{"id":68188,"date":"2023-05-16T01:31:46","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T05:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=68188"},"modified":"2023-05-16T01:31:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T05:31:46","slug":"its-important-to-rethink-the-purpose-of-university-education-a-philosopher-of-education-explains-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/its-important-to-rethink-the-purpose-of-university-education-a-philosopher-of-education-explains-why\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s important to rethink the purpose of university education \u2013 a philosopher of education explains why"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nMost philosophers of education or philosophically inclined scholars of education in the past century and a half would agree with the claim that, ideally, education should be the practice of freedom. That is, it ought to cultivate the ability to intelligently decide how we want to shape our lives. The aim of education should be to foster human autonomy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking here of a diverse array of scholars. Among them are some of the most influential philosophers of education and educational theorists of the 20th century: the American\u00a0John Dewey<\/a>, Brazilian\u00a0Paulo Freire<\/a>\u00a0and Indian Nobel Laureate\u00a0Rabindranath Tagore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s little evidence that their views have played any significant role in shaping the global contemporary education sector, including the tertiary sector.<\/p>\n

If these scholars are correct, universities and educational institutions too often don\u2019t understand what they are doing. It\u2019s a shocking indictment on the higher education sector. After all, educational institutions are in the business (or should be) of fostering understanding.<\/p>\n

I am the director of the\u00a0Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics<\/a>, located in Rhodes University\u2019s Department of Philosophy in South Africa. I have for many years been trying to make sense of education\u2019s purpose and wondering why there is such a great discrepancy between what scholars of education have been telling us and what happens in the classroom.<\/p>\n

What the big thinkers have had to say<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The aforementioned authors believe that education should help to shape well-adjusted individuals who can contribute to the common good \u2013 as opposed to merely lending a hand to what is already there. Merely lending a hand is expressive of a limited understanding of the norms guiding professional work, and hence distorts autonomy.<\/p>\n

Dewey thought that education should promote \u201cintelligent growth\u201d, the sort that defines an autonomous agent. In Dewey\u2019s\u00a0own words<\/a>:
\nImpulses and desires that are not ordered by intelligence are under the control of accidental circumstances. It may be a loss rather than a gain to escape from the control of another person only to find one\u2019s conduct dictated by immediate whim and caprice; that is, at the mercy of impulses into whose formation intelligent judgement has not entered. A person whose conduct is controlled in this way has at most only the illusion of freedom. Actually he is directed by forces over which he has no command.<\/em>
\nAn educated person can adapt to life\u2019s challenges by critically and sensitively engaging with what is given. The alternative is what Dewey describes as someone \u201cwhose conduct is controlled \u2026 by forces over which he has no command\u201d and hence lacks freedom. This is a subject who is unable to develop a proper understanding of the forces that undermine freedom.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it is this sort of existence that very many contemporary universities promote. Universities aim to produce efficient professionals rather than autonomous agents who are able to adapt to life\u2019s challenges and understand the forces that impinge on their formation.<\/p>\n

The reality<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Universities follow on from primary and secondary education by training students to be uncritical servants of the status quo, to apply their intelligence in specific spheres of life and not to ask too many questions beyond the narrow scope of their engagements.<\/p>\n

It is this approach that the American philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky describes in\u00a0an interview<\/a>\u00a0when speaking about the contrast between indoctrination and genuine education.<\/p>\n

This sort of narrowly circumscribed thinking lacks the expansiveness of the critical mind \u2013 a mind able to stand back, consider and influence autonomous action.<\/p>\n

Intellectual subordination<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In an interview which forms part of the 2012 documentary The Lottery of Birth, Jeff Schmidt, a physicist and\u00a0the author of<\/a>\u00a0Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives, says:
\nProfessionals are deliberately produced to be intellectually and politically subordinate.<\/em>
\nHe illustrates this idea with the anecdote of two young nuclear weapons designers working in a nuclear weapons design laboratory. When asked by a journalist what the worst part of their job was, they rejoined that it was dealing with unstable computers lacking sufficient capacity.<\/p>\n

They were not, it seems, able to consider the higher purposes they were blindly serving. The scope of their concerns was subordinated to the aims of others in power \u2013 their employers.<\/p>\n

Education as freedom<\/strong><\/h4>\n

There are ways in which this approach to education can be challenged. For instance, at the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, we\u2019ve developed a programme called\u00a0IiNtetho zoBomi<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(isiXhosa for \u201cconversations about life\u201d).<\/p>\n

It aims to complement the current university offering to foster the educational ideals propounded by the scholars I\u2019ve discussed here. Service-learning activities are a core part of the programme. Students are encouraged to take the course only if they are interested in \u201cunderstanding how your life \u2013 including your inner life \u2013 is formed by the world you inhabit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Is it working? I hope so. But the growth we aim to foster is hard to measure.<\/p>\n

What I can confidently say, however, is that the effect of such programmes at any university would be far greater if there was more institutional buy-in than there currently is.<\/p>\n

The idea that education is the practice of freedom cannot be separated from the idea that education should aim to equip students to critically and creatively engage with reality to transform it for the better.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Pedro Tabensky is Director, Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics at Rhodes University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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