| [Education For Tomorrow: No 84, 2005] By hand and by brain A contribution to discussion Assumptions about learning For the post-fourteen-year-old curriculum in most secondary schools, there is an obligatory insistence on a separation into groups of subjects thought of as either “academic” or “practical”. Within this separation, pupils and parents have to choose between “options”, variously made available by different schools in accordance with their particular material resource, spatial organisation, current staffing, educational imagination and school tradition — a process accepted by all as natural and inevitable. It’s a process informed by many assumptions, made by pupils, parents, teachers and society at large: That different pupils have differing “dispositions” towards particular curriculum areas (recall the “Two Cultures” debate of C.P. Snow); that certain pupils will be unable to “cope” with some forms of study and that there are pupils who will be easier to manage if working on subjects they have actually chosen. There is the role played by family expectations and the anticipation of high earnings from a particular job; and the many assumptions surrounding gender, which though not always explicit, are often all-pervading. Of course, several pupils will not be able to achieve their preferred “options” — the compiler of the scheme will already have had their own stereotypes in mind, as well as the constraints of limited resources, so heavy persuasion ensues! But larger numbers of pupils will have no real preference at all, apart from their previous experience of some of the teachers or a particular teacher’s reputation within the school — and looming over all this is the vexed question of the examination system, clearly striated by its own fierce assumptions regarding “mental” and “material” work. The General Question of Choice The whole question of “choice” itself arises here — choosing a set of subjects to study at age fourteen is of a different order to choosing a wallpaper for the living room! “Choosing” a gas supplier when all the gas is produced at a single source is illusory — if there is a “best buy” why don’t we all use it? If different products have different uses, responding to different needs, then “choice” becomes one of using the technically correct product. Like, for example, using the correct type and size of screw in hanging a door. If you really need a different washing powder for coloured clothes and a different one for white, then every manufacturer will make both and the only essential difference will be in the advertising. In all cases the scientifically established facts operating in the particular circumstances should constrain decisions — pincers and pliers, for example, have different functions. It is spurious to become subjected to the generalised notion of “choice”. This only artificially produces an extension of “the market” for the convenience of different components of capitalist production. A False distinction So it is with “choice” at fourteen plus, especially with regard to “academic” and “vocational” strands. “Mental”, “intellectual” or “academic” activity is usually regarded as in some way superior to “practical”, “material” or “vocational” activity; of thinking over doing. This is not justifiable, for the two are inextricably linked. Read Karl Marx, for example in Capital, Vol. 1, (remembering that Marx uses “labourer” where we would put “worker”): “A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.” The thought, in fact, is father to the deed! Conscious activity has to take place before any real object can be constructed. But it’s the material world which instigates the intellectual concept: “We begin with real, active men, and from their real life-process show the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms of the human brain also are necessary sublimates of men’s material life-process, which can be empirically established and which is bound to material preconditions.” (The German Ideology) Where, in effect Marx enquires, do abstract concepts originate? Though constructed in imagination by thought (cognition) they must be instigated at the initial stage from natural observation external to the thinker. One sees birds flying so one can imagine humans flying — which with modern technology leads to a further stage, of producing images on a screen. And then, through investigation of the forces involved, a way of actually transporting people through the air is found! Consequencies for the Curriculum So, there is a constant interchange between thought and action with, after the primary impulse which is from nature, no useful distinction to be made between them. Acceptance of this would have wide implications, for with the abolition of the distinction projected onto ‘subjects”, all pupils would very largely study the same curriculum. Classes would have to be smaller, text-books specially written, teachers newly trained, careful provision made for slower pupils — but for the first time the word “comprehensive” applied to schools would take on real meaning! Bound up with this is the concept of “educability” — belief in the possibility of “improvement” (ie. a more aware, penetrating appreciation of structure and detail) in learning amongst all non-brain-damaged children. Because we have all met pupils who have great difficulty with learning and retention doesn’t mean they are to be abandoned. There are a multitude of factors, hardly researched, influencing the situation. A more humane system would