It can never be foolish to use the ideas of the past to reflect on our current thinking; after all, the only alternative is to ignore them. Some of these ideas, closely examined, may today be understood as misguided in judgement, incorrect in fact, objectionable in principle or mistaken in some other way. The optimist in me likes to think that is often the case; that we do tend to make progress – not uniformly, for sure, and always subject to setback, but progress, on balance, nevertheless. That said, the concept of continuous progress implies that many, or even most, of our current educational ideas are themselves just one iteration in an ongoing process. Being subject to refinement or rejection necessarily implies that current thinking is certainly incomplete and quite possibly plain wrong.
That broader historical perspective invites some humility and scepticism towards contemporary ideas, but does not in itself suggest which ideas are likely to last, and which are likely to be washed away by the tide. For that, the details matter, and our thinking needs to be informed by specific educational theories and notions from history. It helps to know, for example, that Critical Thinking has appeared time and time again, in one form or another, right across the ages; that might suggest (though not prove) that it will remain relevant. The Learning Styles movement, by contrast, seems to have a basis in our (lamentable) modern emphasis on individual uniqueness – that is not a reason to dismiss, but perhaps a reason to look especially hard. Providing some historical context is where this volume comes in; its aim is to raise awareness of some ideas that have been held in the past to see what wisdom they may still hold and what light they can shine on matters today. Having led the UK School Curriculum and Assessment Authority, Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Winchester College, International School of Geneva and International Education Systems, Nick Tate’s view is more expansive than most and deserves attention. Tate’s claim is that without historical context we will be prisoners of the ‘claustrophobic certainties of the present’, unable to examine critically the assumptions and values of our time with clarity. With today’s many political, social, environmental and technological uncertainties, an historically-informed philosophical perspective of today would be most welcome.
The book devotes a chapter to each of Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Dewey and Arendt, but goes well beyond a simple recounting of the educational ideas. Each chapter has three parts. Tate first places each thinker in historical context, through a brief summary of life and worldview; second, identifies some areas where he believes their thinking has relevance today; and, third, gives us a few choice quotes. Seeing education as one of the theatres where we answer fundamental questions such as What kind of human beings would we like to be? What kind of society would we like to have?, his thinking is always capacious and potentially transgressive. The striking contrast with much of today’s narrow educational discourse is clear because, for Tate, education is both a reflection of and a means to the ultimate end of how it is best for humans to live. It is always about more than how to compete in a global economy, important though that may be; it is an inherently philosophical and moral endeavour and subject to very different views – from Aquinas’ focus on God, to Aristotle’s on leisure, to Dewey’s on Democracy, for example.
These different views are treated with equal affection and respect and are perhaps chosen from the pantheon of educational thinkers precisely because they seek to distinguish between lives of rich significance and those of less value. This is, of course, quite a controversial position today where valuing diversity is sometimes taken to imply cultural relativism, so that the very possibility of meaningful evaluation is seen as illegitimate. Tate denies this and is at pains to point out that these great thinkers, as men and women of their times, often made mistakes (e.g. Plato and slavery, Montaigne and elitism). And that is one of the most engaging aspects of this book – that the ideas and values of the present are used to critique those of the past, while calling on us to do precisely the reverse. There is an engaging interplay here and an implicit conversation that Tate mediates skilfully. Overall, he succeeds in his aim of providing historical context which can help us avoid the charge of over-privileging the present. He also explicitly acknowledges the limited cultural scope of the thinkers he chose – preferring to write only where he is sure of his ground rather than to pretend otherwise.
This book is, therefore, a contribution to nudging towards a better understanding of ourselves, our values and our societies. Barack Obama said that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way that the British probably believe in British exceptionalism, the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism and the French in French exceptionalism. Obama may have been talking about Europe, but surely we can see other examples further afield, and we can extend this from nations to whole discourses of thought. While the present may be exceptional in that we can today draw on more of the past (we are conceptually richer today, and there is more of the past these days, after all), it is still true that today’s discourses of thought are special in precisely the way that Arendt’s or Locke’s discourses were special: in the particular mix of insights in some areas and mistakes in others. This book may help us decide which are which.
If there is a frustration with this book, it is that there is too little of Tate; he uses the philosophers to raise many fascinating questions (What would Plato make of AI? What would Nietzsche have made of Twitter? How would Rousseau help the modern self-esteem movement from slipping into self-regard?) but rarely does more than hint that he, the philosophers themselves, and likely all discerning readers, would have had the same, probably correct, view. That may well be true, but as a central theme of the book – referenced all along and explicitly defined in the conclusion – is to avoid the world of accepted educational discourse in order to find one’s own voice, to speak rather than be spoken for, I could not help but feel a tension here. For example, Tate uses Aristotle to reflect on a particular brand of modern politicians, their self-serving nature and their predilections for trivia – fair enough but today more than ever, I suspect that anyone who needs Aristotle to realise this may not be moved by an Aristotelian pitch. Similarly, he uses Montaigne to lament narrow, quantitative, economic measures of educational success; there are great questions here, but hardly ones that are outside the modern conversation. The right people may not be in that conversation but, again, suggesting they read Montaigne is not likely to bring them into it. So what are Tate’s own ideas?
Perhaps it is not reasonable to expect Tate to place himself with Plato and Nietzsche, but at the end of the book I was left wondering what he, with his extensive experience in national and international education, and in civil service, and with his knowledge of the great thinkers, would advocate for the problems he mentions – the failure to educate for critical thinking in so many, the decline in civic responsibility, the limits of religious choice in state education, how we educate for virtue (and which ones) in a diverse society, which subjects we should teach, how we balance teacher expertise against student choice and many others. These issues arise in classrooms, schools and school systems and will not go away anytime soon. His point is that we need to use the ideas of the past to think well about them, and he is absolutely right. But how? In what ways? Giving priority to whom? The next step is for us to actually come up with our own answers and, as a starting point, it would be interesting to hear his answers. I hope he is already busy writing the next volume.
References
- Tate, N. (2016) What is Education for? The views of the great thinkers and their relevance today. London; John Catt
1 Response
A brief rejoinder, the two notable absences from Nick Tate’s roll call of the wise are Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein……both of whom were directly involved in education. Russell, helped his wife, establish the progressive ‘Beacon Hill School’ and Wittgenstein withdrew from Philosophy to teach at elementary level in semi-rural Austria. I wonder if their own personal stories have a lot to say about how teaching is not solely an intellectual undertaking: both Russell and Wittgenstein can come across as somewhat cold and remote (needless to say their endeavours produced ‘mixed’ results).