LESSON 20
THEORY AND METHODS OF EDUCATION
Theme: Theory and Methods of Education.
v Social, moral and cognitive development
v Individual differences and disabilities
v Learning and cognition
v Motivation
v Research methodology
Each person has an individual profile of characteristics, abilities and challenges that result from predisposition, learning and development. This manifest as individual differences in intelligence, creativity, cognitive style, motivation and the capacity to process information, communicate, and relate to others. The most prevalent disabilities found among school age children are attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disability, dyslexia, and speech disorder. Less common disabilities include mental retardation, hearing impairment, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and blindness.
“Education”, says Aristotle,” is the creation of a sound mind in a sound body”. It encompasses in itself the all-round development of an individual. The success of spreading education to the widest possible area lies in the way it is imparted. With the ever changing technology scenario, the methods of imparting education too have been undergoing changes. But education itself is an age old process, rather as old as the human race itself. It was man’s education through Nature, our greatest teacher, that he learned how to make fire by rubbing stones or invented the wheal to make tasks easier. Education in real earnest helps us in restraining the objectionable predisposition in ourselves. The aims of education have been categorized variously by different scholars. While Herbert Spencer believed in the ‘complete-living aim’, Herbart advocated the moral aim. The complete living aim signifies that education should prepare us for life. This view had also been supported by Rousseau and Mahatma Gandhi. They believed in the complete development or perfection of nature.
All round development has been considered as the first and foremost aim of education. At the same time education ensures that there is a progressive development of innate abilities. Pestalozzi is of the view “Education is natural, harmonious and progressive development of man’s innate powers.” Education enables us to control, give the right direction and the final sublimation of instincts. It creates good citizens. It helps to prepare the kids for their future life. Education inculcates certain values and principles and also prepares a human being for social life. It civilizes the man.
The moral aim of Herbart states that education should ingrain moral values in children. He is of the view that education should assist us in curbing our inferior whims and supplant them with superior ideas. This moral aim has also been stressed upon by Gandhiji in the sense of formation of character. The preachers of this aim do not undermine the significance of knowledge, vocational training or muscular strength. But simultaneously they have also laid stress on their view that the undisclosed aim of education is to assist development of moral habits.
Then there is the social aim which means that education should produce effective individuals in the sense that they realize their responsibilities towards the society. And we all know that man is a social being. The interactive ability is a must as it is through interaction that we come to know of our responsibilities. Edmund Burke asks and he himself answers: “What is education? A parcel of books? Not at all, but an intercourse with the world, with men and with affairs.”
Only bookish knowledge takes a child nowhere. It should be further perfected by practical usage with experience. “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man” is a pithy and precise statement in which the essayist Francis Bacon sums up the advantages of studies. Even Wordsworth in his poem ‘The Tables Turned’ advocated against bookish knowledge.
Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.
Wordsworth was a die-hard naturalist. He wanted man to consider Nature his teacher. Naturalists believe that instincts of the child should be taken as the basis of education. The child should have freedom. Rabindra Nath Tagore was of the opinion that child should be left free in order to gather experience and to understand his own mistakes and shortcomings.
The twentieth century saw the emergence of the concept of Pragmatism. Charles Pierce was the first man to introduce the concept of pragmatism in his philosophy. Later on it was popularized by John Dewey, William James, Kilpatrick and Schiller. They believed that the external world is real and the reality is being constantly created and is always changing. Knowledge and truth is one and the same thing according to them.
Whatever the approach towards education, one thing we all agree: Education is for the betterment of the individual and in the long run for the society. Education helps us prepare ourselves for the life ahead. Darwin gave the theory of the ‘survival of the fittest’; we can say in a way that education prepares the individual for the struggle of life for his own survival.
Knowledge combined with proper guidance can spell success. A dose of proper guidance should be commenced right from the base itself, that is, in school days. Here comes the role of the teacher in molding a child’s mind. Educating a child, especially in the beginning years of schooling, is a very tricky job. That is probably because the child’s mind is like the unmolded clay at that time. Therefore to get the best results and prepare well-informed and erudite adults, proper guidance is a must. For a proper system of education the teacher should encourage a student both in terms of mental encouragement and in lending a helping hand as and wheeeded. A student needs help for training his mind in such a way that it develops a tendency to gather knowledge from all possible sources. While on the other hand too much help if lent to him will make him dependent and used to spoon feeding. Self-study is the most sought after quality in a student. It helps them at the later stages. But because the ‘child is the father of man’ (Wordsworth) all the qualities have to be inculcated right in childhood. And teacher along with parents plays a very significant role. The aims of education should be kept in mind, although a thorough study of these aims may not be imperative. A teacher should make a child ready to face the society, inculcate moral habits in him and thus, assist him in his all-round development.
Education should not be considered synonymous with all that we learn. It does not signify the things we mug up before appearing for an examination. Education is what remains behind, when we fail to remember the mugged up portion. After we have left school, we realize that although we have forgotten quite a few things we learnt but still retain a very large part of it. The latter part is education. Education formally begins in school but actually it begins the day we are born and the process goes on for the whole of our life. This is where the aims of education come in. Education is not only the formal part we gain in schools, colleges or universities. It also includes the lessons life teaches us in various forms. For instance, when a child gets his finger pricked by a needle accidentally he learns that a needle is sharp and can hurt a person, so he will learn to avoid hurting himself in the future. This is only one example from thousands of other instances. We can even learn a lesson of a lifetime from a beggar. The birds inspire us to rise high. An ant motivates us for hard work. We learn some things just by doing them on our own, they are never taught in a school. A child’s first teacher is his mother, then his home and then come the formal agencies of education. Nature too is a great teacher. English poetry too gives us quite a few guidelines for leading a better life. It was not for nothing that Wordsworth went on to remark:
“One impulse from the vernal wood
May teach you more of a man
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.”
As long as there is life, we require education; we need ways to modify our views about life, to face it, to live it in a better way. And education teaches us all this. Even when you read a comic strip, it educates you in some way. They improve our language and make us realize that life isn’t so bad after all that it can’t get worse, as states Bill Watterson in ‘Calvin and Hobbes’. The witty humour of ‘Dennis the Menace’ enriches us no end. “The aim of education,” says Walter Grophices, “is not the specialist but the man of vision who can humanize our life by integrating emotional demands with our new knowledge.”
In another way too, the insects and animals also teach you a lot. The easiest example is that of an ant. It inspires you to work hard. Therefore we can say there are innumerable modes of education, all that one needs is to have a discerning eye.
Education enriches a person in terms of accepting a defeat. A student should first of all be taught so that he is encouraged to study. Side by side he should be readied to face a failure. As Charles F. Kettering rightly says,” The chief job of the education is to teach people how to fail intelligently.” This will help the child coping with the other adversities of life. Education, thus, makes a person an improved version of himself and the world a much better place to live in.
Each person has an individual profile of characteristics, abilities and challenges that result from predisposition, learning and development. This manifest as individual differences in intelligence, creativity, cognitive style, motivation and the capacity to process information, communicate, and relate to others. The most prevalent disabilities found among school age children are attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disability, dyslexia, and speech disorder. Less common disabilities include mental retardation, hearing impairment, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and blindness.
Although theories of intelligence have been discussed by philosophers since Plato, intelligence testing is an invention of educational psychology, and is coincident with the development of that discipline. Continuing debates about the nature of intelligence revolve on whether intelligence can be characterized by a single factor known as general intelligence,[8] multiple factors (e.g., Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences[9]), or whether it can be measured at all. In practice, standardized instruments such as the Stanford-Binet IQ test and the WISC[10] are widely used in economically-developed countries to identify children ieed of individualized educational treatment. Children classified as gifted are often provided with accelerated or enriched programs. Children with identified deficits may be provided with enhanced education in specific skills such as phonological awareness. In addition to basic abilities, the individual’s personality traits are also important, with people higher in conscientiousness and hope attaining superior academic achievements, even after controlling for intelligence and past performance.
Educational Psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing on subgroups such as gifted children and those subject to specific disabilities. Although the terms “educational psychology” and “school psychology” are often used interchangeably, researchers and theorists are likely to be identified in the US and Canada as educational psychologists, whereas practitioners in schools or school-related settings are identified as school psychologists. This distinction is however not made in the UK, where the generic term for practitioners is “educational psychologist.”
Educational psychology can in part be understood through its relationship with other disciplines. It is informed primarily by psychology, bearing a relationship to that discipline analogous to the relationship between medicine and biology. Educational psychology in turn informs a wide range of specialities within educational studies, including instructional design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management. Educational psychology both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning sciences. In universities, departments of educational psychology are usually housed within faculties of education, possibly accounting for the lack of representation of educational psychology content in introductory psychology textbooks.
To understand the characteristics of learners in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, educational psychology develops and applies theories of human development. Often represented as stages through which people pass as they mature, developmental theories describe changes in mental abilities (cognition), social roles, moral reasoning, and beliefs about the nature of knowledge.
For example, educational psychologists have researched the instructional applicability of Jean Piaget’s theory of development, according to which children mature through four stages of cognitive capability. Piaget hypothesized that children are not capable of abstract logical thought until they are older than about 11 years, and therefore younger childreeed to be taught using concrete objects and examples. Researchers have found that transitions, such as from concrete to abstract logical thought, do not occur at the same time in all domains. A child may be able to think abstractly about mathematics, but remain limited to concrete thought when reasoning about human relationships. Perhaps Piaget’s most enduring contribution is his insight that people actively construct their understanding through a self-regulatory process.
Piaget proposed a developmental theory of moral reasoning in which children progress from a naпve understanding of morality based on behavior and outcomes to a more advanced understanding based on intentions. Piaget’s views of moral development were elaborated by Kohlberg into a stage theory of moral development. There is evidence that the moral reasoning described in stage theories is not sufficient to account for moral behavior. For example, other factors such as modeling (as described by the social cognitive theory of morality) are required to explain bullying.
Rudolf Steiner’s model of child development interrelates physical, emotional, cognitive, and moral development in developmental stages similar to those later described by Piaget.
Developmental theories are sometimes presented not as shifts between qualitatively different stages, but as gradual increments on separate dimensions. Development of epistemological beliefs (beliefs about knowledge) have been described in terms of gradual changes in people’s belief in: certainty and permanence of knowledge, fixedness of ability, and credibility of authorities such as teachers and experts. People develop more sophisticated beliefs about knowledge as they gain in education and maturity.
Pedagogics is a normative science with its own subject of research. The historical development of pedagogical thought shows strong relations with philosophical-anthropological principles and with historical-cultural characteristics. Education today is confronted with, among other things, postmodern developments in society (‘Hauslosigkeit’) and a change in patterns of youth behaviour (from a standard career to a chosen career). For pedagogical analysis, a renewed appeal to reason is advocated. A suitable method is the triadic-pedagogical analysis, which reflects on the parent-child relation in connection with historical-cultural developments.
We can safely assume that everyone is aware that children cannot be left to fend for themselves and that they cannot become adult on their own. However, not everyone is convinced that the process of growing up and gradually growing into society requires an on-going pedagogic relationship based on more or less pronounced concepts of what it is to be a civilized human being. “It can’t be allowed!” people cry when they hear that school children are carrying weapons and that they use them on a regular basis. A father will say that his childreeed a “good education” so that they can come to occupy a “good position” in society. While a mother might say that as far as she is concerned, the most important thing is that her children should be “honest” and that they should learn to be prepared to help one another.
In all of these cases there is clearly some notion of the relationship between education and the socio-cultural environment, of the current state of society and society as it might be, of what should be considered normal or abnormal in terms of human behaviour and of the kinds of things that education can strive towards. But not everyone is willing to accept the practical pedagogic consequences that these notions imply — in other words, the need to maintain an on-going pedagogic relationship in which educators care for the children in their charge, are aware of their responsibility and are also ethically responsible, relating to the surrounding culture critically and consciously and making every effort to enable children to take part in society responsibly and effectively in their own way.
Consciously or otherwise, educators allow themselves to be guided by all kinds of values regarding human existence on a daily basis and these values are concretized in their dealings with the children they are educating through the setting of various standards. If educators do not allow themselves to be guided by values, there will be no rules or any rules that do exist will be arbitrarily applied. Or there will be a naive faith that with a bit of good will everything will work out all right on its own. This kind of attitude means that the child is indeed left to fend for itself and fails to learn to make choices and to be responsible for them. A child may well be able to grow up in such a situation, but is not given enough assistance in the process of becoming an adult. For, like Langeveld, we are also of the opinion that while growing up the child simultaneously engages in a process in which it determines and shapes the values that it has learned or discovered while growing up increasingly independently (Langeveld, 1979, p.23).
In this respect, to continue to think along the lines of Langeveld’s pedagogics, we are concerned with development, education and self-forming within a context of relatively constant personal relationships. However, the pedagogic relationship never exists entirely independently of the historical-cultural context. Thus in this respect we also share Imelman’s view that the educator and the child being educated are also affected by the formative influence of the cultural environment. Ultimately, the task of pedagogics is to act as a mediator within this process.
Concerned as it is with the legitimization of pedagogic procedures, theoretical pedagogics has always had to account for the reasons for education and even the necessity for education. Pedagogics per se, that is, for while those who are purely concerned with the therapeutic side of pedagogics — questioning the effectiveness of certain approaches and strategies, such as how to deal with bed-wetting, eating disorders or social anxiety — are covering important ground for the practice of pedagogics, they are not obliged to account for their actions from the point of view of cultural pedagogics, nor are they considered to have any responsibility towards the child in question in the longer term. However, the discipline of pedagogics per se — in other words, the aspect of pedagogics that cannot be reduced to psychology (or any other behavioural science) — cannot evade the issue of legitimization.
Beekman states it in the following lofty terms “A science of education that does not make any value judgements is a valueless science of education.” In 1826 Friedrich Schleiermacher, one of the founders of academic pedagogics, went as far as to characterize pedagogics as applied ethics. It is worth bearing in mind that Schleiermacher conceived of ethics as cultural philosophy as an evolutionary process (‘progress’), but all the same! [1]
In the tradition of pedagogics as an aspect of the humanities it is common practice to base pedagogical reasoning on statements regarding the human being taken from philosophical anthropology. Some of these statements have since become such established ideas in pedagogic theory that their origin is no longer known. Here, by way of example, we look at the anthropological ideas expounded by Scheler, Portmann and, above all, by Gehlen, who is so widely quoted in the formulation of pedagogic theory. With reference to Nietzsche, Gehlen describes man as “the not-yet-determined animal”. Who and what man is or must become still remains to be seen.
According to Gehlen (1940) this fact, which is an unusual phenomenon withiature, makes man “a creature of discipline”. This notion implies a clear task for education, suggesting that without the imposition of discipline the human being will not become a true human being or in any event will not be given his due. Similar ideas had already been voiced earlier, by Kant, for example, in his Vorlesung ьber Pдdagogik [Lecture on Pedagogics] (1776): “We understand by educatioamely care, discipline and instruction besides cultivation”.’ (Kant, 1803, p. 697: “Unter Erziehung nдmlich verstehen wir die Wartung, Disziplin, Unterweisung nebst der Bildung”) [2]
The quotation from Gehlen referred to above is one of a series of statements regarding the human individual that attempt to clarify man’s special status withiature and in the world. The human being is considered to differ from the animal in that he comes into the world incomplete and has to act in an open world in order to be able to survive, for, unlike the animal, the human being is unable to rely on the safety of innate instincts. A newborn infant is unable to act on its own. It needs assistance and therefore needs to be educated. Yet even when man is fully grown the task is still not complete, for as an adult the individual is called upon to make something of himself and must continue to act in order to be able to maintain this position.
However, like children, adults do not need to do this on their own. For — to pursue Gehlen’s argument — human beings are also characterized by the fact that together they create a culture which functions as a second nature within which they can live a human life especially with the aid of institutions (defined as a collection of models of action and/or patterns of behaviour, examples of which include the state, the legal system, the family, school, work and religion). According to this way of thinking the human individual comes into the world unspecialized and finds within himself, as it were, the mandate to act. Initially the child is unable to act independently and until it can act independently it needs help. Pedagogues adopt this anthropological finding as the rationale for educational action. [3] Thus we come to one of the fundamental principles of pedagogic action, which may or may not be explicitly stated. [4]
Gehlen’s anthropology does not stand alone. It exists within the context of a series of anthropologies, being preceded by the work of Scheler and Plessner, among others, which also had an effect on pedagogics, and followed by the work of Sartre, Levinas and Derrida, among others. Research into the fundamental principles of pedagogics might seek to examine such a series of anthropologies [5] not only in terms of the way in which they have been received by pedagogics but also in terms of their (practical) utility.
To a certain extent the history of pedagogics is a history of concepts of man in relation to education. But, one might object, isn’t all education highly individual and situational in practice, embedded in the historical-cultural environment, which is not derived from all kinds of general anthropological systems? And to pursue this line of thinking still further: Isn’t the theory of education excessively divorced from the practice of education which is essentially self-governing and relatively autonomous? The tradition of the humanities goes as far as to speak of theoretical clarification in retrospect, thereby acknowledging the primacy of practice. To some extent the praxis itself determines its own course (Schleiermacher speaks of the “dignity of praxis”).
Given that this is the case, the theory of education is increasingly being assigned the task of critically reflecting on what has already occurred and acting as an ‘interlocutor’ for future practitioners. One thing is certain, when it comes to the discipline of pedagogics the question of theory and practice caever be reduced to the simple application of scientific conclusions in practice. Among other things, scientific opinions are too divided for this to be possible, there being very little consensus from one paradigm to another. As a result, the scientific nature of pedagogics is constantly subject to discussion. The relationship between philosophy and science has yet to crystallize. [6]
To return to the question of the unique and unrepeatable nature of each educational situation.this is another aspect covered by philosophical anthropology that is regularly considered in pedagogics. The various personalistic notions in pedagogics are interesting in this respect. In the twentieth century in particular examples of this kind of thinking can be seen in various countries, in the work of Pascal, Kierkegaard and in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Buber, Maritain), among others.
Personalistic thinking centres on the human individual as a person. As a person-in-the-making the child is charged with the task of realizing its intention in a dialectical relationship with the other. Again this is considered to justify the existence of education, for childreeed help in order to be able to do this. The process of self-realization, which is less concerned with capitalizing on one’s potential than with finding one’s specific purpose in life (which may or may not be interpreted in a religious sense), does not really lend itself to empirical research within the context of developmental psychology, nevertheless it has consistently inspired the thinking regarding education. In this case the human being is considered to be the architect of his own destiny and, as a pupil or student, is partly responsible for his own education.
This view has been convincingly elaborated by the Italian pedagogue Guiseppe Flores d’Arcais who is not as well known as he should be in the Netherlands. [7] His life virtually coincides with the twentieth century and during the course of the twentieth century in Italy Guiseppe Flores d’Arcais has played a vital role in reestablishing pedagogics as academic discipline. He deliberately set himself the task of founding pedagogics “juxta propria principia'” (according to its own principles) and in doing so he aimed to give it its own epistemological identity. A pedagogics that had freed itself from bondage to other disciplines.
Above all, Flores d’Arcais saw the unique contribution (the proprium) of pedagogics in the creation of the person. Education was no longer primarily regarded as a process of socialization, but as a creative and value-inspired process of person-making. Indeed, this creation of the person is the true and main principle of pedagogics. However, this does not mean that pedagogics is able to sail its own course. Flores d’Arcais speaks of the necessity of combining anthropology, teleology (axiology and deontology) and methodology in a three-dimensional pedagogic theory.
In addition to elaborating on the education of the individual and the kind of assistance that promotes personal development, triadic pedagogics also elaborates on the process involved in the transmission and renewal of human culture. Thanks above all to Imelman, the transmission and renewal of human culture has been extracted from the relatively obscure and ambiguous atmosphere in the relationship between the educator and the child and subjected to a clear analysis in the triadic model. [8] Something (a certain point of view) is always communicated. The point of view (or aspect of knowledge) in question is partly reflected in the pedagogic analysis.
In this case, rather than focusing on a theory regarding the pedagogic relationship, we are concerned with an analysis of the triangular relationship between the child, the educator and the point of view being communicated. It hardly needs to be emphasized that such an analysis is also likely to include anthropological factors. A rational and objectifying approach to the transfer of knowledge within the context of the teaching-learning process encourages the pupils to process knowledge critically and helps to prevent the unquestioning absorption of knowledge. The anthropological principle that applies in this case is that the human child should be educated as a rational (and responsible) being.
The considerations outlined above are some of the standard issues addressed by programme-oriented theories of education, particularly within the tradition of the humanities. Pedagogues who lean towards conceptual analysis can therefore claim that they have already dealt with this aspect, given that conceptual analysis is concerned with distinguishing between meaning and nonsense, fiction and reality. In the same way, descriptive scientists can question the empirical and practical relevance of the entire anthropological body of thought. In this respect we are all too well aware of the theoretical diversity that exists within the field of pedagogic science.
So to sum up the ideas set out above:
Pedagogic reasoning is often based on ideas developed by philosophical anthropology. Dominant anthropological principles in pedagogics are man as the not-yet-determined animal and man as a creature of discipline; the human being as an unspecialized being living in an open world; the human being as a rational being. Educational theory is often based on anthropological reflections, seen from the point of view of natural development, cultural philosophy or personalism. An analysis of the central question addressed by pedagogics (what needs to be taught to whom, when, how and why?) is likely to be enhanced by an anthropologically based study of educational reality.
Visual communication
Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid. It is the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colour and electronic resources. It solely relies on vision. It is form of communication with visual effect. It explores the idea that a visual message with text has a greater power to inform, educate or persuade a person. It is communication by presenting information through visual form.
The evaluation of a good visual design is based on measuring comprehension by the audience, not on aesthetic or artistic preference. There are no universally agreed-upon principles of beauty and ugliness. There exists a variety of ways to present information visually, like gestures, body languages, video and TV. Here, focus is on the presentation of text, pictures, diagrams, photos, et cetera, integrated on a computer display. The term visual presentation is used to refer to the actual presentation of information. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice.
