Where does the truth lie?

Educational Forum, The, Winter 2002 by Jones, Alan C

The way the institution responds to the individual's desire to seek meaning inlife makes all the difference.

--Eliot Wigginton (1993/94)

From Socrates and Plato (1961) to E. D. Hirsch Jr. (1987), philosophers and educators have been recommending the "ideal" course of study that all students should be taught. For Socrates it was mathematics, for Dewey it was geography, and for teachers it is likely whatever their college major was. The present preoccupation of our state and national political leaders with standards is a continuation of the "quest for truth" in our schools.

THE QUEST FOR TRUTH

Historically, public schools have participated in this quest by changing their curricular and course offerings to reflect the "current" public dilemma. One decade might find a curriculum geared for collegebound students, while another decade may see an emphasis on preparing young people for the real world of work. In between these two seemingly opposing goals of schooling, a scattering of elective programs is always available. Young people like to take these electives, but they will not prepare our students for either a vocation or postsecondary education. Today, those schools considered "excellent" possess a prescribed curriculum that "prepares" students for participation in a "world-class" work force or can boast that most of their graduates go to college. Schools that would broaden the goals of education beyond "mere preparation" are in danger of being labeled a "shopping mall" high school-- which is tantamount to saying that the school is unable to maintain standards and rigor.

Underlying the debates between those who view preparation as "a treacherous idea" and those who demand more from their schools than allowing students to "follow their bliss" are deep-seated ideas about what knowledge is of most worth, how knowledge should be organized, and how "successful" graduates are or will be in the future. When school boards, state legislatures, or faculty curriculum committees become embroiled in debates about the worth of knowledge, the conversations often become passionate. Each side of the discussion is really supporting a way of making sense out of their experiences in the world. The ideas that presently seem to make the most sense to the public-and have dominated school curricular decisions for the last 100 years-have formed a quest for ultimate truths. Rorty (1989, 73) described these truths as "final vocabularies." Proponents of this model find "the truth" in core academic subjects that rely on abstract symbol systems to rationalize an uncertain world. Whenever Socrates found himself in a difficult discussion with Sophists, he would always refer to mathematical examples or methodologies. Truth, for Socrates, found its source in perfectly ordered ideas that the mind could ascertain only through logical argumentation. Central to this definition of "truth" is the quest for grand theories, themes, or systems in the academic disciplines that will provide us with "final understandings" of how the world works, how human beings behave, and, "finally," how these "final understandings" will guide us to "social harmony."

Though it would be difficult to find a present-day statesman as thoughtful as Socrates, today's politicians and business leaders follow in his footsteps when they propose legislation that promotes required course sequences intended to reveal the "truths" young people should know. Our legislatures advance a step beyond the "cave" by mandating that these "truths" be tested. Coincidentally, the subjects and materials selected by state legislatures lend themselves to some form of forced choice testing. The "truth," in essence, becomes a choice between a, b, c, or d. Knowledge for this group of legislators and educators is found in great books, written by great men, and revealed by great tests.

The educator who has become most associated with ideas that oppose this current version of the "quest for truth" is John Dewey. Unfortunately, Dewey's ideas have been disparaged by a number of national politicians who equate his philosophy with such "failed" progressive practices as "open classrooms," "new math," and "whole language" instruction. The heart of Dewey's philosophy of pragmatism was not about progressive practices in the classroom; rather, he explored how teachers thought about the origins and utility of knowledge. For Dewey, truth would not be found in a body of eternal ideas or grand theories that must be retaught and reinvented for each generation. Truth for Dewey was always contingent on culture and social circumstance. It was always in danger of becoming stagnant. For Dewey, the worst forms of oppression in the world were truths (or grand schemes) that no longer reflected the realities or the problems of a society.

The schools that Dewey envisioned were not places where "truths" were retaught. They were, instead, environments where "each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the limitations of the social group in which it was born, and to come into contact with a broader environment" (Dewey 1916, 20). The "means" teachers should use to escape from the "unworthy features of the existing environment" did not lie in a specific "what" of teaching, but rather how the "what" was taught.