If nothing is knowable. . . WHY BOTHER WITH EDUCATION?
Carlin, David R. Jr.
OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr. IF NOTHING IS KNOWABLE WHY BOTHER WITH EDUCATION? ave we ceased to believe in the possibility of knowledge? Is that why we can't remember when Columbus...
...But if our difficulty is that we have a faulty theory of knowledge that has been gaining ground steadny for the past four hundred years onf, worse still, we have a theory of knowledge that is sound, not faulty at all yet is unconduciveto inspiring any but a handful wittiazealfor knowledge, thenitis difficult to tind grounds for cheer...
...Several centuries back one of the local firefighters wrote a very fine book proving that big tall the ladders,howlongthe hoses, or how great the water pressure...
...The typical college-educated American of today is far from believing that he or she ought to have a general knowledge of the natural sciences...
...I shall be told that my observations are little more than a counsel of educational despam Perhaps they are...
...Once upon a time it was believed that every educated person would eventually acquire a general knowledge of the entire field of Lural science...
...Little wonder, then, that it is difficult to inspire our young people with enthusiasm for knowledge...
...For if we believe that the universe is in principle unknowable...
...but we have been nursing those hopes for a century-and-a-half now, and to date have little to show for it...
...Natural science is seen as knowledgeparexcellence;philosophy literature, and the arts are seen as second-rate knowledge at best, at worst as the expression of mere personal fantasies-while moral knowledge isn't knowledge at all but simply a set of informal rules that decent people agree on...
...This was the hope of the Encyclopedists in the eighteenth century a hope embraced and propagated by Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and a host of lesser but similar lights in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...
...The citizens have long since grown cheerfully accustomed to the fact that their town is constantly in flames, though of late they have shownmuch concern that theiryoung about firefighting...
...If we can improve education by paying teachers more, by assigning more homework etc then there is hope, there is light at the end of a not very lengthy tunnel...
...Yet at the same time great progress was made in fighting small fires, until today there is a highly elaborated science of fighting small fires which science, however, only a small number of gifted persons can master, and that only after many years of training...
...As for the social sciences: insofar as they mimic the methods of natural science we have hopes that they may someday produce a considerable body of scientific knowledge...
...or if we believe that the human mind is so weak and disproportionate an instrument that it cannot understand reality...
...But every good thing has its down side In the case of natural science, there are three facets to the down side...
...Is that why we can't remember when Columbus discovered America...
...It tells entertaining stories but isn't the least bit scientific...
...First, its prestige has been so great thatithas tended to drive all other claimants to the title of knowledge from the field...
...or if we believe that the nature of things can be understood only in small fragments: if we believe any of these things, then it is unlikely education will thrive, no matter how good a job we do with teacher pay, homework, Head Start and the rest...
...But from time to time we ought to step back from the everyday business of school policy and practice to ask if our civilization still believes that the universe is more or less intelligible and that the ordinary human mind is capable-at least when properly trained-of grasping that intelligibility, of seeing into the nature of things...
...Third, natural science, marvelous though it is, makes no claim to deal with any more than an important but limited aspect of reality It talks of how things appear to a human observer,notofhowthey are in themselves It has nothing to say about fundamental questions of value, about the meaning of life and death, about God...
...Second, natural science is the province of specialists, who comprise only a small fracuon ofthe total population...
...That much I grant...
...At all events, you will understand why I believe that the current national debate on quality education does not even come near to dealing with the real issue...
...Modern natural science (which, for the sake of having a convenient starting date we may say begins during the lifetime of Galileo)ls probably the greatest intellectual accomplishment in the history of the human race...
...When we concern ourselves-as President Bush (our "education president") and other political and corporate leaders urge us to do-with the sorry state of American education, it is well that we ask if teachers are paid enough, if students are assigned enough homework, if enough money is put into Head Start, if enough effort and imagination are put into dropout prevention projects, etc...
...If natural science alone is real knowledge, if this knowledge has nothing to say aboutmostof the greatques-tons that trouble human beings, andif this knowledge is in practice available to only a small and highly trained fraction of the Population, then there is nothing astonishing in the fact that our generation of students is indifferent to the pursuit of truth Their indifference is a logically appropriate conclusion to be drawn from the theory of knowledge that has gradually come to pervade our culture...
...Science we believe,isfor the scientists, justas dentistry is for the dentist, auto mechanics for the auto mechanic, and tax collecting for the tax collector...
...There are some things he average person is expected to know (eg., where the earthquake struck and what happened to Jane Pauley), but science isn't one of them...
...Education is about knowledge, which is a relationship between reality and the mind Thus, we are skeptical about either reality or the mind or both, then we are skeptical about the possibility of knowledge-hence about the possibility of education Imagine a town in which the citizens have gradually come to believe that it is impossible to extinguish big fires...
...But things didn't work out that way...
...As for history-forget it...
Vol. 117 • January 1990 • No. 1
