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A Progressive Philosophy for Teacher Education

Dr. (Ms.) Michael S. Whitt

    After spending an adventuresome three years teaching public secondary school in Marion and Broward Counties, Florida, the teacher-philosopher, Amanda Rosaleigh Blake, received a fellowship to begin her Ph.D. She intended to study social and philosophical foundations of education. This broad interdisciplinary teacher-education field involves a synthesis of philosophy and the human (social) sciences. It also includes research emphases in history, philosophy, and anthropology. The twenty-four year old Blake was excited about this new development in her career. Amanda taught some undergraduate courses in social and philosophical foundations in the second and final year of her doctoral program. The income from these classes replaced that provided by her one year fellowship.
    When Amanda taught high school she approached these courses from a thoroughly progressive point of view. This included, among other things, two fundamental ideas. First, the activities were geared to incorporate existing pupil interests. Second, the various contemporary issues covered in the classes were looked at from a broad multidisciplinary perspective. Amanda intended to extend these progressive methods into her teacher-education classes. This would be easier at the teacher education level than at the high school one since the students were already interested in the material. After all, it related directly to their soon to be career.
    She introduced the social and philosophical foundations of education by putting the principles of progressive education in the context of the history and development of human consciousness. This allowed the prospective teachers to situate their own and their students needs and desires and their values and beliefs regarding education in a larger cultural context. A primary concept she used to present the development and history of the human mind was world view. This term refers to the broadest, most basic, and fundamental assumptions one makes about the world in which they live. The concept of world view can be applied to characterize entire societies and cultures. It can also refer to narrower situations such as small groups or even a single individual. In short, all human groups large and small and all individuals have world views.
    Amanda introduced this idea to her teacher education students by presenting the four most important views of the world which have characterized the history of Western Civilization. The earliest of these held by ancient humans as they moved from non-verbal, semi-conscious homo sapiens and potential humans to conscious, verbal beings was a poetic and non-rational view. She told her students by way of example that early humans no doubt had to confront severe and frightening thunder storms. They might have imagined, since imagination was their strongest faculty, the dark clouds, the roar of the thunder, and the lightening rods to be an angry god throwing rods and yelling at them to do certain things. They were to care for their children, institute marriage, and establish a religion based on that god’s honor. They called the god Jove. Their entire world view was a series of such poetic metaphors. They thought in poetic metaphors as rational thought had not yet developed. The teacher education students were fascinated and intrigued by this way of viewing the origin of human consciousness.
    John Sinclair, one of the students in the first class in which she made this presentation, said enthusiastically, “I have never heard the origin of the human mind presented in such a fascinating, original, and imaginative way.”
    Several of the other students agreed excitedly to which Amanda responded, “I’m glad this approach appeals to you. The Poetic World View dominated all of the hunting and gathering societies that characterized early human history.” Before the class moved on Amanda and her students tried to imagine how those students in the early poetic societies were educated. Amanda lost no opportunity to stimulate her teacher-education students’ creative faculties. Amanda was gratified by their fascination with a new approach to human history as they saw it. She did wonder when the schools were going to catch up with historical research. Since the emergence of The New Science of Giambattista Vico in 1748, the idea of the poetic world view as involved with the origin of humanity had been central to historical research.
    “Gradually,” Amanda continued, “the major aspects of agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry, were developed.” Here Amanda paused and giggled. “Guess what, my fellow women students? It was our gender which predominantly developed these two aspects of agriculture. These developments allowed humans to settle in one place and freed them from perpetual hunting and gathering. Until very recently our dear male historians left this salient fact out of the history books.” A wave of excitement traveled over the women in the class with several having comments.
    Catherine Taylor, a confirmed feminist said, “In my women’s group we recently discussed how history has been mainly ‘His Story.’ We decided it is high time that ‘Her Story’ is retrieved. One of our members’ uncovered research that in early times in some societies women had important positions. One example given was that of women generals in the military.”
    “Yeah,” several of the woman chimed in agreement. The class discussed these ideas for the rest of that period. When the students got in a discussion among themselves, Amanda always let it continue until the students’ comments had exhausted themselves. This particular discussion lasted for twenty minutes into the next period the following day. Amanda was delighted. After this she continued with her lecture on world views. She noted that since the invention of agriculture allowed human societies to live in one place, it permitted them to begin developing civilizations, both in small villages and large cities. With these stable settlements came the creation of rational thought. The early forms of the academic disciplines followed this development. These early versions looked quite differently than they do today.
    For example, Amanda told her teacher-education students “that the earlier form of astronomy was governed by the work of an Egyptian named Ptolemy. In his view, the universe was a dualistic structure. The spiritual realm was the superior one and equated with the masculine aspects of things. Below it was the physical one. It was inferior to the spiritual and equated with the feminine aspect of things. Needless to say, this was a thoroughly anti-woman perspective. Ptolemy’s universe was also ordered and regular with an aesthetic bent. The various heavenly bodies traveled around each other in the most perfect way one can imagine. That of course was the circle. In this ordered scheme, the earth sits at the center of the universe.
    All of the other heavenly bodies revolved around it. We know now that the orbits of the various heavenly bodies are ellipses. Also, we also know that the earth is not at the center of the universe, and that the latter is larger than Ptolemy could imagine.
