Educating the Self: theorizing a philosophy of education curriculum.
A.C. (Tina) Besley & Michael A. Peters, University of Glasgow
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Crete , 22-25 September 2004
Abstract
This paper engages with the themes of the philosophy of the subject in Western cultures, the modernist and postmodern curriculum and tasks for the new humanities. It begins to theorize a philosophical curriculum in education as part of such an engagement and discusses a recent curriculum innovation based on the theme of “Modern Educational Thought: Educating the Self" which we developed and co-teach as an M.Ed. module of 30 hours, taught over fifteen weeks at the University of Glasgow.[1] The introduction is followed by a section on the curriculum as a philosophy of the self, a discussion of the modernist notion of the curriculum and ends with detail of the module.
Introduction
At Masters level, we argue, there is a need to introduce students to the wider context of educational theory drawing particularly on the rich heritage of Kantian culture but tracing the different strands of European humanism and making explicit the assumptions of this heritage in contemporary educational theory and practice. Certainly, no discussion of postmodernism or of new methods of educational research based upon postmodernism (or indeed upon modernism) can successfully take place without at least a preliminary understanding of the main tenants and principles that emerged during the Enlightenment with the development of liberal culture. In our secularised and techno-scientific culture too often educational research is taught in a historical vacuum as though method and its underlying philosophy of science can be ripped from its cultural context and taught as ‘transferable skills’ applicable to all cases of inquiry. Many of the research courses and texts in education treat method and questions of methodology as radically ahistorical and acontextual. This trend has been encouraged by what we call the ‘ideology of useful knowledge’—a new pragmatism driven by government policy that demands ‘evidence-based’ inquiry and an emphasis on ‘what works’. The problem is that what counts as evidence is not straight forward and ‘data’-driven inquiry does not acknowledge strongly enough that method and methodology also have their histories tied strongly to a larger set of philosophical ideas and historical developments as anybody with a passing interest in philosophy of science would acknowledge.
Educational research has suffered from the same formalization as many other social sciences. Formalization or the mathematization of method—for example, the emergence of various forms of statistical analysis—has undoubtedly given us huge benefits in rigour and verification. At the same time, the institutionalisation of ‘method’ courses that began when the social sciences started to emulate the success of the natural sciences led to an emphasis that left out the question of the self or what Foucault calls the problematique of the subject (the problem set that emerges around questions of self-knowledge/ignorance, individual consciousness, agency). We can trace this development in analytic Anglo-American philosophy to the logicism of Frege and Russell when the philosophy of the self was written out in favour of the application of the ‘new logic’ to language and the development and refinement of logico-linguistic forms of analysis. On the Continent the traditional emphasis on the problem of the self or the problematique of the subject was preserved in forms of analysis deriving from hermeneutics, phenomenology, existentialism and, to a lesser extent, from structuralism and poststructuralism. (We say ‘to a lesser extent’ because structuralism per se was strongly influenced by the general intellectual movement of European formalism—a movement that originated in the abstraction from content to emphasise question of form or was driven to identify formal properties or elements of any system).
Also fundamental educational concepts that are deeply embedded in Western notions of the self—‘agency’, ‘intentionality’, ‘the person’, ‘the whole child’, ‘the whole school’—and associated notions in economics, politics and ethics that comprise liberal culture, often are assumed or so deeply held notions as the basis of our beliefs and institutions that they are simply taken for granted in curriculum decisions.
This, then, in part, comprises our rationale and justification for introducing a core course as part of a Masters of Education at the University of Glasgow. Perhaps, there is an additional irony in the fact that two scholars from New Zealand (part of the so-called ‘new world’) should come to Glasgow, a city that came to life as part of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the University of Glasgow in order to teach a course that sought, in part, to remind its contemporary students of a history and philosophy that had some of its origins in Scotland. The University of Glasgow is a venerable institution established as the fourth university in Britain in 1451 under a papal bull and had, as most people know, a strong role to play in the Scottish Enlightenment with the likes of Frances Hutcheson (1694-1746), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Thomas Reid (1710-1790), and John Millar (1735-1801).[2] We could expand this point much further and it seems a double irony because Scotland itself was one of the most literate nations in Europe in the late eighteen century, with a strong educational tradition based on John Knox dating from The Book of Discipline during the Protestant Reformation in the early decades of the 1600s.[3]
In short, our rationale is to demonstrate how the philosophy of the self historically and philosophically underlies contemporary education and liberal culture, and how its central notions are presupposed by educational research and the current obsession with method. The object lesson is one about the importance of a philosophical understanding of concepts and an in-depth historical understanding of context that together provide a value base for a secular science-driven set of methods in educational research.
