Progressive Education

The scientific study of education over the last century or so has produced no significant, verifiable results. I believe it never will, for several reasons: human minds are too complex for all variables to be excluded; science is based on observation, and human minds cannot be observed; and there is an insurmountable observer paradox—the human mind cannot fully comprehend itself any more than one can completely swallow one’s body, or pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. And this is without considering the moral issues involved in experimenting on fellow human beings.

This being so, we are left with three useful sources for developing our philosophy of education:

1. Immediate student feedback (that is, these particular students, and even these particular students on this particular day);
2. Personal experience (what has worked for us in the past, as teachers or, even better, as learners; since only our own minds are directly observable by us); and
3. The wisdom of the ages (the advice or known practice of teachers of the past generally acknowledged as great).

We have already dealt in this space with point 2; but perhaps one more thing might be added. Anyone who has been a student for twelve or more years has had a very long apprenticeship in how to be a teacher. He has watched teachers, good and bad, plying their trade for more hours on end than any apprentice in any other occupation, by the time he has graduated high school. Attending a teacher's college is not likely to add much—better to spend an extra year or two acquiring knowledge of the subject he will teach.

But now let's look at point 3: the wisdom of the ages.

I know at once the likely objection to this approach: that it is regressive. We live in a brave new world; things are changing faster than ever before. Even granted that there is no scientific progress in teaching practice, the world has changed a great deal over the past hundred years or so, has it not? And hasn't this changed our educational needs? If it was once useful to be well-grounded in ancient authorities, their thoughts may well no longer apply. Isn't it more important today than it was to learn how to think for ourselves, to be adaptable, to be innovative, creative?
I think it is. But this does not mean the education system can do anything about it.
Is our current system really teaching us to be creative and innovative? If so, the schools and academies, or at least their leading graduates, should be where all, or most, of the new ideas, the striking innovations, come from.

Are they? Consider the following list of famous innovators in various fields:

Thomas Edison – inventor of the light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture projector: three months of formal education.

Albert Einstein—discoverer of the theory of relativity and father of modern physics—dropped out of high school, but eventually earned a Bachelor’s degree.

Steve Jobs—founder of Apple computer and father of the personal computer; founder of Pixar and of computer animated films; creator of the iPod, Mac, and iPhone—dropped out of college in his first semester.

Walt Disney—pioneer of film animation, of color in film, and founder of the concept of the theme park—did not complete high school.

Bill Gates—founder of Microsoft, Windows, etc. College dropout.

Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick—commonly acknowledged as the three greatest film directors in the history of cinema—none attended college.

Henry Ford—inventor of the assembly line and, some say, modern industry. Little or no formal education.

Tim Berners-Lee—inventor of the World Wide Web. Made it to a bachelor’s degree.

Nicola Tesla—inventor of the fluorescent light, among 111 patents. Managed to graduate from college after two attempts.

Orville and Wilbur Wright—inventors of the airplane. Neither graduated from high school.

George Eastman—the genius behind Kodak. Never finished high school.

Edwin Land—inventor of polarization and the instant camera, among other things. Dropped out of college after one year.

John Logie Baird—co-inventor of television. Never graduated from college.

Luther Burbank—inventor of over 800 varieties of plants, including the “Idaho” potato. Never made it to high school.

Philo T. Farnsworth—co-inventor of television. One year of college.

Joseph Armand Bombardier—inventor of the snowmobile. Never attended college.

George Bernard Shaw—most prominent English playwright since Shakespeare; winner of both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. Completed high school, became a lifelong hater of schools.

WB Yeats--greatest modern poet in English. After high school, attended art school for two years.

James Joyce—greatest modern novelist in English. Managed a B.A.

Pablo Picasso—generally acknowledged as the greatest modern artist. Dropped out of art school at 16.

Had enough yet? Clearly, our leading innovators are not learning their trade by attending school.

Meantime, what are our universities devoting their time to? In the humanities and social science faculties, primarily, these days, to the theories of Marx and Freud, repackaged as feminism, “queer studies,” “post-colonial studies,” and so forth.
Marx wrote Das Kapital in 1867; Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. This is hardly cutting edge. Moreover, both have been long ago conclusively disproven; yet even this has not prompted the academy to move on.

While the rest of us are in the 21st century, the academy is still in the 19th.
This illustrates a basic principle: while innovation is probably a good thing, it is not a thing that can be taught. To teach someone to innovate, to teach someone to think for themselves, is a contradiction in terms. It is not, therefore, and cannot be, the purpose of education to do so.

Education is by its nature conservative—it is the passing on to a new generation of the accumulated wisdom of their ancestors. To try to make it something else is to make it something less.

This, I submit, is what we often have at present. Especially since the 1960s, teachers and universities have tried to be “progressive,” and to teach innovation. The result has been an education stripped of content, an emptying of education, and mostly a waste of the students’ time. Where once they would have learned the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, or Confucius, now students learn only the thoughts of their particular instructor.

It has, and must, never have been a good trade.

And has it helped us be more innovative? The reverse: it indoctrinates. In fact, it is more likely that our growing demand for educational qualifications is stifling our ability to innovate, and to react to the changing world.