Matthew
Whoolery, MS
Brigham
Young University
Presented
at the Annual Conference of the Rocky Mountain
Psychological
Association, April 2002, in Park
City, Utah
Correspondence
about this article may be sent to Matthew Whoolery at mwhoolery@aucegypt.edu
Truth
and Agency in Education
Many educators are seeking to reach their students meaningfully, yet
often find themselves in a paradoxical situation.
On one hand, they wish their students to voluntarily join in the process
of learning and become self-motivated, truth-seeking learners.
On the other, many of the current methodologies of education assume
students can be shaped, cajoled, and forced into learning material.
This paradox leaves educators in a serious bind.
This paper will attempt to address some of these problems, especially as
related to the concepts of agency and truth as outlined by the philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s
writings provide alternative solutions to the problems many educators experience
in trying to teach and motivate their students.
Determinism
Traditional
psychological and educational theories view students as being determined by any
number of factors, especially nature (physical bodies and heredity) and nurture
(their unique familial and social milieu).
A deterministic view leads teachers to focus on methods and techniques of
education rather than the student.
One of the outcomes of this traditional deterministic view of the student
is the system of reinforcements used to control the student and force them to
learn material. The very process of
grading is based on the assumption that students will not learn unless “there
is something in it” for them. Exams,
quizzes, and grades reinforce or support the view that the teacher is the power
figure to whom the student must conform to be successful.
Students are often “tested” in such a way that demoralizes or demeans
the student, preserving the power of the instructor as the one holding the
knowledge and authority.
For
example, in an undergraduate course of mine in (of all things) motivational
psychology, the average score on the essay exams was usually about 37%.
The professor seemed to enjoy our poor performance as proof of his
superiority and refused to take responsibility for our lack of knowledge.
Many of the students ceased to come to class, preferring a poorer grade
to the sense of demoralization that came from attending class.
The instructor held with the belief that students are determined beings
who can and should be “shaped” and “manipulated”.
The class became a classic example of word bulimia, the binging on the
ideas of the text and professor, and purging of those exact ideas on exams and
assignments. The students felt this
forced control and lost their appetite for learning. I think this is an extreme
case, but it illustrates the power differential between the teacher and student.
If Kierkegaard is correct and people are agentic, able to choose, the
entire educational enterprise is changed. With
the assumption that students are agentic, the focus moves from teaching as a
technology to the teaching of the individual.
Kierkegaard expressed this idea in his explanation of why he wrote “maieutically,”
or indirectly. He wanted to
“shake off ‘the crowd’ in order to get hold of the ‘single
individual’…there is in a religious sense no public but only individuals”
(Kierkegaard, 2000, p. 453). Focusing on the individual changes teaching from a
technological “trickery” to an important relationship with each
student in a class. Agency strips
away the anonymous quality of a classroom and calls for the teacher to reach out
to each student and invite them to learn, rather than control them into
learning. I will discuss two
impacts of an agentic perspective, responsibility and humility.
Responsibility. First,
responsibility. Let us suppose that
neither the instructor nor the students are agentic.
Then there is no personal responsibility for either in the education
process. If a student were
determined, he would enter the classroom expecting to be taught rather than to
learn. A teacher without agency
would expect the student to learn rather than taking personal responsibility to
teach. Accepting agency
creates a sense of responsibility for both the teacher and the learner. For this presentation, I will explore only the responsibility
for a teacher. One of the sections
of Kierkegaard’s On My Work as an Author, begins “If one is truly to
succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first and foremost
take care to find him where he is and begin there.
This is the secret in the entire art of helping” (p. 460).
The responsibility, then, for the teacher is to reach out to each student
and know where each of them are individually before trying to lead them to any
new understanding or knowledge.
One excellent example of this also occurred in my undergraduate work.
In a statistics class, we had an exam in which the class as a whole did
somewhat poorly. After grading the
exam, the instructor came to class and asked us, sincerely, “What could I have
done to help you learn this material better?”