The M.Ed. module called ‘Modern Educational Thought: Educating the Self’ considers the content, skills, and processes that will be involved in achieving the curriculum aims – the what, why, how and who questions. The module aims are:
· to introduce students to important concepts and theories in education concerning questions of self and identity;
· to introduce students to important theoretical debates and discourses in educational theory;
· to discuss recent developments in educational theory.
In theoretical terms the underlying argument or general sweep of the course emphasises that the philosophy of the subject is a movement away from the abstract, disembodied individual subject characteristic of the Enlightenment (the Kantian ethical subject and liberal political economy – i.e., homo economicus) toward a relational, gendered subject both situated and embodied and understood in all its socio-cultural complexity. Hence, the module begins with Kant and ends with Foucault and some reference to ‘postmodern culture’. Along the way, students are introduced to understandings of liberalism, the feminist critique of the liberal subject, forms of neoliberalism, notions of modernism/modernity, postmodernism/postmodernity, poststructuralism, and changing notions of the self and identity, especially in relation to youth culture.
We have explored the relation between the philosophy of the subject and the curriculum in two ways: first, though the critique of humanism via Heidegger and Foucault, and second, through exploring postmodern perspectives (see de Alba et al, 2000). Briefly, we develop a view of the curriculum that rests on our understanding of postmodernism as revealed in Table 1 (attached) which highlights: anti-foundationalism; post-epistemological viewpoint; anti-naive realism; anti-essentialism and the self; analysis of power/knowledge; boundary crossings. We demonstrate the central role of philosophy of the self in terms of:
· the critique of the metaphysics of presence;
· questioning of the problematic of the humanist subject;
· substitution of genealogical narratives for ontology;
· the cultural construction of subjectivity;
· the discursive production of the self;
· analysis of technologies of self.
In the remainder of this paper we focus on the underlying rationale for the course, the curriculum as a philosophy of self, Enlightenment humanism and the ‘Modernist’ notion of curriculum, and end with the structure of the module itself. The emphasis here is on a philosophical narrative that attempts to tease out our interpretation of the philosophy of the subject as it informs the module ‘Educating the Self’.
The curriculum as a philosophy of the self
From its ancient Greek beginnings with the two key principles, ‘care of the self’ and the Delphic maxim, ‘know thyself’ for personal and social conduct (both of which Foucault, 1988, discusses in his seminar, “Technologies of the Self” and which are briefly discussed later), Western philosophy has devoted itself to investigating the self and its associated problems of self-knowledge/ignorance and self-governance. This traditional emphasis became the basis of European humanism from the period of the Florentine renaissance onwards. European humanism that presaged both rights and equality, consisted in a curriculum and philosophy of education primarily concerned with character formation and the assertion of moral values.
Western analytic philosophy based on the movement of logicism initiated by Frege and Russell represent a strong break with this tradition that no longer allows us to focus on the self as an indispensable part of what is a defining characteristic of the Western tradition. Continental philosophy–in phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism–by contrast, provide a set of links to the rich humanist tradition. Both structuralism and poststructuralism that have developed in reaction to various forms of humanism entertain a more problematic relation. The well-known structuralist motif ‘decentring of the self’ and the continuation of this line of thinking by poststructuralists we argue does not necessarily represent a negation or liquidation of the subject or of agency, but rather a social, linguistic and historicizing re-contextualisation of the subject.
The first and most famous statement of the Enlightenment self, as is well known, was René Descartes “cogito”, an “I think”, the self as the thinking subject, given its formulation in the well known “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”) in the Discours. Much of modern philosophy of the self is the history of trying to overcome Descartes’ conception of self. It is the individual knowing self, fully transparent to itself, which serves as the basis for a foundation for all knowledge, for certainty, for indubitability – even an omniscient demon cannot lead us to doubt the proposition “Cogito ergo sum”. This notion is ‘consolidated’, so to speak, in Kant’s view of the rational, autonomous knower.
