Habits
Dewey explains that we have habits/ practices which, typically, we do not
understand:
'All of us have many habits of whose import we are
quite unaware, since they were formed without our knowing what we were about.
Consequently they possess us, rather than we them. They move us; they control
us. Unless we become aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgement upon
the worth of the result, we do not control them.' (Dewey, 1916: 29-30)
In the context of teaching we can identify these as examples of tacit knowledge,
of embodied knowledge, or of just 'having the knack'. This is significant.
The habits (and 'beliefs', 'desires', 'small-t-theories'?) are usually unavailable
to us. On what possible foundation can we stand to observe them? There is
only interpretation, all the way down. No solid, pre-suppositionless base
on which to start the construction of the edifice of knowledge that an implicit
theory implies. So, what's to be done? Concentrate, instead, on the accomplishments
and their worth? Get involved in the detail? Not seek the lofty heights, but
grub around in the marshes where the real action is? This focus on the real
and occurent events and actions of life/ learning honours the embodied knowledge
of practitioners. A focus on 'How can I improve...?' is pragmatically sound.
'...a habit is a form of executive skill, of efficiency in doing...an ability to use natural conditions as means to ends... an active control of the environment...' (Dewey, 1916: 46)
'The significance of habit is not exhausted... in its executive and motor phase. It means formation of intellectual and emotional disposition as well as a in increase in ease, economy, and efficiency of action. A habit marks an inclination - an active preference and choice for the conditions involved in its exercise... there are habits of judging and reasoning as truly as of handling a tool, painting a picture, or conducting an experiment.' (Dewey, 1916: 48)
'Many a person would feel surprised to have his aptitude in his chosen profession called a habit.' (Dewey, 1916: 49)
Habits reduce themselves to routine ways of acting, ore degenerate into ways of action to which we are enslaved just in the degree in which intelligence is disconnected from them.' (Dewey, 1916: 49)
On not overstating the need for, and reliance on, conscious, theory-led,
pre-suppositional practices:
'Herbart's great service lay in taking the work of
teaching out of the region of routine and accident. He brought it into the
sphere of conscious method... instead of being a compound of casual inspiration
and subservience to tradition...
...(but) it exaggerates beyond reason the possibilities of consciously formulated
and used methods, and underestimates the role of vital, unconscious, attitudes.'
(Dewey, 1916: 71-71)
Shared Meaning
Can a theory, accepted and agreed, help to establish a common purpose within an institution? Can it inspire common action? Is it necessarily a 'theory' that achieves this?
'To have the same ideas about things which others have, to be like minded with them, and thus to be really members of a social group, is... to attach the same meanings to things and to acts which others attach. Otherwise, there is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing and vice-versa. That is, the activity of each is placed in the same inclusive situation... if each views the consequences of his own acts as having a bearing upon what others are doing and takes into account the consequences of their behaviour upon himself, then there is a common mind; a common intent in behaviour. There is an understanding set up between the different contributors; and this common understanding controls the action of each.' (Dewey, 1916: 30)
The possibility of establishing a genuine association, a common consequence, rather than a mere juxtaposition of activity, in school is exciting. If all teachers, and others (support staff, governors, parents) can get to see the larger picture, not in an overtly mechanistic, technicist way, but just to see their role as a significant part of the whole, that could be truly generative. I'm not seeking to import discrete new practices, new tricks, but to establish a common purpose.
Purpose of a theory or reading or philosophy or whatever: to call forth a generative response. To be a stimulus. To be part of a generative community (Lakatos's idea - a progressive scientific research project).
'In general, every stimulus directs activity. It does not simply excite it or stir it up, but directs it towards an object. Put the other way around, a response is not just a re-action, a protest, as it were, against being disturbed; it is, as the word indicates, an answer.' (Dewey, 1916: 24)
Measure of a theory's worth is the answers it calls forth. A theory, broadly understood, is not so much true as effective. The questions it poses are judged by the quality of the answers it evokes. Put this together with Rorty's pragmatic assertion that 'Inquiry that does not achieve coordination of behaviour is not inquiry but simply wordplay.' (Rorty, 1999: xxv) Shared questions and answers leading to changed, shared practices. Rorty again (1999: 200-201): '...a preference for small concrete compromises over large theoretical syntheses would accord with Dewey's pragmatic view that theory is to be encouraged only when likely to facilitate practice.'
Does the puzzling 'living theory', 'conversational' stuff provoke worthwhile questions? Probably. Answers? Not yet formulated. But the idea should be allowed to aggravate. Play with the idea. Let it provoke. (Collectively?)
Education and Growth
Education is its own justification, since life and development and growth
are equivalent:
'When it is said that education is development, everything
depends upon how development is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life
is development, and that developing, growing, is life. Translated into ite
educational equivalents, that means (i) that the educational process has no
end beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the educational process
is one of continual reorganising, reconstructing, transforming.' (Dewey,
1916: 49-50)
'Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more education... The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.' (Dewey, 1916: 51)
'Since life means growth, a living creature lives as truly and positively at one stage as at another, with the same intrinsic fullness and the same absolute claims. Hence education means the enterprise of supplying the conditions which insure growth, or adequacy of life, irrespective of age.' (Dewey, 1916: 51)
'That education is literally and all the time its own reward means that no alleged study or discipline is educative unless it is worth while in its own immediate having.' (Dewey, 1916: 109)
Long-Term Change
Dewey wrote to a different world to mine. Rorty supposes that a grand-unified-theory or philosophy has little local impact but may be important in the long run. Illustrate this.
'Particularly is it true that a society which not
only changes but which has the ideal of such change as will improve it, will
have different standards and methods of education from one which aims simply
at the perpetuation of its own customs.' (Dewey, 1916: 81)
Indeed.
Clarity
One big (unexceptionable) principle to drive practice (in place of, or as
part of, a 'grand-unified-theory') would be 'Know what you're trying to do':
'...the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to
the activity...
(i) It involves careful observation of the given conditions to see what are
the means available for reaching the end, and to discover the hindrances in
the way;
(ii) It suggests the proper order or sequence in the use of means...;
(iii) It makes choice of alternatives possible.' (Dewey, 1916: 102,
my organisation)
'The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting intelligently.' (Dewey, 1916: 103)
Theory
'An ounce of experience is better than a ton of
theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and
verifiable significance. An experience, a very humble experience, is capable
of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual content),
but a theory apart from experience cannot be definitely grasped even as theory.
It tends to become a mere verbal formula, a set of catchwords used to render
thinking, or genuine theorizing, unnecessary and impossible.' (Dewey,
1916: 144)
Compare with Heidegger's
very similar discussion of 'idle talk' or 'chatter'.
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