Chapter 4, Culture: philosophic perspectives II

Brameld, Theodore.  (2008).  The use of explosive ideas in education:  Culture, class, and evolution.  New York:  The New Press.

Knowledge in the process of culture

“How do we acquire culture?  Clearly, the central answer is:  through learning.  Here, then, is enough reason for relating that branch of philosophy called ‘epistemology’ to the acquiring process.  If we acquire through learning, are we not then involved in knowledge-getting or, still more simply, knowing?  And when we are knowing, are we not inescapably engaged in truth-seeking as well?” (p. 54)

“Thus, epistemology, as the philosophic study of the criteria of knowledge, appears in the perspective of culture as a quite different discipline than it does at the hands of formal philosophers.  Epistemology is the handmaiden of cultural acquiring, just as ontology, the philosophic study of reality, is the handmaiden of cultural order.”  (p. 54)

“But how can we know reliably or truly?  This question can be effectively answered only when it is determined how learning takes place in culture.  Here, we return to metacultural assumptions.  Just a little investigation reveals that the scientists of culture no more proceed from the same metacultural assumptions when they try to resolve issues of learning and knowledge than they do in the case of cultural reality.”  (p. 54)

“…quite a number of anthropologists regard the learning process as chiefly one of conditioning.  Any student of psychology at once recognizes here the general and loosely bounded position known as behaviorism — namely, the position that human beings, like all animals, learn by responding to the stimuli of an outside environment.”  (p. 55)

“Psychoanalysis focuses upon another and very important way in which conditioning occurs — that is, through largely unconscious influences induced especially by parents in the first years of life, but also continuously by other members of the culture and subculture to which every human being belongs.  Learning, according to this theory, is primarily a process of personality formation by way of emotional responses to the stimuli of those individuals and groups closest to the child.”  (p. 55)

“The connection of learning as conditioning to the superorganic theory of cultural order should at once become apparent.  Realists, particularly, tend to support a stimulus-response theory of learning and therefore to presuppose that the individual is exposed to the attitudes and habits of a culture through processes that are reinforced by repetition, by the pleasures of reward and the pains of punishment. . . . Clark Hull and Frederick Skinner . . . .”  (p. 55)

“More strictly in terms of epistemology, the metacultural assumption of behaviorists is something like this:  truth is the product of man’s effective grasp of the basic rules, skills, customs, and knowledge already embodied in the given objective reality, including the reality of culture.  Educationally, the acquiring process is chiefly one of adjustment. . . . the behaviorist is an ally . . . of the kind of educator who believes that the school is primarily an agency of cultural reinforcement.” (pp. 55-56)

“According to this second view, man acquires by a process of inquiring into the nature of his culture.  And inquiring, as John Dewey implies . . . , is man’s capacity to engage actively and critically in the events of his cultural experience — to take them apart, as it were, and to rearrange them in more satisfying, efficient, workable ways than before.”  (p. 56)

“. . . the second viewpoint (which we may call functionalism) thinks of mind more as a verb than as a noun — that is, as a special way of acting called ‘inquiring’ or ‘intelligent functioning.’ . . . . In Dewey’s terms, human beings carry on transactions with their environment, and thus with their culture, through which both ‘parties’ to the transaction are altered.”  (p. 56)

“The chief philosophies of education that come to mind when we look at the acquiring process in these alternative ways are, once more, the essentialist and progressivist.  The essentialist tends to take a conditioning view of learning . . . .”  (p. 57)

“By contrast, the progressivist assumes that when men acquire knowledge of culture they do not and certainly need not engage merely in ‘passive mentation’ but may learn also how to inquire into the conditions that have compelled them to acquire that knowledge in habitual ways. . . . [this practice] leads to an active reconstructive conception of learning defined as a transaction in which both poles of the epistemological equation — the knower and the known, the learner and the culture learned — are both modified.”  (p. 57)

Chapter Two, The Use of Explosive Ideas in Education

Brameld, Theodore.  (2008).  The use of explosive ideas in education:  Culture, class, and evolution.  New York:  The New Press.

How We Shall Proceed

“The first chapter of each section considers the nature of the explosive idea itself.”  (p. 16)

“The second chapter in the three-stage design recalls the bridge of philosophy….What does a respective idea mean when its assumptions are critically analyzed by philosophic specialists?” (p. 17)

“Insofar as each third chapter is successful, it demonstrates how professional education becomes dependent upon basic knowledge from other sources than education.”  (p. 17)

Anticipating the Explosive Ideas

“Why, then, were they [culture, class, and evolution] selected?”  (p. 17)

The Functions of Philosophy

“One, epistemology, is concerned with examining and establishing criteria of reliable knowledge.  A second, ontology (sometimes defined synonymously with metaphysics), tries to discover criteria of reality.  A third, axiology, searches for criteria of value.”  (p. 19)

“To what extent do children in the South obtain unbiased knowledge of the Negro problem?  To what extent do children anywhere in America obtain a picture of economic and political events not colored by the propaganda or vested interests of some official or unofficial pressure group?  To what extent, also, do they have opportunity to consider under critical and responsible educational direction the changing mores of our age — especially the values of sexual morality?”  (p. 20)

Types of Educational Philosophy

“Idealists, for example, are idealistic ontologists — that is, they discover the principles of reality in their conception of the universe as spiritual or mental in substance.”  (p. 21)

“Materialists are materialistic axiologists — that is, they find the meaning of value in material events such as economic patterns.”  (p. 21)

“Pragmatists are pragmatic epistemologists — that is, truths are determined by their practical workability in ongoing experience.”  (p. 21)

“Let us call our own preferred types by the following four terms:  essentialism, progressivism, perennialism, and reconstructionism.”  (p. 22)

The Sphere of Practice

“Each of the following three sections concludes with a chapter of application to educational problems and activities.  The practices selected — curriculum, learning-teaching, and control — are obvious enough at first glance.”  (p. 24)

“To mention one other that will interest us again:  concomitant learning is the sort that occurs through direct association with people — usually through informally rather than formally planned experiences.”  (p. 25)

“One widely held view of teaching that we must be wary of is to identify it with indoctrination.” (p. 26)

Control:  “Who shall determine the policies of education?  How shall they be determined?  Who shall carry them out?” (p. 26)

“Should not teachers and even students also have a voice?  And what about the state and federal governments?”  (p. 26)