My understanding of Existentialism

As a famous expression of Existentialism says “existence precedes essence.” Existentialists emphasize subjectivity and freedom in human beings. They believe one should not be defined as having some “nature”, or to be educated to fit in such role. People should create or choose their own nature by themselves. The education strategy guided by Existentialism differs from what we learnt from Aristotle. Aristotle thought that people all have certain places in life, and their education should be decided accordingly. But how did he know the appropriate “place” of a new born baby? Or who had the right to define another human being’s role so as to give him suitable education? Considering the era Aristotle was in, I think, the role of human being might be defined in such a simple way: the offspring of a slave/leader is designated to be a slave /leader. Again, this preordained hierarchy would be rejected by Existentialists.

I appreciate what Existentialists would say: You are responsible for making yourself. This point of view encourages you to strive for better future – American Dream? However, a question came into my mind: Considering the role of education, will it be difficult to provide the exact kind of education for someone according to his own essence? How do teacher know what essence the student have? How can teacher avoid defining student’s role while providing appropriate guidance to the student?

In China, I notice two kinds of educational methods parents use in bringing up their children. Some parents sign up for piano class for their kids, regardless whether their kids are interested in it or not. Further more, they force their kids to take piano examination to get a certificate for becoming a professional pianist. First, I think ignoring kids’ interest violates what Existentialist proposed. The kids may lose motivations to meet their parents’ expectation. Or even worse, the kids may lose the ability to plan their own career. I will prefer to offer my kids an environment where their choices are highly respected. Do I violate the “freedom” proposition by Existentialists if I advise them to stay away from drugs and cigarette?

Some Thoughts

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't care much where ---" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you walk," said the Cat.
"--- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat. "If you only walk long enough."

• The above quote is from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It's not in the reading assignments, and this is not Alice Prof. Pawley. I think this quote describes what this course is all about.
• One thing I heard and found interesting in the past two lectures is to let yourself go where you have not gone before, to places that are new to you, and to patterns of thinking that do not necessarily match yours. I think we will need to challenge what is put in the table from the readings.
• One of my favorite professors once said, "You've learned all what you need for this life in kinder garden." I consider this course to be a little more extra work for this reason!
• I am not a philosopher, and I am not interested in being one, but I read philosophy for pleasure. Ask what does the Ph. stand for in Ph.D.
• I found it useful to decouple teaching morals (ethics) from math, science or more generally thinking to understand the readings. I am not sure if you understand me.
• I also found it useful to decouple talking about teaching techniques (scaffolding, building blocks, etc.) from talking about philosophy of education.
• Three terms you will need to know to be successful in ENE: lenses, unpacking, and scaffolding. For some reason, I keep hearing them very often!
• My problem: In class discussions, I only listen to myself; when others are talking I keep thinking of what I was saying, myself! Do you have the same problem, or is it just me?

Logic and Critical Thinking

I am sure, I am going to miss big deal of next Thursday class discussion but I hope my short summary will contribute a little to the topic and won’t bring more confusion to the already hot debate over logic and critical thinking.

In Logic and Critical Thinking chapter Noddings discusses the thoughts of philosophers of education on three main approaches, as well one not fully developed approach to the teaching of critical thinking. As it is more than impossible to conceptualize (difficulty, as I am continuing to read and learn it is not a struggle only of my own), I will try below to summarize shortly the main points of the chapter discussion and express some of my initial thoughts after reading the text.

According to Nobbings formal logic involves the valid manipulation of symbolic forms. Suppes argues that formal logic is the form of symbolically expressions, not the content, where we judge the true or false of a statement. Robert Ennis first introduces the connection between formal logic and critical thinking. However, his approach falls more to the informal logic then formal logic. He defines critical thinking as "the correct assessing of statement” and characterizes critical or rational thinking in terms of an ability as a form and process. Similar to Ennis, Richard Paul concentrates on the process; he separates “weak” and “strong” sense of critical thinking which approach has been viewed as practical and pedagogical useful. However, Harvey Siegel argues Paul’s approach. Siegel characterizes critical thinking as a process moved by reasons and one of the main aspects of critical thinking for Siegel is the ability properly to assess reasons, reasons that can be examined by all. McPeck defines critical thinking as the appropriate use of reflective skepticism and that there is no such thing as thinking critically in general.

