LECTURE ¹ 3 GENERAL
AGE REGULARITIES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
Theme: General Age regularities of Personality development
v Age
Pedagogics.
v The
Concept of Personality.
v Psychological
and Pedagogical aspects of Personality
Development: Birth – 7 years.
Age Pedagogics.
v The Concept of
Personality.
In
recognition of the complexity of personality, it has been said that every
person is in certain respects like all other people, like some other people and
like no other person.
What this means is that, although all human
beings share the biological features that are universal to the species, they
also hold membership in a particular society and take on the characteristics of
certain people in that society. In spite of all these physical, social and
cultural uniformities, however, each person in the world remains wholly unique.
You can say that about yourself that in
the long history of the human race and the lengthier future that lies ahead,
there has never been and will never be anyone quite likes you. The way you
think, feel, perceive and behave has a pattern which, in its finest details,
will never be duplicated. You simply cannot be cloned!
Your individual personality is created
by a combination of unique factors- your biology, constitution, temperament, genetic
structure, social development, motivational patterns, specific family and
cultural environment and life experiences. All these contribute both to your
individuality as well as to your similarity to others.
The idea that you are what you are and that
you can never be replaced is mind-boggling, not only for you, but for the
personality theorist and researcher whose challenge it is to integrate these
many aspects and dimensions of personality into a coherent framework.
We begin our discussion of the topic of
personality with the search for a theoretical framework within which to
understand the complexity of human personality. Theorists have addressed this
challenge have adopted one of two alternative orientations or conceptions.
The
first is the descriptive view which emphasizes the structure of personality,
either in terms of major behavioral dimensions called personality traits or in
terms of personality types.
The
second is a developmental orientation in which the task is to describe how
personality develops and how individuals adapt to their diverse environments
Trait theory
A trait is a stable and enduring
attribute of a person that is revealed consistently in a variety of situations.
Were a trait theorist to study all possible characteristics that can be used to
describe individuals, the number of possibilities would be overwhelming.
The most cited number in the psychology
of personality may be 17,953. This is the number of distinguishing adjectives
that Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert (1936) were able to extract from the
English language when they set out to create a dictionary of trait names that
could be used to distinguish one person's behavior from another. Thirty years
later, Warren Norman (1963) developed a pool of some 40,000 trait-descriptive
terms. Using experimental and statistical methods, however,
He began his search for simplicity by
creating a set of paired polar opposite adjectives from the list. Statistical
analysis revealed that five personality traits seemed to account for the way in
which ratings by subject grouped together.
Surface traits are considered the overt
expressions of personality. Speaking figuratively, these attributes are close
to the surface and are expressions of more basic traits of personality. Using a
statistical method called factor analysis, sixteen source traits were
identified.
Type theory
Types are broad inclusive patterns of
traits on which some psychologists have attempted to classify people. Perhaps
the most famous of all typologies is that of introversion-extroversion first
described by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the extrovert is outgoing,
exuberant, lively and inclined toward direct action. The introvert presents the
opposite side of the behavioral coin and is more prone to thoughtful
reflection. This attractive typology unfortunately shares the two major
shortcomings of all simple typologies.
First, typologies put people into
extreme categories that apply only to a few individuals. As with most
dimensions of human variation, the graduation from introversion to extroversion
is a continuous one on which people are normally distributed.
Most people fall in the middle of the
dimension and show both introversion and extroversion to a degree. Second, in
their simplicity, typologies ignore one of the most important facts about
personality that it is multidimensional and consists of many attributes.
The task of establishing theoretical
unification, or integration, within a psychological area is one of determining
relative superiority among conflicting accounts. As many recent articles have
shown, however, traditional assessment criteria (novelty, quantifiability,
accuracy, parsimony, replicability) do not provide such integration (Staats,
1987; Wertheimer, 1988; Groot, 1990).
