“How do I know what I think until I see what I say” (attributed to E.M.Forster)
I recently enjoyed reading two posts on the question of ‘Why teach?' I re-read Ben Newmark’s Why Teach, and then Bernard Andrews’ The Great Debate: Educational Fideism.
I thoroughly enjoyed these two pieces, and they have pushed my thinking. I have some opinions on the thoughts expressed in each, but I’m not quite sure what those opinions are as yet. As such, I’m writing this post.
But first, a confession! Something along the lines of the following used to sit on the ‘about’ page of this website.
Part of the reason why I’m so passionate about education is that the world is currently facing many challenges. The challenge to which I’ve dedicated the most time to date is climate change. In a democracy, where the collective votes of the populace drive the decisions of our leaders, the ability of the voting public to understand the science behind, and understand the risk posed by climate change, is of utmost importance. It is my hope that by being a mathematics and science teacher I can contribute to this scientifically-literate populace.
A few years after I wrote this I came across a body of research that had begun to emerge. Here are two illustrative excerpts.
There are two frequent hypotheses about public knowledge and climate change beliefs: (a) providing the public with more climate science information, thus making them more knowledgeable, will bring the beliefs of the public closer to those of climate scientists and (b) individuals with greater cognitive ability (e.g., scientific literacy or numeracy) will have climate change beliefs more like those of experts. However, data do not always support this proposed link between knowledge, ability, and beliefs. A better predictor of beliefs in the United States is political identity. (Gilden & Peters, 2017)
Using data from the nationally representative General Social Survey, we find that more knowledgeable individuals are more likely to express beliefs consistent with their religious or political identities for issues that have become polarized along those lines (e.g., stem cell research, human evolution), but not for issues that are controversial on other grounds (e.g., genetically modified foods). These patterns suggest that scientific knowledge may facilitate defending positions motivated by nonscientific concerns. (Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017)
I subsequently took down the fixing-climate-change paragraph from my ‘about’ page.
But this caused me to think. If I went into teaching because I thought it was a vocation through which I could change the world, but increasingly felt as though this avenue for world-changing wouldn’t be as fruitful as I’d initially hypothesised, does this mean I should quit teaching?
Needless to say, I didn’t.
And so we turn to Ben and Bernard’s pieces.
The arguments
Ben and Bernard both pitch their blog posts as arguments against consequentialism. In Ben’s case, he suggests four reasons often given for teaching, these are:
- Teachers make society more equal
- Teachers make society happier
- Teachers make society better
- Teachers make society more productive.
He goes through these claims, in each case arguing that there is insufficient evidence to convincingly suggest that teaching achieves these proposed ends, and concludes by therefore suggesting that ‘We teach because, as Tressell has said, our children are the heirs of all that has gone before them and by teaching them well we gift them their birth-right to the fruit of our civilizations.’
Ben admits that ‘We cannot shake consequentialism completely’ and, by my interpretation, argues that instead of doing away with consequentialism, we should accept a consequentialism in which the causality between teacher action and result can be more easily identified, ‘It is far more realistic for a teacher to say “I hope that by learning Hamlet’s soliloquy pupils will see that people often struggle with feelings of pointlessness” than it is for them to say we teach Shakespeare because it will make them richer.’
Ben’s argument has interesting consequences. He suggests that ‘If none of our actions leads to the outcomes we once thought they did, and the only value of what we teach is in the intrinsic worth of the material itself, then what and how well we teach assumes immeasurable significance.’ And uses this as a segue into one of his main points, that the main issue for schools to wrestle with is that of curriculum, ‘Curriculum is a powerful alchemy takes a person out of their own limited experience and connects them to something so much larger.’ Essentially, we boil down to a debate about what constitutes ‘The best that has been thought and said’.
Interestingly, in Bernard’s argument against a consequentialist approach to teaching, he starts by defining consequentialism as follows:
Consequentialism is the idea that it is the consequences that are the ultimate measure of rightness and wrongness. Consider the following statements:
- My job as a teacher is to prepare students for the future
- … to pass on the best of what has been thought, said and done
- … to bring about a more socially just society
- … to liberate the students
- … to enable students to take part in the great conversation
That is, Ben’s conclusion regarding what we should do instead of consequentialism ‘to pass on the best of what has been thought, said and done’, is included in Bernard’s definition of what is consequentialism. Though I may have taken an oversimplified version of Ben’s argument here, would be grateful to have any misconceptions pointed out.
Regardless, Bernard’s argument definitely attempts to dive further away from consequentialism by introducing the idea of ‘Fideism’. The root of the word ‘fideism’ is the latin fides meaning ‘faith’. Essentially, Bernard argues that we shouldn’t educate because it has some certain outcome, we should educate because of a faith in the fact that it’s the morally right thing to do.
