If the intellectual climate is such that, when a man comes to the crisis at which he must accept or reject Christ, his reason and imagination are not on the wrong side, then his conflict will be fought out under favourable conditions. Those who help to produce and spread such a climate are therefore doing useful work.
C.S. Lewis
Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.
Cancel culture. Outrage. Twitter mob. Disinvited. Doxing. This is the world we now live in. One false move and you could be history. The mob could be unleashed and your family and workplace targeted. So what do you do? You shut up and make sure to the best of your ability you don’t say certain things out loud, or at least not outside of certain ‘safe’ acquaintances.
Blasphemy is not a common word these days. But amongst religious people, some knowledge of the concept still exists. When I was growing up, I was taught never to say, “Oh my God!” as an exclamation, and “Jesus Christ!” would have certainly been frowned upon. Not so much today.
What you can or can’t say tells you a lot about the faith of a people. Refusal to say God’s name in an irreverent manner, or to use Jesus as a swear word, indicates an acknowledgement of the worth and value of God and his Son Christ. It is to acknowledge that God exists and that He is special and deserving of reverence and awe. Further, it is an acknowledgement that God rules through his Son Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and that that Son will judge every human being for every idle word they have spoken.
Despite the word blasphemy having fallen from common use, we still have the concept in our modern world. We now use the term ‘hate speech’. This is speech that offends our modern sensibilities. What counts as blasphemy indicates the object of a society’s worship. Yes, modern though we be, our society still worships. So what do the new blasphemies tell us? They tell us we have replaced the Lord of all with a new false god whose name is Tolerance.
And the strange thing about this new god is that unlike the LORD God, Tolerance’s rules are endless and onerous. One thing we can no longer safely say is “men aren’t women“! This is modern blasphemy. Thou shalt not deny that gender is a social construct, for Tolerance thy god shall not hold him/her/zir/xer guiltless who denies this.
But Tolerance is a difficult god to serve. One can know where one stands with the LORD God. He at least is the same yesterday, today and forever. Tolerance, on the other hand, is fickle. Fifteen years ago, it was permissible, and even redundant to state ‘men aren’t women’. Today it is evil. And unfortunately for his/her/zirs/xyrs servants, Tolerance’s changes in morality are retroactively applied. Woe betide any servant of Tolerance whose past behaviour, despite being morally acceptable at the time, is found in the future to be sinful. They shall never enter his/her/zirs/xyrs rest. One cannot go to Tolerance’s throne of grace and apply for mercy because there is no throne of grace, only judgment in our time of need.
It’s a strange thing that our god Tolerance is not very patient with our failures. In fact, he/she/xe/ze seems rather intolerant.
Levi: So have you thought more about the discussion we had the other day on Christian education?
Mike: Not really, no. I guess I’m pretty busy at work at the moment….besides, I’m not convinced by your argument.
Levi: Did you know there’s a new school opening down the road next month?
Mike: And you think I should send my kids there?
Levi: Well it’s an Islamic school. So…would you?
Mike: Of course not! Why would you imagine I would do that?
Levi: Well, what if it was free?
Mike: What are you getting at! Of course I wouldn’t. We’re a Christian family. I don’t want my children taught from an Islamic perspective. They deny the Trinity and don’t believe Jesus actually died. But I get the feeling you’re trying to score a point here.
Levi: Yes, I am. If you wouldn’t send your child to an Islamic school, why do you send your child to a government school?
Mike: Seriously? They’re totally different. An Islamic school is religious. They are training children in the Islamic faith.
Levi: So do you believe that a government school is not religious?
Mike: No. State schools are set up to be secular. That means they are non-religious. The reason for this is so that no one faith is privileged.
Levi: Are you so naïve? Can you seriously believe that there is such a thing as a non-religious position? Neutrality is impossible in this area. Jesus said, “”Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” There are no neutral hearts. We are either in rebellion against Christ, or we acknowledge his lordship. Do you think God would consider ignoring him non-religious? Or would that be considered rebellious idolatry?
Mike: Ok, say I grant your point that there is no such thing as a neutrality. But still, I think the danger posed by a government school is significantly less than an Islamic school.