We were all a bit shocked and didn’t know how to react. It was hard to believe that he was really asking the question
sincerely. This instructor truly
took responsibility for us, individually, in learning this material.
His example has always been an inspiration for me as an instructor.
Humility. Though
Kierkegaard acknowledges that a teacher, or helper, must understand more than
the person being taught, he denies that this understanding is truly the most
important. Humility is the key to
teaching. We must first understand
what the learner understands. “If
I nevertheless want to assert my greater understanding, then it is because I am
vain or proud, then basically instead of benefiting him I really want to be
admired by him. But all true
helping begins with a humbling. The
helper must first humble himself under the person he wants to help…not to
dominate but to serve” (p. 460). True
educating, then, requires an instructor who is a servant to those being taught,
rather than the master of his or her domain of interest.
Humility in teaching also involves the willingness to “put up with
being in the wrong” (p. 460). Though
admittedly, the teacher is often in the position to see things more clearly, the
teacher must be willing to listen and place him or herself in the position of
learner. For example, if a student brought up an issue in class that
she was quite impassioned about, though obviously in the wrong, the teacher
should not immediately point out where she was in error. This would leave the student feeling demeaned and not help
her correct her misunderstanding. Kierkegaard
counsels to first be a “willing and attentive listener” and then gently
lead the learner to the truth. I will quote here somewhat at length because of the
excellence of the following passage from Kierkegaard on the role of a teacher:
To be a teacher is not to say: This is the way it is, nor is it to assign lessons and the like. No, to be a teacher is truly to be the learner. Instruction begins with this, that you, the teacher, learn from the learner, place yourself in what he has understood and how he has understood it, if you yourself have not understood it previously, or that you, if you have understood it, then let him examine you, as it were, so that he can be sure that you know your lesson. This is the introduction; then the beginning can be made in another sense (p. 461).
This
humility and willingness to place oneself “beneath” or “behind” a
student is key to being able to teach and influence.
In some sense, the process of teaching first begins with the teacher
being the learner. The teacher must
seek to first understand where the student is and what the student understands,
thus the teacher first must learn from the student. Only when the teacher has reached this point of humility can
he or she begin to teach.
Choosing
not to learn.
One of the objections to the idea of agency is that without being able to
“control” students with grades, assignments, exams, and the like, what is a
teacher to do with the “problem student,” the one who chooses not to learn?
Well, it must be said first that if students are agentic, there is no
absolute way to force them to learn. They
will constantly be able to find ways to learn in spite of their teacher and also
to refuse to learn in spite of their teacher.
So what is to be done with these students?
Kierkegaard states that “Even though a person refuses to go along to
the place to which one is endeavoring to lead him, there is still one thing that
can be done for him: Compel him to become aware” of a new way of seeing things
(p. 464). He admits that there is
something daring about this compulsion to awareness and that it may not always
turn out to be the most pleasant experience.
By compelling someone to become aware, we “succeed in compelling him to
judge. Now he judges. But
what he judges is not in my [the teacher’s] power.
Perhaps he judges the very opposite of what I desire.
Furthermore, that he was compelled to judge perhaps makes him infuriated,
ragingly infuriated—infuriated with the cause, with me—and perhaps I become
the victim of my daring venture” (p. 464).
In relation to the enterprise of educating, this means to make a student
aware of the possibilities of what they can learn.
Presenting the ideas that challenge their entrenched opinions.
This challenge compels the student to think, to experience possibilities.
But this, as Kierkegaard warns, is not guaranteed to work smoothly.
When a teacher opens the student to become aware, the student may make
judgments that agree or disagree with the beliefs of the teacher.
A teacher cannot compel a student to judge or believe in a certain way,
but may only open to the learner the possibilities.
Respect for the agency of the student requires this willingness to allow
them to appropriate the knowledge how they may.
Objective
Truth
Objectivity is the notion that truth exists outside the subjective
experience of an individual. Objective
truth is somehow separate from people, a world “out there.”
