If teaching practices do not, in fact, presuppose foundational educational theories then is teaching, perhaps, a craft?
In his writing the distiguished potter Bernard Leach expounds practical techniques to novices and develops a practical philosophy of one particular craft, namely studio ceramics.
What, in fact, is Bernard Leach doing? He's criticising an egotistical view that fails to value something that he holds to be crucial. He sees through individualistic posturing, and self-conscious virtuosity. More positively, he propounds and defends a standard. This standard is objective inasmuch as it is concretely demonstrated in objects of value, specifically the collection of 'exemplary pots' that form the bulk of his book 'The Potter's Challenge'.
Does a theory defend/ articulate/ clarify what is held to be of value? Does it always declare a standard? A theory might serve to bolster (ornament?) a bit of folk (tacit) knowledge, e.g. 'Children are all different' is ornamented by the 'theory' of multiple intelligences.
How to recognise quality, adherence to the standard? 'A distinguished Japanese potter, Mr. Kawai of Kyoto, when asked how people are to recognize good work, answered simply, 'With their bodies'... I consider the mood, or nature, of a pot to be of first importance. it represents our instinctive total reaction to either man or pot... Judgement in art cannot be other than intuitive and founded upon sense experience, on what Kawai calls 'the body'. No process of reasoning can be a substitute for or widen the range of our intuitive knowledge.' (Leach, 1940: 18)
Leach is nevertheless able to state some 'generalizations
founded on... sense experience' to guide judgements. Here is a selection:
'1. The ends of lines are important; the middles
take care of themselves.
2. Lines are forces, and the points at which they change or cross are significant
and call for emphasis...
5. Curves for beauty, angles for strength...
7. Enduring forms are full of quiet assurance. Overstatement is worse than
understatement.' (Leach, 1940: 24)
The craft analogy is not strong. Teaching is surely more rational than making pots, even if in both cases decisions are made 'on the hoof'.
To know what good teaching is, is it enough to say that you must simply get to see good teaching? Repeatedly and often? Do you get to recognise good teaching intuitively? Do theories help?
Leach: '(The would-be potter) should start looking at good pots... He should touch and examine pots made by a good potter. He should stay away from theories.' (Leach, 1975: 16)
Leach himself has a few things to say about educational practice itself:
'Technique can be a good thing but not by itself...
The schools are filled with too much technique: they have pendulums and metronomes
to make sure that everybody stays in time with the music instead of letting
the natural rhythm come. And there are erasers on all the pencils so that
in a drawing class deviations may be corrected and the thing perfected, instead
of saying: no erasures; put your last penny on the line. Try to draw.
(Educators) try to measure the immeasurable and they
do harm. we must strive for the encouragement of intuition, of idea. Somewhere
it is there in everyone and it must be allowed to develop.' (Leach,
1975: 22)
And again:
'To make a thing oneself is the nearest way to understanding;
but although our newer education is insistent upon this counterpoise to theoretic
learning, there are hardly any schools or teachers in this country who are
introducing boys and girls to the kind of making which involves real beauty.
the sort of thing that goes by the name of Art and Craft in most schools,
including many art schools, the next generation could very well do without.'
(Leach, 1940: 26)
And then, concerning pots of course, but possibly suggestive for tacit educational
knowledge:
'From this collection (of photographs of exemplary
pots) it is my hope that the viewer may glean broad
principles if not precise rules. Rules ask to be broken if they are not of
our own making, but principles if they are deep and wide enough can be suggestive
and helpful. Whether we verbalize them or not we are aware of them, and from
this angle or that, individually as well as historically, they form the invisible
core of standard and tradition.' (Leach, 1975: 48)
References
Leach, B. (1940) A Potter's Book London: Faber and Faber
Leach, B. (1975) The Potter's Challenge London: Souvenir Press