J.R. Royce (1988) suggested that the
traditional criteria had to do with the context of justification and that the
solution to the problem of indeterminacy would come from obtaining "the
same kind of deep and penetrating analyses of the discovery aspect" of our
science (p. 63). That is, we must outline the careers of psychological
positions as they advance from weak to strong. Neither the application of a
monolithic unifying principle (e.g., logical or uninomic positivism) nor the
collection of more data will be helpful (Tolman & Lemery, 1990). The
required antidote is to outline the successive types of positions in each area
and evaluate their correspondence to aspects of the developmental processes
under study.
This chapter demonstrates how various
20th century positions on personality fit into a hierarchy of empirical and
theoretical maturity based on combined outlines of scientific discourse from
Scheffler (1967/1982), Davydov (1984) and Ilyenkov (1982). Although such
match-ups are never perfect, the utility of this combined approach shows
promise.
In his book Science and Subjectivity,
Israel Scheffler (1967/1982) advanced a steadfastly objectivist, but
non-positivist, account of the standard view of science. According to the
standard view, facts provide the empirical data which form observational laws. These
are, in turn, related and explained by theoretical laws.
When one [theoretical] hypothesis is
superseded by another, the genuine facts it had purported to account for are
not inevitably lost; they are typically passed on to its successor, which
conserves them as it reaches out to embrace additional facts (Scheffler,
1967/1982, p. 9).
The challenge for psychologists has been how
to reconcile this standard view with the actual state of the science. How are
the various empirical and theoretical positions in psychology to be related and
evaluated? To relate is to note the succession of positions in a given area
(e.g., personality); to evaluate is to assess the questions addressed by each
position, as well as their correspondence with various aspects of the area.
Scheffler's (1967/1982) distinction
between the empirical and theoretical levels of science is effectively
equivalent to Davydov's (1984) distinction between abstract and substantial
generalization and Ilyenkov's (1982) distinction between initial abstraction,
initial generalization, and concrete conception. The category of concrete
description has been added to expand Scheffler's empirical level.
Scheffler stated his aim as the "reinterpretation
and defense of… objectivity" (1967/1982, p. vii). He stressed that his
"elaboration of the standard view [was] intended as a basis for
discussion" (p. viii). But there is a problem in Scheffler's two-tiered
view of science: It assumes that all empirical investigation is concrete
(because it deals with immediate experience), whereas all theory (because it
goes beyond immediate experience) is abstract. Both Davydov and Ilyenkov argue
that such a view is oversimplified. The task of empirical research, they
suggest, is to catalog and classify various aspects of an area. These empirical
categories (whether they are specific or general) may be either abstract (i.e.,
reveal superficial aspects) or concrete (reveal essential or necessary
interrelations). Truly theoretical thinking, however, is always concrete
because it is concerned with reconstructing the general developmental
transformations of the subject matter (Ilyenkov, 1982, p. 31; Davydov, 1984,
pp. 14-15).
For example, when presented with two
equal sized cubes of metal, some of their different empirical features, like
color, weight and magnetism, may be useful starting points. Other superficial
aspects such as luster may not be useful. Generalized empirical information
about their respective malleability, electrical conductivity and corrosiveness
can be obtained by further manipulation. Empirical descriptive analysis of
their crystalline structures reveals the origin of functional aspects like
stiffness and thermal expansion. However, knowledge of the genesis of such
metals (e.g., in a certain size star, meteor, blast furnace, or atomic reactor)
represents a still higher, developmental form of generalization.
For Davydov and Ilyenkov, the theory
is this higher, concrete, form of generalization. Scheffler (1967/1982),
however, tended to use the term to refer to empirical generalization (initial
or abstract generalization in Ilyenkov and Davydov's terms). This left his
outline vulnerable to anti-objectivism which trades on the indeterminacy of
abstract empirical investigations.