Levi: Do you? Given the impact secularism has had in undermining your civilization do you think you have perhaps miscalculated and underestimated the danger from the government schools? The West’s societies seem to be heading for rapid civilizational collapse as a result of their rebellion against God. Can you not see the connection between this and the training of its children?
A discussion paper, released some weeks ago by think-tank Koi Tū: Centre for Informed Futures was highlighted in an article on the Stuff website. Of particular interest to me was the section on education.
The report muses about implications for education:-
Does the pandemic change thinking around primary and secondary education? Will this experience irreversibly change the nature of learning – changes that were likely inevitable in future decades? There are opportunities here to shift more to teaching skills such as critical thinking and emotional self-regulation, move towards precision education and create leadership and export opportunities. Schools need to focus on transportable and generic skills so that pupils can later navigate a more fluid labour market. Is there a place for technology teaching streams as in Germany and Switzerland? Could this be a circuit breaker that allows for a substantial change in pedagogy?
A couple of comments.
Firstly, we should always be wary of the impulse to assume that an event will irreversibly change anything. Yes, events do have an impact on history and can cause change. But there are a number of fundamental things that never change. The nature of humans for instance. And because the nature of humans is immutable, the nature of learning is not likely to be something that changes. If our brains function in much the same way as they always have, any one event is not going to significantly alter the way humans learn.
Secondly, the report suggests that we should focus on teaching skills that enable students to navigate a more fluid labour market. In recent posts, we have shown that this is a myth based on a misunderstanding of what skill is. What schools need to do, is provide students with a knowledge-rich education. This is a fundamental building block for skill.
Unfortunately, these two myths, that one event or time period changes learning completely, and that our modern world requires the teaching of skills are widely believed and foisted upon the educational landscape. But they are having an unfortunate effect on our young people. If you are a parent, I encourage you to look for a school that does not buy into these myths. Give your children the gift of a content-rich education. Skill and ability to navigate an ever-changing world will follow.
It’s an odd thing that those who should be most concerned with education place so little emphasis on it. For the Christian parent, next to ensuring the salvation of their own soul, their next greatest priority is the spiritual welfare of their children. And yet the Western Christian, by and large, has not connected the dots.
Asaph in Psalm 78 does. He writes, “things….that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders that he has done.” In fact ‘telling’ the next generation is not just something for super-spiritual Christian parents. No, it is the command of God for us all. Asaph continues, “He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children.” It’s not a small thing to fail to pass on our faith to our children. It is disobedience against the Almighty.
What is the expected result of following God’s commands in this aspect of life? It is a passing on of the faith. Asaph writes “that the next generation might know them [the laws of God], the children yet unborn and arise and tell them to their children.” We see a passing on of the knowledge of God’s law from one generation to the next to the next. But the ultimate result of all this is “so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.” The command is designed to produce a people faithful to God.
It seems to me that Asaph’s general expectation is that as we teach the next generation the law of God, then that generation should set its hope in God and avoid the sin of willful rebellion against him.
What do we see today in God’s church in the West? We see successive generations of the church being smaller. Many leave the faith as they hit adulthood, and never come back. The church seems weak. Congregations are often ageing, and even those churches which are youthful are often filled with people who could be accused of being more in love with the social norms of the day than the law of God. A generalization to be sure but accurate.
Over the last month or so we have been slowly reviewing Daisy Christodoulou’s Seven Myths About Education. A note that has sounded time and again is the importance of knowledge. We see this again today as we investigate the final myth she highlights: that teaching knowledge is indoctrination.
Teaching Knowledge is Indoctrination?
This myth seems to arise from postmodernism. In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of theorists claimed that what we often think of as objective facts cannot be agreed to exist. Rather, they argued, we construct reality as societies and cultures. These ‘realities’ are buttressed by institutional power, which preserves these facts. Thus, according to these theorists, teaching knowledge is not neutral, but can be a form of oppression by those who hold societal power, and therefore undemocratic. These theorists argue that the traditional curriculum “reproduces hegemonic values and therefore reproduces social and class inequalities.” Therefore, this approach should be abandoned.