Other types of communication
Other more specific types of communication are for example:
Mass communication
Facilitated communication
Graphic communication
Nonviolent Communication
Oral communication
Science communication
Strategic Communication
Superluminal communication
Technical communication
Procurement communication
Oral Communication
Oral communication is a process whereby information is transferred from a sender to receiver usually by a verbal means but visual aid can support the process.. The receiver could be an individual person, a group of persons or even an audience. There are a few of oral communication types: discussion, speeches, presentations, etc. However, often when you communicate face to face the body language and your voice tonality has a bigger impact than the actual words that you are saying. According to a research:
55% of the impact is determined by the body language. For example: posture, gesture, eye contact, etc.
38% by the tone of your voice
7% by the content of your words in a communication process.
You caotice that the content or the word that you are using is not the determining part of a good communication. The “how you say it” has a major impact on the receiver. You have to capture the attention of the audience and connect with them. For example, two persons saying the same joke, one of them could make the audience die laughing related to his good body language and tone of voice. However, the second person that has the exact same words could make the audience stare at one another.
In an oral communication, it is possible to have visual aid helping you to provide more precise information. Often enough, we use PowerPoint in presentations related to our speech to facilitate or enhance the communication process. Although, we cannot communicate by providing only visual content because we would not be talking about oral communication anymore.
4. Structure of the communication
1. The notion of education.
2. Stages of education.
3. Didactics as theory of education in high school.
4. Learning, basic principles of learning.
5. Learning in different age groups.
6. Learning theory.
7. Teaching process, ist components.
8. Technology as indispensible teaching tool.
9. Pedagogical materials
The notion of education
Education as a science cannot be separated from the educational traditions that existed before. Education was the natural response of early civilizations to the struggle of surviving and thriving as a culture. Adults trained the young of their society in the knowledge and skills they would need to master and eventually pass on. The evolution of culture, and human beings as a species depended on this practice of transmitting knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling continued from one generation to the next. Oral language developed into written symbols and letters. The depth and breadth of knowledge that could be preserved and passed soon increased exponentially. When cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond the basic skills of communicating, trading, gathering food, religious practices, etc, formal education, and schooling, eventually followed. Schooling in this sense was already in place in Egypt between 3000 and 500BC.
EDUCATION is THE PREROGATIVE OF MAN. To man must be reserved the noble term education. Training suffices for animals, and cultivation for plants. Man alone is susceptible of education, because he alone is capable of governing himself, and of becoming a moral being. An animal, through its instincts, is all that it can be, or at least all that it has need of being. But man, in order to perfect himself, has need of reason and reflection; and as at birth he does not himself possess these qualities, he must be brought up by other men.
Is THERE A SCIENCE OP EDUCATION? No one doubts, today, the possibility of a science of education. Education is itself an art, skill embodied in practice; and this art certainly supposes something besides the knowledge of a few rules learned from books. It requires experience, moral qualities, a certainwarmth of heart, and a real inspiration of intelligence. There can be no education without an educator, any more than poetry without a poet, that is, without some one who by his personal qualities vivifies and applies the abstract and lifeless laws of treatises on education. But, just as eloquence has its rules derived from rhetoric, and poetry its rules derived from poetics; just as, in another order of ideas, medicine, which is an art, is based upon the theories of medical science; so education, before being ‘ an art in the hands of the masters who practise it, who enrich it by their versatility and their devotion, who put upon it the impress of their mind and heart, education is a science which philosophy deduces from the general laws of humaature, and which the teacher perfects by inductions from his own experience.
There is, therefore, a science of education, a practical and applied science, which now has its principles and laws, which gives proof of its vitality by a great number of publications.
According to Gabriel Compayer, Pedagogy, so to speak, is the theory of education, and education the practice of pedagogy. Just as one may be a rhetorician without being an orator, so one may be a pedagogue that is, may have a thorough knowledge of the rules of education without being an educator, without having practical skill in the training of children.
DEFINITION OF EDUCATION
It will not be without interest to mention in this place the principal definitions that are of note, either on account of the names of their authors or of the relative exactness of their connotations.
One of the most ancient, and also one of the best, is that of Plato:
“The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.”
The perfection of humaature, such indeed is the ideal purpose of education. It is in the same sense that Kant, Madame Necker de Saussure, and Stuart Mill have given the following definitions :
“Education is the development in man of all the perfection which his nature permits.”
“To educate a child is to put him in a condition to fulfil as perfectly as possible the purpose of his life.”
“Education includes whatever we do for ourselves and whatever is done for us by others, for the express purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of our nature.”
Here it is the general purpose of education which is principally in view. But the term perfection is somewhat vague and requires some explanation. Herbert Spencer’s definition responds in part to this need :
“Education is the preparation for complete living.”
But in what does complete living itself consist? The definitions of German educators give us the reply:
“Education is at once the art and the science of guiding the young and of putting them in a condition, by the aid of instruction, through the power of emulation and good example, to attain the triple end assigned to man by his religious, social, and national destination.” (Niemeyer.)
“Education is the harmonious and equable evolution of the human faculties by a method founded upon the nature of the mind for developing all the faculties of the soul, for stirring up and nourishing all the principles of life, while shunning all one-sided culture and taking account of the sentiments on which the strength and worth of men depend.” (Stein.)
“Education is the harmonious development of the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties.” (Denzel.)
These definitions have the common fault of not throwing into sharper relief the essential character of education properly so called, which is the premeditated, intentional action which the will of a man exercises over the child to instruct and train him. They might be applied equally well to the natural, instinctive, and predetermined development of the human faculties. In this respect we prefer the following formulas:
“Education is the process by which one mind forms another mind, and one heart another heart.” (Jules Simon.)
“Education is the sum of the intentional actions by means of which man attempts to raise his fellows to perfection.” (Marion.)
“Education is the sum of the efforts whose purpose is to give to man the complete possession and correct use of his different faculties.” (Henry Joly.)
Kant rightly demanded that the purpose of education should be to train children, not with reference to their success in the present state of human society, but with reference to a better state possible in the future, in accordance with an ideal conception of humanity. We must surely assent to these high and noble aspirations, without forgetting, however, the practised aims of educational effort. It is in this sense that James Mill wrote :
“The end of education is to render the individual as much as possible an instrument of happiness, first to himself, and next to other beings.”
Doubtless this definition is incomplete, but it has the merit of leading us back to the practical realities and the real conditions of existence. The word happiness is the utilitarian translation of the word perfection. A lofty idealism should not make us forget that the human being aspires to be happy, and that happiness is also a part of his destination. Moreover, without losing sight of the fact that education is above all else the disinterested development of the individual, of one’s personality, it is well that the definition of education should remind us that we do not live solely for ourselves, for our own single and selfish perfection, but that we also live for others, and that our existence is subordinate to that of others.
What are we to conclude from this review of so many different definitions? First, that their authors have often complicated them by the introduction of various elements foreign to the exact notion of the word education, and that it would perhaps be better to be satisfied to say, with Rousseau, for the sake of uniting simply on the sense of the word, ” Education is the art of bringing up children and of forming men.” But if we are determined to include in the definition of education the determination of the subject upon which it acts and the object which it pursues, we shall find the elements of such a conception here and there in the different formulas which we have quoted. It would suffice to bring them together and to say:
“Education is the sum of the reflective efforts by which we aid nature in the development of the physical, 1 intellectual, and moral faculties of man, in view of his perfection, his happiness, and his social destination.” Gabriel Compayer
Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom.
Education encompasses both the teaching and learning of knowledge, proper conduct, and technical competency. It thus focuses on the cultivation of skills, trades or professions, as well as mental, moral & aesthetic development.
Formal education consists of systematic instruction, teaching and training by professional teachers. This consists of the application of pedagogy and the development of curricula. In a liberal education tradition, teachers draw on many different disciplines for their lessons, including psychology, philosophy, linguistics, biology, and sociology. Teachers in specialized professions such as astrophysics, law, or zoology may teach only in a narrow area, usually asprofessors at institutions of higher learning.
The right to education is a fundamental human right. Since 1952, Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. At world level, the United Nations‘ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 guarantees this right under its Article 13.
Systems of formal education
Educational systems are established to provide education and training, often for children and the youth. A curriculum defines what students should know, understand and be able to do as the result of education. A teaching profession delivers teaching which enables learning, and a system of policies, regulations, examinations, structures and funding enables teachers to teach to the best of their abilities. Sometimes education systems can be used to promote doctrines or ideals as well as knowledge, which is known as social engineering. This can lead to political abuse of the system, particularly in totalitarian states and government.
· Education is a broad concept, referring to all the experiences in which students can learn something.
· Instruction refers to the intentional facilitating of learning toward identified goals, delivered either by an instructor or other forms.
· Teaching refers to the actions of a real live instructor designed to impart learning to the student.
· Training refers to learning with a view toward preparing learners with specific knowledge, skills, or abilities that can be applied immediately upon completion.
2. Stages of education
Primary education
Primary school in open air. Teacher (priest) with class from the outskirts of Bucharest, around 1842.
Primary (or elementary) education consists of the first years of formal, structured education. In general, primary education consists of six or seven years of schooling starting at the age of 5 or 6, although this varies between, and sometimes within, countries. Globally, around 70% of primary-age children are enrolled in primary education, and this proportion is rising. Under the Education for All programs driven by UNESCO, most countries have committed to achieving universal enrollment in primary education by 2015, and in many countries, it is compulsory for children to receive primary education. The division between primary and secondary education is somewhat arbitrary, but it generally occurs at about eleven or twelve years of age. Some education systems have separatemiddle schools, with the transition to the final stage of secondary education taking place at around the age of fourteen. Schools that provide primary education,are mostly referred to as primary schools. Primary schools in these countries are often subdivided into infant schools and junior schools.
Secondary education
In most contemporary educational systems of the world, secondary education consists of the second years of formal education that occur during adolescence. It is characterised by transition from the typically compulsory, comprehensive primary education for minors, to the optional, selective tertiary, “post-secondary”, or “higher” education (e.g., university, vocational school) for adults. Depending on the system, schools for this period, or a part of it, may be called secondary or high schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, middle schools, colleges, or vocational schools. The exact meaning of any of these terms varies from one system to another. The exact boundary between primary and secondary education also varies from country to country and even within them, but is generally around the seventh to the tenth year of schooling. Secondary education occurs mainly during the teenage years. In the United States and Canada primary and secondary education together are sometimes referred to as K-12 education, and in New Zealand Year 1-13 is used. The purpose of secondary education can be to give common knowledge, to prepare for higher education or to train directly in a profession.
Higher education
The University of Cambridge is an institute of higher learning.
Higher education, also called tertiary, third stage, or post secondary education, is the non-compulsory educational level that follows the completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school, secondary school, or gymnasium. Tertiary education is normally taken to include undergraduateand postgraduate education, as well as vocational education and training. Colleges and universities are the main institutions that provide tertiary education. Collectively, these are sometimes known as tertiary institutions. Tertiary education generally results in the receipt of certificates, diplomas, or academic degrees.
Higher education includes teaching, research and social services activities of universities, and within the realm of teaching, it includes both theundergraduate level (sometimes referred to as tertiary education) and the graduate (or postgraduate) level (sometimes referred to as graduate school). Higher education in that country generally involves work towards a degree-level or foundation degree qualification. In most developed countries a high proportion of the population (up to 50%) now enter higher education at some time in their lives. Higher education is therefore very important to national economies, both as a significant industry in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy.
Adult education
Adult education has become common in many countries. It takes on many forms, ranging from formal class-based learning to self-directed learning.
3. Didactics as theory of education in high school
DIDACTICS
The word is from the Greek didaktikуs, “apt at teaching.”
Didactics is the theory of teaching and, in a wider sense, the theory and practical application of teaching and learning. In demarcation from mathematics, as the science of learning, didactics refers only to the science of teaching.
Etymology of the English word didactic
the English word didactic
derived from the Greek word didaktikos
,
διδακτικός (instructive (‘didactic’))
derived from the Greek word didaktos, διδακτός (instructed, or communicated by teaching)
The earliest known usage of didactic in English dates from the 17th century.
· Dutch didactisch, French didactique, German Didaktik, German didaktisch, Lithuanian didaktika, Norwegian didaktisk, Russian дидaктика, Swedishdidaktisk
A didactic method (Greek: didбskein = to teach; lore of teaching) is a teaching method that follows a consistent scientific approach or educational style to engage the student’s mind. The didactic method of instruction is often contrasted with dialectics and the Socratic method; the term can also be used to refer to a specific didactic method, as for instance constructivist didactics.
Didactic materials are intended to convey instruction and information. The word is often used to refer to texts that are overburdened with instructive or factual matter to the exclusion of graceful and pleasing detail.
The didactic one has many bonds with epistemology, cognitive psychology, and other social sciences. Sometimes by doing this, it could benefit from concepts of these fields, at the price possibly of an adaptation. It also created its own concepts, directed in that by the directions taken by research.
4. Learning, basic principles of learning
Learning is a process of making sense of experiences rather than memorizing information. It requires integration of thoughts, feelings, and actions(Novak, 1984).
Importance of learning
Learning has a central role in education. Curriculum defines the content of what is taught, and the teaching of literacy and of numeracy in particular are somewhat prescribed, but most of the process of how teaching happens is still largely left up to the individual teacher.
What is learning?
Psychologists such as Kimble (1961) have defined learning in general as an experience which produces a relatively permanent change in behaviour, or potential behaviour. The definition therefore excludes changes which are simply due to maturation in the form of biological growth or development, or temporary changes due to fatigue or the effects of drugs.
As Howe (1980) has pointed out, learning has the important function of enabling us to benefit from experience. It enables us to build up a progressively more sophisticated internal model or representation of our environment, and then to operate on this, rather than on the world itself. Because of this we are able to think about things, to develop strategies, and use abstract concepts such as causation when we ask ourselves what makes things happen. These abilities enable us to predict and therefore to control events which are of importance for us, giving humans an enormous evolutionary advantage over other animals.
LEARNING MODES
It is currently fashionable to divide education into different learning “modes”. The learning modalities are probably the most common:
· Kinesthetic: learning based on hands-on work and engaging in activities.
· Visual: learning based on observation and seeing what is being learned.
· Auditory: learning based on listening to instructions/information.
It is claimed that, depending on their preferred learning modality, different teaching techniques have different levels of effectiveness. A consequence of this theory is that effective teaching should present a variety of teaching methods which cover all three learning modalities so that different students have equal opportunities to learn in a way that is effective for them.
Providing the Conditions for Learning
Quality teaching is one aspect of a larger system, since there is a dynamic and complicated interplay between the social aspects of learning and the specific classroom experiences offered.
Some students enter school ready to learn most days. Others arrive distracted, hungry and unsettled. An effective teacher does whatever possible to create conditions that engage the full spectrum of students, but it is not always possible to counter the negative currents and influences contributed by a harsh or disturbing external culture.
Young ones are most likely to learn when . . .
5. Learning in Different Age Groups
Because of the differences in cognitive, physical, and social abilities of different age groups, different pedagogical approaches are used when working with children of various ages. A technique that works well with a five year old might not be successful with a fourth grader. Similarly, teaching adults requires a different approach than the education of high school teenagers, even when the subject matter is the same. Pedagogical approaches and learning theories may be numerous iature, but the desire of educators to examine and discuss these varied approaches and theories will hopefully help create the best possible learning environment for all students, from preschool through adult.
Preschool
One of the most important debates regarding teaching preschool children is over work versus play. While some educators advocate the beginnings of formal education, including mathematics, reading, and foreign languages, most advocate imaginative play over academic learning at such an early age. Physical development is often stressed, and children are engaged in group activities that aid in socialization. Some preschool programs may be very structured, while others allow the children more choice in their activities.
A kindergarten in Afghanistan
Elementary school
From kindergarten through grade five or six, generally known as elementary education, students learn most of their basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills. Education within the public school system is generally more traditional iature (teacher-directed learning). Many public schools tailor their pedagogical approaches to include different learning styles as well as cultural responsiveness. For parents looking for a more student-directed pedagogical approach, private schools like Montessori and Waldorf, as well as open and free schools, offer a variety of approaches to childhood education.
Middle school and high school
Japanese high school students wearing the “sailor” uniform
Educators in many middle and high school programs often use a traditional pedagogical approach to learning, with lectures and class discussion providing the core of instruction. Standardized testing, while used occasionally in the lower grades, is much more prevalent in high school. Technology is often an integral part of instruction; in addition to multimedia and educational presentations, computer programs have replaced activities like animal dissection in science classes. For those seeking a less teacher-directed approach, alternative high schools generally provide a smaller class size and more student-directed learning. Other types of private schools, such as military schools, offer a rigidly structured approach to education that is almost exclusively teacher-directed.
College
While there are some “free” or alternative colleges that offers self-directed learning and non-graded, narrative evaluations, most colleges and universities primarily employ lectures, laboratories, and discussions as their primary teaching method.
Representation of a university class, 1350s.
Similarly to pedagogical approaches in high school, technology provides additional presentation materials, as well as impacting the way faculty and students communicate. Online discussion groups are common; students may have access to an online message board where they can discuss a covered topic with other students and the professor, and email contact between students and professors can supplement office hours. Professors are often challenged to find new ways to address students’ different learning styles, as well as creating a learning environment that is accessible to those with learning disabilities.
Adult learners
Remedial programs for adult learners (such as literacy programs) focus not only on the acquisition of knowledge, but also must deal with the biases and sensitive emotional issues that may face adults in these situations. Adult educators often use students’ life experiences to help connect them with the academic material. Adult learners interested in continuing higher education often find that online or distance learning is easier to fit into a busy schedule than physically attending classes.
Modern Teaching Methods
During the twentieth century, work within the educational community impacted the way learning was perceived, and pedagogical approaches became widely discussed. In many countries, the traditional method of education had been the “banking method of education,” a concept perhaps most famously criticized in Freire‘s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. With the “banking” method, teachers lecture and bestow knowledge upon the student, who then passively receives, or “banks” it. In the United States, John Dewey significantly influenced pedagogical approaches with his concept of progressive education. Dewey believed that students needed to integrate skills and knowledge into their lives through experience, rather than just be taught dead facts. He also coined the phrase “learning by doing,” a phrase that has become the hallmark of experiential learning. For instance, Dewey’s students learned biology, chemistry, and physics though activities such as cooking breakfast.
The concepts behind cognitivism and social constructivism have led to the development of schools like Montessori and Waldorf schools; private schools that allow children to direct their own education, and encourage hands-on and active learning, while minimizing the amount of technology and teacher-directed learning. Constructivism has also led to the development of educational styles like service learning, where students participate in and reflect upon participation in community service, using their experience to make meaningful connections between what they are studying and its applications. Other types of schooling, such as free schools, open schools, and democratic schools function almost completely without the traditional student/teacher hierarchy.
Brothers studying together in a homeschool environment.
Many educators are focusing on ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. Television, computers, radio, and other forms of media are being utilized in an educational context, often in an attempt to involve the student actively in their own education. Some educators, on the other hand, believe that the use of technology can facilitate learning, but is not the most effective means of encouraging critical thinking and a desire to learn, and prefer the use of physical objects. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that technology has revolutionized many approaches to education, including distance learning, computer assisted instruction, and homeschooling.
While new approaches and pedagogical techniques are constantly being developed, some older ones are being questioned. Many educators question the value of standardized testing, particularly in younger children. While such techniques are still a major part of many educational systems, there is a push to discontinue their use in favor of more student centered, hands on evaluation. Thus, as all those involved in educational theory and practice continue to advance their knowledge and techniques, and our knowledge and technology continues to develop, pedagogy also is in a state of continuous change and improvement in an effort to provide the best education to all people.
6. Learning theory
In psychology and education, a common definition of learning is a process that brings together cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences and experiences for acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in one’s knowledge, skills, values, and world views (Illeris,2000; Ormorod, 1995). Learning as a process focuses on what happens when the learning takes place. Explanations of what happens constitute learning theories.
A learning theory is an attempt to describe how people and animals learn, thereby helping us understand the inherently complex process of learning.Learning theories have two chief values according to Hill (2002). One is in providing us with vocabulary and a conceptual framework for interpreting the examples of learning that we observe. The other is in suggesting where to look for solutions to practical problems. The theories do not give us solutions, but they do direct our attention to those variables that are crucial in finding solutions.
There are three main categories or philosophical frameworks under which learning theories fall: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Behaviorism focuses only on the objectively observable aspects of learning. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to explain brain-based learning. And constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts.
Behavorism as a theory was most developed by B. F. Skinner. It loosely includes the work of such people as Thorndike, Tolman, Guthrie, and Hull. Whatcharacterizes these investigators is their underlying assumptions about the process of learning. In essence, three basic assumptions are held to be true. First,learning is manifested by a change in behavior. Second, the environment shapes behavior. And third, the principles of contiguity (how close in time, two events must be for a bond to be formed) and reinforcement (any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be repeated) are central to explaining the learning process. For behaviorism, learning is the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning.
There are two types of possible conditioning:
1) Classical conditioning, where the behavior becomes a reflex response to stimulus as in the case of Pavlov’s Dogs. Pavlov was interested in studying reflexes, when he saw that the dogs drooled without the proper stimulus. Although no food was in sight, their saliva still dribbled. It turned out that the dogs were reacting to lab coats. Every time the dogs were served food, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs reacted as if food was on its way whenever they saw a lab coat. In a series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to figure out how these phenomena were linked. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.
2) Operant conditioning where there is reinforcement of the behavior by a reward or a punishment. The theory of operant conditioning was developed by B.F. Skinner and is known as Radical Behaviorism. The word ‘operant’ refers to the way in which behavior ‘operates on the environment’. Briefly, a behavior may result either in reinforcement, which increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring, or punishment, which decreases the likelihood of the behavior recurring. It is important to note that, a punisher is not considered to be punishment if it does not result in the reduction of the behavior, and so the terms punishment and reinforcement are determined as a result of the actions. Within this framework, behaviorists are particularly interested in measurable changes in behavior.
