Fifth Post

Plato and Aristotle: Application

And now it remains to ask about all that has been said, “so what?”  What difference might it make to the here and now? So from the interpretations I have offered, allow me to try to draw some implications for our common interests in teaching and learning.  I think that can best be done around the notions of “tradition” and “dialogue.”

We have no scarcity of traditions—that which is “passed on”—in the field of teaching and learning:

• from Plato and Aristotle to their successors in the Greek and Roman periods,
• to the actual establishment of the first universities in the ninth (Morocco), eleventh (Bologna) and twelfth (Paris, Oxford) centuries,
• to their expanding numbers during the Medieval era and the Renaissance and Reformation period,
• and finally—and explosively—in the early modern and contemporary world.

The myriad instructive and learning theories arising from all that history—and passed on to us through the cultural, educational, and religious traditions out of which we operate—send us competing options, mixed signals and sometimes enigmatic signs.

I am a disciple of the notion that we are the “heirs of the tradition” and that it is our sacred task to interpret those traditions, translate them into our language and our time as best we can—but also to determine among them what best “fits” the needs of this time; how they can be molded, improved; and how, building upon them, we can creatively offer the “gift of innovation.”

Sometimes it can seem like a crazy, head-scratching business, but we are all in it together, whether we’re students, teachers, administrators, or observers who care about teaching and learning.  So we have to find a way to deal with the conflicts that are “out there”—the traditions, the texts, the expectations of family, church, society—as well as the conflicts that are “in here”—our differing interpretations of the mixed signals that are out there. 

Without even trying to identify or sort through these innumerable traditions—a task beyond the ken of this blog—let me return to Plato and Aristotle and “fold” this discussion into the second of these twin themes: dialogue. Because the process by which we evaluate those external and internal conflicts regarding the didactic traditions we have inherited comes down to argument, in the sense of civil discourse and reasonable debate—despite their rather blatant and disturbing absence from current public life!

As we have learned from Socrates/Plato, we are not talking about argument as a weapon which silences one’s opponent, but argument as a creative tool for learning. And that takes place best in a supportive community that does not see conflict as a primarily competitive act. In argument as a tool for learning, it is not who wins that is important, but who learns, and what is learned.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is no place for decisions—for the setting of direction within the learning community, the curriculum, or within the classroom, for that matter. As Alasdair McIntyre observed, “Where too much is valued, nothing is valued very much.”

I am not arguing, therefore, for a particular—or “soft”—position on the skills and content areas common to traditional education or for a specific curricular structure, although I have strong opinions/convictions about those issues—especially with regard to the liberal arts and interdisciplinary curricula— which I have expressed in earlier blogs. I am pleading, rather, for the kind of context in which such learning takes place and I am suggesting that in the dialogues where such choices are made, there must be a tolerance for and a celebration of the conflicting interpretations of the various traditions that nourish us.

This means, of course, that the quest for knowledge that we call teaching and learning is, indeed, a search, one that is and to some extent, must be open-ended. There is warrant for this, as we have seen, in both Plato and Aristotle, as well as in contemporary philosophy and in instructional theory.  As Richard Rorty observes: “The conversation Plato began has been enlarged by more voices than Plato would have deemed possible and thus by topics he knew nothing of.”

This fits well into the picture of teaching and learning I am trying to draw, since we, too, must expect and prepare today’s students—and those who come after them—to move beyond any knowledge and skills we are prepared to offer them. As we know and say, when they “finish” their formal education, graduate, receive their degree, it’s the beginning of their learning, not the end—there’s a reason we call it “Commencement.” 

If the learning environment is legitimately one of dialogue, then the teacher becomes what Socrates called a “midwife.”  Carl Rogers offered a contemporary version of this notion when he called the teacher a “facilitator.” The cliché aside, he made an important point in saying of the traditional view of teaching—based on the assumption that what is taught is what is learned, what is presented is what is assimilated—“I know of no assumption that is so obviously untrue. The only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning.” Such learning, he insists, happens best in the presence of acceptance, trust, empathy, and honesty about one’s puzzlements. Plato could not have said it better! It’s the kind of learning illustrated in the dialogues—an engagement in which one takes a risk and is consequential because it both costs something and rewards the investment.

Finally, there are those who are uncomfortable with the notion of learning as an open-ended search. Some simply want the solutions to troublesome questions laid out as a “done deal,” the kind of answers that can be committed to memory and retrieved when needed. Others are just impatient with a conversation whose resolution is not guaranteed in advance—what use is it?

For one thing, I would suggest that we are helped not only by the information we get, but by the process of searching for it—both qualify as authentic learning. Furthermore, we do not escape the problem of uncertainty with “neat” answers: the “facts” we learn in any field are often obsolete within a decade . . . and, sometimes, much sooner. So progress in learning is marked by advance, by movement, by anticipation, not by “circling the wagons.” That, I take it, is what Wittgenstein meant when he described philosophical progress as “scratching where it itches.”

Conclusion

What, then, is the conclusion of the matter? Whitehead advised us to “seek simplicity and distrust it.” So I invite your distrust by “putting a button” on these five blog posts in a few sentences.

The classical tradition, represented by Plato and Aristotle, affirms a set of basic skills and abilities potential in all persons, and urges the development and use of those abilities to achieve, through a process of learning, theoretic knowledge, and the kind of understanding and insight that lets us use that knowledge in a wide variety of circumstances. It requires that we stay in touch with the real world—with all its conflicts and mixed signals—and in open-ended creative dialogue with real people. The context in which such learning can take place forces on us a moral demand. It demands the support of a loving community—not love in the flabby, sentimental sense, but care, respect, and responsibility, both for learning itself and for the learner.

May it ever be so!

REFEERENCES/SOURCES (For all posts in this series: Plato and Aristotle on Teaching and Learning)

Brumbaugh, Robert S., and Nathaniel M. Lawrence. Philosophers on Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963.

Jaspers, Karl.  The Great Philosophers, Vol I. Edited by Hannah Arendt.  Trans. by Ralph Mannheim. A Harvest Book.  New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1962.

MacIntyre, Alasdaire. “Traditions and Conflicts.” Liberal Education, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Nov/Dec ’87), 6-13.

Nash, Paul. Models of Man: Explorations in the Western Education Tradition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968

Palmer, J. Parker. “Community, Conflict, and Ways of Knowing.” Change, Vol. 19, No. 5 (Sept.Oct, 87), 20-25.

Randall, John Herman, Jr. Aristotle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.

Rogers, Carl R. Freedom to Learn. Columbus, Ohio: Charles c. Merrill Publishing Co., 1969.

Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Seeskin, Richard. Dialogue and discovery: A study in Socratic Method. New York:SUNY Press, 1987.

Smith, Jonathan. “Playful Acts of Imagination.” Liberal Education, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Nov/Dec ,’87), 14-20.

Smith, T. V. (ed.) Philosophers Speak for Themselves: From Thales to Plato. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Smith, T. V. (ed.) Philosophers Speak for Themselves: From Aristotle to Plotinus. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Whitehead, Alfred North. The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1924.

(Thanks to these websites,“Roots of the American Educational System,” and “Significance of Aristotle’s Teaching Practice for Modern Education,” Oleg A. Donskikh.)