Lifelong Learning: A Confession
I’ve given my blog in education the name of Life-Long Learning (the acronym LLL for short). Clearly I think that LLL is a good idea and, by implication, I’ve sought to exemplify it. Yet, looking at what I myself have done recently and peering clearly in the mirror, I feel the need to add, “Lifelong learner: Heal thyself”!
For the past two years, I have taught a course called “Understanding Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.” This course builds on the ideas presented in my 2011 book Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the virtues in the age of truthiness and Twitter.
As the subheading indicates, I consider these three perennial virtues in light of the rise of social media, on the one hand, and the postmodern critiques of these virtues, on the other. Put succinctly, I look at the virtues in relation to the disruptive forces of philosophical challenges and technological innovations.
I think that the course is a good one; students seem to like it and learn from it. So I have incentives to continue it much as it is. And yet, this year I realized two things;
The reading list is heavily skewed toward white American and European males, with hardly any writers from the rest of the world, and not many women authors.
While the reading list contains many recent articles from the press and some recent scholarly writings, the key texts come from decades ago.
In reflecting on these tendencies—one might properly call them biases—in the reading list, I made a revealing discovery. Most of the key texts are writings that came to light when I myself was a student in the social sciences, fifty years ago. To be specific:
When studying truth, we begin with Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970); and we review the debates between linguist Noam Chomsky and behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner from the same period.
In our study of beauty, the key texts come from philosopher Nelson Goodman (1968) and art historian E. H. Gombrich (1960). I should mention that we also read two more recent treatises authored by Elaine Scarry (2001) and Kirk Varnedoe (2006).
As for our examination of goodness, the key texts are both from the same period: John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) and A. O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970).
Finally, in our quick survey of developmental psychology, the students read Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, both born in 1896, and review key writings from Lawrence Kohlberg in the 1970s. One exception again: Alison Gopnik’s book The Philosophical Baby (1999).
I can’t avoid the inference that students are being asked to relive my own experiences as a student: to read the texts that were intellectually formative for me half a century ago and to critique them as I have over the years. Or, in the spirit of earlier blogs in this series, I am suggesting that the ideas that transformed my thinking should also be the ones that transform the thinking of my students, who are considerably younger, to say the least. There’s also the inference that there’s “nothing new under the sun” and that, with few exceptions, the relevant field was formed and has not changed materially since I occupied a student seat several decades ago.
Of course, I can come up with counterarguments:
The benefit of distance: These readings are not fly-by-night; they have stood the test of time. Indeed, during the last week of the course in both years, we read a synthesis from the tail end of the 20th century (E. O. Wilson, 1998), but I have already shifted the second work of synthesis from Sean Carroll (2017) to Harari (2015) because Carroll did not pass the test of time… and perhaps Harari won’t either.
Each field has its formative texts which everyone should encounter first hand: This is a somewhat more convincing argument. If you are to study sociology seriously, you need to read the writings of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Though these were written over a century ago, subsequent sociological writings build upon or challenge these foundational thinkers. One can make a similar case with regard to Freud in psychoanalysis, Chomsky in linguistics, or, in my own field of developmental psychology, Piaget, Vygotsky, and a few others.
Exposure to what students are unlikely to encounter otherwise: Because the social sciences are decidedly trendy, most graduate programs focus on recent empirical articles. And so it is possible—if not likely—for a student to get an advanced degree without ever encountering these key foundational texts. I have enough authority—or am bullheaded enough—that I can induce students to read Piaget’s writings rather than empirical studies which, whether or not the author is aware of it, are based on issues and concepts developed by Piaget (and his collaborators, notably Bärbel Inhelder).
And I can also be defensive:
My shifting interests: Unlike many of my teaching colleagues, I have wandered over a wide academic turf. As a result, I have not kept up with the most recent theoretical and empirical writings in each field and have to depend on older knowledge. As a compensation, students are exposed to a teacher who can make links and offer syntheses that may be less available to a more focused scholar.
Insider knowledge: Because I have lived with these texts for a half century (and in some cases, knew the authors reasonably well), I have intimate knowledge of the arguments. I can point out weaknesses and contradictions as well as brilliant insights that changed parts of a field or perhaps launched a new one.
This field of study is not natural or physical sciences: Were I teaching chemistry, physics, or biology, I would necessarily have to focus on works written in the last few years—even ones that have not yet been published. But social sciences develop much more slowly and, in my own view, they don’t establish permanent truths—they provide data-based reasons for proposing certain organizing concepts, frameworks, and theories… as I put it, “ideas that change the conversation.”
So much for pros and cons.
Should I to continue to teach this course in the future, I’d consider several changes:
Diversify the demographies and backgrounds of the authors. Insight and wisdom are not confined to white males who lived in the 20th
Choose more key texts of recent vintage. The books and key articles do not need to come from 2020 but some should bear a more recent date of publication.
Inform myself of some of the recent trends in the field. I have already decided to consult colleagues who are more current and find out what works they are reading and assigning.
Some final notes: When something is going well, there is no need for radical alterations. Were I to teach this course for a decade, I’d hope that by 2028, the reading list would be quite different, and the class discussions and student papers would reflect those differences. But for 2019, I won’t blow the course up; instead, I will tweak.
An important goal of education is to give students the opportunity to have their own thinking challenged and perhaps transformed. It’s valuable to reflect on which works and ideas transformed you as a learner; but there’s no reason to assume that there is a single royal road to transformation. Indeed, across time and across learners, transformation can be catalyzed by many different texts, discussions, and experiences.