Educational approaches such as applied behavior analysis, curriculum based measurement, and direct instruction have emerged from this model.
The earliest challenge to the behaviorists came in a publication in 1929 by Bode, a gestalt psychologist. He criticized behaviorists for being too dependent on overt behavior to explain learning. Gestalt psychologists proposed looking at the patterns rather than isolated events. Gestalt views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labeled cognitive theories. Two key assumptions underlie this cognitive approach: (1) that the memory system is an active organized processor of information and (2) that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to explain brain-based learning. Cognitivists consider how human memory works to promote learning. For example, the physiological processes of sorting and encoding information and events into short term memory and long term memory are important to educators working under the cognitive theory. The major difference between gestaltists and behaviorists is the locus of control over the learning activity. For gestaltists, it lies with the individual learner; for behaviorists, it lies with the environment.
Once memory theories like the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model and Baddeley’s working memory model were established as a theoretical framework in cognitive psychology, new cognitive frameworks of learning began to emerge during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Today, researchers are concentrating on topics like cognitive load and information processing theory. These theories of learning are very useful as they guide instructional design. Aspects of cognitivism can be found in learning how to learn, social role acquisition, intelligence, learning, and memory as related to age.
Constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experience. In other words, “learning involves constructing one’s own knowledge from one’s own experiences.” Constructivist learning, therefore, is a very personal endeavor, whereby internalized concepts, rules, and general principles may consequently be applied in a practical real-world context. This is also known as social constructivism. Social constructivists posit that knowledge is constructed when individuals engage socially in talk and activity about shared problems or tasks. Learning is seen as the process by which individuals are introduced to a culture by more skilled members”(Driver et al., 1994) Constructivism itself has many variations, such as active learning, discovery learning, and knowledge building. Regardless of the variety, constructivism promotes a student’s free exploration within a given framework or structure. The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working to solve realistic problems. Aspects of constructivism can be found in self-directed learning, transformationallearning,experiential learning, situated cognition, and reflective practice.
Informal theories of education may attempt to break down the learning process in pursuit of practicality. One of these deals with whether learning should take place as a building of concepts toward an overall idea, or the understanding of the overall idea with the details filled in later. Critics believe that trying to teach an overall idea without details (facts) is like trying to build a masonry structure without bricks.
Other concerns are the origins of the drive for learning. Some argue that learning is primarily self-regulated, and that the ideal learning situation is one dissimilar to the modern classroom. Critics argue that students learning in isolation fail.
Other learning theories have also been developed for more specific purposes than general learning theories. For example, andragogy is the art and science to help adults learn.
Connectivism is a recent theory of networked learning which focuses on learning as making connections
Multimedia learning theory focuses on principles for the effective use of multimedia in learning.
The Sudbury Model learning theory adduces that learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you. This theory states that there are many ways to learn without the intervention of a teacher.
The classification of learning theories is somewhat analogous to the classification system designed by biologists to sort out living organisms. Like any attempt to define categories, to establish criteria, the world does not fit the scheme in all cases. Originally there was a plant kingdom and an animal kingdom, but eventually organisms that contained cholophyll and were mobile needed to be classified. The protist kingdom was established. The exact criteria for protists are still not established, but it is a classification that gives us a place for all of the organisms that don’t fit neatly into either the plant or animal kingdoms.
To extend the analogy, biologists continued to modify the classification system as know knowledge and insights into existing knowledge were discovered. The advent of new technology such as the electron microscope enabled the addition of the monera kingdom. Recently, the distinctive features of fungi have brought about a proposal for a fifth kingdom, fungi. This development and adjustment of the taxonomy remins one of behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, postmodernism, contextualism, semiotics…
An academic discipline is a branch of knowledge which is formally taught, either at the university, or via some other such method. Functionally, disciplines are usually defined and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and by the learned societies to which their practitioners belong. Professors say schooling is 80% psychological, 20% physical effort.
Each discipline usually has several sub-disciplines or branches, and distinguishing lines are often both arbitrary and ambiguous. Examples of broad areas of academic disciplines include the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences, humanities and applied sciences.
Teachers need the ability to understand a subject well enough to convey its essence to a new generation of students. The goal is to establish a sound knowledge base on which students will be able to build as they are exposed to different life experiences. The passing of knowledge from generation to generation allows students to grow into useful members of society. Good teachers can translate information, good judgment, experience and wisdom into relevant knowledge that a student can understand, retain and pass to others. Studies from the US suggest that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor affecting student performance, and that countries which score highly on international tests have multiple policies in place to ensure that the teachers they employ are as effective as possible.
Many factors shape a person’s conceptual framework, including life experiences; social, emotional, and cognitive developmental stages (APA, 1992); inherent intelligences (Gardner, 1985); learning styles (Curry, 1990); race and gender (Lynn & Hyde, 1989); ethnicity and culture (Banks, 1993); and demographic setting (Orlich, et al., 1998). Teachers must be aware of the influence of these factors — real or potential — on student behaviors and abilities if they are to design effective learning opportunities.
The cluster diagram below offers a few dozen strategic questions as examples of pedagogy. A failure to address such questions reduces the likelihood that children will make impressive progress.
The above questions may be grouped into several major categories that help to show the importance and scope of pedagogy.
A TEACHER
The essence of profession lies in training and educating children, it is aiding in the development of the characters of the youth of today, who will guide humanity tomorrow. Teachers can help to develop the student’s higher levels of understanding rather than concentrate on dispensing and retrieving facts.
Methodologies for teaching are abundant: cooperative learning models, concept mapping, model building, role playing, games, simulations, analyzing case studies, questioning strategies, problem solving, inquiry strategies, field trips (on and off campus), research projects, electronic media presentations, reading, authentic assessment and reflective self evaluation are examples.
The use of computer games, simulations and processing programs may be particularly productive because they allow students to obtain, process, and transform data readily, and to compare multiple perspectives and interpretations of the data. By increasing the speed, ease, variety, and efficacy of learner engagements, teachers can make room for more for the hands-on/minds-on experiences so critical for engaging underrepresented and underserved students in the study of science (Gardner, Mason & Matyas, 1989; Kahle, 1983).
Experienced teachers must be able to exercise the professional judgment needed to match learning opportunities to a variety of existing conceptual frameworks and learning styles. They must provide learning opportunities which are flexible, diverse, challenging and accessible (APA, 1992) which, taken together, stimulate students’ curiosity about the world around them. A teacher who offers diverse learning opportunities makes it more likely that each student will learn science at some level.
TEACHING METHODS
A true educator is not one who simply teaches facts. But rather, a person who shows students how to think for themselves, to find answers to their own questions based on the principles that they have learned, and to not depend solely on him to solve their problems. A teacher must act modestly with his students. If he does not know something, he must not feign the opposite. He must recognize the fact and find the answer. An academician is always studying and learning.
A teacher must divine and uncover each studentвs strong points; the outstanding qualities that the student in fact has and not those that the educator thinks that he should possess. The objective is to assist the student in becoming a professional capable of standing on his own two feet.
A teacher who is too severe, who sees himself as essentially a disciplinarian, will never be a good instructor since education is built on a foundation of love and caring. Of course, teaching requires authority; however, even in an instance of discipline, the student must feel that the teacher really cares for his well being.
No one has ever been forced to become teacher. Consequently, educators must give their best and use precise language with a vocabulary that students can readily understand. They must continually motivate their students. This includes preaching by example and proper actions, and never by behaving in a manner suggesting, “Do as I say, not as I do”. It is essential to understand the difference between saying and doing. In addition, it is important to realize that a person can only be sincere when his thoughts, words and actions are consistent with each other. If a person freely chooses to enter teaching and is not motivated nor strives to fulfill his work in a responsible way, he should leave the teaching profession.
When a person learns to think for himself, he receives a deep sense of satisfaction because he acts on his own initiative. Teaching also requires a sense of humility. Because of this, it is important to remember that a teacher is not the source of information, but rather a vehicle for information that comes from many sources. An academician should never be arrogant in disseminating knowledge; on the contrary, he should feel blessed for having the opportunity to introduce students into the new world of information.
Because of this, it is important to remember that a teacher is not the source of information, but rather a vehicle for information that comes from many sources. An academician should never be arrogant in disseminating knowledge; on the contrary, he should feel blessed for having the opportunity to introduce students into the new world of information.
Training is a process that never ends. One readily apparent example is sports training. To be effective, it must be conducted in an atmosphere of trust and confidence. Trainers must be patient, sensitive, and willing to delegate authority, award recognition and commend work well done. Efficient trainers develop the strengths and potentials of their pupils; they help them to overcome their weaknesses. Training requires time, dedication and perseverance; nevertheless, if it is imparted correctly, it reduces the investment of effort and money, and helps to prevent unpleasant errors.
A story about Albert Einstein (1879-1955; U.S. physicist, born in Germany; awarded a Nobel Prize in physics) tells of a student who, during a final exam in physics, said to him, “Professor, these questions are the same as last yearвs“, to which Einstein responded, “Yes, but this year the answers are different”. This simple anecdote serves to illustrate that what may have appeared to be an unquestionable fact yesterday, could be entirely untrue today.
TEACHING ATTRIBUTES
The proper handling of didactic, scientific and humanistic knowledge is basic for an adequate teaching process. The ongoing application of high moral values and universally accepted good manners are fundamental for the development of teaching.
The universityвs primary mission is to furnish the country with knowledgeable and ethical individuals. That is, people who, through their personal and professional activities, can assume positions of leadership in the community. This thorough conformation is the result of the geometric addition of the vigorous enforcement of the universityвs moral principles plus the teachersв enthusiastic activity.
Impartiality
If a teacher feels biased in favor of or against a (some) student(s), he has the moral duty to excuse himself from making any evaluations that could admit subjective elements. All teachers have the ethical obligation to be impartial, to never humiliate a student and to never make deriding remarks. Some teachers might have difficulty fulfilling this responsibility. In general, human beings tend to justify their attitudes and erroneous actions citing reasons that are not usually objective. The dynamics of hate or prejudice has no place in teaching. In the beginning of his poem, A Divine Image, William Blake (English poet, 1757-1827) wisely says, “Cruelty has a human heart”.
Biases, in favor of, or against, a person (people) can be very subtle and, as a result, easy to camouflage or to justify. Nevertheless, they usually turn out to be beneficial or harmful to the people involved. All favoritism and negative prejudice are unjust and, consequently, unethical. These behaviors are unacceptable, since teachers must treat all students with fairness.
Tolerance
Students are not our peers; therefore, we cannot nor should we even try to demand of them what is expected of a dentist. Nor can we expect them to perform what we ourselves are incapable of doing. Students are our friends. They must always receive the benefit of the doubt. Eventually, these students of dentistry will become our colleagues.
Vulgarity has no place whatsoever in teaching or in instructing, nor do offensive comments. Helen Keller (1880-1968, U.S. writer and lecturer, and deaf and blind educator of the blind) said, “Tolerance is the highest achievement that can be obtained from education”.
Behavior
The academic staff must constantly exhibit irreproachable behavior in their teacher-student relationship. Activities such as flirting, telling double-entendre jokes or making libidinous insinuations, and sexual harassment are inadmissible. Young people attend the School of Dentistry to study a profession. Their objective is to prepare themselves for life. Their goal is to obtain a Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.) or Doctor of Dental Medicine (D.M.D.) degree through disciplined study.
Academic evaluations must always be totally objective and impartial, and must io way be influenced by any attraction that might be felt for a student, or what this one might do to attract a teacher. Academic reports must be based solely on the studentвs conduct, knowledge, and academic as well as clinical performance. Never, under any circumstances, are the behaviors mentioned in the previous paragraph acceptable.
It is absolutely unacceptable, shameful and immoral what usually happens with teachers who take advantage of or abuse their position in the manner previously described. The mentioned ethical implications are especially relevant when we consider the large number of women who are presently electing a career in Dentistry.
Ethics
“Ethics”, which comes from the Greek word ethikos, means custom. It is the concept under which human beings live, and live together. It is the code of moral standards guiding us from the moment we are conceived. It directs relationships between people. In essence, it is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Since ancient times human beings have been concerned about this concept. In the Bible is the story of the Serpent and Eve. In the biblical narration this despicable and deceitful animal convinces and persuades Eve, with its false interpretations, to fail to keep the Divine Law.
Dentistry is a service profession. For the most part, the general public believes in the integrity of its dentists. Unfortunately, some dentists confuse the “S” in service with the “S” that has a vertical line ($). Dental students also provide services to the patients they treat and from whom they learn so much. They, too, are subjected to pressures. These are in the form of grades and the fulfillment of all required practical clinical work. They, too, could end up confusing the two letters “S”.
Teachers must remind their students about a dentistвs ethical responsibilities. All oral health professionals are morally obligated to put forth their best efforts to help the sick. They also have the duty of representing the profession in a dignified manner. They must set an example and, at the same time, ensure full compliance with all universally taught and accepted moral precepts.
It is totally unacceptable for an academician to try to influence another member of the teaching staff with regard to the results of a studentвs examination. A teacher cannot recommend that a student passes or fails an exam, test or class. In addition to being a serious breach of the code of ethics, it is a severe act of disrespect as well as an insult.
Ethics embraces the entire intellectual range of all human beings. It includes every known discipline, from the mystical to the analytical, from the legal to the psychological, from the practical to the theoretical, from the concrete to the artistic. Its principles cannot be negotiated. We can affirm that our actions are ethical when we elect a path of behavior of which our parents will not be ashamed.
Pedagogy, however, is not just concerned with development of conceptual knowledge. An important part of science education is to teach students the social processes of consensus building and engage them in the social construction of meaning (Zeidler, 1997). In other words science education, like education in all fields, should encourage students to think about thinking, facilitate creativity and critical judgement, and favor development of self-awareness (APA, 1992;Zeidler, Lederman & Taylor, 1992).
There are many different definitions of pedagogy. Drawing from the work of Professor Robin Alexander, the National Strategies have developed the following work definition:
Pedagogy is the act of teaching, and the rationale that supports the actions teachers take. It is what a teacher needs to know, and the range of skills a teacher needs to use, in order to make effective teaching decisions.
Reference: Alexander, R. (2004) Still no pedagogy? Principle, pragmatism and compliance in primary education, Cambridge Journal of Education, 34(1), p11.
Teaching is complex. Teachers and other practitioners draw on a range of working theories and their own experiences in arriving at their views on how children learn and how their teaching can support this learning.
There is an increasingly strong body of evidence from research and practice that will help refine these views and inform pedagogical decisions; it recognisesthat certain methods work best for different kinds of learning. This has informed the pedagogical principles that underpin the Strategies’ guidance and advice.
Developing a shared understanding together with a common language to discuss pedagogy is the crucial first step towards transforming teaching and learning. This common understanding will ensure better continuity and progression at all stages of the learning journey.
It is helpful to consider this professional knowledge as four interrelated domains.
QUALITIES OF A GOOD TEACHER
Treatises on pedagogy draw up long catalogues of the qualities of a good teacher. We do not propose in this place to present one of these catalogues in which the pedagogic virtues are numbered, and which require the teachers to have ten or a dozen of them, more or less. The moral education of a teacher has nothing to gain from these fastidious nomenclatures. We shall simply say that the best teacher is he who has to the highest degree the disposal of intellectual and moral qualities ; he who on the one hand has the most knowledge, method, clearness, and vivacity of exposition, and on the other is the most energetic, the most devoted to his task, the most attached to his duties, and at the same time has most affection for his pupils.
It would be easy to show that each of these qualities or virtues is an element of discipline.
A teacher whose knowledge is not questioned, who is never obscure in his lessons, who speaks with exactness, will always be listened to with respect.
A teacher whose every act is known to be inspired by love for his pupils, has only to speak to be obeyed. He will govern by persuasion.
Especially a firm teacher, who possesses the serenity of conscious power, will inspire his pupils with a salutary respect which will make it impossible for them to fail in their tasks.
In discussing the law of 1833, Guizot stated the principal qualities which he expected of a teacher in the new schools, as follows :
“All our efforts and all our sacrifices will be useless, if we do not succeed in finding for the reconstructed public school a competent teacher worthy of the noble mission of instructing the people. It cannot be too often repeated that as is the teacher so is the school. And what a happy union of qualities is necessary to make a good school-master ! A good school-master is a man who ought to know much more than he teaches, in order to teach with intelligence and zeal; who ought to live in an humble sphere, and who nevertheless ought to have an elevated soul in order to preserve that dignity of feeling and even of manner without which he will never gain the respect and confidence of families; who ought to possess a rare union of mildness and firmness, for he is the inferior of many people in a commune. But he ought to be the degraded servant of no one; not ignorant of his rights, but thinking much more of his duties; giving an example to all, serving all as an adviser; above all, not desiring to withdraw from his occupation, content with his situation because of the good he is doing in it, resolved to live and die in the bosom of the school, in the service of common-school instruction, which is for him the service of God and of men. To train teachers who approach such a model is a difficult task; and yet we must succeed in it, or we have done nothing for common-school instruction. A bad school-master, like a bad cure or a bad mayor, is a scourge to a commune. We are certainly very often compelled to content ourselves with ordinary teachers, but we must try to train better ones, and for this purpose primary normal schools are indispensable.”
Technology is an increasingly influential factor in education. Computers and mobile phones are being widely used in developed countries both to complement established education practices and develop new ways of learning such as online education (a type of distance education). This gives students the opportunity to choose what they are interested in learning. The proliferation of computers also means the increase of programming and blogging. Technology offers powerful learning tools that demand new skills and understandings of students, including Multimedia, and provides new ways to engage students, such as Virtual learning environments. Technology is being used more not only in administrative duties in education but also in the instruction of students. The use of technologies such as PowerPoint and interactive whiteboard is capturing the attention of students in the classroom. Technology is also being used in the assessment of students. One example is the Audience Response System (ARS), which allows immediate feedback tests and classroom discussions.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a “diverse set of tools and resources used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information.” These technologies include computers, the Internet, broadcasting technologies (radio and television), and telephony.
References
1. Compayre, History of Pedagogy (Boston: 1886), p. 393.
2. Learning theories. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_%28education%29
3. http://georgeyonge.net/translations/Didactic%20Pedagogics
QUESTIONS: CHECK YOURSELF
1. What is education?
2. When did education appear?
3. Explain the terms: education, teaching, instruction, training.
4. What are the main stages of obtaining education?
5. What is didactics?
6. What is didactic method?
7. What is learning?
8. What learning modes do you know?
9. What is peculiar about learning in different age groups?
10. What main learning theories are recognized?
11. What is curriculum?
12. What components of teaching process can you name?
13. What methodologies for teaching can you name?
14. What are the attributes of teacher’s personality?
15. What pedagogical materials are distinguished?
v Education, School and Pedagogical Thought in Primitive, Slave and Feudal Societies.
* Community primitive
* Slave Society
* Feudal Society
* Socialist Society
Primitive community
The emergence of man meant one of the greatest changes made in the development of nature. This transformation reached its climax when human ancestors were able to attach the stick to the stone, beginning to produce their rudimentary tools. The creation of these rudimentary instruments work led to the separation of man from the animal kingdom.
The process that took man to master the blind forces of nature, passed with extraordinary slowness, because their tools were primitive, poorly crafted, unpolished.
It was a form of communal organization in which there was neither the state nor private property. Production and food gathering was a group activity and were spread equally among all, according to their needs.
There was only one form of organization based on the Matriarchy, ie residing in the control women.
Slave Society
It is characterized by human labor or services obtained through force and the person is considered as the property of its owner, who has him at will. Since ancient times, the slave is legally defined as a commodity that the owner could sell, purchase, gift or exchange for a debt, without the slave to exercise any rights or personal or legal objection. Often there are ethnic differences between the slave trader and slave, because slavery is usually based on a strong racial prejudice, according to which ethnic group to which the handler is considered superior to that of slaves. It is very unusual for slaves to be members of the same ethnic group as the owner, but one of the few exceptions occurred in Russia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The practice of slavery dates back to prehistoric times, although its institutionalization probably occurred when agricultural advances made possible organized societies in which slaves were needed for certain functions. To get it conquered other peoples, some individuals were or what they did with family members to pay debts or were enslaved as punishment for criminals.
* Features:
* An economy based mainly on agriculture, supplemented by hunting, and fishing, like trade. There was an ancient civilization like the Greeks, whose main activity was trade.
* Ancient societies were characterized by the deification of the ruler who makes the laws, therefore, is deified the state. This did not happen in Greece because he was an enlightened society, where he was well aware of governance and human laws.
* Inequality generally originated from the following classes:
* A) Nobility – Slave
* B) Warriors and Priests
* C) Traders
* D) Peasants
* E) Slaves
In these classes, the most important was that of the peasants, as was the labor force that was holding the economy of society.
* Individuals relied more on the powers of the gods than technology, so that the work was crude and primitive, and depended mainly on the strength of the human being.
Feudal Society
Feudalism as an institution arises from the crisis experienced by the society of the Roman Empire. The security situation subsequent to this led to the Germanic leaders need to surround himself with faithful who can trust to ensure their personal safety and as an aid to possible military campaigns. This model became the Carolingian in its governance, so that the sovereign territory administered by the assistance of a retinue or “palace” constituted by territorial lords, bishops and abbots.
With the brunt of the war in this society, little by little more than giving priority to the military gentlemen, by granting possessions, initially had for life but, over time, were becoming hereditary.r> With Quierzy Chapterhouse, Charles the Bald, also recognized as hereditary powers exercised on behalf of the king, so that the public authority was broken up among a large class of gentlemen. With this, the scheme was replicated at lower levels, so that took a pyramidal structure and encouraged the emergence of a new class of professional warriors or knights. These rural estates that they had ensured the preservation of its military equipment, mainly the horse, in exchange for assisting with the higher Mr needed it.
