Saturday, June 12, 2010

Lecture Series: Introduction to Philosophy of Education
Two Models

A brief history lesson is in order. One cannot separate developments in western education from the Church. For the longest time in our history, especially in America, we have functioned with a framework of education richly rooted in the Medieval Catholic idea of education. It came to be known as the "university." The vast majority of the great European universities started as cathedral schools, which grew from there into places dedicated to liberal studies.

University literally means “unity in diversity,” and what the Medieval Catholics had in mind was that Theology provided interpretive guidance to the various arts and sciences, so that in thinking about the world we are literally discovering God’s mind, His purposes and our place in His world.
In this form of education, Theology is not “brought into” or “integrated into” or "added to" the educational enterprise, like some awkward appendage. Instead, Theology brings all subjects into relationship to one another in meaningful ways. It is not integrated clumsily into the subject matter, but is the tool of integration itself. God has, in this sense, already determined the meaning and value of science. When we encounter science, therefore, we are only seeking what God has already proclaimed in this area. All truth is God’s intellectual property. Think of Theology as a conductor that, as C.S. Lewis states it, “sets all the regular arts and sciences to their proper tasks.”

To “bring Bible into a subject” is to make God small enough to fit into a human interpretive paradigm or worldview, which is the very essence of secularism. Christian education loudly insists that God is the light by which all of the human arts and sciences are understood. Perhaps we cannot see Him, but we cannot see anything except by Him. We proclaim God’s sovereign rule over every area of human investigation. C.S. Lewis warns that God is not an ally; He is either a master or a judge, and this is formidably true in education.

Because the Christian God is a God of Logos (reason), He has embedded the universe with a rational order and created beings with a rational capacity that corresponds to that order. Education, therefore, becomes supremely meaningful as an odyssey of discovery. In this sense, education itself is a Christian idea exclusively. One cannot find a meaningful philosophical foundation for education in other worldviews.

All of the arts and sciences are given meaning by their relationship to God, and in each domain some aspect of God’s nature and character, and indeed His purposes, is revealed.

Practically, education becomes an exhilarating affair of figuring out how God put the world together. For men like Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Watts and Paley, doing science was nothing short of an act of worship.

Both analysis and synthesis are necessary counterparts in education. If one is missing, in theory (because neither one can be missing in reality), then education becomes impossible.

Only the Christian worldview can make sense of analysis and synthesis because only Christianity gives us a philosophy robust enough to support meaningful unity and diversity. In order to make this point clear, I have decided to use Randy Martin's helpful R.I.P.E. acronym to illustrate the crucial differences between the major worldviews. 

R.I.P.E. Analysis of Atheism: 

R. The atheistic view of reality reduces to what I will call "Essential Particularization." Think of the beginning of the universe according to a purely materialistic conception. The universe began for no particular reason through a massive explosion. Natural laws were established at random, and events that take place within the "borders" of natural laws are without purpose or plan. They just happen. The speck of universal dust that is the earth came to be for no reason. Any perceived "unity" in the universe is subjective and desperately fragile. According to Bertrand Russell, the universe will one day be nothing but a scattered junkyard of dead matter floating about in a vacuous black ocean. 

I. The atheistic view of identity reduces to Sarte's notion of "Thrown-Inness." Who or what am I? Don't look to the universe for an answer. The universe just "threw" you into existence for no particular reason. You were not planned and you will have no lasting existence. Thus we are to accept the randomness of our existence and live for the day and live for ourselves. We are to create meaning for ourselves in a universe that doesn't particularly care that we exist or don't exist. 

P. What is the atheistic view of purpose? Of course, one can manufacture purpose subjectively, but objectively there is only one purpose for humanity, and that is to pass from any perceived state of "unity" to a state of particularity. And note that I am constrained to this. I have no choice in the matter. In other words, we are trying to unify things in thought. We are trying to understand the world, ourselves, etc. But the natural state of the universe is randomness, and so any subjective "unity in thought" will ultimately succumb to the natural state of the universe, which is random particularization. My brain, which was produced by accident and exists for a breath of time, will ultimately break down. Worms will one day crawl through my corpse, digesting my brain for food and then crawl away to randomly scatter the waste in the earth. Indeed the whole universe will be nothing but aimless, purposeless debris one day.