Therefore, Scheffler's empirical
level has been stretched to include three stages (initial abstraction, initial
generalization and concrete description). This conforms to the view shared by
Davydov and Ilyenkov that most empirical research is abstract (e.g., artificial
experimental milieus, generalized correlations among surface features), while
only some of it is concrete (e.g., non-obtrusive observation, careful
longitudinal studies). Scheffler's notion of the cumulative nature of
theoretical conceptions, however, is preserved in the resulting four-tiered
view of science.
This understanding of scientific discourse can be used
to assess 20th century positions on personality
Early investigation involves initial abstractions at
the empirical level. That is, particular aspects or qualities of a phenomenon
are selected as important for study. The operational definitions of motivation
(hunger, thirst, pain, and sex) are examples of such initial abstractions
(Brown, 1979). At this early stage of investigation, questions about what
aspects of a phenomenon to study for a particular purpose are favored over the
hunt for a crystallized definition of the whole phenomenon.
In the 1920s
and early 1930s, personality researchers often published in the Journal of
Applied Psychology (Parker, 1991). The concern was to establish the advantages
of empirical study of personality over the former phrenological and graphology
traditions (e.g., Cleeton, 1924). These psychologists, while studying what were
later to be called traits, were "not particularly interested in developing
personality theory" (Endler & Parker, 1992, p. 179).
This emphasis
of the part at the expense of the whole indicates the immaturity of an early
investigation. Hence, in 1938, Henry Murray characterized the area as
"still in its diaper enjoying random movements" (p. 21). The advent
of disciplinary self-analysis [p. 154] regarding the validity of empirical
procedures and clinical tests marked the transition to a more standardized
approach (e.g., Landis & Katz, 1934; Hertz, 1935).
Initial (Abstract) Generalization
This stage
involves the formation of categories and classification of types thought to
apply to various aspects of the phenomena (or segments of the population) under
study. Two logically contradictory but empirically supportable classes of
categories were abstracted from the personality area. Trait categories included
neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Situationist
categories included observational and vicarious environmental influences
(Bandura, 1973; Mischel, 1973).
Although Allport and Vernon (1930) recognized the need
to situate the trait view within the broader context of personality such
concerns were subsequently dropped. Trait theory's tendency toward
"methodolatry," a shift of concern away from elaborating some causal
process toward concern over statistical outcome (Danziger, 1990, pp. 111-112;
Bakan, 1967, pp. 158-159), is a symptom of its abstractness.
In the purified
trait approach, the question of whether traits exist as anything more than
empirical convenience was replaced with the question of how many traits are
produced by which statistical method (i.e., Cattell versus Eysenck versus
McCrae and Costa). For instance, Digman (1990) lists the similar factors
obtained by empirical studies between the years 1949-1986 while taking the
ontological status of personality traits completely for granted.
Although pure
trait and situationist positions are rapidly becoming historical curiosities
(Kendrick & Funder, 1988), the continuous and discontinuous aspects of
personality are often framed in terms of exclusive alternatives. Kagan (1988)
argues that there are either (A) "static entities" which don't change
(essences which do not vary when the organism or context does vary) or (B)
"discontinuous constructs" which vary across contexts (pp. 617-619). A
widely used introductory text by Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, & Bem (1990)
describes the same issue as the "consistency paradox" (pp. 543). Despite
such logical difficulties, there has developed a distinct preference for
eclectic and longitudinal studies.
Concrete Description
Concrete
descriptive research focuses on the relations between the various
classifications (e.g., traits, environment, socio-historical events). Temporal
relations between categories are also investigated to obtain a descriptive
outline of the area. In the mid-1970s, the interactionist approach attempted
such an outline.
The
interactionist argues that personality is not just a ripening of genetic
traits, nor just the effect of varied situations but both (Bowers, 1973;
Pervin, 1977). The most recent proponents distinguish between mechanistic and
dynamic interactionism. Endler and Parker (1992), for instance, point out that
the empirical methods used by mechanistic interactionism (ANOVA and the IV-DV
model) were not suited for developmental analysis. They suggest replacing those
empirical tools with the statistical technique of path analysis and programs
such as LISREL which allow bidirectional causal models to [p. 155] be tested
(see Bynner & Romney, 1985).