In this society, there were two different social classes:
* A) The feudal nobility
* B) The peasants-serfs
This company depended mainly on agriculture and every feud produced everything it needed, so that trade was practically nil.
The peasant was called serfs, which means servant of the earth. Although no longer a slave as in antiquity, was a servant who was to remain throughout her life to the land they worked.
* Elements of feudal society:
Feudalism is a phenomenon of the Frankish kingdom, ie the territories included between the rivers Rhine and Loire, which was accelerated by civil wars and invasions that experienced during the centuries following the Carolingian Empire, and structured around two key elements vassalage and the fief. Given the security situation, many landowners sought shelter and protection of other more powerful lords in return for ceding their allegiance and fidelity or a census or tax. Thus, the small property he would become feudal or census-type, respectively. Messrs. intermediate between them and the real authority was gaining more power, both on land and on people linked to it, so that the property was gradually fading off. To ensure the loyalty of the vassal, the master gave him a good return real nature, the feud, it was materialized in the form of land or rights, but never with full ownership over it.
The agreement between the two was done through the ceremony of homage, by which a vassal swore loyalty to the Lord, and he welcomed him, offering defense and protection. The fidelity was generally focused on the military field, so that the vassal to his master was obliged to provide assistance in case of war, although the type of help varied greatly between places or times. Thus, it could be, among other obligations, to fight alongside them, loans, simple monitoring services, a contribution to the financial burdens posed by the campaigns or even participate in ransom if one was captured. In some areas, such as France or Germany, the vassal was to advise the master in making important decisions.
Over time, the title of the fief became hereditary, but the tribute was to be renewed on each transmission. This fact contributed to the concentrate or, as appropriate, fiefs were divided so that the main subjects in turn became lords of other lower-level subjects, who could do the same. Thus, several figures emerged as the wardens or Castilian, responsible for the administration and defense of a castle and the lands that belonged to it also available to other fighters under his command, or ministries, judges, notaries and older, figures all of them civil, responsible for representing the public authority in its various orders.
All this variety of characters led to the emergence of hierarchy between them, but sometimes became a source of conflict, as there were cases in which a vassal himself while it was more of a man, or men of a similar level in the hierarchy are facing each other. To avoid this, in France in the twelfth century appeared the possibility that a servant could be traced even to the king, as the highest authority in order to appeal decisions of his master.
* The feudal economy:
The whole system was based, as we see in mutual assistance between lord and vassal, the latter’s military type in most cases, this implied the need for resources to cover the expense involved keeping a horse a castle or a military contingent. For this reason, the feud should be able to generate sufficient income who wielded. Feudal control over the perceived benefits which could be in kind or cash, as working days in the lands of the lord, paying taxes, levies and duties, or the use of certain services or goods (mills, hills, bridges or roads); exceptionally Mr could also receive income from land sales or redemption of bonds.
Among the many figures that were created to raise revenue, highlights the tithe, a perception that Mr charged for maintenance and repair of a temple that was used by villagers as a parish. The feudal lords were not necessarily military, but the church itself was also integrated in this system. The cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries were also possessions, and thus became the tenth one of their main sources of resources.
Finally, with these economic rights clearly pecuniary, there were other more subtle, known by the generic name of banal, common in the XII and XIII. Consisted of the imposition of the type to go exclusively to mill, sir, for instance, or prohibitions on carrying out certain tasks of the field until a certain date, so that Mr. could sell before production. These rights were more of a court, they were imposed directly by the Lord by proclamation (bannum, hence its name).
Capitalist Society
Capitalist society or industrial society refers to all social classes living in modernity, and which can be divided from perspectives that range from theory antagonistic bi-class (proletariat / bourgeoisie) to multiple analysis of contemporary sociology.
Capitalist or industrial society is born of political and economic relationship of the cultural transformations that gave way to modernity (bourgeois revolutions) where there is a foundation that places man as an unlimited being. This idea was supported by the so-called theory of continuous progress, born of the religious foundations of linear time and allowed a revolutionary way of seeing the world through the industrialization which developed into a progressive secularization (loss of religious interference) with which was completed making the modern revolution that marked a before and after in human history. However, late twentieth-century modernity begins a rapid process of questioning in which capitalist society takes a new direction, away from their industrial origin and addressing the so-called postmodern society in which capitalism becomes a new dimension of process recent. The causes are related to ecological deterioration, the crisis of fundamental social institutions and deindustrialization.
The general characteristics of capitalism are:
* A) Major industrial development
* B) World Trade Intensive
* C) System of presidential and parliamentary government
* D) Appearance of the working class and modernization of labor laws
* E) Freedom of religion and thought
Socialist Society
It differs from capitalism because, unknown private property and free enterprise.
The socialist countries also have great industrial and commercial development.
In the socialist system eliminates the private ownership of the means of production to achieve a classless society. In practice, the socialist system defines a form of state ownership over means of production.
In Europe and Asia, the former socialist countries like USSR, in the decade of the 90 have returned to the capitalist system, because they saw that freedom of action in the economic field was much better than an economy controlled by the state.
At present a moderate form of socialism, democratic socialism, as practiced in some European countries, where the state directs few economic sectors, such as fuel, gas, telecommunications, electric power. This democratic socialism is also trying to establish in America, in countries such as Venezuela, Chile, Brazil.
v School and Pedagogical Thought in Renaissance Epoch.
The Renaissance is one of the most interesting and disputed periods of European history. Many scholars see it as a unique time with characteristics all its own. A second group views the Renaissance as the first two to three centuries of a larger era in European history usually called early modern Europe, which began in the late fifteenth century and ended on the eve of the French Revolution (1789) or with the close of the Napoleonic era (1815). Some social historians reject the concept of the Renaissance altogether. Historians also argue over how much the Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages and whether it was the beginning of the modern world, however defined.
The approach here is that the Renaissance began in Italy about 1350 and in the rest of Europe after 1450 and that it lasted until about 1620. It was a historical era with distinctive themes in learning, politics, literature, art, religion, social life, and music. The changes from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were significant, but not as great as historians once thought. Renaissance developments influenced subsequent centuries, but not so much that the Renaissance as a whole can be called “modern.”
The term “Renaissance” comes from the Renaissance. Several Italian intellectuals of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries used the term rinascitа (‘rebirth or renaissance’) to describe their own age as one in which learning, literature, and the arts were reborn after a long, dark Middle Ages. They saw the ancient world of Rome and Greece, whose literature, learning, and politics they admired, as an age of high achievement. But in their view, hundreds of years of cultural darkness followed because much of the learning and literature of the ancient world had been lost. Indeed, Italian humanists invented the concept of the “Middle Ages” to describe the years between about 400 and 1400. Scholastic philosophy, which the Italian humanists rejected, and a different style of Latin writing, which the humanists viewed as uncouth and barbarous, prevailed in the Middle Ages. But Italian humanists believed that a new age was dawning. In the view of the humanists, the painter Giotto (d. 1337) and the vernacular writer and early humanist Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) led the rebirth or Renaissance. Most Italian intellectuals from the mid-fifteenth century on held these views.
Northern Europeans of the sixteenth century also reached the conclusion that a new age had dawned. They accepted the historical periodization of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance and added a religious dimension. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536), the great Dutch humanist, and his followers looked back to two ancient sources for inspiration: the secular learning of ancient Greece and Rome, and Christianity of the first four centuries. The former offered models of literature, culture, and good morality, while the New Testament and the church fathers, such as Sts. Augustine (354–430) and Jerome (c. 347–419/420), combined pristine Christianity with ancient eloquence. But then barbarous medieval culture replaced ancient eloquence, and, in their view, the theological confusion of medieval Scholasticism obscured the message of the New Testament. Erasmus and his followers dedicated themselves to restoring good literature, meaning classical Greek and Latin, and good religion, meaning Christianity purged of Scholastic irrelevance and clerical abuses. They believed that Christians could best live moral lives and attain salvation in the next life by following both Cicero and the New Testament. They believed that there were no real differences between the moral precepts found in the pagans of ancient Greece and Rome and the Bible.
A cluster of dates marks the beginning of the Renaissance era. The majority of scholars view the early humanist and vernacular writer Petrarch as the first important figure. He strongly criticized medieval habits of thought as inadequate and elevated ancient ideals and literature as models to emulate. By the period 1400 to 1450 numerous Italian intellectuals agreed with Petrarch’s criticism of the Middle Ages and support for a classical revival. The result was the intellectual movement called humanism, which came to dominate Italian Latin schooling, scholarship, ethical ideas, and public discourse and spread to the rest of Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Both contemporaries and modern historians also see the Great Plague of 1348 to 1350, with its huge demographic losses (30 to 50 percent in affected areas) and psychological impact as another dividing point between Middle Ages and Renaissance. Next, a series of major political changes between 1450 and 1500 marked a new political era that was uniquely Renaissance. Spain, France, and England emerged as powerful territorial monarchies in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Their quarrels with each other and interventions in the affairs of smaller states through the next 150 years dominated European politics. Finally, the invention of movable type in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398–1468) created a break with the medieval past in the production and dissemination of books that was so great that it is difficult to measure. By the end of the year 1470, some nineteen towns had printing presses; by 1500 some 255 towns had presses, and the spread of printing was far greater in the sixteenth century. An efficient system of distribution and marketing spread printed books to every corner of Europe. The greater availability of books had an impact on practically every area of life, especially intellectual and religious life, so immense as to be beyond measurement.
Humanism was the defining intellectual movement of the Renaissance. It was based on the belief that the literary, scientific, and philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome provided the best guides for learning and living. And humanists believed that the New Testament and early Christian authors offered the best spiritual advice.
The nineteenth century invented the term “humanism.” But humanism is based on three Renaissance terms.Studia humanitatis meant humanistic studies, which were grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy based on study of the standard ancient authors of Rome and, to a lesser extent, Greece. This is the famous definition presented in 1945 by the eminent historian Paul Oscar Kristeller (1905–1999) and now widely accepted. The Renaissance also used and praised humanitas, an ancient Latin term meaning the good qualities that make men and women human. And the Renaissance invented a new term, humanista. It first appeared in Italian in a University of Pisa document of 1490. By the end of the sixteenth century it had spread to several European vernacular languages and was occasionally used in Latin. A humanista was a student, teacher, or scholar of the humanities.
Humanism became institutionalized in society as a new form of education. Around 1400 a number of Italian pedagogical leaders decided that the traditional medieval curriculum for Latin schools, consisting of studying medieval authors and a few ancient poetic classics, or portions of them, and learning to write formal letters in Latin according to nonclassical rules, was inadequate. They proposed a new curriculum and approach. Pier Paolo Vergerio (c. 1368–1444) wrote the first and most important humanist pedagogical treatise, called De Ingenuis Moribus et Liberalibus Studiis Adulescentiae (On noble customs and liberal studies of adolescents) in 1402 or 1403. He argued that the best way to foster good character, learning, and an eloquent Latin style in speech and writing was to teach humanistic studies. He gave pride of place to history, moral philosophy, and eloquence, a novel emphasis. Boys trained in humanistic studies would be ready to become honorable leaders in society as adults. Vergerio’s treatise had enormous resonance: More than one hundred manuscripts can be found in Italian libraries, and Italian presses produced more than thirty incunabular (printed before 1501) editions. It enjoyed similar diffusion iorthern Europe.
Humanism was more than skill in Latin. It tried to teach the principles of living a moral, responsible, and successful life on this earth. Parents came to believe that a humanistic education would best prepare their sons, and a few daughters, for leadership positions, such as head of a family, member of a city council, judge, administrator, or teacher. Humanistic studies provided the fundamental education. Training in the specialized disciplines of law, medicine, philosophy, or theology came later for those needing them. By about 1550 the English clergyman, the French lawyer, the German knight, the Italian merchant, and the Spanish courtier shared a common intellectual heritage. They could communicate across national frontiers and despite linguistic differences. They shared a common fund of examples, principles, and knowledge derived from the classics. Humanism brought intellectual unity to Europe.
Humanism also included a sharply critical attitude toward received values, individuals, and institutions, especially those that did not live up to their own principles. The humanists’ study of ancient Rome and Greece gave them the chronological perspective and intellectual tools to analyze, criticize, and change their own world. Humanists especially questioned the institutions and values inherited from the Middle Ages. They found fault with medieval art, government, philosophy, and approaches to religion. Once the humanist habit of critical appraisal developed, many turned sharp eyes on their own times. And eventually they turned their critical gaze on the learning of the ancient world and rejected parts of it.
Renaissance scholars inherited from the Middle Ages intellectual views and approaches in philosophy, medicine, and science, and challenged almost all of them. In astronomy they inherited a conception of the universe originating in Ptolemy (c. 100 c.e.–c. 170 c.e.) of the ancient world that the sun revolved around the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) in his De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium (1543; On the revolutions of the heavenly orbs) argued the reverse, that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun. Despite bitter opposition from both Catholic and Protestant religious authorities, his views prevailed with most astronomers by the early seventeenth century. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) absorbed Aristotelian science and then rejected it in favor of a mathematically based analysis of physical reality, the modern science of mechanics. And along the way he offered evidence that Copernicus’s daring view was not just mathematical hypothesis but physical reality. Another mathematical achievement affecting Europe and the rest of the world in future centuries was calendar reform. Renaissance Europe inherited the Julian calendar of ancient Rome, which was ten days in arrears by the sixteenth century. Pope Gregory XIII (reigned 1572–1585) appointed a team of scholars to prepare a new calendar and in 1582 promulgated the Gregorian calendar still used today.
Renaissance medical scholars inherited an understanding of the human body and an approach to healing based on the ancient Greek physician Galen (c. 129–c. 199 c.e.), Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.), and medieval Arab medical scholars. But a group of medical scholars called “medical humanists” by modern scholars challenged and altered received medical knowledge. Led by Niccolт Leoniceno (1428–1524), who taught at the universities of Padua and Ferrara, they applied humanistic philological techniques and ideological criticism to both medieval and ancient medical texts, found them wanting, and proceeded to investigate the human body anew. As a result, Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) through his anatomical studies, William Harvey (1578–1657) through his study of the circulation of the blood, and other scholars revolutionized medical research and instruction. Several Renaissance medical scholars gave their names to parts of the body; for example, the eustachian tube between the ear and the nose is named for Bartolomeo Eustachi (1500/10–1574), and the fallopian or uterine tubes are named for Gabriele Falloppia (1523–1562).
Most of the innovative research in science, medicine, philosophy, and law came from universities. The Renaissance saw a great expansion in the number and quality of universities. It inherited twentynine functioning universities from the Middle Ages in 1400, then created forty-six new ones by 1601, losing only two by closure in between. This left Europe with sixty-three universities, more than double the medieval number. Demand for new universities came from several directions. Most important, increasing numbers of men wanted to learn. Society also needed more trained professionals. Monarchs, princes, and cities required civil servants, preferably with law degrees. A medical degree enabled the recipient to become a private physician, a court physician, or one employed by the town. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations stimulated the demand for theology degrees.
Universities provided stipends and other support for scholars. Since the universal language of learning was Latin and the printing press could publish new information, scientific communication was rapid and overcame the religious division of sixteenth-century Europe. University students to a lesser extent also crossed religious frontiers. The adoption of Roman law in central Europe created a demand for lawyers and judges trained in this field, which meant that both Catholic and Protestant Germans continued to study in Italian universities, the centers for the study of Roman law.
Renaissance states had three basic forms of government: princedoms, monarchies, and oligarchies, which the Renaissance called republics.
Princedoms. A prince was an individual, whether called duke, count, marquis, or just signore (lord), who ruled a state, usually with the support of his family. The term “prince” meant the authority to make decisions concerning all inhabitants without check by representative body, constitution, or court. But the source of the prince’s power and the nature of his rule varied greatly. He often had displaced another ruler or city council by force, war, assassination, bribery, diplomacy, purchase, marriage, or occasionally because the city invited him in to quell factionalism. Most often a prince came to power through an adroit combination of several of these. Once in control, he promulgated laws of succession to give himself a cloak of legitimacy so that his son or another family member might succeed him. Indeed, some inhabitants of the state would see him as legitimate and be content to be ruled by him.
Princely power was seldom absolute. Most princes depended on some accommodation with powerful forces within the state, typically the nobility or the merchant community. Many small princedoms depended on the good will of more powerful states beyond their borders to survive, and this limited options in foreign policy. And the prince’s rule was always uneasy, which was one reason he relied on hired mercenary troops in war, instead of a militia created from his subjects. However achieved, what mattered most was that the prince possessed effective power to promulgate and enforce laws, to collect taxes, to defeat foreign invaders, and to quell rebellion. If the prince commanded the affection and loyalty of his subjects, this made his task easier. Italy and central Europe had an abundance of princedoms, including the states of Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Parma, Piedmont-Savoy, and Urbino iorthern Italy, and Bavaria, Brandenburg, Burgundy, Brunswick-Lьneberg, Luxembourg, the Palatinate, Albertine and Ernestine Saxony, and Wьrttemberg in central Europe.
Monarchies. A monarchy was a princedom sanctioned by a much longer tradition, stronger institutions, and greater claims of legitimacy for its rulers. The majority of monarchies (for example, England, France, Portugal, Scotland, and Spain) were hereditary, while Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and the Holy Roman Empire were elective. Monarchies typically were larger than princedoms and ruled subjects speaking multiple languages and dialects. Monarchies usually had developed laws and rules that determined the succession in advance. Only when the succession was broken through the lack of a legitimate heir, a bitter dispute within the ruling family, or overthrow by a foreign power was a monarch displaced by another.
Monarchies grew in power and size in the Renaissance. The creation of the dual monarchy of Ferdinand of Aragуn and Isabella of Castile between 1474 and 1479 created a powerful Spain that ruled the entire Spanish peninsula except Portugal, and Portugal as well from 1580 to 1640. The Tudor monarchy of England (three kings and two queens from 1485 to 1603) made England, previously a small, strife-torn, and remote part of Europe, into a major force. After the conclusion of the Hundred Years’ War with England (1337–1453), France under the Valois dynasty (ruled 1328 to 1589) became a powerful and rich state. Conflicts between territorial monarchies dominated international politics and war in the Renaissance.
Republics. The smallest and most unusual political unit was the city-state consisting of a major town or city and its surrounding territory of farms and villages. Oligarchies, usually drawn from the merchant elite of the town, ruled republics. Flanked by the professional classes, the merchant community first dominated the commerce of the city. Then in the Middle Ages they threw off the authority of prince, king, or emperor. In their place the merchants created a system of government through interlocking and balanced councils. Large deliberative assemblies, comprising of one hundred, two hundred, or more adult males, elected or chosen by lot, debated and created laws. Executive committees, often six, eight, or a dozen men elected for two to six months, put the laws into action. Short terms of office and rules against self-succession made it possible for several hundred or more adult males to participate in government in a few years. The system of balanced and diffused power ensured that no individual or family could control the city. It was a government of balanced power and mutual suspicion.
Borrowing terminology and legal principles from ancient Roman law and local tradition, the men who formed oligarchies called their governments “republican” and their states “republics.” They believed that their rule was based on the consent of the people who mattered. But they were still oligarchies, because only 5 to 20 percent of the adult males of the city could vote or hold office. Members of government almost always came from the leading merchants, manufacturers, bankers, and lawyers. Some republics permitted shopkeepers and master craftsmen to participate as well. But workers, the propertyless, clergymen, and other middle and low groups in society were excluded. Occasionally the laws conceded to them extraordinary powers in times of emergency. Those living in the countryside and villages outside the city walls had neither a role in government nor the right to choose their rulers. Indeed, the city often exploited them financially and in other ways. Venice, Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Pisa, and Siena in Italy, and Augsburg, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, and the Swiss cantons were republics. Some city-state republics were small in comparison with monarchies and princedoms. But the Republic of Venice commanded an overseas empire of considerable size and commercial importance, while Florence’s merchants and bankers played a large role in international trade, and the city participated forcefully in Italian politics.
Renaissance Europe presented a constantly shifting political scene. No government escaped external threats and very few avoided internal challenge. The numerous weak small states tempted powerful rulers and states. Despite their eloquent proclamations in defense of the liberty of states and citizens, republics were just as aggressive in conquering their weaker neighbors as were princedoms, while monarchies were always on the watch for another princedom, landed noble estate, or republic to absorb. It was the same within the state. Some powerful group or individual within the state would attempt through force or stealth to take control and change its nature. Many succeeded. The maneuvering for advantage, the shifting diplomatic alliances, plots, threats of war, and military actions made Renaissance politics extremely complex.
Two broad political developments prevailed. Princedoms grew iumber and strength, and more powerful states, especially monarchies, absorbed smaller states. Republican city-states became princedoms, as a powerful individual or family within the city took control while maintaining a facade of republican institutions and councils. The gradual transformation of the Republic of Florence into a princedom ruled by members of the Medici family is the classic example. Meanwhile, princedoms fell into the hands of monarchies through military action or dynastic marriages. Three examples will suffice. France and the Habsburgs divided the Duchy of Burgundy between them when its duke, Charles the Bold, was killed in battle in 1477, leaving no male heir; Spain took control of the Kingdom of Naples by military force in 1504; and Spain absorbed the Duchy of Milan as the result of an alliance when the Duke Francesco II Sforza died without an heir in 1535. Strong republics also grew at the expense of their neighbors. The Republic of Venice conquered almost all the independent towns and small princedoms iortheastern Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century in its successful drive to create a mainland state. Small states survived at the price of careful neutrality, which avoided giving offense to more powerful neighbors, or by aligning themselves with larger powers. Such alliances came at a price. The small state lacked an independent foreign policy and might itself become a victim if the larger state fell.