E. How should we then live if atheism is true? Why not allow one's behavior to align with the purest state of nature? Why not allow one's mind to align with the purest state of nature? Surely to do so is to destroy any reason to be moral or to be thoughtful. If the universe is not thinking of me and did not create me through any form of deliberation, why on earth should I deliberate concerning it? If atheism is true, there is simply no meaning to the concept of unity and diversity, and thus no meaning in analysis or synthesis. 

R.I.P.E. Analysis of Pantheism:

R. The pantheistic view of reality reduces to "Essential Oneness." Pantheistic religions affirm that the natural state of reality is singular and indivisible. There is a single consciousness that transcends individual consciousness. Some pantheists today speak in terms of energy. Everything in the universe is fundamentally energy. The various states of energy fluctuate, but in the end we all participate in this energy and are one with this energy. 

I. In a strictly pantheistic understanding of reality, individual identity would be illusory. More than that, our perception that we end here and other things begin there keeps us imprisoned in our own egos. The universe will churn me through reincarnation until I reach the equilibrium of unity or oneness with all things. In the meantime, there are certain practices I can do to hasten the process. 

P. The purpose of life here is the opposite of the purpose of life for the atheist. Again, one can subjectively believe just about anything about purpose, but the objective purpose to which I am constrained in a pantheistic world is to pass from a state of individuation in thought to a state of unification. The universe will break me down and assimilate me. That is my fate!

E. How should we then live if pantheism is true? Surely you can see that if this worldview is true, then education (more specifically analysis and synthesis) are again left without any meaningful foundation. Why try to enlarge the domain of my individual mind, further defining it and establishing its borders, when my individual mind is an illusion. Why feed the illusion that "I" can know something? Why believe there is an dynamic interaction between things and minds when there is only one thing? 

Only Christianity, with its dynamic Triune creator can establish definitively a philosophy that accounts for unity and diversity and therefore for analysis and synthesis, even for western rationalism and eastern mysticism.

But, alas, the "university" was the old way of understanding education. Today it has been supplanted by the "multiversity."

The “multiversity” is a constellation of disassociated colleges, each dedicated to the study of a particular area of investigation, a “little t” truth, with no possibility of integration by a comprehensive meta-narrative (overarching, comprehensive and unfolding story).

The various arts and sciences are reduced to avenues in which varying human perspectives may be explored. Discovery of truth is replaced with “joining the conversation.” The pursuit of certainty is seen as an adolescent intellectual preoccupation, replaced in due time by a mature respect for ambiguity. The intense, confident objectivist has been replaced by the laid back, sandle wearing, soy latte sipping subjectivist. Logic, even mathematics, can be viewed as a human attempt to make sense of a senseless world.

We are locked within our perceptions of the world and can’t get to true objective meaning—indeed there can be no objectivity. This concept is known as skepticism.

If we cannot know anything for sure, then all opinions are equally valid. This concept is known as relativism.

If all opinions are equally valid, because none can be falsified, then no opinions really matter, since no conversation will lead us to a correct opinion. This concept is known as nihilism.

If nothing really matters, then even this sentence doesn’t matter. How is a person to live with this? The answer is hedonism (the philosophy of pleasure)!

Practically education becomes a matter of self-interest alone, what we educators should probably call "bad specialization.” Students are not going to school to understand the world; they are going to school to lay claim to a notion of the “good life” they have learned from their hedonistic culture, which involves pursuing personal interests and making money.

This also controls how they study and learn. If studying is too difficult, then there is no point in pressing through to understanding. One can just find another area of specialization that is “easier,” thus minimizing pain and maximizing pay off. And what if the college graduate never finds work in his area of specialization? Will his education have been wasted? Surely he will think so if he is a product of the multiversity.

Also note that practically this means that science people don’t talk to language people and language people don’t talk to math people, etc. Why would one look to others for help in gaining a comprehensive explanation of the world when one stopped believing in, or perhaps caring about, “comprehensive explanations” long ago?