So the response of some educational theorists is to avoid the imposition of external content on pupils, and instead work with the knowledge and experiences that they already have. We see this all over the educational landscape today. One example from recent times is a New Zealand educational leader suggesting a boy in the deep south of our country is better off knowing about muttonbirds than how many continents we have. Indeed, our New Zealand Curriculum is deliberately broad and eschews set knowledge so local communities can ensure their particular needs are addressed and themes relevant to students’ experience can be explored.
Why is this a myth?
So what is wrong with this? Surely Christodoulou is not supporting inequality and oppression? Of course not, but she points out that if we are concerned about democracy and equality, we should be concerned about the teaching of knowledge in schools. If we do not provide a knowledge-rich education in schools we will further exacerbate the undemocratic and unequal features of our society. Why? By only teaching pupils using the knowledge they bring to the classroom, and focussing on their experiences, we automatically disadvantage those who bring less to the classroom. These are the children of those who are not highly educated themselves.
In fact, a good democracy requires that every citizen “have knowledge and understanding of the world beyond their immediate experience, equality requires that there should be no great gaps in the understanding between people or social classes.” Teaching knowledge is not elitist. It’s not classist, and it’s not racist. As Robert Tressel (a trade unionist) said, “What we call civilisation – the accumulation of knowledge…is the fruit of thousands of years of human thought and toil…not the result of the labour of the ancestors of any separate class of people…and therefore it is by right the common heritage of all.” So let’s not leave any child to their own limited local knowledge and experience. Let’s give them the gift of this heritage.
This is my penultimate post on Daisy Christodoulou’s book, Seven Myths About Education. In the previous post, we highlighted the myth that teachers should be teaching transferable skills. Today Christodoulou slaughters another sacred cow in myth 6.
Myth 6: Projects and Activities are the Best Way to Learn
There is a movement in education which frowns upon the compartmentalization of knowledge into subjects and a consequent push for more project-based learning. This has lead to what is called enquiry pedagogy. The goal is to produce more autonomous learners, and the means is project-based learning where ‘real-life’ type projects are given to students. Sounds great. Students are given opportunities to play experts in role play.
Why is this a myth?
First of all, there is a huge difference between experts and novices. Experts have a huge body of background knowledge that is stored in long-term memory. This is available to be called upon when necessary as we have discussed in earlier posts. This body of knowledge in an expert leads to a qualitative difference in thinking between experts and novices. Children do not have this extensive background knowledge, so functioning as an expert in a ‘real-life’ project is an unattainable goal. Christodoulou strongly argues that it is not even a realistic or legitimate aim for secondary school to produce experts, and it is a mistake to look at what experts do and think that is how we produce experts.
So does this mean we don’t believe education is about producing problem-solvers? Of course not. We do want to produce children who are able to solve real-world problems. But how we go about doing this is the key question. Does project-based learning or activities facilitate or hinder our goal? Again, for Christodoulou, the answer is rich knowledge-based instruction. We don’t produce experts by getting them to act as problem-solving experts by doing real-world projects. We set children on the way to being experts by giving them the gift of knowledge.
Christodoulou uses the analogy of training in football to help the reader understand her point. One does not chuck children into 11 a side games. Yes, children play soccer games, but in training, the whole game is broken down into smaller activities like dribbling and tackling, which are practised. This transfers over to the realm of say English. More practice controlling sentences leads to better writing.
An example of what not to do is given in the chapter. Christodoulou mentions the vital importance of getting pupils thinking about the right things. So, for instance, if a teacher were to teach a unit on the Underground Railroad, an activity of backing cookies (perhaps a type of food eaten on the Underground Railroad) would be a failure as a lesson, as it is not an effective way of getting deeper thinking about the Underground Railroad.
The Poison in this Myth
The most iniquitous aspect of this myth is the way it further disadvantages the already disadvantaged. Projects require background knowledge. “Pupils who will do the least badly at such projects are those who have gained background knowledge elsewhere.” This will typically be children from wealthier backgrounds. If we care about aiding students from ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’, the best action we can take, is to give them the requisite knowledge they need.