Noddings agrees that if we accept McPeck’s view of critical thinking it will mean to teach the epistemology not only the disciplines accumulated content. As she continues, students need to learn how to make a valid argument, how to apply such an argument in everyday life, to adapt an attitude of reflective skepticism, to learn the technical language of the field.

One of the questions Noddings asks at the end of the chapter is: “Are there such things as general thinking skills?” With respect to all said in the chapter, Noddings examples of personal experience – “the fish” test example and the episode from Alice in Wonderland, and mine own experience not exactly as an educator – people in general have problems in thinking critically because they lack understanding of main concepts, principles, and criteria that help us to gain our critical thinking practices. When one teaches instead of focusing on developing thinking skills, an educator needs to focus on the contexts of particular modes of disciplines which will enable a student to learn how reasonably to judge in particular contexts as the critical thinking is not a skill, as the concepts and principles are not isolated, as often seems that way.

The example of the fish led Noddings to the conclusion that to teach logic relaying on how the mind actually works is “foolish and questionable if it will improve ordinary logical thinking.” I do agree with the author’s statement as well with her reasons on why she will continue teach logic in mathematics class: “if proof is to be emphasized, the rules of deductive inference must be understood.” If we focus on understanding rather than on developing skills than we will provide knowledge of what is required in particular context and what practical application is for this particular context. Ennis “acknowledges this and requires that rational thinkers exercise their skills in familiar field of experience.”

And as Noddings introduces at the end of the chapter, fourth, alternative approach to critical thinking, she asks a much more important question of the purposes of critical thinking: “Why do we want our students to become critical thinkers?” Jane Martin goes further as raises moral issues in teaching critical thinking and believes that “too often critical thinkers are spectators rather than participants.” Here as Noddings I am wondering is pedagogical neutrality possible and how and how it will contribute to critical thinking in the moral sense?

What will future generations say about us?

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.”

Aldo Leopold (as cited in Bowers, 1995)

While I am familiar with the philosophy of education and have studied the sociology and politics of knowledge in the past, the way that we lined the information up on the board made the political nature of education, the “cannon” of knowledge, and the society’s ethics all the more present for me. It was powerful.

As I thought about the systems of government practiced by the various societies, who the leaders of the society even considered “men” or “citizens”, I thought about how our society differed. I am thankful that our government doesn’t think that everyone who is not a “citizen” is an “idiot” as did Plato’s fellow “citizens”. I am appreciative that I am not to be trained as “Sophie” and be considered useful only in the ways that I am able to care for the needs of men. This leads me to consider our system and method of education. I do wonder how other generations will look back and consider our education system; what will they see as the lenses and the underpinnings of a “US” philosophy of education; what will be their critiques about our approach, our ethics?

This leads me to consider one of my favorite authors on education and the sociology of knowledge. In his book Education for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies, Bowers (1995) asks readers, educators, and policy makers to consider an ethic of ecology as the framework for our government and subsequently our formal educational system; he asks us to expand our notion of the community to which we belong to include land and other organisms. Bowers understands post-modernism and the political nature of beliefs as well as the lack of universal truths and asks us to build a pluralistic ethic of ecology based on the integrity and stability of the ecosystems of the world. Regardless of where we stand on the climate debate, the words of Norman Myers are powerful, “If we act as if it matters and it doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter. If we act as if doesn’t matter and it does matter, then it does matter.”

The question remains, how will history record our intent and behaviors? What lenses will our society be ascribed? What will current and future philosophers make of us? And what lenses will our historian's be sporting as well?

