaintance with it. For an educated man should be able to form a fair off-hand judgment as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition. To be educated is in fact to be able to do this; and even the man of universal education we deem to be such in virtue of his having this ability. It will however, of course, be understood that we only ascribe universal education to one who in his own individual person is thus critical in all or nearly all branches of knowledge, and not one who has a like ability merely in some special subject. For it is possible for a man to have this competence in some one branch of knowledge without having it all.[4] .

 

With reference to a liberal education, the basic idea here is that in order to achieve some  understanding of oneself and the world, one must have a reasonably good sense of the history and achievements of humanity.

 

Third, there is typically embedded within the idea of a liberal education the idea that the knowledge examined should somehow be essential or fundamental knowledge, as opposed to the transitory and superficial. This sentiment is expressed in the title to Charles Bailey’s book which reads Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education.[5] It’s also expressed in the yearning of E.F. Schumacher in his chapter on education within Small is Beautiful:

 

We also may be more fortunate … and find a teacher who will “clear our minds”, clarify the ideas – the ‘large’ and universal ideas already existent in our minds – and thus make the world intelligible for us. Such a process would indeed deserve to be called ‘education’.[6]

 

These essences might be described thematically, as for example, in Michael Oakeshott’s and Robert Maynard Hutchins admonition to have us initiate students into the “great conversations” of human inquiry. Alternatively, these essences might be understood epistemologically. In 1965, Paul Hirst published a landmark paper entitled Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge in which he suggested that there are seven distinct “forms of knowledge” , (each having their own central concepts, distinctive logical structure, unique truth tests, and “particular techniques and skills for exploring experience and testing their distinctive expressions”[7] ) which of logical necessity must form the basis of any true education. The key idea here, throughout all these different expressions, is that a liberal education must somehow concern itself with that which is central and essential to knowledge or to humanity.

 

Finally, there is within almost all versions of liberal education, an explicit attempt to cultivate rationality and the life of reason. The source for this is probably Aristotle with his assumption that what makes human beings, human beings is their capacity to think. The thread that seems to wind through most versions of a liberal education is the idea that it is important, indeed crucial, to exercise and express that which makes us truly distinctive as a species, i.e. our capacity to be rational.

 

In the context of a liberal education, therefore, the project of “equipping” students to cultivate their humanity requires and involves the acquisition of emancipatory competencies, a broad acquaintance with the story of humanity, exposure to essential as opposed to superficial knowledge, and an appreciation and understanding of the life of reason.

 

What follows from this in terms of actual teaching?

 

• That we have an obligation, as educators, to ensure that our students achieve a kind of baseline competency and literacy, i.e. that they can read, write, and do math to be sure, but also that they know their way around the world geographically and historically, that they have some sense of the rudiments of art and music, and that they know their bodies. We need to make sure our students have this competency and basic literacy because they are the tools of freedom; they provide the foundation upon which to build a life.
• That we need to arrange our curriculum in a way to enable students to acquire a broad familiarity with the “great conversations of human inquiry”. We need, in other words, to give students some sense of what it is like to think and act like a scientist, a poet, a mathematician, an historian, an ethicist, an artist, an athlete, and a musician. The goal, in this instance, is not professional competence; it is instead a nascent understanding and appreciation of the scope and diversity of human achievement.
• That we need to teach subject matter in a way that reveals the core, or fundamental principles, of the study undertaken. This requires that we as teachers understand what is essential about a field of inquiry and what is merely illustration. In almost every class or presentation we need to bring students back to these fundamentals so they can see how lines of inquiry or exploration are like languages, each with their own vocabulary, syntax and grammatical structure.
• That we need to teach our students, in a direct and deliberate way, to reason.

 

 

Inspiring Students to Cultivate Their Humanity

 

Here we are, admittedly, on more difficult terrain.  How to “inspire” students toward the cultivation of their humanity is, again, a beautiful question, but in this case infinitely more subtle and complex. 

 

And yet it remains, nonetheless, the second half of the education we need to give students if our aim truly is to have them cultivate their humanity.  It is that half, in which we as educators, attempt to rouse within our students sometimes the passion and sometimes the horror of what it is to be a human being. It shows itself when we expose our students to stories or exemplars of great works or actions; when as a coach or homeroom teacher we offer advice about how to deal responsibly with a difficult problem; and when we admonish our students for moral transgressions.  It can be detected in the challenges we engineer for our students and in the way we deal with them when things go wrong. Mostly it is manifested in the hopes and aspirations we project that go beyond our classroom instruction.