While this is
an interesting move, dynamic interactionist are still focusing on correlations
among prerequisites of personality, not aspects of personality itself. Just as
the details of personality are not found in genes (the biological prerequisites
for the personality), nor in any passive or active adaptation to an environment
(the biological and social conditions for the individual), they are also not
found in the correlations between those two abstractions.
The
interactionist position, while claiming a role for heredity and for
environment, fails to account for the interaction itself, i.e., human society. Societal
events (e.g., war, economic depression, changing [social] norms) are considered
as external 'factors' that correlate with personality traits. A static view of
development as the result of outside factors on stable elements is assumed.
Dialectical
logic has been missing from interactionist views (e.g., Magnusson, 1990). In
contrast to the supplementary linear empirical tools urged by interactionists,
dialectical logic is a theoretical tool (Ilyenkov, 1977). In the present case,
it helps to distinguish between the logical contradiction of linguistic
categories (e.g., continuity versus discontinuity) and the objective
contradictions of personality development (transformation of a biological
individual into a societal personality).
Concrete Concepts
Concrete
concepts involve the revelation of "necessary interconnections" among
the abstractable properties of the subject matter (Tolman, 1991, p. 160; see
also Bakhurst, 1991). These necessary interconnections are generally revealed
by a developmental account of the phenomenon.
An example of
personality theory which approaches this explanatory stage, is A. N. Leontiev's
(1978) theory of Activity. It explicitly uses a dialectical materialist
analysis and is an extension of the better known Vygotskian tradition (Tolman,
1983; Wertsch, 1986). According to Leontiev, personality must be understood in
terms of its development in societal relations from the initially biological
and social individual. The process is one of the individual's active
appropriation of culture. In other words, the becoming of personality must be
studied, as opposed only to its prerequisites.
Contrary to
trait theory, one is not born a personality but rather a biological individual.
Also contrary to situationist theory, the basis is biological individuality
(i.e., the infant's characteristic level of physiological activeness, attention
span, general mood). Personality develops through the active internalization of
culture under societal influences.
This must be distinguished from interactionist theory
(where genes and environment "meet" culture). The child's
inauguration into societal practices is conceived not simply as the origin of
particular beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions and so on, but as the source of
the child's very capacity to believe, to desire, and so on (Bakhurst, 1991, p.
78). The analytical tools used by the Activity approach to investigate how
biologically given processes are transformed into societal processes (joint
action, appropriation, etc.) are outlined in Tolman (1988).
According to
Leontiev (1978), the infant as an active biological individual is guided [p.
156] by, and also guides, the [nurturing] activity of the primary care giver
(joint action). This relationship is an aspect of [every part of] the infant's
life (feeding, clothing, excretion, etc.). Such reciprocal guidance is always
relative to the biological and experiential development of the child. The way
such ontogenetic development proceeds is to be found in the relation between
what the child can do by itself and what it can do with the help of others (see
Vygotsky, 1978, pp. 84-91, on the zone of proximal development).
The quality of
the joint action is important. Western research on the differences between
authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglecting parenting demonstrated
this point (see Maccoby and Martin, 1983). Despite its factorial methods, the
research of Scarr and McCartney (1983) on evocative interaction (where the
child seeks out new societal relations) confirms Leontiev's theory.
