On the Value of Anthropology and Ethnography in Education
Given all that we've discussed under other topics on this blog, we might rightly wonder whether anthropology and ethnographic study ought not be considered much more fundamental than they are in our contemporary education system. As it is, a student can graduate from college in this country without a single class in cross-cultural understanding, and it would seem that most Americans don't even know what the term ethnography means, nor have most of us given any thought to why it is that most of the world's people come up with very different answers to such fundamentals questions as what matters? What is real? What is true? What is good? And what is right?
Among all our differences, these twin disciplines would help us see that it is the dialogue that we have in common. "This is the phenomenon we study as ethnographers -- the dialogue of action and interaction." [1]
What is being translated in ethnographic study is, according to Spindler, "is what the native knows," his or her "ascription of meaning to events, intentions, and consequences."[2] It amounts to someone else's inside-looking-out perspective -- "the native view of reality."[3]
'Good ethnography', according to Spindler, searches "for clues to the relationship between forms and levels of cultural knowledge and observable behaviors as the dialogue of intervention and response takes place."[4] The "ethnographer's task, according to Wolcott, is the recording of human behaviors in cultural terms [usually] providing an account of some cultural process, such as law, medicine, music, etc.; what we might call 'institutions' from a more static view.[5]
While true "ethnographic study requires direct observation...being immersed in the field situation...and constant interviewing in all degrees of formality and casualness,"[6] we can simulate this method, at least, by ever improving sensitivity and listening. Empathy is a skill we are born with, and perhaps only needs more exercise in order to function better.
As Spindler argues, ethnography is social and cultural rather than psychological because it includes interactions with others.[15] It illuminates the meanings and relationships that form and are formed by "the continuing dialogue that holds communication together.”[9] However, he explains, in as much as it is interactive, it cannot reasonably exclude the psychological from its analysis. Since we who seek to understand this dynamic need all the help we can get, the ethnographic approach cannot afford to ignore any potential help, and thus differs from others in this willingness to consider eclectic perspectives. [16]
But, as Jacobs and Jordan point out, even this is not enough, because much of culture is implicit, that is, taken for granted; and the very nature of assumptions is that they are simply assumed, and thus, not easily discussed explicitly.[ME; p.20] This is important because "many models for research and analysis used by both social scientists and educators do not permit the study of the very processes we have discovered are the most important – those aspects of the continuing dialogue between students and teachers that are hidden beneath the surface of behavior."[10]
A key value shared by Socrates and multicultural studies is humility in the face of this infinite diversity and complexity of human knowledge and all the multiplicity of perspectives it offers. As diversity is increasingly raising its many voices in and about our schools, we cannot help but recognize the growing need to move beyond mere tolerance toward a fuller appreciation of cultural and individual diversity, in both our personal and our institutional practices. It seems the proper question for us to be asking - what do we have to learn from others? What do we, as individuals, have to learn from other individuals? And especially what do we Americans have to learn from other cultures? What do educators around the world have to learn from the study of anthropology, and more specifically, from ethnography – a method that respects the dynamic relation between perspectives, and recognizes what philosophers would urge us to remember, which is both the complementary nature of worldviews, and the necessity of dialogue – that is, if our hope is to understand not only the world we live in, but one another.
It is this recognition of the multi-sidedness of reality that gives the ethnographer great advantage, and gives educators great responsibility. As philosophers from Socrates to John Stuart Mill have argued, because one person's knowledge may be another person's blind spot, it is our worst enemy who would probably be our best teacher. If we understood this better, we would see that understanding goes both ways. Indeed, the 'golden rule of communication' requires that we must listen if we hope to be heard, just as we must give respect if we hope to get it. So again, it seems an important question for us to be asking whether it might be necessary to move beyond the methods of studying people from afar, treating human being and cultures as objects; beyond mere tolerance, toward full appreciation of individual and cultural diversity, in both our personal and our institutional ethics for living.