undertake this research very seriously. Primary, as well as secondary schooling should promote a planned, linked curriculum purposefully orientated towards essential knowledge but not, at school level, towards the vagaries of changing commercial and industrial pressures and certainly without targets and league tables. (But also see eg EFT 81, “Germinating the Seed”). You don’t learn to become a plumber but you do learn the principles of a domestic central heating system; you don’t learn how to make a shirt but you do learn to sew on a button. You don’t need to distinguish the philosophical systems of Hegel from Kant; you do need to distinguish a good argument from a bad. Both doing and thinking are for all! Every child should know how to use and care for basic tools (including culinary etc.), in both workshop and domestic contexts. Perhaps even to make a simple joint in wood but not necessarily construct a coffee table. At the same time, no one who has acquired basic skills should be precluded moving from (say) carpentry to joinery, probably outside the prescribed time-table. Certainly all the “traditional” subjects would be included: History to give a sense of development in time and the progression of ideas; Geography and Geology for the distribution of natural resources and the agglomeration of people; all the Sciences including Astronomy, Cosmology, Meteorology and the Environment to study the structure of the material world and its interaction with humankind; English Language and a Foreign Language and World Literature for the study of relationships between people and the modification of consciousness; Art to appreciate, interpret and enlarge experience of the world; Music to be involved in and produce, emotion through sound, individually and collectively; Sport and physical exercise for development of the body... It is acknowledged that elements of such a curriculum as is hinted at here have been and are incorporated into many schools” schemes of work and from time to time in several different countries. However, what is advocated is its adoption throughout all schools, for all pupils, at all stages, suitably modified according to age, backed up by advice, based on carefully structured research. At every stage, the interrelation between contemplation and activity, between “hand” and “brain” must be revealed and emphasised, each informing the other. With an exercise in geometry, for example, pupils are often urged to “Imagine it’s done then see how you could do it” and then look for extensions or modifications of what has been proved; how often one hears of a sportsman that he has the necessary techniques but lacks adequate mental preparation, which when achieved, promotes new moves. Polytechnical education It would be inappropriate on such a system for directly vocational education to be undertaken, though there could well be integrated into it examination of general production techniques (something like the old “day release”, revised ‘sandwich courses” or modified “work experience”), clearly incorporated as part of normal work. The time for actual industrial or commercial or truly “academic” training is at least post sixteen. This still however should be studied as a two-way process, whether through apprentiships or at University. Taken all together, these various strands form the basis of what could be termed “polytechnical education”. Philosophical background This separation between “hand” and “brain” could be regarded as a starting point for an examination of the difference between ‘subjective idealism” (“we can only know the appearances of things”) and “dialectical materialism” (“everything is in a state of becoming”). Marx writes: “The division of labour only becomes a real division from the moment when the distinction between material and mental labour appears. From this moment, consciousness can really imagine that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it is really conceiving something without conceiving something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc.”(Historisch-kritisch Gesamtausgabe ) Marx further writes: “In order to study the connection between intellectual and material production it is above all essential to conceive the latter in its determined historical form and not as a general category. For example, there corresponds to the capitalist mode of production a type of intellectual production quite different from that which corresponds to the medieval mode of production. Unless material production itself is understood in its specific historical form, it is impossible to grasp the characteristics of the intellectual production which corresponds to it or the reciprocal action between the two.” (Theorien uber den Mehrwert) The dialectical materialist believes the world to be knowable, susceptible to influence by people, who are in their turn influenced by the new changes. Not only does knowledge advance but the manner of its study must also advance with the new changes in that knowledge. A call to action It might be objected that now, when so much of the social fabric is being dismantled, is not the time to attempt fundamental discussion. But apart from it always being the right time, it is especially important when the situation appears darkest, for otherwise on what basis do you begin a fight-back, and how, on becoming even partially successful, do you know what to do to take advantage of your victory? “Development”, says Lenin, “is the struggle of opposites” (Philosophical Notebooks) Philip Chaikin |