The folly of reductionism
One of the philosophical assumptions that the teach-to-test perspective relies on tacitly is reductionism; the idea that things work, for example, exactly like Lego blocks; complex Lego structures are nothing but different arrangements of simple Lego blocks, and that you can explain the behaviour of the complex systems by analysing it, without residue, into its constituent parts or ingredients. Science, philosophy, and education all follow the same method of analysis, as per this understanding of the state of affairs. But complex systems at least, do not work the way of Lego blocks, and we can not explain them by following the reductionist method as it has been claimed. This does not mean that we have to throw the baby of knowledge of complex systems with the bathwater of reductionism. Let's just have the baby. To understand the workings of complex systems, thus, we need a better assumption than reductionism that does justice to the complexity of the explanandum. Mind, for example, is such a complex system and we need a non-reductionist approach to understand its functions, to explain them and to develop its capacities.
Re-cognition as knowledge
If we accept DTM, knowledge is a derivation of the interplay of the unconscious, previous knowledge and the impact of experience. The root idea was once popular in India as pratyabhijna (recognition) theory championed by thinkers -Somananda, Utpaladeva and Abhinava Gupta- of Kashmir Shaivism and in different names in the works of Grammarian and Buddhist thinkers. Socrates too sounds similar when he says in Meno that all knowledge is recollection (anamnesis) [There are significant differences however between these positions. And only in ancient India we find a f...
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... Subhashitam that captures the complexity of teaching and learning. “A student gets a quarter (knowledge) from his teacher, a quarter by his own intelligence. A quarter from his fellow students and a quarter in due course of time”, from many different sources, including MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). आचार्यात् पादमादत्ते पादं शिष्यः स्वमेधया । पादं सब्रह्मचारिभ्यः पादम् कालक्रमेण च ॥
Education is not just a cognitive exercise, it is also an emotional spread that spans our moves of life and shapes our visions, satisfying a hierarchy of needs. Patently, the lesson of the impossibility of teaching is that, at one remove from walking the path along with teachers, there are possibilities of self-discovery. So, it is not what makes us busy covering a course that matters, it is what students are going to discover while doing so. That, as John Lennon sang, is life.
Learning is important for countless reasons, the most important reason being that it molds a person into who he or she is. What people choose to learn, and also what they choose not to, create the core of their opinions as individuals. Though people do not admit it or openly declare it, it is fair to say almost everyone is self centered. Because of this, and the fact that learning dramatically affects a person, learning is not only thrilling, but also expressive. Furthermore, since learning is expressive, its meaning varies from person to person, therefore making each person’s experiences with learning unique and life changing.
Today education has an endless amount of definitions which are correct in certain aspects of society, but most leave out the one part of education that is truly vital. That is the concept of real life experiences. The debate on what it means to be educated has been going on for centuries, yet the answer isn’t esoteric at all! The scintillating Henry David Thoreau amazed scholars of his philosophy that one simply doesn’t just go to school to be educated, but one has to experience the world in order to be prepared for it. He lived in a small house on Walden Pond and lived off of the land. He quoted “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
The way he emphasizes the difference between acquisition and learning, brings a whole new level to education. Using this knowledge, we can develop an education system that will help our youth stay on track and understand what they’re learning and why they’re learning it. This could be particularly helpful with elementary education, when the children are still developing what it means to learn. By redefining the education system, we’ll be able to help our children reach their real potential. If we understand how to teach, it will be a million times easier to connect with the children. We can help our next generation become properly educated about the world that they’re
During my first few days of sophomore year at Stuyvesant High School, I saw how the ways of thinking were diverse in each of my classes. In my European Literature class, where, in our first reading assignment, we questioned the purpose of education itself. I always went with the flow in my learning, and never stopped to say to myself, “Why am I doing this to myself?”. However, once I read Live and Learn by Louis Menand, I started to think about Menand’s three theories of college and juxtapose each of them to my experience so far in high school. In the end, I concluded that many of my classes followed the main points of Theory 2, which was the theory that I mostly agreed with when I read the article for the first time.
In the beginning, there were basic schoolhouses to fulfill the needs of a newly industrialized society. The subjects taught had the sole aim of the student being able to secure a job with the ultimate goal of creating a large enough workforce to fill the new societal needs, creating a stigmatization that any subject that does not help to secure a job is useless. Now that that goal has been met, the bases of classical higher education have been fighting their way into primary education while trying to destroy the previously mentioned stigmatization against non-career-oriented subject matter. Only after hundreds of years, humans as a whole are figuring out that the only subject of education should life and all of its manifestations with no other distractions. Because of this, the main ideas of education should be few, but very important. The ideas taught should be applicable to many scenarios and students should be thoroughly taught their application in life. A...