Given all our differences, it is the dialogue that we have in common. Considering that:
"we are composed of at least 24 ethnic groups, six social classes, males and females, 14 major religious groupings and countless sects, many degrees of left and right and extreme factions in both contingents, gays and straights, drug users and abstainers, and hillbillies and city slickers" - it seems strange that "We claim that there is an American culture," but we can do so "because since prerevolutionary times we have been dialoguing about freedom and constraint, equality and difference, cooperation and competition, independence and conformity, sociability and individuality, Puritanism and free love, materialism and altruism, hard work and getting by, and achievement and failure...somehow we agreed to worry, argue, fight, emulate, and agree or disagree about the same pivotal concerns....They are pivotal (Spindler 1983) and they are arranged in oppositional pairs."[11]
"This is the phenomenon we study as ethnographers – the dialogue of action and interaction."[12]
This focus on dialogue is conceptually preferable to a focus on mere 'culture', anthropologist Spindler explains, because "culturally constructed dialogue" emphasizes the process of communication which shows culture to be alive and growing through active participation, rather than the mere static transmission of information. [13]
So one important question is, what do we Americans have to learn from other cultures? Ethnography works toward the bettering of communication and of understanding or mutual insight between these various cultures, [14] just as anthropology of education might work toward better communication between individual humans, and between them and their own culture, as well as the cultures other than their own.
**
And so, like Socrates, the ethnographer's task is complex and deeply personal, more an act of intuition and inspiration than merely 'social science'. As distinct from this philosophy of other social sciences, the culture that an ethnographer takes as her subject matter is best understood, not only from eclectic outside-looking-in views (i.e. edic, the perspectives that the social science method would have us confine ourselves to) but from inside-looking-out, (emic) empathically and interactively -- as a native might experience it, which is to say, as a dialogue involving the complex reasoning for a given culture being what it is. The ethnographer's task is that of any honest student of human experience, to listen carefully to other's views and to express our own clearly, so to facilitate communication and understanding between us, rather than to win the imaginary battle over whose view is closer to 'the' truth.
The importance of empathy in multicultural ethics, however, while obvious, is not actually 'given'. In fact, it is indeed argued for, and in much the way Paulo Freire argued in his classic 1968 work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire claimed that liberation is not a gift, nor is it merely self-achievement; rather it is a process of interactive re-education through empathic dialogue--itself the truest exercise of freedom. More recently, Maria Lugones support this conclusion in her article, "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and Loving Perception," claiming that "experience that has within it significant insights into non-imperialistic understanding between people" (p.170) can best be had, as the title suggests, by playful and loving "world-traveling"--a way or practice of knowing by which "we discover that there are 'worlds' in which those who are the victims of arrogant perception [in the mainstream construction of reality] are really subjects, lively beings, resistors, [and] constructors of visions" themselves.(p.178)
Taking this diversity seriously, education might find a larger purpose than mere cultural transmission in the task of bridging the isms of misunderstanding between diverse perspectives born of our differing cultural and individual experiences. Recognizing this need for dialogue as a key value, our methods of education might better promote the flexibility of mind, call it eclectic empathy, which is necessary to integrate this complexity into a broader, deeper, mutual understanding, perhaps one involving a complementarity of perspectives afforded by our differing experiences. The question then is, or at least should be, what do we have to learn from each other?
According to Wolcott, "An 'ethnographic approach' implies commitment to a perspective in both the methods of field research and. subsequent writing."[17] And thus, what it is being translated into is the language or 'vernacular' of the readers in other cultures/dialogues to whom it is being addressed.[18] This translation is for the purpose of making sense of a culture in the eyes of outsiders, i.e. communication toward mutual understanding of one another and of cultures in general. And "to the extent that the cultural system involved in [a given] study is similar to their cultural systems serving the same purpose, [a given ethnology] should produce knowledge relevant to the understanding of such roles and cultural systems in general."[19]
In this way, ideographic evidence can lead to fruitful generalizations. If we do not overemphasize single factors, we can recognize similarities without calling them identical. For instance, the relationship between intelligence in primates correlates better with a terrestrial life style, suggesting that it is similarity of conditions, more than anything else, which accounts for similarity of rationality in response. What is an ‘intelligent' response, that is, toward survival and well-being, in one environment for a given kind of creature may or may not be an intelligent response in another.[20]
As Dobbert and Cooke argue, we are obligated to "attempt to move toward a scientifically based theory of child rearing and education which is not limited by our human cultural biases and history."[21]
Such cultural translation is necessary, precisely because we have so much to learn from one another. Mutual understanding is a critically important end in a multicultural community, as ours increasingly is. And yet, we are, to such a great extent, context bound, each and all. It shows up in our American schools, especially from inside-looking-out of them. The dominant culture here has only just begun to realize how much damage is done to young minds because we are so culture bound in our conceptions of value and the worth of our own and other's customs. The cultures we have colonized have known it all along. In our arrogance and ignorance, the nature and value of intercultural and interpersonal understanding has eluded us. Consequently, our methods are intrusive and potentially destructive,[22] and more often discourage cross-cultural learning than encourage it.