 

What “inspiring students” requires, first and foremost, is a conversation amongst teachers within schools (and indeed within society at large) about what attributes we are going to hold up for students as worthy of pursuit and emulation.  While there are some, perhaps many, who might claim that there are no single set of attributes we might—as teachers—universally embrace and promote, I am less pessimistic about this.  I think the range of things we already do as teachers, coaches, and principals offers good evidence of our wanting to cultivate worthwhile attributes in students.  What I think is missing, however,  is a clear framework within which teachers—as educators—might understand, defend and more intentionally promote  this crucial dimension of the educative project.   The construct of “cultivating our humanity” is meant to provide such a framework.  I will have to leave it to another blog—and perhaps to those in the blogosphere—to offer more concrete examples of what this might look like.

 

Some Questions

 

If we think of education as a project of, in part, equipping students to cultivate their humanity, what pieces have I missed here?

 

I sometimes get worried that this construct of “cultivating our humanity”  might easily morph into the kind of self-indulgent pursuit of self-actualization that might only resonate within the context of an affluent North American society. I wonder, therefore, if a more simple and pragmatic picture of education—e.g. one that concentrated on basic literacy and, perhaps, a very direct education on environmental dangers—might be more defensible. Thoughts?  Help?

 

What sorts of attributes—virtues, if you will—do you as a teacher attempt to promote or cultivate within your students? Do you think these attributes are universally worthwhile, or do you think they are relevant and applicable to only some students?

 

Next Blog

 

Not sure. Will likely be something on “excellence” in education, as this is a word that many schools, and many educators, invoke to explain and defend what they are doing.

 

References

 

 

[1] Ernest L. Boyer & Authur Levine, A Quest for Common Learning, Washington: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981.

[2] E.D. Hirsch , Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

[3] Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Great Conversation, Vol 1. Great Books of the Western World, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

[4] Aristotle in Charles Van Doren, A History of Knowledge, New York: Ballantine Books, 1991. p. 135

[5] Charles Bailey, Beyond the Present & the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education. London: Routlege & Kegan Paul, 1984.

[6] E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful. London: Sphere Books (Abacus Edition), 1974, p. 74.

[7] Paul Hirst, “Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge” in Paul Hirst, Knowledge & the Curriculum. London: Routlege & Kegan Paul,  1974. p. 44.

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Purpose of Education – Part I

 

In my previous blog I proposed that in contemporary education there is very little attention paid to the purpose of the undertaking, i.e. that such considerations are replaced instead with an immediate preoccupation with curriculum and implementation.  I then implied that without a robust sense of purpose we lose our capacity to make coherent decisions about curriculum and implementation and at the same time deny ourselves a lodestone that would give meaning to our work.  I further suggested that without a substantive examination of essential goals, we deprive ourselves of the capacity to re-imagine our practices.

 

In this installation I would like to offer a candidate description of one substantive and robust articulation of educational purpose. However, a couple of preliminary notes are in order. First, while I take it that there are a variety of reasonably good candidates as to the purpose of education, I am nonetheless recommending this articulation as one that is particularly good at capturing and representing a number of key essences and in so doing is thereby particularly capable of bearing the weight of much that can be said or implied with regard to curriculum and methodology.

 

Second, the value of this kind of rendering lies in the details or the explication of the surface-level words. You will see soon enough that the opening proposition amounts—on the face of it—to little more than a slogan, not dissimilar to most “mission statements” in schools. Unlike the case of most mission statements, however, it is in the careful explication of such a slogan that the substance of a full-bodied educational philosophy is meant to emerge. 

 

Third, I need to briefly recognize the distinction between “education” and “schooling”—by pointing out that the former is a larger concept than the latter—and explain that I am speaking about something in between these two, i.e. about a society’s interest in preparing and supporting citizens to live what used to be called the “good life”, and in so doing to make a positive contribution to the polis.  My domain of inquiry, therefore, is not so large as to encompass the “education” someone might acquire from life in general, but neither is it so narrow as to concern itself exclusively with what happens in schools as presently constituted. My focus, instead, is on “education” understood as an intentional undertaking that is carried out under the implicit or explicit endorsement of society as whole, i.e. through the vehicle of schools, or indeed through mechanisms we cannot yet imagine.

 

To begin then, I will propose that the essential purpose of education is “to equip and inspire students to cultivate their humanity”.

 

As suggested, the substance of this simple slogan cannot be revealed without considerable explication. There are, in fact, at least three code words (or code ideas) within this phrase that need further articulation: “cultivating humanity”, “equip” and “inspire”.  I will attempt the first of these in this blog and save the other two for the next installment.

