Pedagogy as an undisputed social good (?) - Sonja Grussendorf

Media &Comms seminar on keyword “Pedagogy”

I had 2 half days to prepare this short talk & on the fly I wrote this abstract, which the

following script does not entirely adhere to:

Abstract:

“Few would deny that education is both an individual and a social good. However,

the nature and the implications of its undoubted benefits are hotly contested."

(G.Lloyd in: New Keywords, 2005). It seems that no thesis on pedagogy/ education,

no modern theory dictionary entry on the topic can fail to state from the outset that

education is great. This is dogma. Education is an important, noble and most basic

human endeavour with the potential to cure all societal ills, eradicate social inequality

- and 'undoubtedly' beneficial. I would like to question the dogma, not simply

because of a personal tendency towards contrariness, but because of a faith in the

Heideggerian assertion that 'questioning is the piety of thinking', where 'thinking' is

not that which characterises pedagogy, but is done in philosophy. I will touch on this

to some extent, but will above all want to question the value of the word pedagogy,

by way of critically assessing its use within the field of Learning Technology”

Introduction: my stance on the term pedagogy

I have set out the following as a personal narrative, simply because I had very limited

time and this seemed to me the fastest approach. It is no more than a meandering

stream of thoughts on a set keyword...I’m not entirely sure I even stand by all of

these thoughts, but here goes…

First of all thank you for the opportunity to make me have to think about a keyword

that you would expect to be one of my key professional vocabularies. In reality, it is a

word that I avoid using and avoid thinking about, perhaps to the detriment of my

professional and personal development. I am at home with the more basic terms:

education, learning, teaching. I consider „education‟ my broad field of practice, while

the other two descriptive gerunds give that field of practice active meaning: that‟s

what we do, what we are concerned with doing; i.e. learning technologists are

concerned with how and that others (academics) „do‟ learning and teaching. But

pedagogy is a term which, though familiar, I am not at home with, in the sense that I

don‟t often wish to dwell there: in Heidegger‟s way of speaking this means I do not

care for it.

I’m not so untypical in this. As I first started to cobble together these thoughts on

pedagogy for today‟s seminar, I knew only two things, 1) that my stance towards

pedagogy is predominantly negative and 2) that mine might be considered

representative of my team‟s stance - so I had better checked how they might

approach the topic.

I asked:

“If you have 3 minutes, would you do me a favour, and write down the first

thing that comes into your head when asked: “what is pedagogy, how do

you use the term in your research/ work/ life”. Just vomit it into the

email and press send. Anything, just a few sentences, a small

paragraph.Anything from the profound to the profane… gobbledegook as

welcome as a well-thought out definition. More welcome, since a well-

thought out definition, unless your brain is a dictionary, isn‟t really stormy.”

My colleagues obliged, and most within the spirit that I had asked for.

The first simply posited “It’s interfering with children.”

-- If guidance is a form of interference (and it is at least a mode of mediation) then

this is not as wilfully wrong or tongue in cheek as it was intended. The pedagogue of

antiquity is the slave who walks his master‟s children to school, and there instructs

them, enabling and interfering in their education. The pedagogue of modern times is

the stuffy, dull, pedantic & dogmatic teacher interfering in students‟ ability to be and

to become free and creative thinkers.

The second answer came less tongue in cheek and more surprisingly personal and

idiosyncratic:

“Here’s my pedagogical puke: I always think of this book as it‟s one I

really enjoy looking at and am still intrigued by: Paul Klee‟s Pedagogical

sketchbook – illustrated step by step it takes you through the meaning of

the markings in his work in a very scientific way, its bizarre! I always

struggle with how to pronounce it!”

The pedagogical sketchbook is certainly remarkable. Despite its name it gives away

very little, leaving the reader (or potential learner) with no concrete idea what is

being taught with or in it. PERHAPS this book is an ideal illustration of my thoughts

on pedagogy: there‟s something fascinating there, unless there isn‟t, because it is no

more than pretension. I only saw the book for the first time on Monday. From the

introduction this quote struck me:

“Each of the four divisions of the Sketchbook has one key-sentence, strewn

almost casually - without the pompousness of a theorem - among

specific observations.”

I have nothing against theorems, but I do like the absence of pompousness.

SOMETIMES the use of the word pedagogy carries with it an air of pompousness

or at least of pretension. Or at least one of my colleagues thinks so, as the next

email arrived and stated:

“It means education but in my latest book one author says the term actually

applies to children's learning and adult learning is andragogy or something

like that! I sometimes think it’s a word that we use in learning

technology when we want to impress someone! I don't like it very

much in all honesty!”

Which is echoed by another colleague:

“I try to avoid using the word because I'm still not sure if it's pedagoggy or

pedagodjy. I've yet to compose a sentence that could not easily be recast

to use "teaching" instead. And I am slightly fearful using it will draw a

baying mob of semi-literate Sun readers to string me up outside a

Portsmouth boozer.”

