Chapter 4, Culture: philosophic perspectives III

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

Goal-seeking in culture

“If it is true, as earlier contended, that all cultures have implicit or explicit goals — that is, purposes toward which they endeavor to move with some sense of direction — then it is also true that all cultures have more or less articulate sets of values that symbolize rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness.  But the nature of cultural goals, like that of order and process, may be interpreted again in conflicting ways, depending upon the metacultural assumptions from which it is approached.”  (p. 58)

“Let us consider … the view that the values of culture are primarily determined by the basic interest of human beings — by their striving for satisfaction of needs and wants. . . . These range all the way from the physiological hunger of food and sex to the more subtle but nevertheless equally genuine sociopsychological wants of recognition and cooperation.”  (p. 59)

“Such an approach to cultural goals may be expressed axiologically as a functional theory of ethics — ethics being defined here as the philosophic study of moral conduct. . . . the interests of human beings everywhere in the world can be found to have many common denominators, no matter how diversified cultures might otherwise be.  Thus, one of the typical contentions of this approach is that we need to study the values of people cross-culturally — that is, to compare one culture with another to see how far their goals function in both similar and different ways.”  (p. 59)

“Another approach to the problems of goals … is the theory that cultures are moving progressively toward an ultimate end that is somehow inherent in the order and process of culture.  According to this theory, goals are the driving force of all cultural change in that they provide the ‘magnets’ that draw men onward and, in a sense, upward toward perfection.”  (p. 60)

“In ontological terms, the view that culture … is moving inevitably toward an ultimate goal is called teleology.  The nature of the goal may vary according to different theorists, however.  Marxists, for example, hold that it is the ‘classless society’ — the Communist ideal of pure economic freedom through public ownership and control of all means of production.  Those of Father Teilhard’s [de Chardin] faith conceive that the ultimate goal is eternal salvation, and that all cultural processes are in one way or another a means to this perfect and final end.”  (p. 60)

“. . . one may hold that the first view of the goal problem — exemplified by Malinowski — is perhaps closer to what we have called the reconstructionist orientation than to the others.  Reconstructionists hold that the delineation of human goals is to be achieved through cross-cultural research that enlists not only anthropology but all the sciences of human behavior, such as psychiatry and political science.”  (p. 60)

“The reconstructionist educator also takes the position that not only is it possible to describe the desires of human beings by such research, but that it is possible to arrive at much greater consensus than we have thus far achieved as to the desirability of the most important cross-cultural goals.  In other words, description could lead to both prescription and proscription of goals — both to those that are recommended as culturally desirable and to those that are condemned as culturally undesirable.”  (p. 60)

“The bridging of the gap between described values … and prescribed — that is, normative — values, … is suggested by the reconstructionist theory of ‘social consensus.’ . . . It is necessary first to consider the maximum evidence available as to whether certain goals … are in fact accepted by all or most cultures. . . . . The second step requires communication both among members of one culture and also among cultures that the evidence is what it claims to be.  The third step is the endeavor to express as wide agreement as possible upon the basis of the evidence communicated.  The fourth step is to act in order to test out the agreement by observation and experience — thereby determining whether verbalized testimony harmonizes with behavioral testimony.”  (p. 61)

“Referring back for a moment to the knowledge-getting process, one might say that social consensus involves both inquiring and acquiring.  That is, it involves the kind of social inquiring necessary in collecting and comparing evidence and in reaching maximum communication about that evidence.  It involves social acquiring in the sense that the aim of the collecting and communicating of evidence is to achieve as much active agreement as possible about desirable goals on the basis of the evidence and the communication.”  (p. 61)

The major process of culture, acquiring, is thereby linked with cultural goals and the seeking of them — a good indication of why it is impossible in the experience of living cultures to separate any one of the three dimensions (order, process, or goals) from the other two.  It indicates, also, why reconstructionist education, though concerned with achieving desirable goals by practice with social consensus at every possible stage of enculturation, recognizes that cultural goals in turn demand both effective processes of achieving them and effective order of human relationship within which these processes may function.  (p. 61)