 

Cultivating Humanity

 

The idea of “cultivating one’s humanity” has its roots in the classical idea of a liberal education, which itself will need some explanation.  The basic elements of a liberal education first found concrete expression in the “quadrivium” and “trivium” of the Roman curriculum, but has important antecedents in the teachings of the ancient Greeks.  The central idea is that it is the kind of education that enables a person to be “free”. The key to understanding a liberal education is to understand the very precise manner in which this “freedom” is intended.

 

Commentators on liberal education speak about gaining freedom from certain constraints and acquiring freedom for the exercise of certain capacities. (Charles Bailey, Beyond the Present and the Particular, )

 

Those who speak about gaining freedom from constraints usually have in mind the ignorance, superstitions, and indefensible habits and conventions of our times. The basic idea here is relatively straightforward. A liberal education is meant to give students the knowledge they need (combined with a capacity to reason) to break free of these sorts of obstacles. The emphasis here, from Aristotle, is usually on the capacity to reason.

 

The idea of acquiring freedom for the exercise of certain capacities is a bit more difficult to grasp, although it is by far the richest of the two formulations. In this version, a liberal education is understood as the kind of education that enables or equips a person to express the very best of what it is to be a human being.

 

The idea of being able to identify “the very best of what it is to be a human being” is very much a classical ideal. It presupposes that there are qualities and actions that we can point to which represent humanity at its best and at its worst. It assumes that we can make important and intelligible distinctions between instances of courage, humility and beauty as against examples of cowardice, arrogance, and evil. And it assumes, further, that the point of education (and of life) is to cultivate the best of which human beings are capable.

 

This last proposition is perhaps the most important because it makes explicit the teleological nature of a classical approach to education. The word “telos” means ultimate purpose or end. It comes from the Greek word for the bullseye of an archery target. To take a “teleological” approach to education, then, is simply to understand the enterprise and arrange one’s instructional strategies in the context of some ultimate purpose or end. In classical parlance, this ultimate purpose or end is usually expressed as some shared (or potentially shareable) conception of the good, or conception of the good life. A liberal education understood in a classical sense, therefore, is one that is explicitly designed to support an ultimate end, where “ultimate end” is understood as some conception of the good life.

 

The question that immediately arises, of course, is what constitutes a “good life”?  The classical answer is that the good life consists in the fullest cultivation of human excellences. For Aristotle this meant, for certain, the cultivation of one’s capacity to reason. But the Greeks, Roman and indeed the modern world favours other excellences as well. The conception of the “good life” that underpins the view of liberal education presented here can best be captured by saying that to express the very best of what it is to be a human being is to continually cultivate our moral, intellectual, aesthetic and physical capacities, and perhaps our spiritual capacity as well. The “good life”, in other words, consists in cultivating these capacities within ourselves to the best of our ability.

 

In addition, therefore, to being the kind of education that frees students from the ignorance and superstitions of their times (through exposure to knowledge and to the ability to reason), a liberal education is simultaneously the kind of education that frees a person for the cultivation of certain human qualities. It proposes that there are certain things students need to know, certain skills that they need to acquire and certain dispositions, or virtues, they need to have in order to be both capable and inclined to break free of habit and convention and to cultivate human excellences.  The freedom that graduates of such an education attain, therefore, is the freedom that comes with cultivating one’s humanity to the fullest.

 

Some Questions

 

Do you find it peculiar and ill-advised or necessary and worthwhile to attempt to formulate a substantive account of the purpose of education in this way?  If the former, why?

 

Do you think the construct of “cultivating humanity” is either too broad or too narrow a target to which the efforts of education—i.e. the equipping and the inspiring—might be aimed? Can you suggest some other destination that might be more fitting?

 

Do you think it is true to claim that part of what would count as full expression of what it is to be a human being is to cultivate one’s “spiritual” capacity?  Are we somehow less human if we do not cultivate a spiritual capacity? Are we somehow less human if we do not cultivate our moral, aesthetic, intellectual, and physical capacities? Or at least, attempt to cultivate these to the best of our abilities?

 

Some References

 

Charles Bailey. Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

 

Timothy Fuller, Ed. The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education.   New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

 

Martha Nussbaum. Cultivating Humanity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1997

 

Next Blog

 

A Candidate for the Purpose of Education – Part II

The particulars of “equipping and inspiring” students

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Before How

 

In my introductory blog, I suggested that four questions need to be asked about contemporary education and schooling . In an abridged form they are as follows: 

·         What is the purpose of education?