Reference:

Bowers, C.A. (1995). Educating for an ecologically sustainable culture: rethinking moral education, creativity, intelligence, and other modern orthodoxies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

About Dewey's "Growth" and Epistemology

As I mentioned in my last post, some other questions running in my head when I was writing that post. Also, the topic of my last post seems too big, and somehow empty, so I am trying to talk some smaller things by using specific examples here.

Dewey hold the opinion that becoming more skillful as a burglar does not represent growth, because such activities close off connections and prevent further growth. Then Noddings put another two examples of mathematics and monetary accumulation to argue against Dewey’s opinion. From my perspective, both of their opinions haven’t well developed (maybe it’s because the length of the passages in this book is limited, and I have never read other of their articles in which their argument processes maybe full presented).

In my opinion, the process when the burglar is learning should be regarded as a kind of growth. Then if the burglar went on to do very serious wrong deeds, more and more serious, even developed into a murderer, and got arrested and was given an all life sentence. Only at this time, his growth stopped, because he had lost all the connections to further growth. Exceptional cases exist where prisoner with a life-long sentence could get out of the prison and go on towards new growth like Andy Dufresne in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”. However, I am not intended to talk about so extreme cases here, so let’s go back to the burglar, if he didn’t do that much serious wrong deed, and someday he somehow realized it’s a bad thing to steal, and stopped such behavior and became a very skillful worker or so. The skills he had learnt when being a burglar may contribute to his new job. This is definitely a growth which opens the door of a new kind of life to him. Even if the skills won’t contribute to his new work, his thought during this transition of his life, and his idea that “being a burglar is wrong” should definitely account for his growth. Dewey may see things from the angle of a democratic society, but I see them from the angle of the individual burglar. We have talked about Dewey’s democratic idealism in our group’s discussion in class, the critiques of Dewey’s theory is actually based on his ideal democratic society.

Dewey's "aim of education is growth" led me to think one question I have been wondering: what is the aim of engineering education? To make students become engineers? What if many of them end up not being engineers (this is obviously true)? Does the engineering education fail? Many of my former classmates in Electrical Engineering are not engineers now. Is this a waste of engineering educational recourses? Should I blame this to the EE education that we have received? Now, Dewey’s idea of growth kind of inspires me that as long as the engineering education gives certain connections to the students which connected them with certain directions that they want to go, the education is at least not a failure, such as my EE education has connected me to Purdue ENE now. I am not an electrical engineer now, but at least I am not failure production of that EE education. It seems earlier to talk about “engineering education” when we are still reading about education, but my mind doesn’t wait until the “what is engineering education?” essay due date. This is another contradictory topic running in my mind, and I shouldn’t say it here. Maybe I could further develop this idea in my “what is engineering education?” essay.

I have a last piece of opinion to say. When I wrote about the burglar case, I said the idea “being a burglar is wrong” could contribute to the burglar’s growth, and this reminded me a defect in Dewey’s epistemology: "p" should be true to be regarded as knowledge, when "p" turns to be wrong, it no longer guides inquiry, so it couldn’t be regarded as knowledge and should be abandoned. There should be more to say, even though "p" is no longer right, “p is wrong” should be knowledge, because it could guide inquiry. For example, we may get a hypothesis that “s is wrong” because it is similar to "p", and then we could utilize other method to verify whether this hypothesis is right or wrong. Actually, the knowledge that “something is wrong” is often more useful than a right proposition, because we tend to be more aware of the experience and lessons we gain from a former wrong idea.

That's all, please excuse my badly-organized logic.

Multiple lenses

We discussed different educational philosophical thoughts of different philosophers in class. All of them were questioning and answering “what is education” through certain lenses. Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Dewey have their lenses, so do those existentialists, phenomenologists, and postmodernists, etc. Mostly because of the certain lens they took, flaws in their theory become very obvious when we critique through another lens.