Conclusion
Although this
chapter focused on modern views of personality, the same assessment methodology
applies to other core areas of psychology. This methodology recognizes the
historical value of initial abstractions on the empirical level, but specifies
the aim of scientific discourse as the eventual concretization of the abstract
through the attainment of concrete generalization on the
theoretical-explanatory level. By elaborating the levels of scientific
discourse more fully, this methodology reveals the relative maturities of
empirical and theoretical positions in psychology, making choices and
integrations among such positions attainable in principle.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A. Principal:
Footnotes
1. At least it is
this part of their heritage for which they are remembered, thanks to the
interpretation of their disciples. On the other hand, Auguste Comte borrowed
his theory of the evolution of religion from Saint-Simon who also enunciated
the evolutionary thought that mankind must decay like other living things. Saint-Simon’s
speculations, however, always ended in closed systems.
2. Compare the
critique of the utopians in J. Davis: Contemporary Social Movements, p. 51
3. See, G. Elton:
The Revolutionary Idea in France, 1789-1871, p. 123. (1923 edition.)
4. His chief works
are: L'Industrie (1816-1818), Le Politique (1819), L'Organisateur (1819-1820),
Systeme Industriel (1821), and Le Nouveau Christianisme (1825).
5. Gide and Rist: A
History of Economic Doctrines, p. 202.
7. Saint-Simon's
opposition to military government, of course, came after Napoleon's defeat. While
Napoleon lived, his system of government in Italy was declared to be the best
the world had ever seen. "So long as Napoleon's fortunes were in the
ascendant, no sycophant was ever more obsequious." (A. J. Booth:
Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism, p. 39.)
8. See, D. B.
Cofer: Saint-Simonism in the Radicalism of Thomas Carlyle.
9. T. Kirkup: A
History of Socialism (5th ed., 1913), p. 31.
11. See, A.
Brisbane: General Introduction to Social Science, pp. 13, 14 and following. (New
York, 1876, edition.)
12. The same, p. 43.
14. Brisbane: work
cited, p. 71.
15. For his chart
of evolution, see C. Fourier: Theory of the Four Movements, p. 36.
16. Fourier was
acute enough to predict that canals would be built both at Suez and Panama,
although it was the disciples of Saint-Simon who built one and began the other!
17. The plan and
rules of Fourier's Phalanges are given in P. Godwin: A Popular View of the
Doctrines of Charles Fourier, p. 51 and following.
18. R. T. Ely: The
Labor Movement in America, p. 20. (1905 edition.)
20. Brisbane,
Greeley, Parke, Godwin, George Ripley, C. A. Dana, William Henry Channing,
Hawthorne, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Thoreau, Henry James, James Russell
Lowell, Margaret Fuller, Louise Alcott, and others were Fourierists.
21. N. J. Ware: The
Industrial Worker, 1840-1860, p. 165.
23. See R. Owen: A
New View of Society and Other Writings. (Everyman's ed.)
24. See, C.
Southwell: Socialism Made Easy or a Plain Exposition of Mr. Owen's Views; also,
R. Owen: Public Discussion between Robert Owen and the Rev. J. H. Roebuch.
25. R. Owen:
Letters on Education, p. 14.
27. The same, p. 94.
28. See, R. Owen:
Wealth and Misery.
29. No Negro could
become a member of the New Harmony colony.
At first the
constitution of the New Harmony was put on an exceedingly anti-democratic
basis: ". . . the government was to be in a committee of twelve, of whom
eight should be persons who had advanced one hundred pounds or upwards." (W.
L. Sargent: R. Owen and his Social Philosophy, p. 235.)
31. D. Ricardo:
Works, p. 23 (J. R. McCulloch 1876 edition).
32. Wrote: An
Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth (1824); Appeal of One
Half the Human Race; Women (1825); Labour Rewarded (1827); Practical Directions
for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities (1830). He died 1833.
33. Wrote: A
Lecture on Human Happiness (1825); A Word of Advice to the Orbistonians (1826);
The Social System (1831); An Efficient Remedy for the Distress of Nations
(1842); The Currency Question, (1847); Lectures on the Nature and the Use of
Money (1848)
34. E. Lowenthal:
The Ricardian Socialists, p. 51.
35. However, the
navy was all right!