Truth is also seen as an objective entity, which can be possessed by a
person. The possession of more
“facts” or an accumulation of information is the critical difference between
the student and the teacher. The
current views of education put a great deal of focus on the idea of
“information technology.” The method
of delivery of information is viewed as more important than the educator.
And the responsibility of the teacher becomes primarily finding a way to
transmit the information most effectively and efficiently, hence “information
technology.” It is no wonder millions of dollars are being spent towards
providing “powerful” tools to make this transmission of objective knowledge
possible. This is not haphazard; it is a reflection of the view modern society
has of truth.
Another consequence of objective view of truth on education is the loss
of responsibility. If truth were
really found outside the person and could exist independently of all persons,
the teacher may have some responsibility for how things are taught
(method), but not for what is being taught (content).
A teacher could say to himself: “I simply state things as they are, I
am not responsible for how things are.” A
professor may be criticized for being boring but surely not for being
untruthful. Students are encouraged
to accept the truth from the mouth of the teacher without thinking about it
critically. Multiple-choice testing
is one of the exemplary outcomes of the commitment made to objective truth.
This form of testing reinforces the idea that the professor has
“more” of something than the student, and the student has a deficit of the
truth, which must be filled.
Subjectivity
For Kierkegaard, ALL knowledge and truth pertain to a person and are
therefore, subjective. There is no
such thing as objective knowledge or objective thinking, only subjectivity
masking itself falsely as objective. If
this is true, the entire object of education must be reconsidered.
In describing the role of the teacher, in Philosophical Fragments,
Kierkegaard claims that the “teacher thrusts the learner away, except that by
being turned in upon himself in this manner the learner does not discover that
he previously knew the truth but discovers his untruth” (p. 120).
There are a couple of important points in this brief quote.
First is the relationship of the teacher to the student.
The teacher is not giving some “thing” to the student to fulfill a
deficit. The teacher actually pushes the student away and guides the
student to turn inward to discover his or her “untruth.”
There is no demand for conformity to an external truth, but an
encouragement of the student’s increase in self-awareness: “I can discover
my own untruth only by myself, because only when I discover it is it discovered,
not before, even though the whole world knew it” (p. 120).
This discovery of the truth cannot be forced or manipulated by
methodologies, but by a drawing forth from the student the truth and untruth
that is already in them.
Secondly, it is important to note the way that Kierkegaard uses the terms
truth and untruth. These are always
characteristics of a person’s relating to himself or herself.
It is a way of relating, not a passive state of mind or a quality
that exists outside the individual. Truth
is a personal characteristic rather than correspondence to an external reality.
Teaching, then, cannot be done directly by the teacher.
Teaching demands something more than passive obedience to the words of
the teacher, it requires that the teacher, “before beginning to teach, must
transform, not reform the learner. But
no human being is capable of doing this; if it is to take place, it must be done
by the god himself” (p. 121). The
teacher becomes a sort of midwife, helping the students give birth to the truth
that is already in them. A teacher
must always see themselves as the instrument rather than the “teacher.”
And the instrument can only be effective if it is “right” with the
student and with the god himself. The
life of the teacher outside of the teaching situation now becomes very relevant
to their ability to teach. A
teacher who is in untruth, or relating to himself or herself untruthfully,
cannot lead a student to truth. The
personal characteristics of humility, honesty, and integrity have everything to
do with what is taught.
The
content of the teaching, in my estimation, becomes a sidelight to what is being
taught. I find that the inspiration
provided by fine teachers sometimes relates little to the class subject.
A class in statistics is only partly about formulas and calculations.
It remains, even primarily, a work of transformation for the teacher and
student. Kierkegaard’s notion of
education redeems education from objective information to personal, from
technology to a way of relating.
References
Kierkegaard,
S. (2000). The
Essential Kierkegaard. H.V.
Hong and E.H. Hong, Eds. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press.