·         How best can educational leaders support teachers in being genuine educators?

·         How do structural features (e.g. school size and teacher load, etc.) either enhance or undermine the educative project?

·         How do we best use the potential of Schools 2.0 in the service of education?

You will find that this blog is structured—by way of its categories—to pursue each of these different paths, although I hope you will also see that they are intimately inter-related.

 

In this blog, I want to begin the “purpose of education” thread by trying to make the case for the importance of asking core philosophy questions before addressing issues of implementation.  Here goes!

 

One of the most remarkable things about contemporary schooling is the near absence of any serious consideration whatsoever as to why we send our children to school—what purposes we have in mind, what aspirations we want to fulfill. I suspect that one reason for this is that the purpose of schools is almost universally regarded as uncontroversial and therefore taken for granted, i.e. that schools are presumably meant to, in some fashion, prepare people for jobs, or perhaps even for life.  With this supposedly understood and accepted, the most topical questions in education become not “why?”, but “how” (implementation), and “what”, (curriculum).

While there is much good work that has been done—and will continue to be done—on curriculum (what),  and implementation strategies (how), I think there are a number of  very good reasons to pay close attention to purpose as the very first order of business in either starting a new school or rethinking an existing one.

First, while the purpose of education may seem by many to be obvious and uncontroversial—e.g. to teach people things in order (perhaps) to prepare them for future careers—there is, in fact, a rich range of divergent possibilities that compete for consideration. To be ignorant of these possibilities—or to make no conscious decision concerning their application—is to fail to understand and appreciate the full scope and potential of education.

Second, one’s understanding of the purpose of education shapes one’s approaches to curriculum and methodology. This can play itself out in subtle ways in schools: in the courses that make it into the curriculum; in the instructional methods adopted by teachers; in the priorities a school attaches to arts, athletics, academics, service, leadership; and even in the approach to student discipline.  When a school is being mindful about its purposes, these permeate every feature of its culture. When, as is more often the case, it simply takes its purposes for granted, then a kind of “default culture” ensues in which issues of curriculum, methodology, program balance, and even student discipline become matters of management rather than purposeful direction.

A third reason to begin by establishing a very clear idea of purpose is that the work of schools requires a tremendous amount of commitment and effort. Teachers will stay up late to review student work; administrators will work weekends to make sure everything is in order; parents will volunteer time to raise funds and assist with programs; and the students themselves will pour their heart and soul into their studies.  If there is no clear and robust sense of purpose underlining all of this, then the effort and the commitment will eventually wane. There will be a sea change: a move from having a sense of participating in a great and eminently worthwhile undertaking to simply “getting through school”. Human beings—teachers, administrators, parents and students alike—need to understand and embrace the meaning in something in order to give it their full engagement.  If anything requires full engagement, it is the task of education.  And in this case, having clarity of purpose is the yeast that leavens the bread. 

But there is as yet an even more important reason to pay close attention to purpose. If we never ask why we are doing something, we never open up opportunities for us to think about things differently. And if we lose the capacity to think about things differently, we stagnate-or worse, we fail to exercise our full powers.

Imagine, for example, if you asked a car manufacturer—innocently—what a car is. It is not hard to imagine his or her incredulous look, and then a perfunctory description of something with four wheels, a chassis and an engine, etc. Now imagine you asking why we have cars in our society and why they always end up having four wheels, a chassis and an engine, etc.  If our manufacturer answers that “cars have always been this way” then this indicates, again, either an inability or unwillingness to address the question.

Imagine, on the other hand, a car manufacturer who has the ability and inclination to address the why questions.  Imagine them pondering the practical, aesthetic, psychological purposes that cars have and then wondering aloud whether there might be a different way to address these needs and wants.  I suspect that it is something like this kind of thinking that can sometimes lead to the “breakthrough innovation”—the decision to do something entirely different that sets (or re-sets) the direction of the industry. 

Now imagine asking this same set of questions about computers, or universities, or architecture, or the legal system…. or indeed about schools?  What puzzles and inspirations might occur?

It is precisely this capacity to articulate substantive purposes, and then to look at current practices in light of those purposes, that will enable us to constantly refine and improve both purpose and practice.

In the course of these blogs, I am going to be asking questions about school leadership, the structure of schools, and the potential of Schools 2.0. We are, as such, going to move through sometimes turbulent waters.  What will be needed, therefore, is a firm hand on the tiller—that is, a very good sense of where we are going and why. 

