Humanistic Critique of Education. Группа авторов
Burke’s “linguistic approach” to education to contextualize that approach in the problems of and prospects for democratic culture and to discuss the implications of the Burkeian approach to education and democracy for the renewal of American democratic culture.
Humanistic Critique of Education: Teaching and Learning as Symbolic Action fills an important scholarly niche by bringing together excellent scholarship while extending Kenneth Burke’s ideas into a rarely touched area of inquiry, thus providing an opportunity to foster new research and application of his system in new and fruitful ways. Research findings based on ideas applied in situ from Humanistic Critique of Education would be the next important step to contributing knowledge through the scholarship on teaching and learning.
Notes
1. Bernie Brock and I wrote this introduction several months before his death, and I carried on our work for publication. This chapter is likely the last (or at least one of his last) projects, which he embraced with his usual enthusiasm and critical perspective. Through this brief chapter we wanted to apply some of his selected critical observations about America’s education system and bolster them with evidence from other sources—to help me frame this volume’s role in bridging scholarship about Kenneth Burke and education.
2. A related metaphor to these is “student as customer,” which many institutions use to define both their relationships with students and their institutional missions. The problem with this metaphor is that it, essentially, equates education with the mere purchasing of a product or service (cf. McMillan & Cheney, 1996; chapter 7 in this volume). Although education, strictly speaking, may be viewed as a service, it certainly is not like buying a product, such as a toaster. And if education is viewed as a service, it is unlike having a carpet cleaned, for example, where people who want it done may be those who cannot do it well, do not want to do it at all themselves, or find it easiest to pay someone to do it for them. Education, if viewed as a service, is unique from all others, at least because of the particular symbolic action inherent in educational settings among instructors, students, alumni, and administration.
References
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1 Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education*
Kenneth Burke
Basic Orientation
Beginning absolutely, we might define man as the typically language-using, or symbol-using, animal. And on the basis of such a definition, we could argue for a “linguistic approach to the problems of education.” Or we could settle for much less, merely pointing to the obviously great importance of the linguistic factor as regards both education in particular and human relations in general.
Language in Educational Theory
For symmetry’s sake, we would build upon the more thoroughgoing of these positions. Yet, for prudence’ sake, we would remind the reader: Even if he will not go so far with us, there are still many points in favor of restoring (however differently) the great stress once placed upon language in educational theory. (Recall that the medieval trivium comprised grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic.)
In either case, whether the more thoroughgoing or the less thoroughgoing of these positions is adopted, we shall be considering our subject in terms of symbolic action. We shall look upon language-using as a mode of conduct and shall frame our terms accordingly. We could call this position “dramatistic” because it thus begins with a stress upon “action.” And it might be contrasted with idealistic terminologies, that begin with considerations of perception, knowledge, learning. In contrast with such epistemological approaches, this approach would be ontological, centering upon the substantiality of the act. Also, a “dramatistic” approach, as so conceived, is literal, not figurative. Man literally is a symbol-using animal. He really does approach the world symbol-wise (and symbol-foolish).1
But a “dramatistic” approach, with its definition of man as the typically language-using or symbol-using animal, points two ways. First, the principles of symbol-using must be considered in their own right, as a separate “realm” or “dimension” (not reducible to “nature” in the nonverbal or extraverbal sense of the term). Second, the formula should warn us not to overlook the term “animal” in our definition. Man as an animal is subject to the realm of the extraverbal, or nonsymbolic, a realm of material necessity that is best charted in terms of motion. That is. in his sheer animality, man is to be described in terms of physical or physiological motion, as contrasted with the kind of terms we need for analyzing the realm of verbal action.
Professor Brubacher has touched upon an analogous problem, when referring to the classical definition of man as “rational animal.” As regards those who “subscribed to a humanistic theory of education,” he says: “They held with Aristotle that the distinctive nature of man which set him off from other animals was his rationality. The principal function of education, therefore, was to develop this rationality.”
In general, this partial nonsequitur,