    Ptolemy’s rational picture of the universe was part of the Greek World View espoused by Plato and Socrates. In these early times the two philosophers established a variety of progressive education.” Amanda’s students were most interested in the Greek World View, especially the version of progressive education involved in it. Amanda read passages from Plato’s “Dialogues” which set forth the elements of this early method. It involved asking the students leading questions which prompted him or her to gradually arrive at the correct or most appropriate answer to a problem or situation. The examples of the progressive method in Plato’s writings came from geometry and other aspects of math. There were two math education majors in Amanda’s first foundations class. They were Nanette Futral, a beautiful brunette from a small town one hundred miles south of Gainesville, and Jeff Scott, a handsome lad from Jacksonville. Both students told Amanda that they thought they could use a modified version of the Platonic-Socratic method in teaching geometry and trigonometry. They even gave examples of problems which might be dealt with by this modified method.
    Amanda concluded that, “the Greek World View dominated western society until it began to crumble at the end of the Middle Ages in the l6th Century. The impetus for this was the immensely influential philosophy of the French thinker Rene Descartes; two of Descartes cardinal principles are expressed in his assertions, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and that the universe is written in the language of mathematics and mechanics. Like the Greek World View Descartes Mechanical World View is dualistic but in a different sense. There is the objective dimension which is rational, mechanical, and quantitative. It is superior to the subjective dimension which is qualitative. It contains feeling, color, and other sensuous qualities. Quality is definitely inferior and secondary to quantity. In fact, quality exists only in the mind; whereas quantity has an objective reality. This aspect of the third world view received an indignant response from Amanda’s students. She thoroughly agreed with their responses.
    As Anne Beal put it, “In short, dear Mr. Descartes sees feelings, color, song, all aspects of art and history, and other qualities as having a reality inferior to that of mechanical subjects.” Other students made related responses.
    “You and the others have got it Anne.” Amanda responded.
     John Bryan of Atlanta, a future literature teacher, said angrily, “This Mechanical View has resulted in an over emphasis in English on grammar, which although important is often boring to students and to a neglect of the more interesting areas of poetry and other literary subjects.“
    Sandy Lumpkin, also of Atlanta and a literature major, snapped, “John is so right, and the influence of this disgusting mechanical world view has even spread to the natural sciences themselves. Physics and chemistry are often focused way too much on the purely mathematical aspects of the subjects. The profound philosophies and theories underlying the advances in 20^th century natural science are rarely covered. One important example is the philosophy underlying Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty.”
    “Yes,” Amanda agreed, “Heisenberg has written a wonderful book on these philosophical ideas.”
    Theresa Cook, a talented art education major, sighed, “Yes, and what we read about in Raymond Callahan’s book Education and the Cult of Efficiency* indicated that the application of that hideous Taylor System to the public schools was a tragedy of immense proportions. The ideas involved in trying to turn the schools into images of business are truly insane, It was crazy how everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of turning the schools into models of the factory system.”
    (*A required reading for the class)
    “I agree with all of you,” Amanda replied. “It was a disgusting spectacle and it isn’t dead yet. Every time progressive principles are attacked by reactionary predators, they do so in the name of advocating a business model for our public education system. The Mechanical World View gripped Western civilization from the time Newtonian Physics consolidated it all in the 17^th century until the latter part of the 19^th and early part of the 20^th centuries. During the latter time period organic theories began to appear in the work of such scientists as Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The work of these and other scientists relativized the rigid absolutes of the Mechanical View and what was left of the Greek World View. The world began to look like a great organism rather than a great machine. The only constants were dynamic processes, such as energy and change. From the common sense perspective all sorts of seeming paradoxes characterizes our everyday reality. The observing subject can not be separated from the observed object. They influence each other in subtle and not so subtle ways. The whole is not always the same as the sum of its parts. It might be greater or less.
    After reading Callahan and related sources on the Mechanical World View, the students read authors who had transcended mechanism and were operating according to the Organic World View. They read John Dewey’s Experience and Education;the factory system..” J. Krishnmurti’s On Education; Dare the school Build a New Social Order? by George S. Counts; Kenneth Benne’s Education for Tragedy and other essays on Organic Education, and two articles Amanda had written and published. In addition to the required reading, Amanda selected several books which were written from a general organic perspective and among which the student could select the one which most appealed to them. These included Tom Robbin’s novel concerning alternative life styles and spiritual growth and needs, Another Roadside Attraction; Robert Pirsig’s autobiographical work concerning human development, parent-child relationships, and mental health, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Andrew Weil’s book refuting many of the narrow minded misconceptions concerning marijuana and other illegal and legal drugs, The Natural Mind: Drugs and the Higher Consciousness; Philip Slater’s organic critique of the mechanistic aspects still hanging on in our society, The Pursuit of Loneliness; and Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, which compares mechanical Newtonian physics with contemporary organic physics, and also dealt with some social and educational implications of the latter.
    At the very end of the course, Amanda talked with the students about the needs of teaching to reach true professional status and what this would take. For instance, one consequence of the mechanical structuring of schools was to place students and teachers, the two most important actors in schools, as subordinates at the bottom of that structure. Autonomy for teachers and greater rights for their clients were needed, among other things. In addition, strong professional associations which can protect teachers from authoritarian administrators and school board members are needed. These organizations are increasingly becoming a reality.
    Finally, Amanda’s students always got to choose what form their evaluation would take. When she talked about the various forms of exams and writing papers most students always chose writing papers, although a few opted for open book, open notes essay exams, These two evaluation methods gave an expansiveness to the students’ capacities that was not allowed by multiple choice, true-false, and other mechanical means of evaluation. The students wrote three papers or took three essay exams the fourth week, the seventh week, and at the end of the quarter. It created much work for Amanda, but she preferred this to mechanical evaluations. She wanted to stay as true as possible to the emerging Organic World View.

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