As Wolcott's study of elementary school principles shows, despite the way that we hype the role of principle, the actual function they serve is to "thoroughly and systematically" reduce variation among students. Thus principles have their greatest impact "not as agents of change but rather as advocates of constraint," despite this being neither an immediate nor a conscious concern of any of the principles themselves.[23]
*
Multicultural education, with justice as its end, recognizes at the outset that anything that might rightly qualify as truth emerges in the dialogue that is imperative to an interactive and eclectic conception of reality. In multicultural ethics, which is not unlike Socratic ethics in its objective of replacing tyranny with justice, the importance of empathy is better understood as listening without prejudice, which is to say, with a good will. The concept of empathy can be understood simply as a tool to reach the inside-looking-out, that is, subjective point of view, as distinct from the outside-looking-in approach to its objects which materialist science habitually takes. If multicultural ethics needs an argument for this integration at all, it has an obvious analogy in the reason that each of us has two eyes instead of only one--i.e. to give us depth in our vision and understanding. And as John Stuart Mill put it, our differing experiences give us different perspectives from which to view the world, and thus, none of us has the privileged perspective from which reality can be defined. In fact, it is exactly when any of us claims this privilege that we can see clearly the 'construction', as distinct from the 'discovery', of reality.
The abuse of power that goes into such arrogant construction violates truer objective reality, not to mention the natural law of justice, and prevents us from understanding what Mill, like Socrates, referred to as the whole of truth. Only respect, humility and empathy are antidotes to such arrogance. Multicultural education means many things, among them, taking responsibility for the political part we play in the interaction of nested hierarchies. If, as agents with conscience, we have in common our various experiences of the world as it appears from under the weight of one of these hierarchies, then it behooves us to recognize (by way of that sympathetic sense for which women are both hailed and feared) where and how we are putting our own weight on others, sometimes just by pretending to know more about them and what's good for them than we possibly can--at least not without bringing their own voices into our so-called scientific data. We are forced to this method of empathic dialogue by our democratic commitment to justice. And by it we might reconstruct a broader and more inclusive vision of reality... in dialogue together.
It would seem to be our first task then for teachers to--humbly and with good will, or as Lugones would say, playfully and lovingly — reteach ourselves how wholistic truth really is, and how much it has to do with pure and simple respect and honesty. As ancient philosophers would argue, it's clear that only such an eclectic conception of knowledge could qualify as 'understanding' at all. Bearing witness to other's perspectives on reality both dignifies their many oft'-ignored views and brings them into our own growing reality in such a way as to make the interests of others our own. And this would compel us to conflict resolution and reconciliation as we come to see what great good dialectic education truly brings. For there will be little or no hope for peace and justice on this planet until academics discontinue the practice of fighting to win the war over whose perspective is superior -- not to mention the war against unruly students -- as if we 'know' so much more than we do. Conflict in the intellectual world is reflected in our classrooms, and in our culture-wars, and this is reflected in the physical conditions of the poor and powerless. How are the world’s most affected supposed to resolve the conflicts within their lives, if we, in many ways the world most privileged, cannot even resolve them on an intellectual level?
When it comes to education, opportunity is obligation. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “Of those to whom much is given, much is required.” The power that educational policy makers and teachers themselves exercise over the lives of our young is enormous, and the 'good' effects of these actions is unequally distributed. These questions are thus deserving of more scrutiny than we typically give them. Such learning is necessary for our higher potentials for mutual understanding to develop in our educational experience.
As Socrates would remind us, the exercise of empathy, respect and humility in our teaching models it for out students, and we owe them no less than the will to understand the whole truth, including all perspective in dialogue. How else can we resolve the ubiquitous conflict between so many warring cultures than by teaching our young to learn and listen with respect to all points of view represented by all the world's people?
Some, like Fiere, might say an anthropological approach would allow us to see humans as subject to their own self-willed destination, and yet deeply affected by the world around them -- not static and determined by forces outside of themselves, and yet not entirely in the drivers seat of their own lives either. Without these in their early education, how can our young develop an understanding of why different people see the same world differently, or the ability to communicate with those of different backgrounds. It stands to reason that we should, since we each and all come from different places and times. We are like snowflakes in this way, unique and unrepeatable, and yet subject to the same common and understandable pattern formation.
