In Praise of Jeeps

“Knowing how something is put together is worth a thousand facts about it.” - Jerome Bruner

Perhaps no single sentence better captures the essential contrast between a progressive education and the facts-based approach to schools that infects the majority of schools in America today.

We all have some experience with putting things together. My personal favorite was in Mechanical Maintenance Officer Training in 1967. We newly-minted 2nd Lieutenants had an individual capstone task of removing an engine from a Jeep, taking it completely apart, reassembling it and starting it up - all in a few hours. 56 years later I could probably do it again. I can only imagine trying to do that by following printed instructions. IKEA anyone?

Because of my undiminished interest in education and child development, I read any newspaper article about schools and school policy that crosses my screen, as well as occasional journal and magazine articles. I am almost invariably irritated - at best - infuriated - too often. I have oft opined that education is the field in which what we do departs most frustratingly from what we should know.

Neurobiology, child development and lived experience tell us one set of things, yet we do another set of things, bringing to mind Einstein’s overused, but apt, definition of insanity.

I ranted at length about this in my book, so this will be a mini-rant, focused on the ways that language affects and infects the broad public consensus on school practices and assessment.

Among the most common education words are “teaching” and “learning.” There is a universally accepted idea at the heart of educational discourse that these words are linked in a causal way. Someone “teaches” and others “learn.” For purposes of this piece, and to avoid unnecessarily arcane nitpicking, “teaching” and “instructing” are interchangeable. “Instruction” is particularly irritating, as it implies a more forceful link with the object (child) being instructed. Both “teaching” and “instructing” are understood as having a power dynamic and presuppose that the teacher or instructor has valuable knowledge or information to dispense. From a purely pragmatic point of view, this assumption drives poor educational practices. Plutarch wrote, “The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth.” Many “teachers” cheerfully paraphrase that quote and then go about their “instructing” so as to fill the little vessels (vassals?) so they may empty the information into the next available assessment. Or, to stretch the use of metaphor, pour water all over any small fires of passion and curiosity that were incidentally or accidentally ignited.

From a scientific point of view, current practices are abominable. From the work of early theorists, like Lev Vygotsky, Maria Montessori and many others, to current advances in neuroscience, it is inarguably true that active learning is more potent and durable than passive learning. Jerome Bruner and Noam Chomsky, to name just a pair, are among those who have demonstrated that language is acquired in social context (which does not include the silent society of most American classrooms). This, of course, is a powerful part of the so-called whole language approach to reading, but I’ll refrain from re-opening that can of worms for now.

A primary cause and effect of the dominant dysfunction is economic. Class size doesn’t matter, according to those who assert, somewhat truthfully, that lecturing 35 (or 135) kids works just as well as lecturing 15 kids. That meaningless analysis allows the craziness to continue unabated.

I belatedly get to the point that led me to write this post . . .

The teacher-student, instructor-instructed model of miseducation also has a philosophical consequence that does a grave disservice. The process demands that children unquestioningly accept information rather than constructing their own knowledge. The knowledge itself is less durable, but it also denies the development of agency and creativity. I argue that a child’s construction of knowledge is often more profound than an instructor’s delivery of information.

A recent New York Times piece, referenced in my last post, examined the political firestorm over faculty activism as a matter of freedom of expression. I approach this from a different angle. The best “teacher” is one whose personal opinion or ideology is a mystery, except of course in the case of clear morality or indisputable fact. But particularly as the current model of education is constructed, the “teacher” or “professor” (contemplate the root meaning of “professor!”) is seen as infallible or, at least, as one whose viewpoint is to be absorbed and reiterated. This is part of my aversion to religious training/indoctrination. The study of religion is important, but should be more about the questions than the answers.

When I taught, particularly as it was in a school that was progressive by both mission and dominant political leaning, I did my best to guide discussion and debate from a neutral stance, often asserting the counter-majoritarian (conservative) view that Manhattan kids pooh-poohed or had never considered. Whether interpreting a piece of literature, considering history, arguing politics or proposing a method to solve a mathematical puzzle, good “teachers” should prize a student’s construct, not affirm that which aligns with their own.

My relationships with students included surprisingly intimate one-on-one conversations with each 11th grader. They were amazingly forthcoming, in large part because I valued their beliefs and experiences and offered my own only when asked - and then very carefully, so as to try to avoid the (unavoidable) possibility of influence through age and power imbalance. I learned a great deal from them.

I love Lev Vygotsky’s idea of a teacher being a guide, not an instructor. Just imagine if we re-framed schools as places where children are guided as they construct knowledge and develop their own sense of the world they will inherit.

In such schools the most powerful phrase, echoing through each day, would be, “What do you think?”

You could also have a few old Jeeps around!