Ignoring the elitist overtones of that last admission, a certain consensus about

pedagogy emerges. Maybe in Learning Technology we are more at home with the

Latin education, the Gothic teaching and the Old German learning; whereas the

Greek pedagogy smacks of academic affectation. Or maybe we are simply cautious

in as far as we don‟t want to alienate those we work with: when talking about

educational technologies from a pedagogical point of view eyes might glaze over,

ears get covered. I suggest the switch -off occurs at the moment of shoe-horning in

theory when what is at stake is actual practice.

I am overstating my case deliberately, in order to give both bulk and credence to my

idea that the use of the word pedagogy is not always the most useful in my

particular practice and that it might be used to show off. But I don‟t mean to say

that pedagogy as a term is useless per se, as such, and everywhere and always.

Julian‟s paper quite clearly deals with the term as a proper academic concept. The

term does also have a very definite place in my field. It informs our research and our

thinking about the use (or abuse or danger) of technologies in education. But I

understand it as denoting the theoretical underpinning to that thinking, simply,

meaning „the study of the art of teaching‟ as opposed to the practice of teaching.

So I was surprised that another colleague quite happily stated that

“I use pedagogy to mean "teaching, and facilitating learning". And I

probably extend that definition in use to mean "teaching, and facilitating

learning, effectively". I suppose it really means "the study of teaching and

learning" but I seldom use it in that context. However I dislike the use of it

as a countable noun - I would never talk about "pedagogies" when I

mean "approaches".”

I can agree with his dislike of plural pedagogies, in the same way I dislike the use of

methodology when what is meant is method. But is he justified in defining pedagogy

so weakly, equating it quite nonchalantly with “teaching and facilitating learning”?

Pedagogy is a discipline and is concerned with philosophical questions, such as

what is teaching and where does learning take place and how is education a

social good? When it is used as synonymous with the practical teaching and

learning, I suggest something is lost on both sides, namely the useful distinction

between practice and theory.

But where has this gotten me so far? Not very far. I haven‟t laid out what

distinguishes education from pedagogy, but only remarked on how the word

pedagogy on occasion lends an air of pretension, where it is meant to lend an

air of authority.

I haven‟t actually drawn a clear distinction between education and pedagogy. Others

have done it elsewhere, arguing for example that education is the good of „learning

for its own sake‟ and pedagogy the bad of „instrumental learning‟ –namely akin to

indoctrination, related to measurable outcomes, i.e. social engineering type

instruction (G.Hinchliffe, Education or Pedagogy, Journal of Philosophy of Education,

Vol 35, 1, 2001). We are probably all here familiar with these types of debates

around what is the true nature (and true purpose) of education is, and we know we

can approach the debate from various angles, theoretical, critical, philosophical,

economical, moral, and so on. As with any interesting, academic concept, much of it

depends on definition. If I define “pedagogy” to describe the set of ideas and

methods that push and cajole children or students to conform to and engage in

particular social goals then I define it as instrumental. If I define pedagogy as the

study of the art of teaching I give it a more philosophical status. We might contrast

true (that is, good) Higher education, which is about fostering analytic skills and life

competencies that enable the human to lead a well-rounded full life with lower value

vocational and professional training for example.

What it is about is this: “Few would deny that education is both an individual and a

social good” (G. Lloyd, Keywords 2005, p.97) Thequestion then becomes which one

deserves more (or indeed exclusive) support (i.e. funding from the state). Is it a

societal aim or society‟s responsibility to support the development of the individual to

become a well-rounded person? Or should society only invest in the individual when

it gets something out of the investment by the end? Theoreticians, politicians,

philosophers, thinkers etcdisagree over which is the more important value, but all

agree that education has value. This implies that what is NOT questioned is that

education (or learning or whatever one might want to call it) is a social good FULL

STOP.

But is it? Why should it be that education is the ne plus ultra? Was it always the

ultimate social good, or has it merely developed into one for economic reasons?

EM Forster wrote,

“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can

only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination

system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-

called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider”

(Aspects of the novel, 1927)

But EM Forster sounds a bit overly worthy, so lest I be accused of pomposity or

pretentiousness, let me give you an even better quote by Queen of Crime, Agatha

Christie, it‟s from her “They Do it With Mirrors” of 1952:

“Of course there‟s a fashion in these things, just like there is in clothes. (My

dear, have you seen what Christian Dior is trying to make us wear in the way

of skirts?) Where was I? Oh yes, Fashion. Well, there‟s fashion in

philanthropy too. It used to be education in Gulbrandsen’s day. But that‟s

out of date now. The State has stepped in. Everyone expects education as a

matter of right – and doesn‟t think much of it when they get it.”