In recent posts we have been looking at Daisy Christodoulou’s book, Seven Myths About Education. In our previous post we looked at the myth that students can always just look up what they don’t know.
Myth 5: We should teach transferable skills
Today we are investigating the myth of transferable skills.
So what are transferable skills? As the name suggests, they are skills that can be transferred to different settings. And like the other myths, there is a certain attraction to this myth. What educator does not want students to develop skills that can be utilised in multiple areas?
Where do we see this myth?
So what does this myth look like? Christodoulou quotes Professor Gary Claxton, “…knowledge is changing so fast that we cannot give young people what they will need to know because we do not know what it will be. Instead we should be helping them develop supple and nimble minds, so that they will be able to learn whatever they need to.” This is a classic example of the myth of transferrable skills.
Today, teachers and educators seem to have bought this myth, Rote learning of facts is out, focus on skills is in. Project-based learning is in, as are theme-based approaches to learning rather than subject-based learning.
Why it’s a Myth
So what’s the problem? The issue is that skills are not as transferrable as we sometimes think. The way you analyse and problem solve in a maths problem differs to the way you would approach historical questions.
Once again, Dan Willingham, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia has a contribution to make to the debate. He points out that our brain is not like a calculator which can just perform the same function (say analysis) on different sets of data. Rather, “Critical thinking processes are tied to background knowledge.” The implication, he argues is that we need to ensure students acquire background knowledge parallel with practising critical thinking skills.
E.D. Hirsch argues that those who have and use 21st century skills effectively are those who have “domain knowledge in a wide range of domains.” Hirsch refers to a massive body of evidence that shows what we think of as transferrable skills are knowledge based. So, “Knowledge is skill: skill is knowledge.”
A great example of this is in the realm of chess. There is no evidence that chess masters demonstrate more than average competence intellectually. Their talents tend to be chess specific. Thus the acquisition of chess skills is built on recognition memory or stored knowledge.
A second example is in reading. The skill of comprehension in reading is associated with knowledge. So much so, that ‘low’ readers reading a text on baseball were found to comprehend that passage better than ‘good’ readers when those ‘low’ readers had a good knowledge of baseball and the ‘good’ readers did not.
Conclusion
So what we tend to think of as skill in experts is really a function of knowledge that experts have built up into their long-term memory and can retrieve as necessary. This means that if we focus on teaching skills at the exclusion of deep knowledge, we are actually working against the development of transferable skills.
In my daily skim of the news recently, I came across this article bemoaning the government’s response to COVID 19. Why? According to the Ministry for Women. the government’s approach favoured men and was likely to exacerbate gender inequalities.
How so? Well, apparently the ‘shovel ready’ projects benefit workforces that are dominated by men, whereas women tend to make up a larger component of industries such as retail, hospitality and tourism which have been hard hit. Now I don’t really want to get into whether the government’s response to the economic situation, that they by their actions have foisted upon us, is wise or not.
What I do want to look at is one particular quote in the article.
Impact of COVID 19 on Women in the Workforce
Professor Jennifer Curtin, the head of the University of Auckland’s Public Policy Institute is quoted in the article.
My concern about this shovel ready, Ministry of Works, nostalgic spending is that, what happens if too many women lose their jobs, then can’t find a job, and end up staying home and taking care of children?
I read this and thought. Wow, that could be great! Imagine that. An economic crisis that forces us to think about more than just money. An opportunity for families to see value in the home economy and the little lives there. But no, I obviously missed the point. Curtin continued.
Then we end up looking like we looked like in the 1950s. Back to the same old breadwinner model where the bread-winner was the guy.
It’s hardly an argument, but it seems that we must assume that if this economic crisis caused women to stay home and care for children that would be bad. Why? Reading between the lines Curtin might be arguing it is bad because it’s an old model, and gives men more power and women less opportunity to work outside the home.
What is Progress?