…education cannot be justified; it is justified by our moral obligation to educate, and these truths are given to us by the world, not opined. My moral obligations are absolute; no appeal to hope or fear of the consequences can change that.
Response?
I must admit, I felt a great affinity to Ben’s piece. It captured many of the existential struggles that I’ve faced as a teacher over the last few years as I’ve gradually felt more and more as though the system (upper years and post-schooling) that we’re sending students into is simply a positional arms race in which the number of winners will be forever fixed. However, I feel that its limitation is replacing the list of outcomes that often drive teachers – a more equal, happier, better, more productive society – with another target outcome: a society comprised of individuals who know more of the great things that have been thought and said. I definitely agree with Ben’s point that the link between what we teach and what students learn is easier to track that the link between what we teach and its impact on society, but I’m not as yet convinced that this makes the former a more justifiable reason for teaching.
I found Bernard’s piece very interesting in that it really did appear to transcend a consequentialist approach with the ‘fideist’ argument. However, whilst it is valid to transcend consequentialism by calling upon faith, I’m as yet convinced that it’s better to do so.
(btw, Ben and Bernard’s pieces were both well argued reflections, with many insights. I strongly suggest that you read both of them in their entirety)
Conclusion?
One of the most interesting questions that I think arises from this debate about ‘Why teach?’ is not necessarily the answers to the question, but an inquiry into the origins of the question itself. Why do we feel the need to ask this question? Why do we feel the need to justify our selection of this profession? Do we see the banker having an existential crisis about their chosen vocation? What about the politician or the used car salesperson?
These questions about bankers, politicians and used car salespeople are purposefully provocative. They’re posed in an attempt to elicit the response of ‘Haha, those dodgy used car salespeople. They, unlike us ever-compassionate teachers, are definitely not losing sleep at night over the fact that they’re not making the world a better place!’* In fact, I pose these questions to make the opposite point. Bankers, politicians, and those who sell cars, like teachers, are humans. It is human nature to question, to worry, to plan, to justify, and to have existential crises. I think that these kind of debates about the ‘Why teach?’ are driven by any ‘what’s the purpose of’ type question, that is, the human condition. (*not claiming that I'm immune to this trap myself!)
Perhaps the purpose of education is to facilitate such debates and such ‘what's the purpose of'-type questions? That’s definitely one of the things that I most enjoy about it (hence the Education Research Reading Room podcast I guess).
You may have noticed, I’ve now tied myself into a bit of a knot. We started off with my confession that I used to make a consequentialist argument for being a teacher, and I’ve ended with a consequentialist argument for being a teacher. In between, I pointed out that I felt that Ben did the same, and that Bernard seems to have transcended consequentialism by appealing to fideism. In both cases, I expressed that neither seemed to give me closure on the issue (I do recognise that neither Ben nor Bernard were aiming to give me closure in writing their pieces).
I think that part of the challenge here comes from the nature of debate. In order to have a debate that makes progress towards a conclusion we must have some agreed upon foundation (e.g., it’s important to work out an answer to the question ‘Why teach?’). As soon as a shared foundation is established though, we immediately fall into the consequentialist trap because, by definition, we are trying to justify our argument based upon the shared basis. We can try to step outside the consequentialist framework, but our agreement of such an alternate argument relies upon the mutual acceptance of an alternate basis, and so on and so forth.
Conclusion take 2
My writing of this piece had a couple of purposes. Firstly, in reading Ben and Bernard’s pieces I felt that I wanted to explore some counterpoints that weren’t quite concrete for me yet. Secondly, I wanted to try to uncover my own current reflections on the purpose of teaching. Have I achieved these goals? I think that my thinking regarding the former has developed, but there’s more space for this. In terms of the latter, I don’t know if I’ve really managed to make all that much progress.
That being said, in writing this I was reminded of an exchange that I participated in recently on this same topic. During my discussion with John Hattie for the ERRR podcast, John asked me why I teach. After a short pause, I replied ‘Because it’s fun’. Perhaps after this piece I now feel more comfortable with the ‘it’s fun’ response. A few years ago I wouldn’t have dreamt of responding in this way, and Hattie was similarly taken aback at this reply, indicating that he expected me to say something along the lines of ‘to make a difference’. So maybe writing this blog has helped me to better come to terms with the fact that perhaps my initial, big-picture-consequentialist, justifications were just (for me at least) a post-hoc virtuous sounding rationalisation for something that I was doing for more selfish reasons than I’d cared to admit. Maybe it’s ok to teach just because it’s fun?