The very complex and ever-shifting political reality stimulated the rapid development of diplomacy. The resident ambassador, that is, a permanent representative of one government to another, was a Renaissance innovation. He went to live in the capital city or court of another state where he conveyed messages between his government and the host government. Or to use the words that Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), the English ambassador to Venice, supposedly wrote in 1604, “a resident ambassador is a good man sent to tell lies abroad for his country’s good.” Perhaps more important than the messages, or lies, was the information that the resident ambassador and his staff gathered about the host country. Ambassadorial reports full of every kind of information are invaluable sources for modern scholars studying the Renaissance. The reports of papal nuncios and Venetian ambassadors are particularly useful.
The instability of forms of government, the many wars, and the fluidity of international politics stimulated an enormous amount of discussion about politics, including several masterpieces of political philosophy. NiccolтMachiavelli (1469–1527), having observed both, wrote about princedoms in his Il principe (The Prince, written in 1513), and on republics in Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livy, written 1514–1520). Numerous humanists wrote treatises advising a prince or king how he might be a good prince, work for the good of his people, and, as a result, see his state and himself prosper. Erasmus wrote the most famous one, Institutio Principis Christiani (1516; Education of a Christian prince). Jean Bodin (1530–1596) argued that state and society needed the stability that only a sovereign and absolute power can provide, and that this must be the monarchy, in his Six livres de la rйpublique (1576; Six Books on the commonwealth; in Latin, 1586).
Vernacular literatures flourished in the Renaissance even though humanists preferred Latin. In 1400 standard English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and other vernaculars did not exist. People spoke and sometimes wrote a variety of regional dialects with haphazard spelling and multiple vocabularies. Nevertheless, thanks to the adoption of the vernacular by some governments, the printing press, and the creation of literary masterpieces, significant progress toward elegant and standard forms of modern vernaculars occurred.
German was typical. German-speaking lands inherited many varieties of German from the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century some state chanceries began to use German instead of Latin. Hence, versions of German associated with the chanceries of more important states, including the East Middle Saxon dialect used in the chancery of the electorate of Saxony, became more influential. Next, printing encouraged writers and editors to standardize orthography and usage in order to reach a wider range of readers. Most important, Martin Luther (1483–1546) published a German translation of the Bible (New Testament in 1522; complete Bible in 1534), which may have had three hundred editions and over half a million printed copies by 1600, an enormous number at a time of limited literacy. And many began to imitate his style. Since he wrote in East Middle Saxon, this version of German eventually became standard German. Literary academies concerned about correct usage, vocabulary, and orthography rose in the seventeenth century to create dictionaries. A reasonably standardized German literary language had developed, though the uneducated continued to speak regional dialects.
Similar changes took place in other parts of Europe, with the aid of Renaissance authors and their creations. In Italy three Tuscan authors, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)—medieval in thought but using Tuscan brilliantly—Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) began the process. Literary arbiters, such as Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) insisted on a standard Italian based on the fourteenth-century Tuscan of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Major sixteenth-century writers, including Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), and Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), agreed. None of the three was Tuscan, but each tried to write, and sometimes rewrote, their masterpieces in a more Tuscan Italian. Then the Accademia della Crusca (founded in Florence in the 1580s) published a dictionary. Tuscan became modern Italian. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and three English translations of the Bible, that of William Tyndale (printed 1526 and 1537), the Geneva Bible of 1560, and the King James Bible of 1611, had an enormous influence on English. The writers and dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age, particularly Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), did the same for the Castilian version of Spanish.
Art is undoubtedly the best-loved and -known part of the Renaissance. The Renaissance produced an extraordinary amount of art, and the role of the artist differed from that in the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance had a passion for art. Commissions came from kings, popes, princes, nobles, and lowborn mercenary captains. Leaders commissioned portraits of themselves, of scenes of their accomplishments, such as successful battles, and of illustrious ancestors. Cities wanted their council halls decorated with huge murals, frescoes, and tapestries depicting great civic moments. Monasteries commissioned artists to paint frescoes in cells and refectories that would inspire monks to greater devotion. And civic, dynastic, and religious leaders hired architects to erect buildings at enormous expense to beautify the city or to serve as semipublic residences for leaders. Such art was designed to celebrate and impress.
A remarkable feature of Renaissance art was the heightened interaction between patron and artist. Patrons such as Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–1492) of Florence and popes Julius II (reigned 1503–1513) and Leo X (reigned 1513–1521) were active and enlightened patrons. They proposed programs, or instructed humanists to do it for them, for the artists to follow. At the same time, the results show that they did not stifle the artists’ originality. Men and women of many social levels had an appetite for art. The wealthy merchant wanted a painting of Jesus, Mary, or saints, with small portraits of members of his family praying to them, for his home. A noble might provide funding to decorate a chapel in his parish church honoring the saint for whom he was named. Members of the middle classes and probably the working classes wanted small devotional paintings. To meet the demand, enterprising merchants organized the mass production of devotional images, specifying the image (typically Mary, Jesus crucified, or patron saint), design, color, and size. It is impossible to know how many small devotional paintings and illustrated prints were produced, because most have disappeared. Major art forms, such as paintings, sculptures, and buildings, have attracted the most attention, but works in the minor arts, including furniture, silver and gold objects, small metal works, table decorations, household objects, colorful ceramics, candlesticks, chalices, and priestly vestments were also produced in great abundance.
The new styles came from Italy, and Italy produced more art than any other part of Europe. Art objects of every sort were among the luxury goods that Italy produced and exported. It also exported artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, who died at the French court.
The ancient world of Rome and Greece, as interpreted by the humanists, greatly influenced Renaissance art. Artists and humanists studied the surviving buildings and monuments, read ancient treatises available for the first time, and imbibed the humanist emphasis on man and his actions and perceptions, plus the habit of sharp criticism of medieval styles.
Stimulated by the ancients, Renaissance artists were the first in European history to write extensively about art and themselves. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) wrote treatises on painting (1435) and on architecture (1452); Raphael wrote a letter to Pope Leo X (c. 1519) concerning art. Giorgio Vasari’s (1511–1574) Lives of the Artists (first edition 1550, revised edition 1568) was a series of biographies of Renaissance artists accompanied by his many comments about artistic styles. It was the first history of art. The silversmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) wrote about artistic practices and much more about himself, much of it probably fictitious, in his Autobiography, written between 1558 and 1566.
The social and intellectual position of the artist changed in the Renaissance. The artist began as a craftsman, occupying a relatively low social position and tied to his guild, someone who followed local traditions and produced paintings for local patrons. He became a self-conscious creator of original works of art with complex schemes, a person who conversed with humanists and negotiated with kings and popes. Successful artists enjoyed wealth and honors, such as the knighthood that Emperor Charles V conferred on Titian (Tiziano Vercelli, c. 1488–1576) in 1533.
The Renaissance was a hierarchical age in which the social position of a child’s parents largely determined his or her place in society. Yet it was a variegated society, with nobles, commoners, wealthy merchants, craftsmen, shopkeepers, workers, peasants, prelates, parish priests, monks in monasteries, nuns in convents, civil servants, men of the professional classes, and others. It was an age of conspicuous consumption and great imbalances of wealth. But Renaissance society also provided social services for the less fortunate. Ecclesiastical, lay, and civic charitable institutions provided for orphans, the sick, the hungry, and outcast groups, such as prostitutes and the syphilitic ill. Although social mobility was limited, a few humble individuals rose to the apex of society. Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), a mercenary soldier of uncertain origins, became duke of Milan in 1450 and founded his own dynasty. The shepherd boy Antonio Ghislieri (born 1504) became Pope Pius V (reigned 1566–1572).
Renaissance Europe had considerable cultural and intellectual unity, greater than it had in the centuries of the Middle Ages or would again until the European Economic Union of the late twentieth century. A common belief in humanism and humanistic education based on the classics created much of it. The preeminence of Italy also helped because Italians led the way in humanism, art, the techniques of diplomacy, and even the humble business skill of double-entry bookkeeping.
The prolonged Habsburg-Valois conflict, often called the Italian Wars (1494–1559) because much of the fighting occurred in Italy, and, above all, the Protestant Reformation began to crack that unity. Moreover, many typical Renaissance impulses had spent their force by the early seventeenth century. The great revival of the learning of ancient Greece and Rome had been assimilated, and humanism was no longer the driving force behind philosophical and scientific innovation. Italy no longer provided artistic, cultural, and scientific leadership, except in music, as a group of Florentine musicians created lyric opera around 1600.
Europe began a new age on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). More powerful monarchies with different policies ushered in a different era of politics and war. Exuberant baroque art and architecture of the seventeenth century were not the same as the restrained, classicizing art of the previous two centuries. Galileo Galilei and Renй Descartes (1596–1650) discarded Renaissance Aristotelian science in favor of mathematics and mechanics. The universities of Europe were no longer essential for training Europe’s elite and hosting innovative research. France would be the military, literary, and stylistic leader of the different Europe of the seventeenth century.
v The history of Pedagogical Thought.
Two literatures have shaped much of the writing in the educational foundations over the past two decades: Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy. Each has its textual reference points, its favored authors, and its desired audiences. Each invokes the term “critical” as a valued educational goal: urging teachers to help students become more skeptical toward commonly accepted truisms. Each says, in its own way, “Do not let yourself be deceived.” And each has sought to reach and influence particular groups of educators, at all levels of schooling, through workshops, lectures, and pedagogical texts. They share a passion and sense of urgency about the need for more critically oriented classrooms. Yet with very few exceptions these literatures do not discuss one another. Is this because they propose conflicting visions of what “critical” thought entails? Are their approaches to pedagogy incompatible? Might there be moments of insight that each can offer the other? Do they perhaps share common limitations, which through comparison become more apparent? Are there other ways to think about becoming “critical” that stand outside these traditions, but which hold educational significance? These are the questions motivating this essay.
We will begin by contrasting Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy in terms of their conception of what it means to be “critical.” We will suggest some important similarities, and differences, in how they frame this topic. Each tradition has to some extent criticized the other; and each has been criticized, sometimes along similar lines, by other perspectives, especially feminist and poststructural perspectives. These lines of reciprocal and external criticism, in turn, lead us to suggest some different ways to think about “criticality.”
At a broad level, Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy share some common concerns. They both imagine a general population in society who are to some extent deficient in the abilities or dispositions that would allow them to discern certain kinds of inaccuracies, distortions, and even falsehoods. They share a concern with how these inaccuracies, distortions, and falsehoods limit freedom, though this concern is more explicit in the Critical Pedagogy tradition, which sees society as fundamentally divided by relations of unequal power. Critical Pedagogues are specifically concerned with the influences of educational knowledge, and of cultural formations generally, that perpetuate or legitimate an unjust status quo; fostering a critical capacity in citizens is a way of enabling them to resist such power effects. Critical Pedagogues take sides, on behalf of those groups who are disenfranchised from social, economic, and political possibilities. Many Critical Thinking authors would cite similar concerns, but regard them as subsidiary to the more inclusive problem of people basing their life choices on unsubstantiated truth claims — a problem that is nonpartisan in its nature or effects. For Critical Thinking advocates, all of us need to be better critical thinkers, and there is often an implicit hope that enhanced critical thinking could have a general humanizing effect, across all social groups and classes. In this sense, both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy authors would argue that by helping to make people more critical in thought and action, progressively minded educators can help to free learners to see the world as it is and to act accordingly; critical education can increase freedom and enlarge the scope of human possibilities.
Yet, as one zooms in, further differences appear. The Critical Thinking tradition concerns itself primarily with criteria of epistemic adequacy: to be “critical” basically means to be more discerning in recognizing faulty arguments, hasty generalizations, assertions lacking evidence, truth claims based on unreliable authority, ambiguous or obscure concepts, and so forth. For the Critical Thinker, people do not sufficiently analyze the reasons by which they live, do not examine the assumptions, commitments, and logic of daily life. As Richard Paul puts it, the basic problem is irrational, illogical, and unexamined living. He believes that people need to learn how to express and criticize the logic of arguments that underpin our everyday activity: “The art of explicating, analyzing, and assessing these ‘arguments’ and ‘logic’ is essential to leading an examined life” (Paul 1990, 66). The prime tools of Critical Thinking are the skills of formal and informal logic, conceptual analysis, and epistemology. The primary preoccupation of Critical Thinking is to supplant sloppy or distorted thinking with thinking based upon reliable procedures of inquiry. Where our beliefs remain unexamined, we are not free; we act without thinking about why we act, and thus do not exercise control over our own destinies. For the Critical Thinking tradition, as Harvey Siegel states, critical thinking aims at self-sufficiency, and “a self-sufficient person is a liberated person…free from the unwarranted and undesirable control of unjustified beliefs” (Siegel, 1988, 58).
The Critical Pedagogy tradition begins from a very different starting point. It regards specific belief claims, not primarily as propositions to be assessed for their truth content, but as parts of systems of belief and action that have aggregate effects within the power structures of society. It asks first about these systems of belief and action, who benefits? The primary preoccupation of Critical Pedagogy is with social injustice and how to transform inequitable, undemocratic, or oppressive institutions and social relations. At some point, assessments of truth or conceptual slipperiness might come into the discussion (different writers in the Critical Pedagogy tradition differ in this respect), but they are in the service of demonstrating how certain power effects occur, not in the service of pursuing Truth in some dispassioned sense (Burbules 1992/1995). Indeed, a crucial dimension of this approach is that certain claims, even if they might be “true” or substantiated within particular confines and assumptions, might nevertheless be partisan in their effects. Assertions that African-Americans score lower on IQ tests, for example, even if it is a “fact” that this particular population does on average score lower on this particular set of tests, leaves significant larger questions unaddressed, not the least of which is what effect such assertions have on a general population that is not aware of the important limits of these tests or the tenuous relation, at best, between “what IQ tests measure” and “intelligence.” Other important questions, from this standpoint, include: Who is making these assertions? Why are they being made at this point in time? Who funds such research? Who promulgates these “findings”? Are they being raised to question African-American intelligence or to demonstrate the bias of IQ tests? Such questions, from the Critical Pedagogy perspective, are not external to, or separable from, the import of also weighing the evidentiary base for such claims.
Now, the Critical Thinking response to this approach will be that these are simply two different, perhaps both valuable, endeavors. It is one thing to question the evidentiary base (or logic, or clarity, or coherence) of a particular claim, and to find it wanting. This is one kind of critique, adequate and worthwhile on its own terms. It is something else, something separate, to question the motivation behind those who propound certain views, their group interests, the effects of their claims on society, and so forth. That sort of critique might also be worthwhile (we suspect that most Critical Thinking authors would say that it is worthwhile), but it depends on a different sort of analysis, with a different burden of argument — one that philosophers may have less to contribute to than would historians or sociologists, for example.
The response, in turn, from the Critical Pedagogy point of view is that the two levels cannot be kept separate because the standards of epistemic adequacy themselves (valid argument, supporting evidence, conceptual clarity, and so on) and the particular ways in which these standards are invoked and interpreted in particular settings inevitably involve the very same considerations of who, where, when, and why that any other social belief claims raise. Moreover, such considerations inevitably blur into and influence epistemic matters in a narrower sense, such as how research questions are defined, the methods of such research, and the qualifications of the researchers and writers who produce such writings for public attention.
But neither the Critical Thinking nor the Critical Pedagogy tradition is monolithic or homogeneous, and a closer examination of each reveals further dimensions of these similarities and differences.
Critical Thinking
A concern with critical thinking in education, in the broad sense of teaching students the rules of logic or how to assess evidence, is hardly new: it is woven throughout the Western tradition of education, from the Greeks to the Scholastics to the present day. Separate segments of the curriculum have often been dedicated to such studies, especially at higher levels of schooling. What the Critical Thinking movement has emphasized is the idea that specific reasoning skills undergird the curriculum as a whole; that the purpose of education generally is to foster critical thinking; and that the skills and dispositions of critical thinking can and should infuse teaching and learning at all levels of schooling. Critical thinking is linked to the idea of rationality itself, and developing rationality is seen as a prime, if not the prime, aim of education (see, for example, Siegel 1988).
The names most frequently associated with this tradition, at least in the United States, include Robert Ennis, John McPeck, Richard Paul, Israel Scheffler, and Harvey Siegel. While a detailed survey of their respective views, and the significant differences among their outlooks, is outside our scope here, a few key themes and debates have emerged in recent years within this field of inquiry.
To Critical Thinking, the critical person is something like a critical consumer of information; he or she is driven to seek reasons and evidence. Part of this is a matter of mastering certain skills of thought: learning to diagnose invalid forms of argument, knowing how to make and defend distinctions, and so on. Much of the literature in this area, especially early on, seemed to be devoted to lists and taxonomies of what a “critical thinker” should know and be able to do (Ennis 1962, 1980). More recently, however, various authors in this tradition have come to recognize that teaching content and skills is of minor import if learners do not also develop the dispositions or inclination to look at the world through a critical lens. By this, Critical Thinking means that the critical person has not only the capacity (the skills) to seek reasons, truth, and evidence, but also that he or she has the drive (disposition) to seek them. For instance, Ennis claims that a critical persoot only should seek reasons and try to be well informed, but that he or she should have a tendency to do such things (Ennis 1987, 1996). Siegel criticizes Ennis somewhat for seeing dispositions simply as what animates the skills of critical thinking, because this fails to distinguish sufficiently the critical thinker from critical thinking. For Siegel, a cluster of dispositions (the “critical spirit”) is more like a deep-seated character trait, something like Scheffler’s notion of “a love of truth and a contempt of lying” (Siegel 1988; Scheffler 1991). It is part of critical thinking itself. Paul also stresses this distinction between skills and dispositions in his distinction between “weak-sense” and “strong-sense” critical thinking. For Paul, the “weak-sense” means that one has learned the skills and can demonstrate them when asked to do so; the “strong-sense” means that one has incorporated these skills into a way of living in which one’s own assumptions are re-examined and questioned as well. According to Paul, a critical thinker in the “strong sense” has a passionate drive for “clarity, accuracy, and fairmindedness” (Paul 1983, 23; see also Paul 1994).
This dispositional view of critical thinking has real advantages over the skills-only view. But in important respects it is still limited. First, it is not clear exactly what is entailed by making such dispositions part of critical thinking. In our view it not only broadens the notion of criticality beyond mere “logicality,” but it necessarily requires a greater attention to institutional contexts and social relations than Critical Thinking authors have provided. Both the skills-based view and the skills-plus-dispositions view are still focused on the individual person. But it is only in the context of social relations that these dispositions or character traits can be formed or expressed, and for this reason the practices of critical thinking inherently involve bringing about certain social conditions. Part of what it is to be a critical thinker is to be engaged in certain kinds of conversations and relations with others; and the kinds of social circumstances that promote or inhibit that must therefore be part of the examination of what Critical Thinking is trying to achieve.
A second theme in the Critical Thinking literature has been the extent to which critical thinking can be characterized as a set of generalized abilities and dispositions, as opposed to content-specific abilities and dispositions that are learned and expressed differently in different areas of investigation. Can a general “Critical Thinking” course develop abilities and dispositions that will then be applied in any of a range of fields; or should such material be presented specifically in connection to the questions and content of particular fields of study? Is a scientist who is a critical thinker doing the same things as an historian who is a critical thinker? When each evaluates “good evidence,” are they truly thinking about problems in similar ways, or are the differences in interpretation and application dominant? This debate has set John McPeck, the chief advocate of content-specificity, in opposition to a number of other theorists in this area (Norris 1992; Talaska 1992). This issue relates not only to the question of how we might teach critical thinking, but also to how and whether one can test for a general facility in critical thinking (Ennis 1984).
A third debate has addressed the question of the degree to which the standards of critical thinking, and the conception of rationality that underlies them, are culturally biased in favor of a particular masculine and/or Western mode of thinking, one that implicitly devalues other “ways of knowing.” Theories of education that stress the primary importance of logic, conceptual clarity, and rigorous adherence to scientific evidence have been challenged by various advocates of cultural and gender diversity who emphasize respect for alternative world views and styles of reasoning. Partly in response to such criticisms, Richard Paul has developed a conception of critical thinking that regards “sociocentrism” as itself a sign of flawed thinking (Paul 1994). Paul believes that, because critical thinking allows us to overcome the sway of our egocentric and sociocentric beliefs, it is “essential to our role as moral agents and as potential shapers of our owature and destiny” (Paul 1990, 67). For Paul, and for some other Critical Thinking authors as well, part of the method of critical thinking involves fostering dialogue, in which thinking from the perspective of others is also relevant to the assessment of truth claims; a too-hasty imposition of one’s own standards of evidence might result not only in a premature rejection of credible alternative points of view, but might also have the effect of silencing the voices of those who (in the present context) need to be encouraged as much as possible to speak for themselves. In this respect, we see Paul introducing into the very definition of critical thinking some of the sorts of social and contextual factors that Critical Pedagogy writers have emphasized.
Critical Pedagogy
The idea of Critical Pedagogy begins with the neo-Marxian literature on Critical Theory (Stanley 1992). The early Critical Theorists (most of whom were associated with the Frankfurt School) believed that Marxism had underemphasized the importance of cultural and media influences for the persistence of capitalism; that maintaining conditions of ideological hegemony were important for (in fact inseparable from) the legitimacy and smooth working of capitalist economic relations. One obvious example would be in the growth of advertising as both a spur to rising consumption and as a means of creating the image of industries driven only by a desire to serve the needs of their customers. As consumers, as workers, and as winners or losers in the marketplace of employment, citizens in a capitalist society need both to know their “rightful” place in the order of things and to be reconciled to that destiny. Systems of education are among the institutions that foster and reinforce such beliefs, through the rhetoric of meritocracy, through testing, through tracking, through vocational training or college preparatory curricula, and so forth (Bowles & Gintis 1976; Apple 1979; Popkewitz 1991).
Critical Pedagogy represents, in a phrase, the reaction of progressive educators against such institutionalized functions. It is an effort to work within educational institutions and other media to raise questions about inequalities of power, about the false myths of opportunity and merit for many students, and about the way belief systems become internalized to the point where individuals and groups abandon the very aspiration to question or change their lot in life. Some of the authors mostly strongly associated with this tradition include Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and Ira Shor. In the language of Critical Pedagogy, the critical person is one who is empowered to seek justice, to seek emancipation. Not only is the critical person adept at recognizing injustice but, for Critical Pedagogy, that person is also moved to change it. Here Critical Pedagogy wholeheartedly takes up Marx’s Thesis XI on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Marx 1845/1977, 158).