36. John Gray: A
Lecture on Human Happiness, pp. 69-70
37. The pertinent
works of T. Hodgskin are: Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital (1825);
Popular Political Economy (1827); The Natural and Artificial Rights of Property
Contrasted (1832).
38. Hodgskin, like
Herbert Spencer, was on the staff of the London Economist.
38. J. Bray:
Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy, p. 17. (1931 ed.)
39. See, J. Bray,
the same, p. 56 and following.
40. The same, p. 52.
41. E. Lowenthal:
The Ricardian Socialists, p. 898.
42. R. W. Postgate:
Revolution from 1789 to 1906, p. 165.
43. See, P. W.
Slosson: The Decline of the Chartist Movement, especially p. 178.
44. New York Daily
Tribune, July 9, 1845, quoted in N. J. Ware: The Industrial Worker 1840-1860,
p. 7.
45. The same, p. 13.
46. R. T. Ely: The
Labor Movement in America, p. 49 (1905 edition).
47. N. J. Ware:
work cited, quoted from "City of Boston Document No. 66."
48. E. Jones: Notes
to the People, p. 74, quoted in P. W. Slosson, work cited.
49. N. J. Ware: The
same, p. xv, footnote.
50. Quoted in P. W.
Slosson, work cited, p. 197.
51. J. E. Smith: On
the Prospects of Society, p. 98, quoted in R. W. Postgate, work cited, Document
46.
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 human nature, 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
human nature, 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 didaktikós, “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.
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 äèäaêòèêà,
Swedishdidaktisk
A didactic
method (Greek: didáskein =
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 in
nature, 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.
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
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 in nature
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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 studentâs 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 yearâs", 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 universityâs 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 universityâs moral principles plus the teachersâ 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 in no 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 studentâs 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 dentistâs 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 studentâs 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 rinascità ('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
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 Niccolò 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 in
northern Italy, and Bavaria, Brandenburg, Burgundy, Brunswick-Lüneberg,
Luxembourg, the Palatinate, Albertine and Ernestine Saxony, and
Württemberg 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
Aragón 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 in number 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 in northeastern
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. NiccolòMachiavelli (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 république (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
René 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 person not 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 own nature 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 in new 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 human naiveté, 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 in new 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 authoritarian nature. 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 mean not 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. Owen never 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 human nature. (*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 own nature 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.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A. Principal:
Footnotes
1. At least it is this part of their heritage for
which they are remembered, thanks to the interpretation of their disciples. On
the other hand, Auguste Comte borrowed his theory of the evolution of religion
from Saint-Simon who also enunciated the evolutionary thought that mankind must
decay like other living things. Saint-Simon’s speculations, however, always
ended in closed systems.
2. Compare the critique of the utopians in J. Davis:
Contemporary Social Movements, p. 51
3. See, G. Elton: The Revolutionary Idea in France,
1789-1871, p. 123. (1923 edition.)
4. His chief works are: L'Industrie (1816-1818), Le
Politique (1819), L'Organisateur (1819-1820), Systeme Industriel (1821), and Le
Nouveau Christianisme (1825).
5. Gide and Rist: A History of Economic Doctrines, p.
202.
7. Saint-Simon's opposition to military government, of
course, came after Napoleon's defeat. While Napoleon lived, his system of
government in Italy was declared to be the best the world had ever seen.
"So long as Napoleon's fortunes were in the ascendant, no sycophant was
ever more obsequious." (A. J. Booth: Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism, p.
39.)
8. See, D. B. Cofer: Saint-Simonism in the Radicalism
of Thomas Carlyle.
9. T. Kirkup: A History of Socialism (5th ed., 1913),
p. 31.
11. See, A. Brisbane: General Introduction to Social
Science, pp. 13, 14 and following. (New York, 1876, edition.)
12. The same, p. 43.
14. Brisbane: work cited, p. 71.
15. For his chart of evolution, see C. Fourier: Theory
of the Four Movements, p. 36.