For this reason it also seems important that we remember the Greek ideal of the importance of helping individuals to develop their own particular voice. We face so many similar yet different survival challenges, experience the same kinds of motivations, feelings, needs, and thoughts, yet with regard to differing environments. Our moral dilemmas cannot help but be very much alike, and we cannot help but learn from one another’s experience--unless, like the social sciences, we continue to ignore one-another all together from inside-out.
Now, more than ever, we are as obligated to speak honestly when we have something to say, to contribute to others cumulative understanding by way of our experience, just as we are obligated to listen empathically to other's points of view in order to enhance our own by way of others. Now especially because there are so many of us who see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Such communication amounts in the end to conflict resolution by empathy for the complementarity of various perspectives. In addition, we understand ourselves much better when we share the experience of others and hear our own thoughts in their voices. Hence, the need for dialogue.
[1] (Spindler 1987, 152)
[2] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[3] (Spindler 1987, 14)
[4] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[5] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[6] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[7] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[8] (Spindler 1987, xviii)
[9] (Spindler 1987, 155)
[10] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[11] (Spindler 1987, 152)
[12] (Spindler 1987, 152)
[13] (Spindler 1987, 156)
[14] (Spindler 1987, 155)
[15] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[16] (Spindler 1987, xviii)
[17] (Spindler 1987, 248)
[18] (Spindler 1987, 155)
[19] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[20] (Spindler 1987, 99) For example, egoism, a well conditioned attitude in western culture, seems an effective strategy for survival in a population of egoists, but proves self-defeating in populations where altruism is ample and individuals bond with those who are trustworthy and ostracize the less so from the ties of their affection.(*The Evolution of Altruism, Robert Axelrod, p.*( ; ) This highlights the importance of anthropological study to western educational methods--considering how much we have to learn from and about others.
[21] (Spindler 1987, 99)
[22] (Spindler 1987, 163)
[23] (Spindler 1987, 272)
Given all that we've discussed under other topics on this blog, we might rightly wonder whether anthropology and ethnographic study ought not be considered much more fundamental than they are in our contemporary education system. As it is, a student can graduate from college in this country without a single class in cross-cultural understanding, and it would seem that most Americans don't even know what the term ethnography means, nor have most of us given any thought to why it is that most of the world's people come up with very different answers to such fundamentals questions as what matters? What is real? What is true? What is good? And what is right?
Among all our differences, these twin disciplines would help us see that it is the dialogue that we have in common. "This is the phenomenon we study as ethnographers -- the dialogue of action and interaction." [1]
What is being translated in ethnographic study is, according to Spindler, "is what the native knows," his or her "ascription of meaning to events, intentions, and consequences."[2] It amounts to someone else's inside-looking-out perspective -- "the native view of reality."[3]
'Good ethnography', according to Spindler, searches "for clues to the relationship between forms and levels of cultural knowledge and observable behaviors as the dialogue of intervention and response takes place."[4] The "ethnographer's task, according to Wolcott, is the recording of human behaviors in cultural terms [usually] providing an account of some cultural process, such as law, medicine, music, etc.; what we might call 'institutions' from a more static view.[5]
While true "ethnographic study requires direct observation...being immersed in the field situation...and constant interviewing in all degrees of formality and casualness,"[6] we can simulate this method, at least, by ever improving sensitivity and listening. Empathy is a skill we are born with, and perhaps only needs more exercise in order to function better.