This emphasis on change, and on collective action to achieve it, moves the central concerns of Critical Pedagogy rather far from those of Critical Thinking: the endeavor to teach others to think critically is less a matter of fostering individual skills and dispositions, and more a consequence of the pedagogical relations, between teachers and students and among students, which promote it; furthermore, the object of thinking critically is not only against demonstrably false beliefs, but also those that are misleading, partisan, or implicated in the preservation of an unjust status quo.
The author who has articulated these concerns most strongly is Paulo Freire, writing originally within the specific context of promoting adult literacy within Latin American peasant communities, but whose work has taken on an increasingly international interest and appeal in the past three decades (Freire 1970a, 1970b, 1973, 1985; McLaren & Lankshear 1993; McLaren & Leonard 1993). For Freire, Critical Pedagogy is concerned with the development of conscienticizao, usually translated as “critical consciousness.” Freedom, for Freire, begins with the recognition of a system of oppressive relations, and one’s own place in that system. The task of Critical Pedagogy is to bring members of an oppressed group to a critical consciousness of their situation as a beginning point of their liberatory praxis. Change in consciousness and concrete action are linked for Freire; the greatest single barrier against the prospect of liberation is an ingrained, fatalistic belief in the inevitability and necessity of an unjust status quo.
One important way in which Giroux develops this idea is in his distinction between a “language of critique” and a “language of possibility” (Giroux 1983, 1988). As he stresses, both are essential to the pursuit of social justice. Giroux points to what he sees as the failure of the radical critics of the new sociology of education because, in his view, they offered a language of critique, but not a language of possibility. They saw schools primarily as instruments for the reproduction of capitalist relations and for the legitimation of dominant ideologies, and thus were unable to construct a discourse for “counterhegemonic” practices in schools (Giroux 1988, 111-112). Giroux stresses the importance of developing a language of possibility as part of what makes a person critical. As he puts it, the aim of the critical educator should be “to raise ambitions, desires, and real hope for those who wish to take seriously the issue of educational struggle and social justice” (Giroux 1988, 177).
For both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, “criticality” requires that one be moved to do something, whether that something be seeking reasons or seeking social justice. For Critical Thinking, it is not enough to know how to seek reasons, truth, and understanding; one must also be impassioned to pursue them rigorously. For Critical Pedagogy, that one can critically reflect and interpret the world is not sufficient; one must also be willing and able to act to change that world. From the standpoint of Critical Pedagogy the Critical Thinking tradition assumes an overly direct connection between reasons and action. For instance, when Ennis conceives Critical Thinking as “reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or to do,” the assumption is that “deciding” usually leads relatively unproblematically to the “doing” (Ennis 1987). The model of practical reasoning on which this view depends assumes a relatively straightforward relation, in most cases, between the force of reasons and action. But for Critical Pedagogy the problems of overcoming oppressed thinking and demoralization are more complex than this: changing thought and practice must occur together; they fuel one another. For Freire, criticality requires praxis — both reflection and action, both interpretation and change. As he puts it, “Critical consciousness is brought about not through intellectual effort alone but through praxis — through the authentic union of action and reflection” (Freire 1970a, 48).
Critical Pedagogy would never find it sufficient to reform the habits of thought of thinkers, however effectively, without challenging and transforming the institutions, ideologies, and relations that engender distorted, oppressed thinking in the first place — not as an additional act beyond the pedagogical one, but as an inseparable part of it. For Critical Thinking, at most, the development of more discerning thinkers might make them more likely to undermine discreditable institutions, to challenge misleading authorities, and so on — but this would be a separate consequence of the attainment of Critical Thinking, not part of it.
A second central theme in Freire’s work, which has fundamentally shaped the Critical Pedagogy tradition, is his particular focus on “literacy.” At the ground level, what motivated Freire’s original work was the attempt to develop an adult literacy program, one in which developing the capacity to read was tied into developing an enhanced sense of individual and collective self-esteem and confidence. To be illiterate, for Freire, was not only to lack the skills of reading and writing; it was to feel powerless and dependent in a much more general way as well. The challenge to an adult literacy campaign was not only to provide skills, but to address directly the self-contempt and sense of powerlessness that he believed accompanied illiteracy (Freire 1970b). Hence his approach to fostering literacy combined the development of basic skills in reading and writing; the development of a sense of confidence and efficacy, especially in collective thought and action; and the desire to change, not only one’s self, but the circumstances of one’s social group. The pedagogical method that he thinks promote all of these is dialogue: “cultural action for freedom is characterized by dialogue, and its preeminent purpose is to conscientize the people” (Freire 1970a, 47).
Richard Paul says similarly that “dialogical thinking” is inherent to Critical Thinking (Paul 1990). However, there is more of a social emphasis to dialogue within Critical Pedagogy: dialogue occurs between people, not purely as a form of dialogical thought. Here again Critical Pedagogy focuses more upon institutional settings and relations between individuals, where Critical Thinking’s focus is more on the individuals themselves. In other words, dialogue directly involves others, while one person’s development of “dialogical thinking” may only indirectly involve others. Yet the work of Vygotsky and others would argue that the development of such capacities for individuals necessarily involves social interactions as well. Paul addresses this point, but it does not play the central role in his theory that it does for Freire and other Critical Pedagogues — still, Paul appears to us to be somewhat of a transitional figure between these two traditions.
The method of Critical Pedagogy for Freire involves, to use his phrase, “reading the world” as well as “reading the word” (Freire & Macedo 1987). Part of developing a critical consciousness, as noted above, is critiquing the social relations, social institutions, and social traditions that create and maintain conditions of oppression. For Freire, the teaching of literacy is a primary form of cultural action, and as action it must “relate speaking the word to transforming reality” (Freire 1970a, 4). To do this, Freire uses what he calls codifications: representative images that both “illustrate” the words or phrases students are learning to read, and also represent problematic social conditions that become the focus of collective dialogue (and, eventually, the object of strategies for potential change). The process of decodification is a kind of “reading” — a “reading” of social dynamics, of forces of reaction or change, of why the world is as it is, and how it might be made different. Decodification is the attempt to “read the world” with the same kind of perspicacity with which one is learning to “read the word.”
In this important regard, Critical Pedagogy shares with Critical Thinking the idea that there is something real about which they can raise the consciousness of people. Both traditions believe that there is something given, against which mistaken beliefs and distorted perceptions can be tested. In both, there is a drive to bring people to recognize “the way things are” (Freire 1970a, 17). In different words, Critical Pedagogy and Critical Thinking arise from the same sentiment to overcome ignorance, to test the distorted against the true, to ground effective human action in an accurate sense of social reality. Of course, how each movement talks about “the way things are” is quite different. For Critical Thinking, this is about empirically demonstrable facts. For Critical Pedagogy, on the other hand, this is about the intersubjective attempt to formulate and agree upon a common understanding about “structures of oppression” and “relations of domination.” As we have discussed, there is more to this process than simply determining the “facts”; but, in the end, for Freire as for any other Marxist tradition, this intersubjective process is thought to be grounded in a set of objective conditions.
Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy
In the discussion so far, we have tried to emphasize some relations and contrasts between the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions. To the extent that they have addressed one another, the commentary has often been antagonistic:
The most powerful, yet limited, definition of critical thinking comes out of the positivist tradition in the applied sciences and suffers from what I call the Internal Consistency position. According to the adherents of the Internal Consistency position, critical thinking refers primarily to teaching students how to analyze and develop reading and writing assignments from the perspective of formal, logical patterns of consistency….While all of the learning skills are important, their limitations as a whole lie in what is excluded, and it is with respect to what is missing that the ideology of such an approach is revealed (Giroux 1994, 200-201).
Although I hesitate to dignify Henry Giroux’s article on citizenship with a reply, I find it hard to contain myself. The article shows respect neither for logic nor for the English language….Giroux’s own bombastic, jargon-ridden rhetoric…is elitist in the worst sense: it is designed to erect a barrier between the author and any reader not already a member of the “critical” cult (Schrag 1988, 143).
There are other, more constructive engagements, however. Certain authors within each tradition have seriously tried to engage the concerns of the other — although, interestingly, the purpose of such investigations has usually been to demonstrate that all of the truly beneficial qualities of the other tradition can be reconciled with the best of one’s own, without any of the purported drawbacks:
It should be clear that my aim is not to discredit the ideal of critical thinking. Rather, I question whether the practices of teaching critical thinking…as it has evolved into the practice of teaching informal logic issufficient for actualizing the ideal. I have argued that it is not sufficient, if “critical thinking” includes the ability to decode the political nature of events and institutions, and if it includes the ability to envision alternative events and institutions (Kaplan 1991/1994, 217, emphasis added).
Postmodernism, or any other perspective which seriously endorses radical or progressive social and educational change, requires an epistemology which endorses truth and justification as viable theoretical notions. That is to say: Postmodern advocacy of radical pedagogies (and politics) requires Old-Fashioned Epistemology (Siegel 1993, 22).
From the perspective of Critical Thinking, Critical Pedagogy crosses a threshold between teaching criticality and indoctrinating. Teaching students to think critically must include allowing them to come to their own conclusions; yet Critical Pedagogy seems to come dangerously close to prejudging what those conclusions must be. Critical Pedagogy see this threshold problem conversely: indoctrination is the case already; students must be brought to criticality, and this can only be done by alerting them to the social conditions that have brought this about. In short, we can restate the problem as follows: Critical Thinking’s claim is, at heart, to teach how to think critically, not how to think politically; for Critical Pedagogy, this is a false distinction.
For Critical Pedagogy, as we have discussed, self-emancipation is contingent upon social emancipation. It is not only a difference between an emphasis on the individual and an emphasis on society as a whole; both Critical Pedagogy and Critical Thinking want “criticality” in both senses (Missimer 1989/1994; Hostetler 1991/1994). It is rather that, for Critical Pedagogy, individual criticality is intimately linked to social criticality, joining, in Giroux’s phrase, “the conditions for social, and hence, self-emancipation” (Giroux 1988, 110). For Critical Thinking, the attainment of individual critical thinking may, with success for enough people, lead to an increase in critical thinking socially, but it does not depend upon it.
These traditions also explicitly differ from one another in the different problems and contexts they regard as issues. Critical Thinking assumes no set agenda of issues that must be addressed. To try to bring someone to criticality necessarily precludes identifying any fixed set of questions about particular social, moral, political, economic, and cultural issues, let alone a fixed set of answers. As already noted, this is not to say that those involved in the Critical Thinking movement do not think that social justice is an important issue; nor to say that people such as Ennis, Paul, and Siegel do not wish to see those sorts of issues addressed — in fact, they occasionally assert quite explicitly that they do. It is rather that, as Critical Thinking understands criticality, “impartiality” is a key virtue. They strive not to push their students along certain lines, nor to impose certain values (the fact/value distinction is a central thesis of the analytical tradition that informs much of Critical Thinking). Socially relevant cases might be pedagogically beneficial as the “raw material” on which to practice the skills and dispositions of Critical Thinking, because they are salient for many learners in a classroom. But they are not intrinsically important to Critical Thinking itself; in many cases purely symbolic cases could be used to teach the same elements (as in the use of symbols or empty X’s and Y’s to teach logic).
Hence, Critical Thinking tends to address issues in an item-by-item fashion, not within a grand scheme with other issues. The issues themselves may have relations to one another, and they may have connections to broader themes, but those relations and connections are not the focus of investigation. What is crucial to the issue at hand is the interplay of an immediate cluster of evidence, reasons, and arguments. For Critical Thinking, what is important is to describe the issue, give the various reasons for and against, and draw out any assumptions (and only those) that have immediate and direct bearing on the argument. This tends to produce a more analytical and less wholistic mode of critique.
When Critical Pedagogy talks about power and the way in which it structures social relations, it inevitably draws from a context, a larger narrative, within which these issues are framed; and typically sees it as part of the artificiality and abstractness of Critical Thinking that it does not treat such matters as central. Critical Pedagogy looks to how an issue relates to “deeper” explanations — deeper in the sense that they refer to the basic functioning of power on institutional and societal levels. For Critical Pedagogy, it makes no sense to talk about issues on a nonrelational, item-by-item basis. Where Critical Thinking emphasizes the immediate reasons and assumptions of an argument, Critical Pedagogy wants to draw in for consideration factors that may appear at first of less immediate relevance.
We do not want to imply merely that Critical Pedagogy wants people to get the “big picture” whereas Critical Thinking does not. Oftentimes, their “big pictures” are simply going to be different. The important point is why they are different, and the difference resides in the fact that whereas Critical Thinking is quite reluctant to prescribe any particular context for a discussion, Critical Pedagogy shows enthusiasm for a particular one — one that tends to view social matters within a framework of struggles over social justice, the workings of capitalism, and forms of cultural and material oppression. As noted, this favoring of a particular narrative seems to open Critical Pedagogy up to a charge of indoctrination by Critical Thinking: that everything is up for questioning within Critical Pedagogy except the categories and premises of Critical Pedagogy itself. But the Critical Pedagogue’s counter to this is that Critical Thinking’s apparent “openness” and impartiality simply enshrine many conventional assumptions as presented by the popular media, traditional textbooks, etc., in a manner that intentionally or not teaches political conformity; particular claims are scrutinized critically, while a less visible set of social norms and practices — including, notably, many particular to the structure and activities of schooling itself — continue to operate invisibly in the background.
In short, each of these traditions regards the other as insufficiently critical; each defines, in terms of its own discourse and priorities, key elements that it believes the other neglects to address. Each wants to acknowledge a certain value in the goals the other aspires to, but argues that its means are inadequate to attain them. What is most interesting, from our standpoint, is not which of these traditions is “better,” but the fascinating way in which each wants to claim sovereignty over the other; each claiming to include all the truly beneficial insights of the other, and yet more — and, as we will see, how each has been subject to criticisms that may make them appear more as related rivals than as polar opposites.
Criticisms of Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy
It will not have been lost on many readers that when we listed the prime authors in both the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions, all listed were male. There are certainly significant women writing within each tradition, but the chief spokespersons, and the most visible figures in the debates between these traditions, have been men. Not surprisingly, then, both traditions have been subject to criticisms, often from feminists, that their ostensibly universal categories and issues in fact exclude the voices and concerns of women and other groups.
In the case of Critical Thinking, as noted earlier, this has typically taken the form of an attack on the “rationalistic” underpinnings of its epistemology: that its logic is different from “women’s logic,” that its reliance on empirical evidence excludes other sources of evidence or forms of verification (experience, emotion, feeling) — in short, that its masculinist way of knowing is different from “women’s ways of knowing” (for example, Belenky et al. 1986; Thayer-Bacon 1993). Other arguments do not denigrate the concerns of Critical Thinking entirely, but simply want to relegate them to part of what we want to accomplish educationally (Arnstine 1991; Garrison & Phelan 1990; Noddings 1984; Warren 1994). Often these criticisms, posed by women with distinctive feminist concerns in mind, also bring in a concern with Critical Thinking’s exclusion or neglect of ways of thought of other racial or ethnic groups as well — though the problems of “essentializing” such groups, as if they “naturally” thought differently from white men, has made some advocates cautious about overgeneralizing these concerns.
Critical Pedagogy has been subject to similar, and occasionally identical, criticisms. Claims that Critical Pedagogy is “rationalistic,” that its purported reliance on “open dialogue” in fact masks a closed and paternal conversation, that it excludes issues and voices that other groups bring to educational encounters, have been asserted with some force (Ellsworth 1989; Gore 1993). In this case, the sting of irony is especially strong. After all, advocates of Critical Thinking would hardly feel the accusation of being called “rationalistic” as much of an insult; but for Critical Pedagogy, given its discourse of emancipation, to be accused of being yet another medium of oppression is a sharp rebuke.
Are these criticisms justified? Certainly the advocates of these traditions have tried to defend themselves against the accusation of being “exclusionary” (Siegel 1996; Giroux 1992c). The arguments have been long and vigorous, and we cannot recount them all here. But without dodging the matter of taking sides, we would like to suggest a different way of looking at the issue: Why is it that significant audiences see themselves as excluded from each of these traditions? Are they simply misled; are they ignorant or ill-willed; are they unwilling to listen to or accept the reasonable case that advocates of Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy put forth in response to their objections — or is the very existence of disenfranchised and alienated audiences a reason for concern, a sign that Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy do not, and perhaps cannot, achieve the sort of breadth, inclusiveness, and universal liberation they each, in their own way, promise? We find it impossible to avoid such a conclusion: that if the continued and well-intended defense and rearticulation of the reasons for a Critical Thinking or a Critical Pedagogy approach cannot themselves succeed in persuading those who are skeptical toward them, then this is prima facie evidence that something stands beyond them — that their aspirations toward a universal liberation, whether a liberation of the intellect first and foremost, or a liberation of a political consciousness and praxis, patently do not touch all of the felt concerns and needs of certain audiences, and that a renewed call for “more of the same,” as if this might eventually win others over, simply pushes such audiences further away.
For this reason and others we do not want to see an “erasure” of Critical Thinking by Critical Pedagogy, or vice versa. Though each, from its own perspective, claims sovereignty over the other, and purports to have the more encompassing view, we prefer to regard the tension between them as beneficial. If one values a “critical” perspective at all, then part of that should entail critique from the most challenging points of view. Critical Thinking needs to be questioned from the standpoint of social accountability; it needs to be asked what difference it makes to people’s real lives; it needs to be challenged when it becomes overly artificial and abstract; and it needs to be interrogated about the social and institutional features that promote or inhibit the “critical spirit,” for if such dispositions are central to Critical Thinking, then the conditions that suppress them cannot be altered or influenced by the teaching of epistemological rigor alone (Burbules 1992, 1995).
At the same time, Critical Pedagogy needs to be questioned from the standpoint of Critical Thinking: about what its implicit standards of truth and evidence are; about the extent to which inquiry, whether individual or collective, should be unbounded by particular political presuppositions; about how far it is and is not willing to go in seeing learners question the authority of their teachers (when the teachers are advocating the correct “critical” positions); about how open-ended and decentered the process of dialogue actually is — or whether it is simply a more egalitarian and humane way of steering students toward certain foregone conclusions.
And finally, both of these traditions need to be challenged by perspectives that can plausibly claim that other voices and concerns are not addressed by their promises. Claims of universalism are especially suspect in a world of increasingly self-conscious diversity; and whether or not one adopts the full range of “postmodern” criticisms of rationality and modernity, it cannot be denied that these are criticisms that must be met, not pushed off by simply reasserting the promise and hope that “you may not be included or feel included yet, but our theoretical categories and assumptions can indeed accommodate you without fundamental modification.” The responses to such a defense are easily predictable, and understandable.
One of the most useful critical angles toward both the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions has been a poststructural examination of how they exist within a historical context as discursive systems with particular social effects (Cherryholmes 1988: Gore 1993). The contemporary challenge to “metanarratives” is sometimes misunderstood as a simple rejection of any theory at all, a total rejection on anti-epistemological grounds; but this is not the key point. The challenge of such criticisms is to examine the effects of metanarratives as ways of framing the world; in this case, how claims of universality, or impartiality, or inclusiveness, or objectivity, variously characterize different positions within the Critical Thinking or Critical Pedagogy schools of thought. Their very claims to sovereignty, one might say, are more revealing about them (and from this perspective makes them more deeply akin) than any particular positions or claims they put forth. It is partly for this reason that we welcome their unreconciled disputes; it reminds us of something important about their limitations.
Here, gradually, we have tried to introduce a different way of thinking about criticality, one that stands outside the traditions of Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, without taking sides between them, but regarding each as having a range of benefit and a range of limitation. The very tension between them teaches us something, in a way that eliminating either or seeing one gain hegemony would ultimately dissolve. Important feminist, multiculturalist, and generally postmodernist rejections of both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, which we have only been able to sketch here, are of more recent provenance in educational discourse — but about them we would say the same. There is something about the preservation of such sustained differences that yields new insights, something that is lost when the tension is erased by one perspective gaining (or claiming) dominance. But the tension is also erased by the pursuit of a liberal “compromise”; or by the dream of an Hegelian “synthesis” that can reconcile the opposites; or by a Deweyan attempt to show that the apparent dichotomy is not real; or by a presumption of incommensurability that makes the sides decide it is no longer worth engaging one another. All of these are ways of making the agonistic engagement go away. We prefer to think in terms of a criticality that is procedural: What are the conditions that give rise to critical thinking, that promote a sharp reflection on one’s own presuppositions, that allow for a fresh rethinking of the conventional, that fosterthinking iew ways?
Toward an Alternate Criticality
The starting point of this alternative is reflecting upon criticality as a practice — what is involved in actually thinking critically, what are the conditions that tend to foster such thinking, and so on. Here we can only draw the outlines of some of these elements, each of which merits extended discussion.
First, criticality does involve certain abilities and skills, including but not limited to the skills of Critical Thinking. These skills have a definite domain of usefulness, but learning them should include not only an appreciation for what they can do, but an appreciation for what they cannot do. For example, methods of analysis, across different disciplines from the scientific to the philosophic, involve removing the object of study from its usual context in order (1) to focus study upon it and it only and (2) to be able to parse it into component elements. This is true of all sorts of analysis, whether the analysis of an organism, a chemical analysis, or an analysis of a concept. There is value to doing this, but also a limit, since removing a thing from its usual context changes it by eliminating the network of relations that give rise to it, interact with it, and partly define it. If any amount of wholism is true, then such decontextualizing and/or dissecting into components loses something of the original.
