Humanistic Critique of Education. Группа авторов
‘foibles and antics” of “the Human Barnyard.’” Reaffirming “the parliamentary process,” it is motivated by a “humanitarian concern to see how far conflict (war) may be translated practically into linguistic struggle and how such verbal struggle may be made to eventuate in a common enactment short of physical combat.”
Other details noted: “encouraging tolerance by speculation”; a “Neo-Liberal Ideal” that proposes to accept with ironic resignation “the development of technology, a development that will require such a vast bureaucracy (in both political and commercial administration) as the world has never before encountered”; would “confront the global situation with an attitude neither local nor imperialistic”; and is designed to embody its attitude in a method of linguistic analysis.
In his “howevers” (and howevers are of the essence in this perspective) Professor Benne finds that Burke’s book is not sufficiently “normative, preferential.” But there is a partial however to this however: “Nevertheless, one can find implicit norms in his description of his method,” as with Burke’s stress upon the dialectical, which is equated with “dramatism” at one end and with “scientific method” at the other, and with an over-all complexity of view that is ironic. (For irony “arises when one tries, by the interaction of terms upon one another, to produce a development which uses all the terms,” in the methodic search for “a ‘perspective of perspectives’ in which the values of each partial perspective are in some measure preserved.”)
Calling the book “a methodology of practical judgment,” Professor Benne next refers to another work, The Discipline of Practical Judgment in a Democratic Society (by Raup, Benne, Smith, and Axtelle), which “attempts to do justice to the meaning of Burke’s pentad of dramatistic terms in the act of judgment, though without the employment of his terminology.” These two books “seem fruitfully to supplement each other”; and they “make at least a beginning in this task of the interpretation of rationality and of contemporary symbolic adequacy.” Or, in sum: “‘Symbolic adequacy’ can only be developed,” and “mastery of our linguistic resources (which are ultimately our rational resources) can be achieved if acquired in the dramatic perspective of the significant conflicts of our time.”
Among other considerations stressed in this perspective, we night list briefly: Their systematic concern with the principle of “identification” that prevails, for instance, when ruler and subjects, however disparate their ways of living, feel themselves united in some common cause; the gleams of “mystery” and corresponding feelings of guilt that arise when beings of different status are in communication; the modes of symbolic purification ingrained in the nature of symbolic action, and culminating in acts of victimage; the principle of completion to which language vows us, as when we round out a judgment upon others until it returns upon the self (cf. the Kantian “categorical imperative”); the verbal resources of transcendence, implicit in the initial momentous fact that the word transcends the thing it names; and, above all, the workings of that marvel of marvels, not present in nature, and found only in the resources of symbolism, the negative (with its “completion” or “perfection” in the “thou shalt not”).
The approach to human relations through the study of language in terms of drama makes such concerns primary and seeks to build a systematic terminology to treat of human quandaries in such a spirit. It contends that the basic motives of human effort are concealed behind the clutter of the machinery, both technological and administrative, which civilization has amassed in the attempts to live well. It contends that by a methodic study of symbolic action men have their best chance of seeing beyond this clutter, into the ironic nature of the human species. Yet it seeks to be as instrumentalist as the instrumentation it would distrust. But while it would completely grant that terminologies of motion are properly cultivated in those fields of applied science dealing specifically with aspects of motion (as the physical sciences), it would categorically resist any quasi-positivistic tendencies to treat of the human realm in such terms.
We must here leave many relevant questions unanswered. But we might close this section by a reference to the kind of “short-cut” which we consider primary, where the analysis of particular linguistic structures is concerned:
We refer to the notion that the study of symbolic action in particular literary works should begin with the charting of “equations.” That is: When you consult a text, from which you hope to derive insights as regards our human quandaries in general, you begin by asking yourself “what equals what in this text?” And then, next, “what follows what in this text?”
The study of such “equations” is a way of yielding without demoralization. One cannot know in advance what the “equations” are to be (what “hero” is to equal, what “villain” is to equal, what “wisdom” is to equal, etc ).3 Yet in one search for such “equations,” which the author himself spontaneously exemplified rather than upheld as conscious doctrine, one is guided by method. Accordingly, such analysis is no mere surrender, though it does set up a preparatory stage in which one wholly “yields” to the text.
Having thus, without heckling, systematically let the text say its full say, even beyond what its author may have thought he was saying, we have the basic admonition as regards man, with relation to his specialty, “symbolic action.” We see “exhortations” of terrifying importance being prepared for, even when a writer has no such intentions in mind. For, if certain elements equal “good” and certain elements equal “bad” (or, what is often more important, if certain elements equal “socially superior” and certain elements equal “socially inferior”), then in contemplating the “dynamics” of such “equations” (their implied hortatory value), do we not contemplate the very essence of human foibles?
And, at least within the ideality of our educational pursuits, are we not thereby admonished to watch and wait—and not just preceptorially, but technically?
“Dramatism,” the approach to the human situation “linguistically,” in terms of symbolic action, fulfils its purposes only in so far as it makes methodical the attitude of patience. The “dramatic” may thunder. It should. The “dramatistic,” in a commingling of techniques and hypochondriasis, will “appreciate” man’s ways of thundering.
Educational Aims and Values
Education, as so conceived, would be primarily admonitory. It would seek to become a sophisticated and methodized set of parables, or fables. Noting how man’s distinctive trait, his way with symbols, is the source of both his typical accomplishments and his typical disabilities, education as so conceived would be first and foremost “of a divided mind,” and would seek to make itself at home in such divisiveness.
Far too often, education is wholly under the sign of the promissory. The serious student enters school hoping to increase his powers, to equip himself in the competition for “success,” to make the “contacts” that get him a better-paying job. Vocational courses almost inevitably confirm such an attitude, since their main purpose is to perfect technical ability, to teach special skills.
The “humanistic” aspect of the curriculum is usually approached in the same spirit, even by those who think of themselves as opponents of the vocational emphasis. The courses are expected in some way or other to help students “get ahead” as individuals. Humanistic education thus becomes the attempt to teach and to acquire the kind of “insignia” that are thought to be proof of cultural election.
This pragmatic emphasis may not always be individualistically motivated. With the project of The Republic for the training of the guardians, for instance, the emphasis was rather in the direction of Plato’s yearning that education might serve for the triumph of all Greek states, united in a common cause against the “barbarians.” And nationalistic emphases in general would belong here; for although there is conceivable an ideal world of nationalisms that would be related to one another as peacefully as the varied portraits in an art gallery, we need no very difficult fables to admonish us about the ever-ready dialectical resource whereby national “differences” may become national “conflicts.”
Only a truly “universal” attitude toward educational purposes can modify this intrinsically competitive emphasis. Such an attitude would be