As Spindler argues, ethnography is social and cultural rather than psychological because it includes interactions with others.[15] It illuminates the meanings and relationships that form and are formed by "the continuing dialogue that holds communication together.”[9] However, he explains, in as much as it is interactive, it cannot reasonably exclude the psychological from its analysis. Since we who seek to understand this dynamic need all the help we can get, the ethnographic approach cannot afford to ignore any potential help, and thus differs from others in this willingness to consider eclectic perspectives. [16]
But, as Jacobs and Jordan point out, even this is not enough, because much of culture is implicit, that is, taken for granted; and the very nature of assumptions is that they are simply assumed, and thus, not easily discussed explicitly.[ME; p.20] This is important because "many models for research and analysis used by both social scientists and educators do not permit the study of the very processes we have discovered are the most important – those aspects of the continuing dialogue between students and teachers that are hidden beneath the surface of behavior."[10]
A key value shared by Socrates and multicultural studies is humility in the face of this infinite diversity and complexity of human knowledge and all the multiplicity of perspectives it offers. As diversity is increasingly raising its many voices in and about our schools, we cannot help but recognize the growing need to move beyond mere tolerance toward a fuller appreciation of cultural and individual diversity, in both our personal and our institutional practices. It seems the proper question for us to be asking - what do we have to learn from others? What do we, as individuals, have to learn from other individuals? And especially what do we Americans have to learn from other cultures? What do educators around the world have to learn from the study of anthropology, and more specifically, from ethnography – a method that respects the dynamic relation between perspectives, and recognizes what philosophers would urge us to remember, which is both the complementary nature of worldviews, and the necessity of dialogue – that is, if our hope is to understand not only the world we live in, but one another.
It is this recognition of the multi-sidedness of reality that gives the ethnographer great advantage, and gives educators great responsibility. As philosophers from Socrates to John Stuart Mill have argued, because one person's knowledge may be another person's blind spot, it is our worst enemy who would probably be our best teacher. If we understood this better, we would see that understanding goes both ways. Indeed, the 'golden rule of communication' requires that we must listen if we hope to be heard, just as we must give respect if we hope to get it. So again, it seems an important question for us to be asking whether it might be necessary to move beyond the methods of studying people from afar, treating human being and cultures as objects; beyond mere tolerance, toward full appreciation of individual and cultural diversity, in both our personal and our institutional ethics for living.
Given all our differences, it is the dialogue that we have in common. Considering that:
"we are composed of at least 24 ethnic groups, six social classes, males and females, 14 major religious groupings and countless sects, many degrees of left and right and extreme factions in both contingents, gays and straights, drug users and abstainers, and hillbillies and city slickers" - it seems strange that "We claim that there is an American culture," but we can do so "because since prerevolutionary times we have been dialoguing about freedom and constraint, equality and difference, cooperation and competition, independence and conformity, sociability and individuality, Puritanism and free love, materialism and altruism, hard work and getting by, and achievement and failure...somehow we agreed to worry, argue, fight, emulate, and agree or disagree about the same pivotal concerns....They are pivotal (Spindler 1983) and they are arranged in oppositional pairs."[11]
"This is the phenomenon we study as ethnographers – the dialogue of action and interaction."[12]
This focus on dialogue is conceptually preferable to a focus on mere 'culture', anthropologist Spindler explains, because "culturally constructed dialogue" emphasizes the process of communication which shows culture to be alive and growing through active participation, rather than the mere static transmission of information. [13]
So one important question is, what do we Americans have to learn from other cultures? Ethnography works toward the bettering of communication and of understanding or mutual insight between these various cultures, [14] just as anthropology of education might work toward better communication between individual humans, and between them and their own culture, as well as the cultures other than their own.
**
And so, like Socrates, the ethnographer's task is complex and deeply personal, more an act of intuition and inspiration than merely 'social science'. As distinct from this philosophy of other social sciences, the culture that an ethnographer takes as her subject matter is best understood, not only from eclectic outside-looking-in views (i.e. edic, the perspectives that the social science method would have us confine ourselves to) but from inside-looking-out, (emic) empathically and interactively -- as a native might experience it, which is to say, as a dialogue involving the complex reasoning for a given culture being what it is. The ethnographer's task is that of any honest student of human experience, to listen carefully to other's views and to express our own clearly, so to facilitate communication and understanding between us, rather than to win the imaginary battle over whose view is closer to 'the' truth.