In addition to these logical and analytical skills, we would emphasize that criticality also involves the ability to think outside a framework of conventional understandings; it means to think anew, to think differently. This view of criticality goes far beyond the preoccupation with not being deceived. There might be worse things than being mistaken; there may be greater dangers in being only trivially or banally “true.” Ignorance is one kind of impotence; an inability or unwillingness to move beyond or question conventional understandings is another. This is a point that links in some respects with Freire’s desire to move beyond an “intransitive consciousness,” and with Giroux’s call for a “language of possibility.” But even in these cases there is a givenness to what a “critical” understanding should look like that threatens to become its own kind of constraint. Freire’s metaphor for learning to read is “decodification,” a revealing word because it implies a fixed relation of symbol to meaning and reveals an assumption usually latent within Critical Pedagogy: that the purpose of critical thinking is to discern a world, a real world of relations, structures, and social dynamics, that has been obscured by the distortions of ideology. Learning to “decode” means to find the actual, hidden meaning of things. It is a revealing choice of words, as opposed to, say, “interpretation,” which also suggests finding a meaning, but which could also mean creating a meaning, or seeking out several alternative meanings. This latter view could not assume that “critical” literacy and dialogue would necessarily converge on any single understanding of the world. Yet it is a crucial aspect of Critical Pedagogy that dialogue does converge upon a set of understandings tied to a capacity to act toward social change — and social change of a particular type. Multiple, unreconciled interpretations, by contrast, might yield other sorts of benefits — those of fecundity and variety over those of solidarity.
Much more needs to be said about how it is possible to think anew, to think otherwise. But what we wish to stress here is that this is a kind of criticality, too, a breaking away from convention and cant. Part of what is necessary for this to happen is an openness to, and a comfort with, thinking in the midst of deeply challenging alternatives. One obvious condition here is that such alternatives exist and that they be engaged with sufficient respect to be considered imaginatively — even when (especially when) they do not fit in neatly with the categories with which one is familiar. This is why, as noted earlier, the tensions between radically conflicting views are themselves valuable; and why the etic perspective is as potentially informative as the emic. Difference is a condition of criticality, when it is encountered in a context that allows for translations or communication across differences; when it is taken seriously, and not distanced as exotic or quaint; and when one does not use the excuse of “incommensurability” as a reason to abandon dialogue (Burbules & Rice 1991; Burbules 1993, forthcoming).
Rather than the simple epistemic view of “ideology” as distortion or misrepresentation, we find it useful here to reflect on Douglas Kellner’s discussion of the “life cycle” of an ideology (Kellner 1978). An ideology is not a simple proposition, or even a set of propositions, whose truth value can be tested against the world. Ideologies have the appeal and persistence that they do because they actually do account for a set of social experiences and concerns. No thorough approach to ideology-critique should deny the very real appeal that ideologies hold for people — an appeal that is as much affective as cognitive. To deny that appeal is to adopt a very simplistic view of humaaivetй, and to assume that it will be easier to displace ideologies than it actually is. Both the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions often make this mistake, we believe. As Kellner puts it, ideologies often have an original appeal as an “ism,” as a radically new, fresh, challenging perspective on social and political concerns. Over time, the selfsame ideologies become “hegemonic,” not because they change, but because circumstances change while the ideology becomes more and more concerned with its own preservation. What causes this decline into reification and stasis is precisely the absence of reflexiveness within ideological thought, the inability to recognize its own origins and limitations, and the lack of opportunities for thinking differently. In the sense we are discussing it here, criticality is the opposite of the hegemonic.
This argument suggests, then, that one important aspect of criticality is an ability to reflect on one’s own views and assumptions as themselves features of a particular cultural and historical formation. Such a reflection does not automatically lead to relativism or a conclusion that all views are equally valid; but it does make it more difficult to imagine universality or finality for any particular set of views. Most important, it regards one’s views as perpetually open to challenge, as choices entailing a responsibility toward the effects of one’s arguments on others. This sort of critical reflection is quite difficult to exercise entirely on one’s own; we are enabled to do it through our conversations with others, especially others not like us. Almost by definition, it is difficult to see the limitations and lacunae in our own understandings; hence maintaining both the social conditions in which such conversations can occur (conditions of plurality, tolerance, and respect) as well as the personal and interpersonal capacities, and willingness, to engage in such conversations, becomes a central dimension of criticality — it is not simply a matter of individual abilities or dispositions. The Critical Pedagogy tradition has stressed some of these same concerns.
Yet at a still deeper level, the work of Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, and others, challenges us with a further aspect of criticality: the ability to question and doubt even our own presuppositions — the ones without which we literally do not know how to think and act (Burbules 1995). This seemingly paradoxical sort of questioning is often part of the process by which radically new thinking begins: by an aporia; by a doubt that we do not know (yet) how to move beyond; by imagining what it might mean to think without some of the very things that make our (current) thinking meaningful. Here, we have moved into a sense of criticality well beyond the categories of both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy; to the extent that these traditions of thought and practice have become programmatic, become “movements” of a sort, they may be less able — and less motivated — to pull up their own roots for examination. Their very success as influential areas of scholarship and teaching seems to have required a certain insistence about particular ways of thinking and acting. Can a deeper criticality be maintained under such circumstances? Or is it threatened by the desire to win over converts?
The perspective of viewing criticality as a practice helps us to see that criticality is a way of being as well as a way of thinking, a relation to others as well as an intellectual capacity. To take one concrete instance, the critical thinker must relish, or at least tolerate, the sense of moving against the grain of convention — this isn’t separate from criticality or a “motivation” for it; it is part of what it means to be critical, and not everyone (even those who can master certain logical or analytical skills) can or will occupy that position. To take another example, in order for fallibilism to mean anything, a person must be willing to admit to being wrong. We know that some people possess this virtue and others do not; we also know that certain circumstances and relations encourage the exercise of such virtues and others do not. Once we unravel these mysteries, we will see that fostering such virtues will involve much more than Critical Thinking instruction typically imagines. Here Critical Pedagogy may be closer to the position we are proposing, as it begins with the premise of social context, the barriers that inhibit critical thought, and the need to learn through activity.
Furthermore, as soon as one starts examining just what the conditions of criticality are, it becomes readily apparent that it is not a purely individual trait. It may involve some individual virtues, but only as they are formed, expressed, and influenced in actual social circumstances. Institutions and social relations may foster criticality or suppress it. Because criticality is a function of collective questioning, criticism, and creativity, it is always social in character, partly because relations to others influence the individual, and partly because certain of these activities (particularly thinking iew ways) arise from an interaction with challenging alternative views (Burbules 1993).
These conditions, then, of personal character, of challenging and supportive social relations, of communicative opportunities, of contexts of difference that present us with the possibility of thinking otherwise, are interdependent circumstances. They are the conditions that allow the development and exercise of criticality as we have sketched it in this essay. They are, of course, educational conditions. Criticality is a practice, a mark of what we do, of who we are, and not only how we think. Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, and their feminist, multiculturalist, and postmodern critics, apprehend parts of this conception of criticality. Yet, we find, the deepest insights into understanding what criticality is come from the unreconciled tensions amongst them — because it is in remaining open to such challenges without seeking to dissipate them that criticality reveals its value as a way of life.
UP to now we have used the term Socialism as though it were identical with the teachings of Marx and Engels, founders of scientific socialism. Marx and Engels, however, called themselves communists; it is therefore important that at the very outset we state precisely what socialism means and what is its distinction from communism. A proper understanding of these two terms is imperative in the light of the confusion in usage that prevails today. For example, Russia now designates itself a Socialist Soviet Republic, although it is controlled by a Communist Party under Stalin which affirms that it can build socialism in one country alone. On the other hand, members of the Socialist Party declare that the regime in Russia is not socialist at all, but is restoring capitalism. Between the socialists and the communists there has been a very bitter and sanguinary struggle. Again, still other people designate as Socialism a situation wherein the government takes over railroads and nationalizes a certain amount of property.
In the days of Marx and Engels, the term Socialist had been used by Robert Owen and others and had come to mean ideas and plans for a new society put forth by declassed elements of the upper classes. These socialists were utopians who, regardless of their specific plans, had certain basic characteristics in common. According to them, socialism consisted of a grand plan conceived in the brain of the utopian genius. The plan was to be realized by means of peaceful, rational discussion. All the utopians were firm believers in the power of reason to change the world, and all they wanted was the opportunity to persuade others of the justice and reasonableness of their position. All their plans were static, completed blueprints, eternal and immutable.(*1) None of them understood the meaning of history or of evolution.
None of these dreamers relied upon the working class. They had no conception of the class struggle, but rather appealed to the wealthy to help them to ameliorate the lot of the poor, either, as Robert Owen, for philanthropic reasons, or, as Saint-Simon and Fourier, as a reaction from the terror of the French Revolution. None of these men conceived of the new social order as being a product of violence. They hated the insurrections of the mob and rabble led by communists. The movement was to be led entirely from the top and not from the bottom.
All of these people were extremely critical of the capitalist order, being opposed to competition, and wanting to terminate the privileges of the industrialists. Against all forms of anarchy and chaos, the utopians sought refuge from the existing interminable clash to secure eternal harmony within society, harmony of the social order with nature. To usher in the new utopia, they worked out schemes of mutual co-operation and mutual aid of a more or less authoritariaature. These aspects of the utopians gave them the name Socialists. (*2)
The plans of social inventors like Owens, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and others, could easily have become the ideology of reactionary collectivists, and, indeed, they do form the prototypes of the plans of twentieth century fascism. However, in those days, capitalism had no need of such schemes. The industrialists were thinking, not of crushing the labor movement, but of using the poor for their own political advantage and bringing peace and order to society not by authoritarian utopias but by the anarchy of capitalism. Thus the critical doctrines of the utopians could be taken up only by the victims of capitalism who gave to them certain interpretations which made them the precursors of scientific socialism.
It was imperative that Marx and Engels, who proceeded in an entirely different manner, should separate themselves from this utopian planfulness. If the utopians called themselves Socialists, Marx and Engels called themselves Communists and put out their Communist Manifesto, forming their Communist League, etc. Marx and Engels created a movement and relied upon the working class to carry forward the traditions of the peasant war, of the Paris Commune in the French Revolution, and of Baboeuf and the other communists. Insurrection, class struggle, the proletariat, these were the factors of Marxist political theory, rather than any pale philanthropic and timid scheme of “harmony.”
Before Marxism arises, the disciples of Robert Owen, Fourier, Saint- Simon, and such elements, color the movements of the working class. The adherents of Saint-Simon, for example, were against exploitation, against private property, and against capitalism, as then extant. They favored a tax on land and producers’ co-operatives. The Saint-Simonians always thought of society with a capital “S” and regarded all the members of the nation as included in one collective organization. Thus it is that the terms “Socialism” and “Social Democracy” came to be taken over by the workers who fought many battles under this name.
The Marxist could not ignore this situation and when, in Germany and elsewhere, working class organizations arose that called themselves Socialist or Social Democratic, it was not for Marx and Engels to stand aloof from these movements because of a name.
Of course, the fact that the name Socialism was chosen to designate the vague gropings of the proletariat in itself showed how immature and confused the working class was. Nevertheless, as Marx himself had declared, the workers had to learn from their own experiences; they would not accept learned dissertations imposed upon them by some intellectual. It was necessary for Marx to penetrate that movement, to work within it, and to nurture there the seeds of Marxism that would eventually win over the labor elements to scientific socialism.
Thus it was that by the ’60’s of the last century, Marx was willing to accept the term Socialism, since it no longer represented the old blueprint plans of the utopian, and Friedrich Engels could write his book, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.
After the death of Marx and with the rise of the Second International, the term Socialism took complete possession of the field and became synonymous with communism. This was all the easier since socialism had always been understood as a future transition stage of society leading to communism, as the first or lower stage of communism. However, it soon became plain that the abandonment of the term “Communism” had in reality covered the abandonment of the revolutionary class struggle. After the debacle of the World War, the revolutionary socialists split away from the others, under Lenin, and retook the name Communist.
Thus we see that, even when used exactly, the term Socialism can have three distinct meanings. First, it can mean a future system of society characterized, as described by Marx, by the fact that capitalism, with its markets, commodities, values, prices, exchange, surplus value, capital, money, competition, etc., is no more; instead, there is a conscious, planful society where production is for use on such an enormously improved technical plane that there will be plenty for all. This society will be a stage between capitalism and communism and will retain some remnants of the former in the mental make-up of the individual. The State, however, will have withered away, together with religion, recognized as the opium of the people. Socialism will gradually give way to communism.
Another meaning of the term Socialism has to do with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat that initiates socialism. The Soviet Union, for example, is legitimately called the “Socialist” Republic, not because the stage of society known as socialism exists in Russia, but rather because the Dictatorship of the Proletariat existing in Russia has abolished to a very considerable extent private ownership of the means of production and has laid the basis for the extinction of capitalism, leading to socialism. This was the usage of Lenin. Under Stalin, the theory has been stretched to mean that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat itself is socialism, that socialism is compatible with an army, with a State, with class struggles, with markets, wages, etc. We shall take this up later. It is well, however, to note that under Lenin, socialism could meaot only a future state of society as laid down by Marx, but also could be a designation of a transition regime — Dictatorship of the Proletariat-leading to socialism.
The third meaning of the term Socialism is to signify the program of the Socialist parties as distinct from that of the Communist. In short, here socialism is opposed to communism. In the present chapter we shall use socialism in this last sense of the term, namely, to mean the program and practice of the Socialist parties as separate from and in conflict with those of the Communist.
It is true that the Socialist parties agree with the Communist that socialism, as a stage of society, is the end of their striving. It is also true that very often the Socialist parties fervidly maintain their adherence to the doctrines of Marx, claiming only to interpret them in another direction. In fact, the literary heirs of Marx and Engels, like Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, and others, became leaders, not of a “Communist” movement but of the “Socialists.” Today, however, what we must stress is not the agreement in ultimate goal that the socialists have in common with the communists, but rather the struggles between them that have led to the breaking up of the labor movement and to tremendous convulsions all over the world.
If at present we see some signs of the mitigation of these splits and a tendency for socialists and communists to come together, it is only because the blows of fascism have compelled them to unite on the one hand, while, on the other, the large Communist parties connected with Russia have so degenerated towards the socialist position as practically to be indistinguishable from their erstwhile enemies. We must not, however, confuse “united front” with “unity” and the fact that the socialists and communists are willing to unite on a common field of action does not necessarily mean that they will not fight each other to the death under other circumstances.
The earliest of the utopians of the nineteenth century from the point of view of influence was Saint-Simon, a French nobleman who, at an early age, had volunteered to fight in the American Revolution, but had later become frightened by the effects of the French Revolution. To Saint-Simon,”Progress is achieved in one of two ways, by revolution or dictatorship, and dictatorship was preferable to revolution.” (*3) Revolution was an anachronism that would become unnecessary were society changed. Denouncing the sovereignty of the people, Saint-Simon went so far as to propose an alliance between the Bourbons and the industrial classes in order to achieve his plan for preventing revolution; he asked the King to declare himself the chief of the kingdom and to adopt his plan by royal ordinance. Thus the plans of Saint-Simon were anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic from the very beginning.
What Saint-Simon desired was an industrial State directed by modern science. (*4) “Saint-Simon’s creed can best be described as ‘industrialism’ plus a slight admixture of Socialism. . . .” (*5) He advocated the abolition of the landed idle class and the limitation of society to two classes only, the learned and the industrial. (*6) Standing armies and war should be abolished. (*7) The good of society was attained by the satisfaction of its physical and moral wants. The object of government was to apply knowledge and wealth to that end. To Saint-Simon, liberty was not an end or even a means to an end. It was a result, the result of man’s progressive mastery of nature; man freed himself through society. Tremendously impressed by the power of industry, Saint-Simon believed it was necessary to harness industry and its technical progress to the social order to obtain a better social system. Thus, in his plans there were to be no parasites; his was to be a regime where industry dominated.
Saint-Simon invented an industrial parliament of three chambers, the first, a chamber of invention; the second, of examination; the third, of execution. The First Chamber was to have three hundred engineers, poets, scholars, musicians, and such, of whom two hundred were to be engineers. This body would initiate all legislation. The Second Chamber was also to contain three hundred, of which one hundred were to be mathematical physicists, one hundred metaphysicians, and one hundred physicians. This Chamber was to examine the laws. The Third Chamber was to be composed of the “captains of industry,” a term which Saint-Simon was the first to coin. This body alone was to execute the laws. Thus, the industrialist was to have the power of administration entirely in his hands.
Labor was the highest duty of a citizen and only the worker could govern society. Saint-Simon, however, included the industrialist as part of labor and drew no distinction between him and his employed worker. Indeed, at this time in France, to draw such a distinction would have seemed strange, since the entrepreneurs took an active part in organizing the labor process. To accomplish the rule of labor, Saint-Simon planned a widespread general education, the abolition of poverty, and the preeminence of learning and industry. In his last work, Saint-Simon raised his utopia to the level of a religion, exhorting all to love one another; to raise the moral and physical condition of man by industry and education; to let the captains of the three leading departments of knowledge, of art, and of industry conduct and constitute the government; to give to every man according to his needs and exact from every man according to his capacity; to supply work with the head or hand for everyone.”
The opinions of Saint-Simon, so violently a reaction against the anarchical Liberalism of the French Revolution, easily are revealed as merely a rationalization of the system of French affairs which Napoleon attempted to develop. We have here, as under Napoleon, great praise for industry, a theory of government of talents, an idealization of work without talk, a theory of the necessity of religion and of the ubiquity of the government, a denunciation of the old regime and a criticism of laissez faire Liberalism, with control in the hands of the dictator, the agent of industry. Some of these plans of Saint-Simon are even today being taken over by fascist groups in Europe.
If Saint-Simon became a respectable figure in the eyes of the workers, it was not so much because of his theories, but rather owing to the work of his disciples, the Saint-Simonians, who, made up of petty-bourgeois elements, heavily stressed their critique of anarchical industrial society and thus played into the hands of working-class and middle-class elements who were moving in a progressive and radical direction. As we have seen, Saint- Simon had great influence over Auguste Comte, founder of sociology, and the Saint-Simonians were able to influence some of the intellectuals on the continent and in England, especially John Stuart Mill and Carlyle.
Later to achieve recognition was the work of Charles Fourier. One may say that Fourier and Saint-Simon together constitute one whole, each being regarded as the complement of the other. “Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of centralization; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and individual freedom. With Saint- Simonism the State is the starting point, the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a local body corresponding to the commune, which he called the phalange. (*8)
Fourier’s starting point in his criticism of the present order of things was not the injustice of the distribution of social wealth, or the suffering of the poor, but rather the anarchic wastefulness of modern production and the repellent condition of labor. Fourier does not address himself to the sentiments of man, but to their material interests. “His battle-cry is not ‘justice,’ but ‘order,’ and the general prosperity and happiness of mankind is but an incident of the universal harmony of his system, not its primal aim.” (*9) As Brisbane, one of his disciples, put it: The universe was governed by fixed and mathematical laws the discovery of which would usher in the law of harmony on earth with the result that man would rule nature, rule himself and become attuned to the cosmos. (*10) The genius of Fourier penetrated into these secrets and gave them to the world, not as a fantasy of wish-fulfillment, but as a mere statement of the scientific law of universal harmony.
Under Fourier’s true order of society there would be established universal wealth and prosperity, universal knowledge and intelligence, attractive industry, permanent peace and social concord, unity of all interests, universal co-operation and association, practical liberty in all relations, social equality of the race, universal health and vigor, passional harmony and social unity. (*11) Fourier stressed above all two important principles: first, industrial activity could be made really attractive; secondly, the solidarity of the human race. Fourier, like most Frenchmen, wanted social science to be a social science.
Fourier obtained his principles of harmony from a grand study supposedly embodying the entire universe. His theory included four movements, social, animal, organic, and material, and in all of these different worlds one law prevailed, the law of attraction, which is the idea of God. (*12) “God, in requiring of any of his creatures the performance of a work or function, employs no other lever or agent than Attraction; he never resorts to coercion, constraint or violence in any form; he governs the Universe by this power alone; he impels all beings to fulfil their Destiny from the pleasure, the charm, the delight, he connects with it, and not from fear of pain or punishment.” (*13)
Far more than Saint-Simon, Fourier attempted to work out the laws of evolution, and insisted that even under the Harmonic Order there would still be differences of opinion, contrasts of character and personal antipathies, the abolition of which would destroy the very spice of life. These individual clashes, far from leading to discord, would stimulate a competition for the mutual good. However, here again, thanks to the utopian colonies of his disciples and to his own penchant for meticulously closed systems, what remains of Fourierism is not a theory of evolution but some schematic blue-print in which Fourier predicts that in due time wild animals will associate with man as soon as man overcomes his vices, that the light from the Aurora Borealis will be transformed into dew that will make the North Pole have the climate of sunny Italy and the oceans taste like lemonade. (*14)
According to Fourier, the trouble with industry was that it was neither attractive nor effective. It was his task to lay down a theory of how to make industry attractive and to secure a regime of harmony. To accomplish this, industry must be organized on the basis of a study of human passions. All must be productive laborers, organized in Commune co-operatives where the individual can develop freely. The Communes are to have local autonomy. The State is to be reduced to nothing.
By no means was Fourier a communist. He was vehemently opposed to the schemes of Robert Owen. In his organized Commune known as the Phalanx, no community of property existed; private capital was retained, as well as the right of inheritance. All those within the Phalanx were to labor and, of the proceeds of their labor, five-twelfths were to go to the laborer, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to the talented ones (management), of whom, no doubt, Fourier was to be the leader. (*15) Thus, capital was to be made a permanent institution, but in such a guise as to make Fourier’s new industrialism a weapon against red revolution. While the Saint-Simonians believed in nationalization of property, the Fourierists were associationists, more individualistic in character, and insisting that the individual should not be merged in the mass but must be safeguarded by means of small autonomous groups. Federation would be entirely voluntary; all unity would be prompted from within rather than imposed from without.