Forster hints at the problem of economic tie-in. Christie hints that the idea of

education for all is ideologically motivated. But neither of them question education or

pedagogy as a good as such, rather they express a distrust of the modern

education system, of how education is administered and foisted on all. My problem

for today is, that I have not found a way of questioning education as such, as a social

good, only that I don‟t like to overly emphasise its importance. So this is where I

have strayed to: a miserly view of education and of those that praise its über-

importance. Just because I feel a profound unease at people who profess their

lifelong love of lifelong learning, doesn‟t mean that lifelong learning isn‟t in itself

something to rave about. So again I‟ve arrived nowhere.

So what does this all have to do with Heidegger? Well, if I now wanted to be really

pretentious I could start on how what is always at stake is the matter of thinking, and

that neither education nor pedagogy are the realms in which thinking takes place.

The question about the value of education or the importance of pedagogy, the

question about which of these terms is better or worse – they‟re all not important

questions at all! The only thing that matters is questioning (and that at least I have

started to do), and in particular questioning what it means for us to be (and that

might at some point include to question what it means to be a being which learns

and teaches and seeks knowledge for its own sake).

I could do that, but I haven‟t got time, so instead I am going to return to my theme of

pretentiousness by way of an awkward anecdote.

In my slightly obsessive Heidegger period I wastrying to figure out if Heidegger was

not in fact the ideal educational philosopher which would mean I could bring him into

my work and read him as work, rather than as hobby. I‟d thought I‟d finally found a

definitive piece of his thinking on university education, an English transcript, and

wanted to find the original German in the Gesamtausgabe (the full work). I asked a

philosophy mailing list for help and in the end I found out that I‟d fallen for a hoax, the

transcript had been made up. And I had paid money for this “definitive text”. I felt

very much like an idiot.

Why I am including this now is that I realized later that my desire to bring in

Heidegger into my work was not so much because I had really found a way of

bringing Heideggerian thinking into my thinking on education, but that I just wanted it

to be so, I wanted to add a little philosophical glamour, to spice my dull presentations

up with a bit of academic pretension, rather than work harder and achieve it through

my own thinking. I know this was at least partly the case and it goes straight back to

my colleague‟s suspicion about pedagogy (lovely academic Greek word) as a term

that we Learning Technologists like to use when we try to impress. And quite frankly

I am now secure enough in my work that I don‟t think I need to anymore.

To be fair, although the hoax transcript was not the work of Heidegger, there is a

definitive discussion by Heidegger on education, and it‟s quite simply his entire work.

His lectures are not only excellent on philosophical grounds, but exemplary as

lectures. His preambles to these lectures (and his letters to friends and lovers) show

how he cared about teaching, about taking his listeners (students, readers) on his

path towards thinking. He often explains how one ought to read texts, what it means

to think… (esp his short text on mindfulness, his “What is philosophy”, even in Being

and Time, there‟s a short section on Descartes that explains really clearly, and very

generously, why the Meditations contained great if flawed metaphysical thinking!

Well worth seeking out for those who are interested in philosophical thinking).

Heidegger took thinking seriously and he thought that the task of the philosopher

was to pursue this. He took teaching seriously, which can be seen from his vast

collected volumes, most of which are meticulously and carefully written out lecture

notes which go through canonical philosophical texts step by step. He made

philosophers of the past come alive, not by way of offering biographical and

historical background noise, but by making their philosophy relevant to the

modern reader. For example, hereally dislikedthe distraction of biographical context.

It‟s the actual thinking that counts and just knowing about a philosopher‟s life without

giving their work the proper attention was anathema to Heidegger. I would suggest

that is an attitude worth bearing in mind. So he wrote for example in his Nietzsche

lectures that

“Whoever does not have the courage and perseverance of thought

required to become involved in Nietzsche’s own writings, need not read

anything about him either.”

And either Arendt or Gadamer reported him introducing a lecture series on Aristotle

with the simple sentence:

“Aristotle was born, worked, and died. Now let‟s turn to his work.”

(I cannot now recall where I have read this)

So how am I going to tie this together in a satisfying way? As promised from the

outset, I won‟t. These are mere meanderings and idle musings on the given

keyword. But with a final twist, I would like to end in a really pretentious and

pompous way, namely with a quote from Seneca which I believe Heidegger would

have endorsed. Of course I don‟t read Latin, but I was familiar with the reverse of his

quote, because it‟s used pretentiously (and perversely!) as school mottos all over

Germany: “We don‟t learn for school, but for life!” But that is not what Seneca wrote.

He wrote that we do indeed learn for school and not for life. I translated this rather

freely from a rather free German translation of the original:

“We play games. We blunt our thinking with superfluous problems, & such idle

analyses don‟t help us to live well, but at the most they make us sound scholarly.

Real wisdom is much more accessible than academic wisdom, it would be so much

better if our education taught us common sense! But we waste everything, and we

waste our highest good, namely philosophy, with superfluous questions. We are

hopelessly addicted to everything, and that includes an insatiable hunger for

scholarliness: we don‟t learn for life, we learn for the sake of the School.”

And you may make of this what you will.