Then, question comes to me that what is the lens or lenses that we take today when we talk about, question, or try to define education? We know that we must have certain lens, because we couldn’t “see” the answers to our questions with “naked eyes” (no lens, totally unbiased). If we could find the answers with “naked eyes”, then probably the universal-forever-answers could be located. Unfortunately, that will never happen. This might be a way to explain that why we do the same things and ask the same questions again and again and again, because human beings keep changing lenses during the process of growth, every time we change the lenses, we should “repeat” some actions, but these new actions have totally different means.

Then, my question goes on like this: if we know what is our lens today, and we are sure that it will result in certain defects in our theory, then when we know that the results of our inquiry should have certain disadvantages because of inevitable defect in the premise, do we still have the courage to go on? Is it possible that we could see things through multiple lenses (if “naked eyes” are totally impossible)? How can we do that? I admit and used to strongly agree with that people are deeply influenced by their environment and the times they live, but it is true that there are certain philosophers in history whose thoughts (or more precisely a portion of their thoughts) could transcend the limitation of their time. So now I believe that if we are aware of the limitation that our lenses give us, we take it as a serious problem, and we have a strong desire to break the limitation, then maybe we could make it to yield a better outcome of our inquiry, at least we could on some degree break the spatial limitation, if we couldn’t break the temporal limitation of this digital era.

I personally believe there is something deeply rooted in my mind always leading me to break certain limitation given by my lens, especially spatially. However, I want to see things through multiple lenses for better outcome, but maybe the meaning of inquiry is lying in the process. I probably shouldn’t struggle with how to achieve a more unbiased lens; rather, I should learn to live with the beauty of all the confusing questions according to Palmer’s suggestion.

P. S.
I try to be clear and concentrate on the theme of this post, but I am not sure whether I did it using a language I am not good at. Also, I am often distracted by some of other seems irrelevant questions that keep occurring when I want to concentrate on one theme, what presents to me when I finished the writing is always different from what I thought it should be. I should "comb" my thoughts again and again, and it takes time, but eventually my "thought of hair" still looks crazy. I am writing another post about some other questions occurred to me when I was writing the passages above.

What is engineering wordle from first day

Here it is (go to www.wordle.net to make your own): option 1 and option 2

r:)

Philosophy in The Chronicle

As I was reading this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly publication dedicated to "the news" in higher education, I noticed a significant section of the paper devoted to "The Defining Idea of the Next Decade". The Chronicle asked a handful of scholars to answer the question: "What will be the defining idea of the coming decade and why?" The answers, in the form of short essays, were printed one after another.

One essay was from Parker Palmer, whom we read last week, discussing the need to reinvigorate the "tensions of democracy" - which he calls humility and chutzpah. In essence, it is the tension between listening with an open mind and heart, and knowing and speaking one's own truth.

Another essay, by Daniel Cohen, talked about the debate between the individual and the collective - another "tension" if you will, and that this debate will be had again, stemming from the way we value the voice of the collective (via social media) versus the way we value the voice of the expert.

A third essay, by Linda Kerber, writes about the continued need for equity for women. I was interested in this essay because of the way she approached the topic - a way that we discussed in class today - asking the question, presenting her argument, and being explicit about the consequences of that arguement.

In all, there were 19 essays presented, and I could see threads of our discussions today and those of last week in each of them.

Thoughts on chapters 3, 4:philosophical questions about education?

What are questions about education that each philosophical perspective/school might ask?  (Final group work of today's class.  We will come back to this on Sept 9.)

Analytical

• What PRECISELY is learning?
• Does teaching imply learning?

Existentialism

• don't define me!!!
• what is the nature of choice?
• what is the role of the learner?

Phenomenology

• what is an experience in which you were "educated" or were taught or were a learner?
• what is an "education of caring"?

Critical theory

• who has power in/over education?
• what is priveleged knowledge?

Post-modernism

• should/must knowledge be political?