Philosopy of Education (Updated 26 July 2022)
Philosophy of Education
In science and the humanities education is an agent of cultural change. Other changes agents, which are outside the scope of this essay, include migration, religion, commerce, government, and conquest. Suppose that “Education” denotes the set of processes that enable humans to consciously participate in an entity which Caleb Scharf, an astronomer studying and writing about natural and artificial intelligence, recently called the dataome[1]. Taking a variety of forms, “the dataome” has allowed ideas and material to be shared across space and time within and between a countless number of living things. Consequently, the dataome, both indirectly and directly, supports the scientific discovery, invention, and innovation for which the species, H. sapiens, has been responsible. A further proposal by Scharf is that the dataome, being independent of humankind, is likely to evolve with us and outlast our species. Scharf’s thinking reminds one of an atheist version of the Noosphere described by Teilhard de Chardin[2].
I propose that each of the following quotes speaks a message to teachers of science, particularly to the teachers whose students look forward to STEMM careers, including medicine, computer science and management.
“Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. We tend to confuse the two because humans and other mammals solve most problems by feeling things”[3]
A theoretical cohort is, “A theory combined with the sort of further assumptions about the world including assumptions about apparatus and experimental conditions that are required in order for theories to have observable implications.”[4]
The energetic burden of digital data[5] is such that, “The ongoing experiment in biological evolution has, this time, landed on a trick in the dataome that is both new and perhaps entirely inevitable. Whether or not that carries us further than it has already is unclear and depends a great deal on how we balance the demands of the dataome with our biological needs for a stable and nurturing planetary environment.”
I chose these quotes because STEMM teachers, from early childhood to doctoral and post-doctoral study, educate in a pluralistic society where students come from of a variety of ethnicities, mother tongues and socio-economic backgrounds. Therefore, we must appreciate student diversity and respect the “otherness” of every student’s identity. At the same time STEMM teachers have a responsibility to the foundations of academic disciplines, and to the processes that propagate such disciplines, with change, by incorporating current research. Finally, we have a responsibility to the community, and to the ecosystem of which those whom we educate are a part. Looking forward I submit the best way to meet three sets of needs (those of today’s students, those set by our disciplines’ ongoing development, and those to the future of both, disciplines and students) is to critically examine content and conscientiously select both the course material and the manner in which that material will be communicated. Only such course objectives, designed for inclusivity and set in an equitable manner, are worthy to instill appropriate accountability in diverse students.
The challenges for every instructor, working with colleagues and instructional technology specialists, is to decide what information students need to know to achieve subject matter proficiency and to find the communication “sweet spot” that maximally enables students to learn. It is variation, not homogeneity, that enables populations to thrive in changing environments. That, in my opinion, is a difficult concept for anyone to learn. I believe, nevertheless, that everyone can master it through a pedagogy built so as to enfranchise the full spectrum of students for acquiring information and understanding in elementary courses, and professional norms and standards in higher level work.
Returning to the quotes with which this post began, I can summarize their message using cartoons shown below in Figure 1. There an overview of Translational Science[6] is shown on the left. In the cartoon we see a project in translational science defined by Activities (vertical axis) which take place during specific Stages (horizontal axis) of the project or product lifecycle. Completion of activities in a particular phase can propel the project (green arrows) forward into the next stage, back to an earlier stage or off the lifecycle track (red head on green arrow) altogether. The right side of Figure 1 (redrawn from a book by Huston Smith[7]) shows the arrow of empirical information (labeled number) targeting progressively more difficult to obtain uses of empirical information: unbiased description (labeled objectivity), system understanding (labeled prediction), and human intervention (labeled control). Are these cartoons disparate or highly similar? Both highlight the key elements: empirical information and knowledge correction through feedback, that formed the groundwork on which science was built historically, and which remain active in contemporary science operating for the benefit humanity.
My career in the biopharmaceutical industry was witness to a considerable number of changes in drug discovery and development research, and in medical practice. These changes, largely due to the widespread proliferation of information and communication technology, enabled four areas where empirical science previously did not tread: values, purpose, meaning and quality, to be defined globally in the context of dynamic systems models. Having seen this convergence, and the growth of neuroscience, I propose that learning is an inevitable consequence of experience and memory. Ignorance, however, is the consequence of experience and memory in the absence of education and empathy. Consequently, I endorse a philosophy of education in which those who have knowledge, acquired by education and lived professional experience, are responsible to pass on what, from their store of knowledge, continues to add value to those who are carrying human life forward. This also means those who have knowledge, acquired by education and lived professional experience, participate in rejecting what, from their store of knowledge, fails to add value to those who are carrying human life forward. Obviously, the most difficult job of an educator is deciding on which pile to “place” each of his or her specific “knowledge artifacts”.
References
1. Harari, Y. N. (2019). 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Penguin Random House.
2. de Chardin, P.T (1947) The Formation of the Noosphere in Revue des Questions Scientifiques (Louvain) January 1947. Translated by N. Denny. The Future of Man (1969) Torchbook Harper and Row. Chapter X.
3. Strevens, M. (2020). The Knowledge Machine. Liveright W.W. Norton & Company.
4. Scharf, C. (2021). The Ascent of Information: Books Bits, Genes Machines and Life’s Unending Algorithm. Penguin Random House.
5. Institute of Medicine 2013. The CTSA Program at NIH: Opportunities for Advancing Clinical and Translational Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18323.
6. Smith, H. (1982). Beyond the Postmodern Mind, Crossroad Publishing Company, New York
[1] Scharf, 2021 p6
[2] Denny, 1969 pp 161-192
[3] Harari, 2018 p78
[4] Strevens, 2020 p139
[5] Scharf, 2021 p284
[6] Institute of Medicine, 2013 p20.
[7] Smith, 1982 p65.
Figure 1. Overview of Translational Science to Educate for Careers in Health and Community Care