Education gives me the knowledge that I require to overcome any problem every day. Furthermore, it is more value when teachers and students are free to express their own point of view without doubts. Freire states, “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. It is a learning situation in which the cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors- teachers on the one hand and students on the other” (249). Fraire point is that the teacher and student learn each other when both communicate their ideas. Education is richer when both parts speak and argue over a topic than when only teachers talk and give their opinion about it . It is important for me to hear the point of view of everyone in the classroom because this is the way I build my own opinion. I do not always agree with everyone, but I respect the opinion of all. I rely on education because it aids me to master another
Education remains a cornerstone for society as it has for decades. Technology advances, the economy fluctuates, and politics change, but education remains, not only important but imperative for personal and social growth. Yet, as important as it is touted to be, the quality and purpose of learning is often lost in the assembly-line, manufactured process of education that exists today.
In Plato’s Meno, Socrates suggested that knowledge comes from recollection, or, in Greek, anamnesis. He believes that the knowledge is already implanted in the human mind, and by recollection, men can retrieve back knowledge. There are two stages to this: first, a “stirring up” of true, innate opinions, then, a conversion of the knowledge (Gulley). Furthermore, Socrates believes that we acquired knowledge before this life. “As the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned” (Plato 81c). Socrates holds the idea of reincarnation—as the soul reincarnates through many lives, it learns everything. Overall, the Doctrine of Recollection is based on two premises. The first is the immortality of the soul, along with its incarnations, and the second is the kinship of all nature (Ionescu).
Tagg, John. “Why Learn? What We May Really Be Teaching Students.” About Campus. 2004. Print.
Therefore, through the soul, that has been born before being placed into a physical human body, the human has knowledge. As a result of the soul being immortal and knowing everything, Socrates ties that idea of immortality with the theory of recollection, which claims that our knowledge is inside of us because of the soul and it never learns anything new, only remembers, consequently, serving as an evidence that the soul is pre- existent. Socrates uses the knowledge of the soul to explain that there is no such thing as learning but instead there is discovery of the knowledge that one has and does, by himself, without receiving new information. However, most knowledge is forgotten at birth since we are born without knowing, for example, how to add, subtract,talk, etc. Nonetheless, the knowledge we have, has to be recollected with the help of a teacher. Socrates is able to prove this argument to a degree by using Meno’s slave, who had no prior knowledge of geometry before, as an example of how humans have the knowledge inside of them, through the soul, and they know everything but all they need are a sort of guidance to be able to “free” the knowledge they didn’t know they had inside them all this time. (Plato,
In order to be an effective teacher there needs to be an understanding that we all learn differently, this means that no single teaching strategy is effective for all students/learners all the time. This makes teaching a complex process because you need to understand and meet the requirements of all of your learners. Students learn best when they aren’t asked to simply memorise information but when they form their own understandings of what is being taught. When a student has successfully learnt a new idea they are able to then intergrate this information with their previously learnt information and make sense of it. To be an effective teacher you need to work jointly with students to asses where they are at, be able to give feedback on how the student is going and ensure that they are understanding the lesson (Killen, 2013) According to Lovat and Smith (2003) students learning must result in a change in a student’s understanding of the information being taught. In order to show understanding they must be able to share this information with others and want to learn more (Killen, 2013). In order to have a deeper understanding of what is being taught they need to be aware of the relationship that exists between what they knew previously and the new information that is being learned (Killen, 2013).. Students need to be given goals that they can achieve in order to feel a sense of mastery over their own learning, this gives students motivation that they are able to complete tasks and to keep going.
The world without knowledge is in complete disorder; we don’t realize how empty and ignorant we are without knowledge. The ignorance within ourselves, nonetheless, can be filled with education and bring definite changes which can impact an individual, a community, a generation and eventually our world. Naturally the world, in the long run, is dependent upon the educated. Success is carried throughout the pursuit of obtaining skills and valuing the virtue of education and academics. Education, by far means, is the most important facet of college and well worth the investment.
...at previously, sometimes in the midst of a discussion, people forget that there are two sides of a story and not everyone has to agree to yours. What we learn from our books or our studies is not what is necessarily important. What we learn from our peers and our professors is what’s important. Learning is more than absorbing fact, it is acquiring understanding, and it is being passionate about the material you are given. Each piece that we have read in class, and each comment that we make impacts a person no matter how little it seems. The education systems focuses too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning. However, this course felt like we were learning something instead trying to finish the curriculum. As Albert Einstein once said, “education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”.
education is life itself." This philosophy truly emphasizes the importance of education in one's life, and that they are indeed interrelated, not separated. I believe he was expressing, in part, the notion that education should serve us throughout our lives, constantly empowering us to achieve our greatest potential through self-realization. Learning, is a life-long process, by which we are all constantly searching for meaning through reflecting on our experiences to make sense of, and better understand the world in which we live in. I am humble enough to say that I too remain a student, not just in the literal sense, but in life. As teachers, I believe it is our responsibility to provide an educational experience that motivates our students to discover their own hidden potentials and to hopefully achieve self-realization. This is especially important for young children, for it is with the combination of their innate learning ability and the influence of great educators that can account for their marvelous capacity of potential.
The “roots” of education, meaning actually going to school, studying, making great grades, and giving it your best, are bitter and tiring. Those students that have not yet become uninterested in learning are the ones that have seen past the strife in the beginning and have the rewarding end in mind.