Some Questions

 

Is it true, in your experience, that most schools are preoccupied with the logistics of “How” (implementation) and “What” (curriculum)  to the exclusion of serious consideration given to the core purpose of the undertaking?  What is on the agenda of most staff and parent meetings? What professional development opportunities, if any, are there for staff—either individually or collectively—to examine core principles of education? When someone wants to raise questions about core principles,  how is this typically received?

 

If it is true that little or no time is given to an examination of purpose, why is that? Is this a feature of modern institutions in general, or is it peculiar to schools? If it is a feature of modern institutions in general, then what is it about contemporary society that encourages us to be so profoundly unreflective? If this is a feature of schools in particular, what are the forces in play that cause us to run “madly off in all directions”?

 

Is it true that a purpose-driven school will yield a better quality of education?

 

Are independent schools any better at focusing on purpose than public schools?  Put differently, is it the case that independent schools have more opportunity to be purpose-driven because they do not have to meet the wider purposes of a general public? Can a public school be mission-driven in the same way that some independent schools claim to be?

 

What, if anything, does a school’s “mission statement” have to do with articulating a substantive purpose of schooling? How, if at all, do “mission statements” really impinge upon day-to-day practice in schools?

 

Next Blog  

In my next blog I will offer the first part of what I think is a credible candidate for “the purpose of education”. You will find, perhaps surprisingly, that I am going to draw upon the classical ideal of a liberal education as a strong foundation upon which to build a coherent view of what education could be.

Four Questions …on What Education Could Be

 

The purpose of this blog, therefore, is to ask questions—four, in fact—about the “educative project” as it might be carried out within the contemporary world. While I will, to be sure, offer up positions and propositions of my own, my hope is that these will act as a catalyst for thoughtful response and therefore a deeper, richer understanding of the problem.  The four questions that I think need most asking are as follows:

 

How do we connect, or better realign, the work we do in schools with a philosophical core that expresses the full scope and potential of the educative project? 

This question arises from a suspicion that in educational circles—perhaps in many circles—we focus on the “what” and “how” of the undertaking, but we do not spend near enough time asking “why?”.  There is, in other words, a disconnect between what might be thought of as the essential purpose of the undertaking and the way that purpose has come to be played out in practice. What can emerge, as a result, is a kind of cheap facsimile—a strange distortion—of the original project. This question requires that we identify “the educative project” in a way that is compelling and forceful and then demonstrate how a robust educational philosophy can permeate and define the culture and action of a school.

 

How, practically speaking, do we “invite teachers to become educators” in the sense of supporting and inspiring them to thoughtfully pursue the educative project with their students?

This is really a question of educational leadership in the context of a modern school, and it emerges as a result of some of my own experiences as a middle school principal. While there are always site-specific reasons for difficulties encountered in any particular school, I am more interested in the general principles or strategies—if these exist—that might be employed to create the kind of staff culture in which teachers are inspired and energized to contribute to the fulfillment of a powerful educational ideal. This questions requires, among other things, that we explore and better understand the precise contribution of staff collaboration within the context of a mission-driven school.

 

How do we structure schools—i.e. in terms of class size, timetables, teacher loads, curriculum delivery, assessment practices, etc.—in a way that will support, rather than detract from, the educative project?

The proposition here is that there are whole host of structural considerations that need to be closely re-examined if we are serious about educating students in any non-trivial sense. Some of these structural considerations include, school size, class size (and class distribution formats), class length, timetable configurations, curriculum delivery, assessment and reporting schedules, teacher loads, planning time. While none of these elements can, in themselves, create a powerful educational environment—only teachers can do that—most of them, if poorly configured, can significantly detract from our educational purposes. 

 

How do we incorporate the potential of Schools 2.0 in a way that will realize and expand—rather than trivialize and degrade—the educative project?

Many commentators seem to take either a derogatory or a celebratory view of the next generation’s use of new and ever-emerging digital technologies, particularly in the context of education. On one hand these technologies are thought to ensure that our youth will become “the stupidest generation of all time”, while on the other they are seen as the key that will unlock the door to greater wisdom. The future is upon us, however, whether we want it or not. The challenge embedded within this question is to determine how best to develop and deploy these emerging technologies in the service of a robust and powerful picture of education.  

 

In my next blog, entitled “Why Before How”, I will try to make a case for the importance of asking core philosophy questions before addressing issues of implementation. In the meantime, I’d be pleased to learn how others understand and approach some of the questions I have rasied.