Prologue III
normative= What should be done?
operational= What can be done?
“How can I succeed in an increasingly complicated
world?” This is the question modern
educators seek to answer. The new
question feels useful, fits the scientific method, and promises power. Since the Enlightenment, this question has
done battle with the older, normative question:
“What is man and what are his purposes?”
The old has been gradually analyzed into oblivion, while the new has
been strengthened by scientific breakthroughs.
Ancient and feudal man understood he had the role of a servant. To seek anything higher was condemned as
foolhardy. Modern man has broken through
that caution and seeks to rule. This is
the aim of modern education. Educators
take things apart and list them for memorization until there is no room in a
student's education to ask “What are the implications of this? How does this increase our understanding of
our purposes?”
Prologue IV
Nowadays, schools carry many technologies for finding out
what can be done, but no imagination for determining what ought to be
done. Students hitch a ride on a
predictable, testable system rather than hiking up the steep mountain to the
ideal. This is now seen in government
policy as well as education. The idea of
counterinsurgency during the war in Vietnam was the result of this operational,
rather than normative, thinking. Just
because something can be done does not mean it ought to be done. Another example is teaching communication
using technique rather than constant reading, writing and orderly
instruction. (What is the difference between
technique and orderly instruction, I wonder?)
Communication is viewed as a skill learned for success, rather than a
way to discover man's purposes. Ironically, the author describes the actions of
the US in Vietnam in terms that only readers of Plutarch would understand. I have read just enough Plutarch to recognize
the references and grasp shades of meaning, but need to read more to truly
understand. (I also need to research the
decisions made by US leaders during that time.
What exactly was the idea of counterinsurgency? I am sure this is a dumb question for a
forty-something American to ask.)
Operational thinking (“What can be done?”) develops a life of
its own and strives to exist after its usefulness is over. This reminds me of the tyrannical brain in A
Wrinkle in Time, of government bureaucracies, of parasitic plants and
animals in the natural world. Man, still
a servant, serves the Frankenstein of his own making. Like it says in the Bible, “Choose this day
whom you will serve.” Man will serve
something or someone. Modern man's
blindness and pride leads him away from the pursuit of the Ideal Man and toward
the machine.
Technique makes man “a more efficient berry gatherer, a more
discriminating shell collector, a more willing water carrier,” leaving out any
consideration of the human spirit. Yet
the goal of education ought to be the cultivation of the human spirit: “to teach the young to know what is good, to
serve it above self, to reproduce it, and to recognize that in knowledge lies this
responsibility.” Without this, students
are left at the mercy of lust and ego.
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