Many poststructuralist French philosophers, especially its post WW II, have viewed the self as an increasingly concrete specification in its socio-cultural complexity. In particular, poststructuralist thinkers have specified the subject in terms of its temporality and finitude—we come into the world and we depart. There is a limited time horizon for human beings and temporality is a mode of being as Heidegger or Bergson might say. These thinkers also, following phenomenologists like Mearleau-Ponty, empahsised corporeality (embodiedness) and spatial location (situatedness). The emphasis on temporality and the body—on the embodiedness of a thinking creature—has open up new philosophical vistas and research possibilities. Much of this development can also be traced to the subjective turn by Descartes and increasingly philosophers and educational theorists have turned to questions of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, gendered subjectivity and sexuality with a recognition of libidinal forces and emotionality in constituting the human subject. More recently, scholasr following this line of thinking have recognised the importance of processes of cultural and ethical self-constitution and they have often linked these questions to patterns of production and consumption and the importance of self-constitution and positioning in discourse. Contrary to some assessments of poststructuralist currents of thought, French theorists did not liquidate the subject but rather rehabilitated it, multiplied it and reinvented it in all its theoretical and practical depth. This is certainly true of Foucault who returns to the ethical subject and the question of ethical self-constitution in his later work.
Foucault argued that the Delphic moral principle, ‘know thyself’ (gnothi sauton) became dominant, taking precedence over another ancient principle and set of practices, ‘to take care of yourself’, or to be concerned with oneself (epimelēsthai sautou) (Foucault, 1988). According to Foucault, ‘care of the self’ formed one of the main rules for personal and social conduct and for the art of life in ancient Greek cities. The two principles were interconnected and it was actually from the principle of care of the self that the Delphic principle was brought into operation as a form of technical advice or rules to be followed when the oracle was consulted. Foucault accepted that the ancient Greek notion of care of the self was an inclusive one that involved care for others and precluded the possibility of tyranny because a tyrant did not, by definition, take care of the self since he[4] did not take care of others. Foucault stated that care for others became an explicit ethic later on and should not be put before care of the self (see Foucault, 1984; 1997).
In contemporary Western culture the two moral principles have been transformed such that care of the self is often viewed as immoral, narcissistic and selfish, even an escape from rules. This has occurred because know thyself was the principle that Plato privileged and which subsequently became hugely influential in philosophy precisely because Descartes privileged the cogito or thinking subject and knowledge of the self. Yet Foucault argued for the return of the ancient maxim of care of the self because the since the Enlightenment the Delphic maxim had become over-riding and linked inextricably with constituting subjects who are able to be governed.
Foucault pointed out that for the ancient Greeks the ethical principle of self consisted of self-mastery, but by comparison, it shifted to become self-renunciation in the Christian era (Foucault, 1988). Thus the crucial difference revolved around two quite different ethical notions. Self-mastery implied both a control of the passions and a moderation in all things, but also a worldliness that involved being in and part of the world of the free citizen in a democratic society. Self-renunciation as a form of Christian asceticism involved a set of two interlinked truths obligations: one set surrounded “the faith, the book, the dogma” and another “the self, the soul the heart” (Foucault, 1981, cited in Foucault, 2001: 139). The tasks involved in the latter, include first a “clearing up all the illusions, temptations, and seductions which can occur in the mind, and discovering the reality of what is going on within ourselves” and second getting free from attachment to the self, “not because the self is an illusion, but because the self is much too real” (Foucault, 1981, cited in Foucault, 2001: 139). These tasks implied self-negation and a withdrawal from the world, in what forms a “spiral of truth formulation and reality renouncement which is at the heart of Christian techniques of the self” (Foucault, 1981, cited in Foucault, 2001: 139). Confessional practices form a technology of the self – speaking, reading and writing the self -- that shifted from the religious world to medical then to therapeutic and pedagogical models in secular contemporary societies (Foucault, 1988; Peters, 2000). Foucault concluded his seminar on technologies of the self with the highly significant point that the verbalization techniques of confession have been important for the development of the human sciences into which they have been transposed and inserted and where they are now used “without renunciation of the self but to constitute, positively, a new self. To use these techniques without renouncing oneself constitutes a decisive break” (Foucault, 1988: 49).