“By contrast, the perennialist theory of cultural goals does not assume that one achieves them primarily by a social or public process of acquiring and inquiring, but rather that the goals of man, already inherent as they are in the nature of culture and universe, will be attained if you and I can somehow learn to recognize the absolute laws of reality, knowledge, and value necessary to their attainment and can then abide by these laws to the utmost.”  (p. 62)

In this recognition of objective law, the perennialist reminds one of the essentialist’s attitude toward superorganic order, but he differs from the latter in his insistence that the value-seeking and value-achieving process requires, no less than knowledge-getting, a strong ingredient of intuition and even of revelation.  (p. 62)

“The ultimate goals of culture are not delineated by a cooperative process of gathering, communicating, and agreeing upon relevant evidence; they are discerned, finally, by one’s inherent capacity to discover their character through one’s own rational and spiritual power — reinforced, of course, by divine power.  Education’s most important responsibility is to share in and enhance this discovery.”  (p. 62)

Big Ideas from Carl Rogers IV

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

The Philosophical and Value Ramifications

CHAPTER 14, A modern approach to the valuing process

“The work of the teacher and educator, like that of the therapist, is inextricably involved in the problem of values.  The school has always been seen as one of the means by which the culture transmits its values from one generation to the next.  But now this process is in upheaval, with many of our young people declaring themselves ‘dropouts’ from the confused and hypocritical value system that they see operating in the world [1964].  How are educators — how are citizens — to orient themselves in relation to this complex and perplexing issue?”  (p. 277)

Some definitions of values

“[Charles Morris] points out that value is a term we employ in different ways.  We use it to refer to the tendency of living beings to show preference, by their actions, for one kind of object or objective rather than another.  Morris called this preferential behavior operative values.”  (p. 279)

“A second distinction might be called conceived values.  This is the preference of the individual for a symbolized object. . . . A preference for ‘honesty is the best policy’ is such a conceived value.”  (p. 279)

“A final distinction might be called objective values.  People use the word in this way when they wish to speak of what is objectively preferable — whether or not is is, in fact, sensed or conceived of as desirable. . . . I am, instead more concerned with operative values and conceived values.”  (p. 279)

Some introjected patterns

“Introject is a psychological term that best describes the internalization of another’s characteristics without a conscious effort. . . . Let me list a few commonly held introjections:” (p. 282)

1. sexual desires and behaviors are mostly bad
2. disobedience is bad
3. making money is the highest good
4. learning an accumulation of scholarly facts is highly desirable
5. browsing and aimlessly exploratory reading for fun is undesirable
6. style and fashion are important
7. dictatorships are utterly bad, except when they support our goals
8. to love thy neighbor is the highest good
9. competition is preferable to teamwork and cooperation
10. cheating is clever and desirable
11. Coca-Cola, MTV, chewing gum, video games, American jeans, and automobiles are utterly desirable

Common characteristics of Adult Valuing

1. most of our values are introjected from other individuals or groups significant to us
2. the source or locus of evaluation lies outside the self
3. criterion by which values are set is the degree to which they cause us to be loved or accepted
4. conceived preferences are either not related at all, or not clearly related, to our own process of experiencing
5. wide and unrecognized discrepancy between the evidence supplied by our own experience and these conceived values
6. because these conceptions are not open to the test of experience, we must hold them in a rigid and unchanging fashion; otherwise, our value system would collapse
7. because they are untestable, there is no ready way of solving contradictions
8. because we have relinquished the locus of evaluation to others and have lost touch with our own valuing process, we feel profoundly insecure and easily threatened in our values

The Fundamental Discrepancy

“The fundamental discrepancy between our individual concepts and what we are actually experiencing, between the intellectual structure of our values and the valuing process going unrecognized within this, is a part of the fundamental estrangement of the modern person from his or herself.  This is a major problem for those in the helping professions:  teachers, social workers, and therapists.” (p. 284)

BIG IDEA

• restoring contact with experience (for both the teacher and the learner)