But what evidence do we have that the 1950s model was worse than the one we have today? From whose perspective are we making this value judgment? As a child, I appreciated the fact that my mother stayed at home and cared for me. As a teacher, I see kids starved of a mother’s love who could do with a more old fashioned hands-on approach.
Curtin herself, in questioning the budgeting process wants a gender-responsive system where government agencies have to explicitly ask who benefits from policies and address inequalities. Perhaps that thinking should be applied to our children. What benefits them? Would having Mum at home help or hinder their development as human beings? What does true social progress look like?
Well, the research is in. Having a Mum at home for young children, and being home for children when they return from school is best. If you are interested in reading further into this and are not concerned about the inconvenience it might cause your family should you be convinced, a place to begin would be Mary Eberstadt’s Home-Alone America. She looks into the impact that family-child separation has in a number of areas. The book investigates the impact of daycare, as well as other negative effects of typical modern patterns of family life. From obesity to mental health to STDs, our modern patterns of child-raising have wreaked havoc in the lives of countless children.
Unfortunately, as adults, we tend to focus on getting what we want, and the voiceless children struggle to get what they need. So when issues occur in the lives of our children, we don’t look at our lifestyles. Eberstadt notes that “the passionate desire to attribute today’s behavioural and mental problems to inanimate suspects…despite serious evidence to the contrary shows us how reflexively our society fastens on to some explanation, any explanation that does not involve parents.”
So while Curtin might disparage the return of Mums to the home as a result of COVID 19 as some kind of backwards step, perhaps a backwards step is what we need if we are to make positive social progress. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity pointed out that progress is not always forward.
We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
Photo by Jon Flobrant
Maybe we took a wrong turn in our approach to families and childcare. The explosion of mental health issues in children surely tell us something has gone wrong. Statements like Curtin’s devalue children and those who raise children. Implicit in her thinking is that to lose a job and be forced to be at home and raise one’s own children is a backward step. But perhaps these precious little eternal souls are more important than pushing paper from one office to another. Maybe, just maybe, heading back to a more 1950s arrangement might actually be a step forward for many families.
Let’s Think Holistically
Finally, might it not be worth thinking more holistically? Instead of focussing on whether men are getting a better deal, or women are being unfairly treated, I wonder what it would look like if we started thinking of ourselves in terms of households? What if we considered the household as one team? In a team, you have a captain, and you have people playing different positions, but every player has a role to play in winning the game. If we approached the family as a team rather than in an individualistic manner, what might change? What would it look like if fathers captained their families and considered the common good of everyone in their household?
Who hasn’t heard this one? Someone displays an unusual depth of knowledge and another scornfully says, “If I wanted to know that, I could just google it.” We’ve seen hints of this in the other myths. Procedural knowledge, or knowing how is rated about declarative knowledge or knowing what.
This myth has certainly infected the classroom. Apparently teachers shouldn’t worry about their students learning facts. Given our internet age, knowledge is redundant. Rather we need to focus on teaching research skills.
How is this a myth? What is wrong with this thinking?
the first issue is that it denies what research on memory tells us. Knowledge in our long term memory is extremely important. In fact, the more knowledge we have, the greater range of problems we are able to solve. If we memorise frequently used bits of information, these will not clog-up our short term memory when we are trying to solve complex problems.
A classic case in the classroom is teaching fractions with children who do not know their multiplication tables. First times tables must be in the long term memory, then you can teach fractions. Or what about your doctor? Nobody would want their doctor googling how to do a procedure five minutes before they are due to go into surgery. They are going to need a lot of knowledge stored in their long term memory so they can be effective.
Secondly, ‘looking something up’ actually requires a certain amount of knowledge. First of all, one needs to know what one needs to find out. In addition, knowledge of what makes for a good source could be important. And these are just starting points. As Christodoulou points out, “..research skills are, on closer inspection, the function of large bodies of knowledge.” In fact, often when we describe students has having good research skills, we are actually making more of a comment on their general knowledge. Because of their good general knowledge, they are enabled to interpret research questions and approach the whole process of research in a competent manner.
So yes, we do want to teach good research skills. But it should never be an either-or thing. We want to complement this with providing children with a good body of knowledge.