16. Fourier was acute enough to predict that canals
would be built both at Suez and Panama, although it was the disciples of
Saint-Simon who built one and began the other!
17. The plan and rules of Fourier's Phalanges are
given in P. Godwin: A Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier, p. 51
and following.
18. R. T. Ely: The Labor Movement in America, p. 20.
(1905 edition.)
20. Brisbane, Greeley, Parke, Godwin, George Ripley,
C. A. Dana, William Henry Channing, Hawthorne, Emerson, Theodore Parker,
Thoreau, Henry James, James Russell Lowell, Margaret Fuller, Louise Alcott, and
others were Fourierists.
21. N. J. Ware: The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860, p.
165.
23. See R. Owen: A New View of Society and Other
Writings. (Everyman's ed.)
24. See, C. Southwell: Socialism Made Easy or a Plain
Exposition of Mr. Owen's Views; also, R. Owen: Public Discussion between Robert
Owen and the Rev. J. H. Roebuch.
25. R. Owen: Letters on Education, p. 14.
27. The same, p. 94.
28. See, R. Owen: Wealth and Misery.
29. No Negro could become a member of the New Harmony
colony.
At first the constitution of the New Harmony was put
on an exceedingly anti-democratic basis: ". . . the government was to be
in a committee of twelve, of whom eight should be persons who had advanced one
hundred pounds or upwards." (W. L. Sargent: R. Owen and his Social
Philosophy, p. 235.)
31. D. Ricardo: Works, p. 23 (J. R. McCulloch 1876
edition).
32. Wrote: An Inquiry into the Principles of the
Distribution of Wealth (1824); Appeal of One Half the Human Race; Women (1825);
Labour Rewarded (1827); Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical
Establishment of Communities (1830). He died 1833.
33. Wrote: A Lecture on Human Happiness (1825); A Word
of Advice to the Orbistonians (1826); The Social System (1831); An Efficient
Remedy for the Distress of Nations (1842); The Currency Question, (1847);
Lectures on the Nature and the Use of Money (1848)
34. E. Lowenthal: The Ricardian Socialists, p. 51.
35. However, the navy was all right!
36. John Gray: A Lecture on Human Happiness, pp. 69-70
37. The pertinent works of T. Hodgskin are: Labour
Defended Against the Claims of Capital (1825); Popular Political Economy
(1827); The Natural and Artificial Rights of Property Contrasted (1832).
38. Hodgskin, like Herbert Spencer, was on the staff
of the London Economist.
38. J. Bray: Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy, p.
17. (1931 ed.)
39. See, J. Bray, the same, p. 56 and following.
40. The same, p. 52.
41. E. Lowenthal: The Ricardian Socialists, p. 898.
42. R. W. Postgate: Revolution from 1789 to 1906, p.
165.
43. See, P. W. Slosson: The Decline of the Chartist
Movement, especially p. 178.
44. New York Daily Tribune, July 9, 1845, quoted in N.
J. Ware: The Industrial Worker 1840-1860, p. 7.
45. The same, p. 13.
46. R. T. Ely: The Labor Movement in America, p. 49
(1905 edition).
47. N. J. Ware: work cited, quoted from "City of
Boston Document No. 66."
48. E. Jones: Notes to the People, p. 74, quoted in P.
W. Slosson, work cited.
49. N. J. Ware: The same, p. xv, footnote.
50. Quoted in P. W. Slosson, work cited, p. 197.
51. J. E. Smith: On the Prospects of Society, p. 98,
quoted in R. W. Postgate, work cited, Document 46.
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 rinascità ('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
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
Niccolò 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 in northern Italy, and
Bavaria, Brandenburg, Burgundy, Brunswick-Lüneberg, Luxembourg, the
Palatinate, Albertine and Ernestine Saxony, and Württemberg 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 Aragón 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 in number 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 in northeastern 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. NiccolòMachiavelli
(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 république (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
René 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.