Education and Freedom: Philosophies on the Emancipation of Thought, Essay Example

Phenomenologist, Maxine Greene interpolates the entirety of the History of Western Dialectics through the momentary praxis of student’s everyday lives through affirmation of existential difference rather than preconceived notions about the utilitarian prospectus of a student’s future path.  In Chapter 1 of her work, A Dialectic of Freedom, she explores the possibility of a break with automatism as the search for new potentialities. Twentieth century philosophies on education, says Greene, sought vertical learning competencies administered by way of authoritarian praxis. Vying for a new antithesis to the restriction to intellectual engagement, Greene is specifically interested in the novelty of ‘rational planning’ and its untold results in a population dedicated to a project of stratified class, gender and race identification.

Citing Merleau-Ponty, Greene maintains that mediation between such tensions may not find resolution in “perfect synthesis or harmony” (1968, p. 95). It is in the interstices of partiality that Greene’s proposition has impact for a meta-physics of education. Distinct in her historical materialist trajectory, Greene’s phenomenological thrust is divided by a world that instigates distinction between thought and action, yet culminates in total cohesion. Much of Western metaphysics has erroneously identified consciousness with mere conceptual processes, rather than with the sentient being. The phenomenon of praxis allows contemporary philosophers of education to think through the somatic incorporations of the ‘whole child’ into learning settings.

Applied to education, the material conditions by which alienation can be detoured is through integrated models of curricula that offer students sufficient praxis in subjects like Art and trade crafts. Mirroring Antonio Gramsci’s inter-war philosophies on classical education – -whereby one could study Latin, and further intellectual development in other subjects such as Law and Medicine – Greene’s pedagogical assertion begins with the ‘organic’ development of knowledge ‘by hand’ as a natural mode of transference in scientific knowledge and higher learning facilitation.  If education is a channel to freedom, awareness of genuine praxis as viable motive must be present in adult life. According to Green, it is the constant dialectic with perceived knowledge about the human, societal, and natural world that existential freedom might be fostered.

Greene’s life work on philosophies of dialectical analysis extends to the topic of ethics and moral education and the organizing praxis of the school curriculum as ‘world.’ Situationist in logic, her pedagogical interpolation of historical material processes negates the existence of ‘groups’ of dispossessed intellectuals. As she effectively argues, “My focal interest is in human freedom, in the capacity to surpass the given and look at things as if they could be otherwise” (p. 3).

The foregoing essay examines the efficacy and impact of Greene’s philosophy on educational praxis as the dialectic of freedom in comparison with other three philosophers on the topic: Adler, Dewey and Illich. Four main propositions are elicited from discourse analysis, and put into dialectic reflective of Greene’s thought on Jean Paul Satre’s universal ‘condemn[ation] to freedom’ as natural human condition. The first looks at the meaning of freedom, or what does it mean to be free? Secondly, the comparative addresses: what is the relationship between individual freedom and society? The query then turns to : what is the relationship between individual freedom and society? Finally, the futurist longings of traditional metaphysical thought reverberate in consideration of: what type of education best prepares citizens to maintain the freedom that we cherish in our culture?

Table 1

Four Propositions to Education as Freedom:

Table 1: Four Propositions to Education as Freedom

In Mortimer Adler’s (1939) The Crisis in Contemporary education he looks at the the myth of universal progress, progress in all things, lies at the heart of progressive education. Arguing against positivism and extensions of the doctrine of evolution, Adler maintains that progress is distinct from change and the possibility of evaluative measurement of the standards of progress can only be extrapolated from interminable variations unmarked by decisive temporal conjectures. Harkening to classical thinkers in consideration of ‘natural man,’ Adler also returns to his positivist inclinations citing Auguste Comte’s ‘three stages of human history’ so scientific in utility. Nevertheless, a Jewish scholar writing at the time of Hitler and Mussolini, Adler’s thought foreshadows later pedagogical renderings responsive to the rise in authoritarian ideologies in dynamic continuity with both totalitarian and liberal market states in the latter half of the century.

Separating science from philosophy, Adler furthers the epistemological basis to his work with the implication of positivisms effort to de-ontologize science toward definition of “knowledge of phenomenal relationships.” Like Greene, Adler was searching for a phenomenology of method which lies in Science’s requirement to a specific experience; and philosophy’s only goal of experimentation is to provoke  the senses in query of human existence. For Adler, it is the natural world on which they operate that is parallel ground for emancipation from distinctions between the two, and argues that it is the imminent tragedy of the contemporary world that positivistic culture has “magnified science” with the result a loss of wisdom.

Dewey’s concept of freedom is based upon rational planning within the Progressive Era immediately before World War I to the 1930s with the New Deal. The relationship between education and social progress is one of utilitarian thought dictated by the concerns of social policy projects dating to the early twentieth century. The industrialization of daily life had great influence on the repetitive technological expansion impacting the everyday lives of Americans. The absolute belief that a metaphysics of praxis might be organized around vertical channels of authority is quite typical of this period, and Dewey is instrumental to much of what became the framework for standardization of schooling systems, and especially top down curriculum models. In Greene’s (1973) Teacher as Stranger she argues against Dewey’s insights, and suggests that formation of consciousness and intelligence in general must be reconstituted in environments where facilitation of phenomenological experiences are only partially and momentarily guided, as students promote their own development from within through performative measures enhanced through dialectic learning.

In 1970, Ivan Illich wrote his treatise on education from his roost in Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) Cuernavaca, Mexico. Contemporary to Greene’s philosophy of dialectics and the phenomenology of education, Illich takes on the voice of advocacy as he moves toward what he argues is a mandate for ‘deschooling.’ Repudiating the history of authoritarian education in Latin America, and related structural oppression in the United States, Illich covers a wide berth in his search for a solution to traditional education. His search for an alternative begins with deconstruction of the term ‘school.’

Inciting a new lexicon of freedom intended to mobilize social movements toward the reconstitution of learning as an institution that can be generated from the ground up, Illich’s tone reflects the tendencies of his era, and Neo-Marxist trajectories on systemic transformation. In keeping with Greene’s historical materialist dialectic, Illich is still succinctly within the realm of the meta-physical ‘master’ as he argues for a transformation of indoctrination. Here overt transgression into the ontology of the content ratifies Illich’s limitations as a true revolutionary against authoritarianism, and reinserts his claim to the halls of traditional learning, where formative or phenomenological praxis is of less interest than dictation of thought as ‘knowledge.’

References

Adler, M. (1939) The Crisis in Contemporary Education. The Social Frontier,V(42), 140-145. Retrieved from: http://www.ditext.com/adler/frontier.html

Dewey, J. (1899). The School and Social Progress.

_____ (1916). Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education.

Greene, M. (1973). Teacher as stranger: Educational philosophy for the modern age. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

______(1975). Curriculum and consciousness. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists. Lerkeley: McCutchan.

______ (1985). Consciousness and the public space: Discovering a pedagogy. Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 3, 69-83.

______(1986). Philosophy and teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 479-501). New York: Macmillan.

______(1988). The Dialectic of Freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Illich, I. (1970). Deschooling Society. Retrieved from: http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html

Vandenberg, D. (2002). Metaphysics, Dialectical Materialism, Maxine Greene, And Education. Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 10, 107-124.