From one angle, Fourier was thus connected with Proudhon. From another angle, Fourier became a starting point for the theories of those who later were to espouse guild socialism. While Saint Simon thought in terms of national economy, Fourier thought in terms of a garden city where, with his Phalanstery carefully ordered and regulated, (*16) the distinction between industry and agriculture was to be wiped out and within the city there was to be an intimate correlation of both. Fourier, therefore, is a reaction against the heaped up monuments of stone that make up a modern city; as he feared revolution, so did he fear Paris, and desired to transform its narrow streets into large boulevards surrounded by fields where the healthy organism could flourish.
The features of Fourier’s utopia appealed mightily to reformers in America, and while the system of Saint-Simon found no echo in the United States, that of Fourier was seized upon in an emphatic and practical manner. After all, the Americans were nothing if not practical. America had always been the land of utopia; here was an opportunity to carry out what was an eminently respectable doctrine, not at all revolutionary, but rather a backfire for revolution, although the Americans had no such fear of revolution as Fourier. Fourierism appealed to them because it was an attempt to organize on a small scale an ideal system of society, retaining capitalism, retaining individualism, reducing the State to nil, escaping the conflicts of society which the intellectuals of America could see so clearly were at hand.
From early times, colonists had come to America to build utopia. In the eighteenth century these utopias were entirely of an agrarian and religious nature, made up of foreign-born elements. “It is safe to say that considerably over one hundred, possibly two hundred, communistic villages have been founded in the United States, although comparatively few yet live. There are perhaps from seventy to eighty communities at present in the United States, with a membership of from six to seven thousand, and property the value of which may be roughly estimated at twenty-five or thirty million dollars.” (*17) It has been estimated that the number of persons who at one time or another participated in utopian experiments in the United States in the nineteenth century has run into the hundreds of thousands. (*18)
In the early nineteenth century, those addicted to utopian plans of such a nature were mostly Germans and later, French. In the 1820’S, utopianism took the form of adherence to the views of Robert Owen, who came to this country to establish his utopian colonies and had great influence here, being invited several times to speak privately before the members of the Congress of the United States, the President, and other important officials. Upon the failure of Owenism, the utopian reformers, 1840-1850, eagerly went towards Fourierism, yielding, from 1848 on, to the utopian plans of Cabet.
The Fourierists were able to win a number of talented admirers. (*19) In 1814, Brisbane published the work of Fourier under the title of Social Destiny of Man, and two years later, in New York, Brisbane inaugurated a regular column for the propagation of Fourier’s ideas. The magazine, The Phalanx or journal of Social Science, was issued; it was rechristened The Harbinger in 1845, when it was transferred to the Brook Farm Colony. It passed from existence in 1849 along with Brook Farm. (*20) Thus, the Fourierist schemes were closely tied up with the transcendentalism of the Concord School of Liberal thinkers, who, in theory and in practice, attempted to run away from reality.
The third utopian of importance in the early nineteenth century was Robert Owen, whose chief theoretical contribution was the plan for the formation of producers’ co-operatives taking in all the industries of a locality organized in a thoroughly centralized communist manner. The vital principle of the new industrialism must be co-operation; competition was to be no more.
“In this above all else Owen’s significance lies. It is the idea that unifies all his varied activities. Whether he is pleading for a Factory Act to protect the helpless servants of the new machines, or for a universal system of liberating education, or for trade unions, or for his own scheme of co-operative communities, the dominant idea in his mind is the need for the social control of the new productive power. (*21)
Unlike Fourier and Saint-Simon, Robert Owen did not represent a reaction from the violence of the French Revolution as such. His opinion was that politics wasn’t of any great importance, since it was but a result of economic relations. The thing to do was to change the economic relations and the social environment. A typical Englishman, Owen believed that man owed his character entirely to social environment and that, if this could be changed, man could be entirely transformed. (*22)
The fundamental principles that Owen espoused could be reduced to five: (1) that man was a product of environment; (2) that feelings and convictions were independent of our will; (3) that feelings produced the motive to action (will); (4) that no two humans were ever similar exactly; (5) that every normal individual can be raised or lowered by social influence. (*23) In line with these principles, Owen took an aggressively anti-religionist position.
Robert Owen spent his life attempting to carry out his ideas. A wealthy manufacturer, he was able to form a model village, to pose as a moral reformer, philosopher and uplifter of society. He paid great attention to infant schools and to the education of the workmen at a time when such education was woefully lacking. His idea was, “Happiness cannot be isolated among a few human beings.” (*24) He reduced the hours of labor and introduced his own factory legislation to improve working conditions.
All the while, Owen was proving that these reforms only brought more profit to him, that philanthropy paid handsomely. And, indeed, “Although the wages given to the workmen were lower than were paid elsewhere, it caused no discontent among the people, and New Lanark escaped the disturbances and protracted strikes so general among cotton-spinners in England and Glasgow.” (*25) This success led Owen to appeal to the rich to emulate him.
Robert Owen, however, knew exactly from whence his large wealth came. He stated emphatically: “It is a common mistake arising from the confusion of ideas inseparable from the present erroneous system of society, to believe that the rich provide for the poor and working classes; while in fact the poor and working classes create all the wealth which the rich possess …. The rich … actually prevent them from creating a supply of wealth that would be sufficient to preclude all from becoming poor ….” (*26)
Owen was no disciple of Malthus. The poor need not always be with us; labor could always produce a surplus. Oweever tired of showing the contrast between rich and poor and of arguing for a system where all would get the produce of their labor and form communities to this end. The workers produced forty times as much as before and yet they were in terrible circumstances. (*27) In his report on the causes of poverty, made in 1817, Owen pointed to the effects of the introduction of machinery in this regard and urged that employment be found for those thrown out of work by the introduction of a system whereby each city would provide a farm and factory for employment of the poor. In his report he actually went to the extent of working out the minute details of his projected scheme of Parallelograms. In a later work he expanded his ideas. Society was to be divided into four classes: (1) paupers, to be taken care of as above; (2) workmen; (3) small proprietors; (4) idlers with big capital. The last group was to hire workmen under conditions whereby the workers would control. Each workman was to work in comfort for seven years, then to be given one hundred pounds and placed in class three — or he could work five years more and be given two hundred pounds.
With Owen the problem was not production but proper distribution of wealth. Sturdy advocate of co-operation, completely refusing to recognize the worth of the State, and contemptuous of politics, Robert Owen terminated his activities in England only to re-engage in them on a grander scale in America, where his utopia could be put into full effect. He invested much money in his venture at New Harmony, Indiana, but by 1830 his village of co-operation, with its labor notes, was forced to close down. (*28)
However, the idea of co-operation did not disappear, and, after the Reform Bill of 1832, which failed to enfranchise them, groups of workers in England became active in organizing co-operative societies. The trade unions themselves conceived of their function as instruments of collective bargaining to be merely secondary to their ideas for a co-operative system. In 1834, indeed, Robert Owen headed a grand trade union movement, only to see it collapse that very year. Robert Owen could not endure long as a trade union leader. “He had been too much used, as an employer, to playing the benevolent autocrat…. The cause was, in his eyes, essentially a crusade for the moral regeneration of society as a whole, and not a war of class against class. The struggle to achieve a wage advance here, or to resist a wage reduction there, did not interest him; for to his mind trade-unionism and co-operation were of account only as means to the establishment of the ‘New Moral World.” (*29)
Besides Robert Owen, who was above all a practical philanthropist and a dreamer who had pictured that he could universalize under the capitalist system the social conditions which he had been able to construct in his village of New Lanark, there arose in Britain a school of socialists stemming from Ricardo. They included such people as William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas Hodgskin, and John Francis Bray. Some of these writers connected themselves with the school of Welfare-Liberalism typified by John Stuart Mill.
The fundamental principle of Ricardo’s work was that the exchangeable value of commodities, or their relative worth as compared with each other, depends exclusively on the quantities of labor necessary to produce them and bring them to market. Adam Smith had done this before but had assumed that after rent had been established and capital accumulated, values fluctuated according to variations of rent and wages. Ricardo showed this to be wrong both in regard to rent and in regard to wages. To Ricardo it was not true that if wages rose prices had to rise, as Adam Smith believed, and “There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.” (*30) Naturally, such views could be taken up by workingmen.
William Thompson, (*31) an economist, was interested not in production, but in the distribution of wealth to insure the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Like Bentham, he began to study the laws of happiness and came to the conclusion that, as all men are susceptible to equal amounts of happiness, only full equality would lead to justice. Since all men are naturally nearly equal and all wealth is the product of labor, great wealth must come from robbery. The rich were, therefore, robbers.
To Thompson, three different systems of industrial organization were possible: (1) the present method of theft and frauds, where wealth is for the few and is taken from the many; (2) the system of “security” where each is to have the whole produce of labor; and (3) a system of “equality” which may be considered as flowing from the principle of utility. Thompson himself favored the third, trying to follow two masters, both Bentham and Robert Owen, although he agreed with Owen’s co-operatives.
Thompson took his stand against the Malthusian restriction of population. He exposed the Corn Repeal laws agitation as purely capitalistic, and took the side of labor. Capital was unproductive; only labor created value. The worker was correct in joining unions, but the weapon of the partial strike was extremely limited and could get the worker nowhere.
John Gray (*32) agreed with Thompson that the foundation of all property is labor. Gray’s method was to study the distribution of wealth in a given society, estimating the total wealth and discovering what portion each class got. To do this, Gray had to analyze class relations to find out which were productive and what proportion of the wealth each section received.
Gray thought only those who worked by manual labor and produced material wealth were productive, though some producers were useless — those producing luxury articles-while some non-producers were engaged in useful services. “The productive class, Gray concluded, received only a trifle more than one-fifth of their produce, while the remaining four-fifths were absorbed by landlords and capitalists.” (*33)
Gray denounced the occupations of one-third of the population as useless. The very name soldier was a disgrace to humaature. (*34) Rent was robbery; lawyers were useless; doctors would pass away under a new social order.
Gray’s great contribution was to show that production is restricted and confined by competition and exchange. Abolish competition and exchange and there would be no limit to production. He denied the right of an individual to own land, since all have an equal right to develop; thus he stood for land nationalization as well as for a system of small farms. This economist believed in co-operatives, but in exchange and not in production. He wanted a national bank with paper notes based on goods.
Gray sums up his argument as follows: “We have endeavored to show by whom wealth is created, and by whom it is consumed. We have endeavored to show that it is from human labor that every description of wealth proceeds; that the productive classes DO NOW support, not only themselves, but every unproductive member of society; that they only are productive members of society who apply their own hands either to the cultivation of the earth itself, or to the preparing or appropriating the produce of the earth to the uses of life; . . .
“We have endeavored to show that the real income of the country, which consists in the quantity of wealth annually created by the labour of the people, is taken from its producers, chiefly, by the rent of land, by the rent of houses, by the interest of money, and by the profit obtained by persons who buy their labour from them at one price, and sell it at another; that these immense taxes of rent, interest and profits on labour, must even continue while the system of individual competition stands; that in the new communities all would be productive members of society; excepting only the persons absolutely required in occupations, who would also devote their time and talents to the general good. . . .” (*35)
Gray’s conclusions should have led him ultimately to communism, but neither Gray nor Thompson went that far. Both wanted the laborer to receive the full product of his labor, but both insisted that the laborer could do as he pleased with this product and could start his own enterprise by himself. This could lead only to individualism again. In this way, the communistic theories of Thompson and Gray were stultified by the limitations of their times.
Starting from an entirely different premise, Thomas Hodgskin argued that labor was the source of all wealth, that all exchangeable value is produced by labor. (*36) Landlords and capitalists produce nothing. Capital is not stored-up labor as others believe; even wages are the produce of labor which is entitled to everything it produces. Instead of arriving at communism, however, Hodgskin embraced the theory of laissez faire which to him represented a theory of the laws of the harmony of nature. (*37) Thus Hodgskin was very close to the utilitarian and philosophic Radical school. He denounced Ricardo as being wholly interested in profits, but at the same time he also condemned the theory that capital and labor have contrary interests, believing that both capital and wages could be increased simultaneously. He wanted the master manufacturers to be paid as laborers for the value of their services in the factory, although he was opposed, on the basis of natural rights, to the capitalists receiving an income from their property holdings.
Hodgskin was jealous of governmental powers which checked the individual and thus became opposed to the national system of education by government, favoring the creation of private mechanics institutes instead. Likewise, he was opposed to parliamentary regulation of factory laws, to the taxation of alcohol, and to any interference in the relations of capital and labor. Thus to Hodgskin, socialism was a reaction from and not a correction of the errors of capitalism, and, like some of the Anarchists of the day, his real thesis was to perpetuate true competition by depriving property holders of their privileges.
If we say that Hodgskin belongs to the economic school of Ricardian socialists of the day, it is simply because of his declaration that labor is the source of all value, and his conclusion that capitalists should receive no income from their holdings. In effect, Hodgskin was far closer to the socialistic Anarchism of Proudhon than to the views of Karl Marx.
To John Francis Bray, the root of all social wrong was the institution of property as it then existed. (*38) Political equality unaccompanied by economic equality was impossible, as would soon be demonstrated in the evolution of America, as well as already having been amply proven in Europe.
Like Owen and Thompson, Bray declared that man is a creature of circumstances which he cannot change and which he is forced to obey. All men are equal and have the duties of equal labor and the rights of equal wealth and social ownership of land. Since men are more or less equal in labor, wages should be more or less equal.
Bray realized vaguely that the workers were exploited, although he could not state the fact clearly, implying rather that the worker is cheated in the process of exchange. He did exclaim, however, that the worker gives the employer six days labor for an equivalent worth four days labor, and that all gain is extracted from the productive classes. The gain of the capitalist is the loss of the workman. (*39)
Bray characterized the present system as follows: “Under the present social system, the whole of the working class is dependent upon the capitalist or employer for the means of labour; and where one class by its position in society, is thus dependent upon another class for the MEANS of LABOUR, it is dependent likewise for the MEANS OF LIFE . . . .” (*40) He recommended that all should labor, all exchanges should be equal.
The only possible remedy was the abolition of the private ownership of wealth and of the right of inheritance. The productive class should take over the State and issue paper money in terms of labor to buy out the capitalist. Since money and banking were the great weapons of the capitalists, these were to be replaced by labor notes.
“Society was to undertake the physical, intellectual, and moral education of all children, leaving to parents as individuals only the ‘caressing of parental love.”‘ (*41) Women were to be freed from economic dependence and political inferiority; thus, like William Thompson and John Stuart Mill, who had also evoked great interest in the woman question, Bray became a champion for the development of womanhood. He also stood for a complete system of social insurance and protection of labor.
All of these Ricardian socialists with their theories of value as labor were limited by the defects of utopians generally. First, as a rule they were unable to take an historical perspective. Second, they were rationalists, believing in the power of peaceful persuasion to move the world. Third, they had no connection with the labor movement, but were intellectual elements of the bourgeoisie, keen enough to begin to infer what was wrong with the world and to draw radical conclusions from orthodox, classical, economic theory.
None the less, they foreshadowed the works of Marx and Engels and reflected the claims and pretensions of the labor movement then clamorously arising in Chartist agitations and in the revolutions of Europe.
At this time, other groups also appeared to criticize the industrial system and to espouse the cause of the under-dog. A Christian Socialist movement arose in England. Later on, in Europe, there would appear a Catholic Socialism, a State Socialism, and a Guild Socialism. These movements, however, presented themselves, generally after the rise of Marxism, in order to fight and destroy revolution. Thus, these other socialist movements were not the forerunners of Marxism, but were rather its enemies. Their theories could very well be adopted by reactionary collectivists as seen today in the fascist camp. We shall treat this type of socialism under fascism.
The conditions which were arising prior to 1848 were such as to make inevitable expressions leading to the conclusions later embodied by Marx. It would be well to pause to describe briefly the conditions of the time as they affected the working class, conditions normally bad, made infinitely worse by the periodic cyclical crises of overproduction and unemployment which were then setting. in and which found the worker completely unprotected.
In Paris, for example, it was estimated in 1836 that 100 out of every 1,232 people were below the poverty line and that 9 out of every 24 deaths took place in the hospices, that is, in the alms houses. During the crisis of 1847, one-third of the population was in receipt of charity, with 450,000 food tickets issued, (*42) while in July 1848, two-thirds of the workers were unemployed in Tourcoing, three-fourths in Calais, two-thirds in St. Etienne, etc.
In England the situation was dramatized by the flow of emigration. In 1838, emigration was about 33,000; in 1842, it rose to 128,000. For the eight years 1846 to 1854, emigration totaled over 2,500, 000. (*43) With the Irish famine, the population of Ireland became rapidly depleted, almost a million people perishing.
The figures of the criminal rates also are illustrative of the situation. Whereas the population of Great Britain increased but 79 per cent between 1805 and 1841, crime committals increased 482 per cent, reaching a total of 174.6 to every hundred thousand.
The situation in the United States can be seen from the reports in the New York Daily Tribune. “. . . the average earnings of those who live by simple labor in our city — embracing at least two-thirds of our population — scarcely, if at all, exceed one dollar per week for each person subsisting thereon.” (*44) The typical wage of a needle worker is given as follows: “Work which had brought 971/2 cents in 1844 was paid Only 371/2 cents in 1845 The average earnings of these women were $1.50 to $2 a week, though many of them could not earn more than $1.” (*45)
As for working conditions, we cite the following: “The length of a day’s labor varied from twelve to fifteen hours…. The regulations at Patterson, New Jersey, required women and children to be at work at half past four in the morning…. Operatives were taxed by the companies for the support of religion; . . . Windows were nailed down and the operatives deprived of fresh air…. Women and children were urged on by the use of a cowhide, and an instance is given of a little girl, eleven years of age, whose leg was broken with a ‘billet of wood. Still more harrowing is the description of the merciless whipping of a deaf-and-dumb boy by an overseer…. He received … one hundred blows. At Mendon, Mass., a boy of twelve drowned himself in a pond to escape factory labor.” (*46)
In 1849, social conditions were investigated by the City of Boston. Dr. Clark officially reports: “One cellar was reported by the police to be occupied nightly as a sleeping-apartment for thirty-nine persons. In another, the tide had risen so high that it was necessary to approach the bedside of a patient by means of a plank which was laid from one stool to another; while the dead body of an infant was actually sailing about the room in its Coffin.” (*47) An investigation held at practically the same time in New York City declares the fact that by no means were such conditions peculiar to Boston but were common to practically every large city in the country.
Under such circumstances, it was no wonder that, especially within the ranks of labor, opinions adumbrating those of Marx appeared everywhere. Among the Chartists, for example, Ernest Jones declared: “Money-capital did not create labor, but labor created money-capital; machinery did not create work, but work created machinery. It therefore follows that labour is, by its owature the sovereign power, and that it owes no allegiance, gratitude or subjection to capital.” (*48)
Another leader, J. Brontierre O’Brien,,did much to popularize the phrase “wage slavery.” He translated the work of Buonarotti on the Baboeuf ,movement in the French Revolution, and thus helped to bring the attention of the English workman to the early French Communist movement. Even in America “the term ‘wage-slave’ had a much better standing in the forties than it has today.” (*49)
Among the Chartists, G. J. Harnay could declare, “As regards the workingman exterminating other ‘classes, the answer is easy. Other classes have no right to exist. To prepare the way for the absolute supremacy of the working classes … preparatory to the abolition of the system of classes, is the mission of the Red Republican.” (*50)
One writer could actually call for an industrial republic similar to Soviets. “Have the shoemakers a representative in the House of Commons? There are 133,000 shoemakers in the country, and these, with their wives and families, make upwards of half a million of human beings in this country, all living by shoemaking. Yet not one representative have they…..” (*51)
Thus we may conclude that the writings of the scientific socialists were fully the product of their times, the result of sharp economic contradictions and crises, of violent political revolutions. Had Marx and Engels not lived, there is no doubt that other writers would have elaborated the same points of view.
After the Revolution of 1830, repressive measures were increased by the reactionary forces in control of Central Europe. In Germany, the protests of intellectual radicals against the old order led to large-scale banishments from the country. These exiles, in 1834, were able to organize in Paris the League of the Banished. Soon a Right and Left Wing developed within the group, the Left Wing splitting in 1836 to form the League of the Just. This latter organization did away with the dictatorial tendencies of the former and established an administrative committee democratically elected to head its work. It read revolutionary and socialistic works and was extremely interested in the utopian writing of Cabet who was the leader in appealing directly to the working class for the establishment of his utopias.
The League of the Just did not content itself with abstract propaganda, but began secretly, in Germany and elsewhere, to organize branches of the society which functioned under the guise of educational and singing societies and which began the task of building labor unions. The League of the Just contained within it many communists, the leading figure being Wilhelm Weitling. Several of the League were imprisoned for taking part in the communist attempt of Blanqui in France in 1839.
It was this group that later was forced to emigrate to England, and which founded a German Workers Educational Union, which became the Communist Labor Educational Union. These bodies, together with the League of the Just, formed, in 1847, the Communist League headed by Marx and Engels.
At this point we do not wish to analyze the activity of the Communist League, which we leave for another chapter. Suffice it to say that the League played an important role in the political turmoils and revolutions of 1848. Through the Communist League, Marx and Engels were induced to write their remarkable Communist Manifesto which, translated into every European language, became a sort of bible of the working class. Thus the Communist League prepared the way for the international action of the workers which was first realized on a large scale in the First International formed in 1864.
The Communist League was a strictly communist organization with a definite philosophy, communist procedure, trained cadres. The First International was an entirely different body.
THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION
A. Principal:
1.The upbringing of children – http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/child.htm
2.http://www.thewaytotruth.org/pearls/upbringing.html
3.Principles of Upbringing children – http://www.al-islam.org/upbringing/
4.Moral Education – http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC23/B8%20Susan%20Devine.pdf
5.BERKOWITZ, MARVIN W., and OSER, FRITZ, eds. 1985. Moral Education: Theory and Application. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
6.Moral Issues – http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/taku77/
7.Education – http://www.educativ.info/edu/dezvedue.html