The importance of empathy in multicultural ethics, however, while obvious, is not actually 'given'. In fact, it is indeed argued for, and in much the way Paulo Freire argued in his classic 1968 work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire claimed that liberation is not a gift, nor is it merely self-achievement; rather it is a process of interactive re-education through empathic dialogue--itself the truest exercise of freedom. More recently, Maria Lugones support this conclusion in her article, "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and Loving Perception," claiming that "experience that has within it significant insights into non-imperialistic understanding between people" (p.170) can best be had, as the title suggests, by playful and loving "world-traveling"--a way or practice of knowing by which "we discover that there are 'worlds' in which those who are the victims of arrogant perception [in the mainstream construction of reality] are really subjects, lively beings, resistors, [and] constructors of visions" themselves.(p.178)
Taking this diversity seriously, education might find a larger purpose than mere cultural transmission in the task of bridging the isms of misunderstanding between diverse perspectives born of our differing cultural and individual experiences. Recognizing this need for dialogue as a key value, our methods of education might better promote the flexibility of mind, call it eclectic empathy, which is necessary to integrate this complexity into a broader, deeper, mutual understanding, perhaps one involving a complementarity of perspectives afforded by our differing experiences. The question then is, or at least should be, what do we have to learn from each other?
According to Wolcott, "An 'ethnographic approach' implies commitment to a perspective in both the methods of field research and. subsequent writing."[17] And thus, what it is being translated into is the language or 'vernacular' of the readers in other cultures/dialogues to whom it is being addressed.[18] This translation is for the purpose of making sense of a culture in the eyes of outsiders, i.e. communication toward mutual understanding of one another and of cultures in general. And "to the extent that the cultural system involved in [a given] study is similar to their cultural systems serving the same purpose, [a given ethnology] should produce knowledge relevant to the understanding of such roles and cultural systems in general."[19]
In this way, ideographic evidence can lead to fruitful generalizations. If we do not overemphasize single factors, we can recognize similarities without calling them identical. For instance, the relationship between intelligence in primates correlates better with a terrestrial life style, suggesting that it is similarity of conditions, more than anything else, which accounts for similarity of rationality in response. What is an ‘intelligent' response, that is, toward survival and well-being, in one environment for a given kind of creature may or may not be an intelligent response in another.[20]
As Dobbert and Cooke argue, we are obligated to "attempt to move toward a scientifically based theory of child rearing and education which is not limited by our human cultural biases and history."[21]
Such cultural translation is necessary, precisely because we have so much to learn from one another. Mutual understanding is a critically important end in a multicultural community, as ours increasingly is. And yet, we are, to such a great extent, context bound, each and all. It shows up in our American schools, especially from inside-looking-out of them. The dominant culture here has only just begun to realize how much damage is done to young minds because we are so culture bound in our conceptions of value and the worth of our own and other's customs. The cultures we have colonized have known it all along. In our arrogance and ignorance, the nature and value of intercultural and interpersonal understanding has eluded us. Consequently, our methods are intrusive and potentially destructive,[22] and more often discourage cross-cultural learning than encourage it.
As Wolcott's study of elementary school principles shows, despite the way that we hype the role of principle, the actual function they serve is to "thoroughly and systematically" reduce variation among students. Thus principles have their greatest impact "not as agents of change but rather as advocates of constraint," despite this being neither an immediate nor a conscious concern of any of the principles themselves.[23]
*
Multicultural education, with justice as its end, recognizes at the outset that anything that might rightly qualify as truth emerges in the dialogue that is imperative to an interactive and eclectic conception of reality. In multicultural ethics, which is not unlike Socratic ethics in its objective of replacing tyranny with justice, the importance of empathy is better understood as listening without prejudice, which is to say, with a good will. The concept of empathy can be understood simply as a tool to reach the inside-looking-out, that is, subjective point of view, as distinct from the outside-looking-in approach to its objects which materialist science habitually takes. If multicultural ethics needs an argument for this integration at all, it has an obvious analogy in the reason that each of us has two eyes instead of only one--i.e. to give us depth in our vision and understanding. And as John Stuart Mill put it, our differing experiences give us different perspectives from which to view the world, and thus, none of us has the privileged perspective from which reality can be defined. In fact, it is exactly when any of us claims this privilege that we can see clearly the 'construction', as distinct from the 'discovery', of reality.
The abuse of power that goes into such arrogant construction violates truer objective reality, not to mention the natural law of justice, and prevents us from understanding what Mill, like Socrates, referred to as the whole of truth. Only respect, humility and empathy are antidotes to such arrogance. Multicultural education means many things, among them, taking responsibility for the political part we play in the interaction of nested hierarchies. If, as agents with conscience, we have in common our various experiences of the world as it appears from under the weight of one of these hierarchies, then it behooves us to recognize (by way of that sympathetic sense for which women are both hailed and feared) where and how we are putting our own weight on others, sometimes just by pretending to know more about them and what's good for them than we possibly can--at least not without bringing their own voices into our so-called scientific data. We are forced to this method of empathic dialogue by our democratic commitment to justice. And by it we might reconstruct a broader and more inclusive vision of reality... in dialogue together.
