Nature as a teacher

The 'organic concept' as developed in the writings of the early German romantics is perhaps not as well known as it might be. In brief, the concept, a fusion of the philosophies of Fichte and Spinoza, sought to unify the natural, physical world and the mental world into an organic whole (see Beiser, 2003). In this model, nature is the absolute and the mind is one part, the most highly developed part, of that whole. There is only a difference in degree and not a distinction in kind, between the mental and the physical. According to this theory, the mental activity of the genius (the artist or the philosopher) is but nature coming to its self awareness. Nature remains indeterminate and inchoate without humanity. But as plenty of Romantic poets have demonstrated through their work, it may also be true that humans can discover or reflect on their own self through exposure to nature.

There can be little doubt that humans have transformed their environment to a far greater degree than other species. This capacity for transformation and rapid change lend to humankind a somewhat precarious destiny. We may use our extraordinary capacities of imagination and love to live in friendship with and amongst human and nonhuman others, or we may continue to believe that the earth serves man and remain 'masters of the mystery that the earth breathes'. As the most complex manifestation of nature, the romantics understood quite well that humans bore a heavy burden. With the benefit of an aesthetic and moral education that taught the individual how to truly love what is not of themselves as a family, as community, we might at least approach wholeness. Friedrich Schlegel once wrote that to 'follow nature' is the only precept of a moral education. (See Beiser, 1996: 152) Why did he say this? Because Schlegel thought that despite humanity's elevated position, nature may remain the best teacher of all. Nature can teach us how to live well…

Geography and educational aims

This post follows on from the previous one on Justifying geography.

The kinds of aims we should have for the living of a fulfilling human life are clearly highly debatable, as is the idea that we can provide any kind of objective list of aims in the first place. However, I am not delving into this particular issue here (see White, 2005 for more on this). In this post I am more concerned with examining how we might go about justifying geography in light of the kinds of aims which actually have been enshrined in the latest version of the KS3-4 National Curriculum (and I assume here that these have been decided upon after lengthy and painstaking deliberation). I must also add that at the time of writing a new government has just taken office that holds some very different conceptions of education from its predecessor, and so it could be that these aims are revised again in the not too distant future. Nevertheless, the aims as they stand are not overly contentious, and they provide a good starting platform from which to begin our justification for geography. I see this as an unavoidably slow and meticulous task that really requires empirical evidence to back it up. However, we can at least make some headway here.

Justifying geography

In the last post we saw that subjects cannot simply appeal to tradition to justify their place on the curriculum. Each subject has, instead, to continually justify its place by examining itself against the set of aims and principles that have been decided in advance as being core to a good education. By doing so, we will not have proved that initiation into the subjects is in fact the best method of education but we will at least have demonstrated that learning a particular subject contributes to our wider educational goals. This is perhaps the best we can hope for.

This process of justification may be easier for some subjects than for others. It is my view that when it comes to geography the justification seems, initially, relatively easy. Not only does it seem intuitively important to understand human and physical worlds and their interconnections, but in addition it is hard to image a time when such an understanding wouldn’t be important for a life worth living. Indeed, we might feasibly conceive of a scenario in which we needed no such understanding, for example, one in which we were all pre-programmed to behave, like robots, in a particular way according to an extrinsic plan. But even in this case, which after all is not too dissimilar to some theological worldviews that have held sway over the centuries, some minimal world knowledge might still seem desirable. Such knowledge might consist of some downloaded information that enabled us to orientate ourselves, perhaps a kind of personal Geographical Information System (GIS) wired into our heads for instance. The important point is that so long as life is considered not to be so controlled, and ourselves to be autonomous beings, some understanding of the physical and human world in which we live out our lives seems essential.

A traditional fallacy

In the previous two postings I have attempted to demonstrate that school subjects still matter. I have done so largely in response to arguments to the effect that 'traditional subjects' are irrelevant in the information age and also to trends, particularly in academies, that see such subjects undermined in favour of vocational training.

At this point I wish to first single out the rather emotive use of the word 'traditional' as it is used by both critics and ardent supporters of a subject-based curriculum. When a critic adjoins the word 'traditional' to 'subject' they are surely referring to content heavy, fact rich subjects of the grammar school style. Yet we can cannot overlook the clear and well-documented fact that subjects can be other than traditional, so certainly no effective arguments against a subject-based curriculum can be made simply on the grounds that they are too traditional (assuming that the critic has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the tradition is in itself a undesirable thing).

Academies and curricular freedoms

The UK's new Department of Education's first bill is to give thousands more schools around the country the opportunity to become academies. One of the often asserted benefits of becoming an academy is increased curricula freedom, but freedom from what exactly? Freedom from overly rigid curriculum constraints is, from the perspective of most, a good thing. But when exactly does the much welcomed freedom to foster innovative and response approaches to teaching and learning become freedom from the responsibility to give our children a broad and balanced education? How can we facilitate the former whilst avoiding the exceedingly unfortunate scenario that the latter presents? How are we to react when we hear of schools dropping entire subjects at whim solely in order to improve league-table performance?

These are the kinds of questions stimulated by a report published by Civitas last December called 'The Secrets of Academies' Success' by Anastasia de Waal (2009).

Do subjects still matter?

In my last post on education and wonder I upheld the thesis that all learning begins in our emplaced and embodied experience of the world. In particular, in the experience of wonder, in which the startling fact of encounter itself comes to the fore – the fact that we are in the world, belong to the world, and are compelled to therefore question and comprehend that world. I am aware that this may lead some readers to enquire whether I am thereby arguing for a kind of education that is guided solely by the dictates of experience and relevance. For example, do I take the position that subjects or disciplines, those traditional conduits of knowledge that hitherto comprised the form and content of education, are misguided and outdated? I must declare straight away that I do not subscribe to such a view. Let us reflect for a moment on Kant's acute remark in his first Critique:

"But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience" (My italics)