The Nature and Purpose of Education

Discussions regarding specific methods and content have identified different responses to some very basic questions concerning the nature and purpose of education, but have focused more on promoting and defending specific methods instead of first confronting the underlying assumptions upon which the methods are based. Yet it is precisely the underlying assumptions about the nature and purpose of man that define the intellectual, moral, and cultural foundations for our differing views of the nature and purpose of education.

Behaviorism, as articulated by John Watson and B. F. Skinner, sees man as an object that is only capable of responding to external stimuli. Their premise claims that man acquired sense organs through evolution, not Divine design, and these sensory organs receive and transfer the environmental stimuli which then act upon the human "object", causing a response. Thus, choice and action are determined by the process of controlling and manipulating stimuli, which can be reduced to a science in a laboratory.

In his book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner dismisses any belief in the free will or agency of man, claiming instead that "man does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him." He said:

Freedom and dignity...are the possessions of the autonomous man of traditional theory, and they are essential to practices in which a person is held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. a scientific analysis [behaviorism] shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. (highlighting added)

It is upon this humanist moral foundation that behavioral methods such as DISTAR and ECRI are based.

The opposing end of the moral spectrum takes the concept of free will to the other extreme by operating on the assumption that man is not only a "self", but that he possesses within himself all the wisdom and individual determination needed to progress. In Summerhill, the British educator A. S. Neill counters the behaviorist assumption by suggesting that…

we should allow children to be themselves...renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious instruction...a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing...the function of the child is to live his own life, not the life someone else may choose for him.

From this extreme springs methods such as "whole language" and "fuzzy math".

While many reject progressivism as one extreme, controversy still exists between the humanist underpinnings of behaviorism and the Judeo-Christian belief in redemption and the nature of man. Differences arise in how we define the capacity and nature of man: whether he is a moral agent accountable to a higher, divine law, or a no redemptive organism to be manipulated, controlled, shaped, and used by an external environment. Each view is governed by opposing values and uses a different set of standards to measure human choice and action.

Judeo-Christian thought examines both the physical and spiritual nature of man. Behaviorism examines only the physical and denies the spiritual. The physical sciences have reduced the nature of man from the wholistic view of spiritual and physical combined to a biological and ultimately psychological science. Western educational theory has turned away from religion to science as the standard by which the nature of man is defined, and has become preoccupied with measurable, quantifiable, observable, and replicable behavior, effectively divorcing the physical man from the spiritual man. Skinner himself admitted that behavioral science could not tolerate such an uncontrollable variable as the 'spiritual man', because such a perspective would destroy his concept of science. He said, "There is no place in the scientific position for a self as a true originator of initiator of action." That statement alone admits the relevance of spiritual man, not the opposite.

Judeo-Christian thought claims on the other hand that man is a moral agent with the capacity to initiate action, discern between good and evil, right and wrong, and to choose between them. Dr. Flinders explains that only by acknowledging that there is, in fact, a "Self" can it then be argued that there is something beyond the "self" that the self can then impact. Thus, he claims,

our existence becomes a moral existence. We are not only free to act, we are responsible for our actions. This perspective makes the fundamental purpose of education a matter of formulating character.

Those who are seeking a return to "character-based education" have largely focused on specific curriculum content while failing to first identify and restore the spiritual foundation of such an education, or have mistakenly sought to implement it in a secular system that prohibits the spiritual foundation altogether. Yet the behavioral paradigm within a secular public education system establishes certain parameters beyond which the individual is not allowed to exercise his spiritual agency, and the parameters are primarily designed to serve the group, rather than the individual. This creates a barrier to character education, which requires intellectual and spiritual freedom to pursue.

In 1936, Pope Pious XI issued an encyclical which illustrated why character education could never be taught in a system that denies Divine Law. It read, in part, as follows:

There are three necessary societies, distinct from one another and yet harmoniously combined by God, into which man is born: two, namely the family and civil society, belong to the natural order; the third, the Church, to the supernatural order...and first of all education belongs preeminently to the Church...Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism, which in any way excludes or overlooks supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of...grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound. Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a certain self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or Divine, in the work of his education...What is intended by not a few, is the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the Divine Law...

From this it follows that the so-called "neutral" or "lay" [public] school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education. Such a school, moreover, cannot exist in practice; it is bound to become irreligious.

Is it any wonder that public schools have failed to produce educated statesmen of character since religion was banned from the classroom and the laboratory? This is precisely why "character education" cannot and will not work within the public education system.

Educators cannot claim to be neutral on the subject of individual agency. One way or another, every parent, student, and teacher assumes a world view based on the choices they make in educating and being educated. In his book, Teach the Children, Dr. Neil J. Flinders writes:

Generally speaking, the deterministic assumption...has shaped the theory and practice of education in the western world. In developing and implementing educational practices, every parent and every teacher, knowingly or unknowingly, makes a decision about free will or determinism. And every student, wittingly or unwittingly, submits or rebels in some degree to the same issue.

He goes on to write:

It is vitally important that parents, teachers, and students understand which of [the] traditional value structures they are promoting and experiencing. Dissonance that may lead to hypocrisy and frustration often occurs when people fail to distinguish what they are doing to others and what others are doing to them in educational settings.

The temptation for many people is to make indiscriminate choices in these foundational matters as they relate to education. It seems easier to compartmentalize and make choices simply in terms of whatever works most quickly or whatever is acceptable to others. It is now fashionable to emphasize productivity and results: if it works, adopt it, adapt it, and do it. But there is a serious danger in this approach. The simple fact that something works doesn't make it right. For the agency-oriented educator the question "Does it work?" must always be subservient to the question "Is it right?" Pragmatism may be a good copilot, but it is an unsafe and dangerous pilot. Secure movement toward a better and safer future, for those who believe in agency, resides in correctness, not expediency.

Defenders of behaviorism attempt to reconcile its underlying humanist assumptions with the Judeo-Christian view of man as a moral agent by suggesting that such examination is irrelevant to the "science" of human behavior. Faced with the inherent contradiction of their argument — that an object devoid of free will and the capacity to act upon the world can nevertheless (and ironically!) consciously manipulate and control the environment which in turn controls man, some simply choose not to address the underlying moral contradictions at all. Others use religion to validate science when convenient, setting aside those moral absolutes that do not fit within accepted scientific theories.

Educators must exercise the greatest caution that they don't fall into the emerging dialectic trap of attempting to reconcile intellectually the two opposing assumptions of Humanism and Judeo-Christian thought by carelessly combining or synthesizing divinely-revealed truth with man-made reason and experimentation. They must resist the temptation to seek the acceptance and admiration of those who control important reward systems in the professional world which require them to embrace the naturalistic findings of science at the expense of their moral beliefs.

Before educators consider specific methods or pedagogy, they must first be willing to confront and identify the principles that determine their view of the nature of man and his capacity to determine the moral outcome of his existence. Once that has been accomplished, they must then determine what constitutes the nature and purpose of education based upon that underlying assumption. Only then can we truly examine specific methods in the proper context by focusing on the whole individual, rather than the physical man alone.

Rebecca Bocchino

© April 1999

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