It would seem to be our first task then for teachers to--humbly and with good will, or as Lugones would say, playfully and lovingly — reteach ourselves how wholistic truth really is, and how much it has to do with pure and simple respect and honesty. As ancient philosophers would argue, it's clear that only such an eclectic conception of knowledge could qualify as 'understanding' at all. Bearing witness to other's perspectives on reality both dignifies their many oft'-ignored views and brings them into our own growing reality in such a way as to make the interests of others our own. And this would compel us to conflict resolution and reconciliation as we come to see what great good dialectic education truly brings. For there will be little or no hope for peace and justice on this planet until academics discontinue the practice of fighting to win the war over whose perspective is superior -- not to mention the war against unruly students -- as if we 'know' so much more than we do. Conflict in the intellectual world is reflected in our classrooms, and in our culture-wars, and this is reflected in the physical conditions of the poor and powerless. How are the world’s most affected supposed to resolve the conflicts within their lives, if we, in many ways the world most privileged, cannot even resolve them on an intellectual level?
When it comes to education, opportunity is obligation. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “Of those to whom much is given, much is required.” The power that educational policy makers and teachers themselves exercise over the lives of our young is enormous, and the 'good' effects of these actions is unequally distributed. These questions are thus deserving of more scrutiny than we typically give them. Such learning is necessary for our higher potentials for mutual understanding to develop in our educational experience.
As Socrates would remind us, the exercise of empathy, respect and humility in our teaching models it for out students, and we owe them no less than the will to understand the whole truth, including all perspective in dialogue. How else can we resolve the ubiquitous conflict between so many warring cultures than by teaching our young to learn and listen with respect to all points of view represented by all the world's people?
Some, like Fiere, might say an anthropological approach would allow us to see humans as subject to their own self-willed destination, and yet deeply affected by the world around them -- not static and determined by forces outside of themselves, and yet not entirely in the drivers seat of their own lives either. Without these in their early education, how can our young develop an understanding of why different people see the same world differently, or the ability to communicate with those of different backgrounds. It stands to reason that we should, since we each and all come from different places and times. We are like snowflakes in this way, unique and unrepeatable, and yet subject to the same common and understandable pattern formation.
For this reason it also seems important that we remember the Greek ideal of the importance of helping individuals to develop their own particular voice. We face so many similar yet different survival challenges, experience the same kinds of motivations, feelings, needs, and thoughts, yet with regard to differing environments. Our moral dilemmas cannot help but be very much alike, and we cannot help but learn from one another’s experience--unless, like the social sciences, we continue to ignore one-another all together from inside-out.
Now, more than ever, we are as obligated to speak honestly when we have something to say, to contribute to others cumulative understanding by way of our experience, just as we are obligated to listen empathically to other's points of view in order to enhance our own by way of others. Now especially because there are so many of us who see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Such communication amounts in the end to conflict resolution by empathy for the complementarity of various perspectives. In addition, we understand ourselves much better when we share the experience of others and hear our own thoughts in their voices. Hence, the need for dialogue.
[1] (Spindler 1987, 152)
[2] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[3] (Spindler 1987, 14)
[4] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[5] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[6] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[7] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[8] (Spindler 1987, xviii)
[9] (Spindler 1987, 155)
[10] (Spindler 1987, 154)
[11] (Spindler 1987, 152)
[12] (Spindler 1987, 152)
[13] (Spindler 1987, 156)
[14] (Spindler 1987, 155)
[15] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[16] (Spindler 1987, xviii)
[17] (Spindler 1987, 248)
[18] (Spindler 1987, 155)
[19] (Spindler 1987, 246)
[20] (Spindler 1987, 99) For example, egoism, a well conditioned attitude in western culture, seems an effective strategy for survival in a population of egoists, but proves self-defeating in populations where altruism is ample and individuals bond with those who are trustworthy and ostracize the less so from the ties of their affection.(*The Evolution of Altruism, Robert Axelrod, p.*( ; ) This highlights the importance of anthropological study to western educational methods--considering how much we have to learn from and about others.
[21] (Spindler 1987, 99)
[22] (Spindler 1987, 163)
[23] (Spindler 1987, 272)