teaching, learning, and their counterfeits by mortimer adler

8/7/2019 Teaching, Learning, And Their Counterfeits by Mortimer Adler

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TEACHIN G, LEARN ING,AND THEIR COUNTER-

FEITS

BY MORTIMER J. ADLER, PH.D.


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TEACHING, LEARNING, AND THEIR COUNTERFEITS

BY MORTIMER J. ADLER, PH.D.

Everyone knows, or certainly should know, that indoctrination is not genuine teachingand that the results of indoctrination are the very opposite of genuine learning. Yet, as a

matter of fact, much that goes on in the classrooms of our schools is nothing but indoctri-nation.

How can this have come about? How can we have so misunderstood the nature of teach-ing and learning that their counterfeits rather than the genuine articles are rampant in our

schools?

The answer lies in the loss of three insights about the nature of teaching and learning, inconsequence of which three mistakes are made.

1. It is mistakenly supposed that the activity of teachers is always the principal and some-

times the sole cause of the learning that occurs in students.

2. When it is said that all learning is either by instruction or by discovery, it is mistakenly

supposed that what students learn by instruction is something they passively receive fromtheir teachers.

3. The failure to distinguish genuine knowledge from mere opinion, together with the

failure to distinguish impressions made on and retained by the memory from the devel-opment of understanding in the mind, arises a third mistaken supposition-that genuine

knowledge can be acquired without an understanding of what is known.

These three mistaken suppositions are so integrally related to one another that if any oneof them is made, the other two will be made also. It is, therefore, not surprising that allthree have been made by the reigning education establishment with the inevitable conse-

quence that indoctrination has been accepted as genuine teaching instead of being abomi-nated as a vicious counterfeit of it.

Nor should it be surprising that the three basic insights, by which the mistaken supposi-

tions can be corrected, are also so integrally related that the understanding of genuineteaching which derives from any one of these three insights will be accompanied by an

understanding of genuine teaching derived from the other two. In addition, with thatthreefold understanding of genuine teaching will come an understanding of genuine

learning as a development of the mind, not a formation of memories, and as an acquisi-tion of knowledge and understanding, not an adoption of indoctrinated opinions.


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The first of the three insights makes it clear that teaching, like farming and healing, is acooperative, not a productive, art.

The second insight is that all learning is by discovery, either by discovery alone or be

discovery aided by instruction, but never by instruction alone.

The third insight is that bits of information or matters of fact retained by the memory withno understanding of the information or the facts remembered is not knowledge, but mere

opinion, no better than prejudices fostered by propaganda or other sources of indoctrina-tion.

Let me now present a slightly more expanded statement of each of these three insights.

I. TEACHING IS A COOPERATIVE, NOT A PRODUCTIVE, ART

Among the useful arts, only three are cooperative arts. All the rest are productive. Thethree cooperative arts are farming, healing, and teaching.

In the case of such useful arts as shoe-making, ship-building, and cabinet-making, the

results produced would not come into existence were it not for the activity of the artist orcraftsman-the shoemaker, the shipwright, the carpenter. The materials out of which

shoes, ships, and furniture are made, left to themselves, would not naturally tend to pro-duce those things. Such useful products emerge only when craftsmen intervene to shapeor transform raw materials into the desired objects. Here human productive activity is not

only the principal, but also the sole efficient cause of the result achieved.

Now consider such things as the fruits and grains we eat, the health we possess, and theknowledge or understanding we acquire. We might call these things, respectively, the

products of agriculture, of medicine, and of education.

In the case of the fruits and grains, as well as edible animal organisms, prehistoric peoplewere hunters and gatherers.

This means that the edibles they consumed were all products of nature, which they mere-ly picked or killed in order to consume them. Farming began when human beings ac-

quired the skill of working with nature to facilitate the production of fruits and grains andalso edible animal organisms. Farming thus became the first of the cooperative arts.

Long before the art of medicine came into existence, human beings possessed health as

the result of natural causes. Medicine or the art of healing emerged when humans ac-quired the skill of cooperating with these natural processes to preserve health or facilitate

its recovery after a bout of illness.


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Finally we come to teaching, and here it is Socrates who first depicted teaching as a co-operative art. He did so by comparing his own style of teaching with the work of the

midwife. It is the mother, not the midwife, who goes through the pains of childbirth todeliver the child. The midwife merely cooperates with the process, helping the mothering

in her efforts, and making childbirth a little easier and a little more hygienic.

Another way of saying this is to point out that teachers, like midwives, are always dis-pensable. Children can be born without midwives. Knowledge and understanding can be

acquired without teachers, through the purely natural operations of the human mind.

Teachers who regard themselves as the principal, even the sole, cause of the learning thatoccurs in their students simply do not understand teaching as a cooperative art. They

think of themselves as producing knowledge or understanding in the minds of their stu-dents as shoemakers produce shoes out of pliable or plastic materials.

Only when teachers realize that the principal cause of the learning that occurs in a student

is the activity of the student's own mind do they assume the role of cooperative artists.While the activity of the learner's mind is the principal cause of all learning, it is not thesole cause. Here the teacher steps in as a secondary and cooperative cause.

Just as, in the view of Hippocrates, surgery is a departure from healing as a cooperative

art, so, in the view of Socrates, didactic teaching, or teaching by lecturing or telling ratherthan teaching by questioning and discussion, is a departure from teaching as a coopera-

tive art...

II. LEARNING BY INSTRUCTION AND BY DISCOVERY

If in genuine learning, the activity of the learner's own mind is always the principal causeof learning, then all learning is by discovery.

It may be either (a) unaided discovery, when the activity of the learner's mind is the prin-

cipal, but also the sole cause of learning, or (b) aided discovery, when the activity of thelearner's mind is the principal, but not the sole cause of learning.

When instruction is not accompanied by discovery, when instruction makes impressionson the memory with no act of understanding by the mind, then it is not genuine teaching,

but mere indoctrination. Genuine teaching, in sharp distinction from indoctrination, al-ways consists in activities on the part of teachers that cooperate with activities performed

by the minds of students engaged in discovery.


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III. MIND VS. MEMORY, KNOWLEDGE VS. OPINION

The Greek word for mind, nous, identifies it with understanding. What we do not under-

stand at all is possessed by us only as an item remembered. Memory is a by-product ofsense-perception; understanding, an act of the intellect. Statements that are verbally re-

membered and recalled should never be confused with facts understood.

Correlated with this distinction between mind and memory is the distinction betweenknowledge and opinion. To know something as opposed to holding a mere opinion about

it is to understand it in the light of relevant reasons and supporting evidence.

How do students come by the opinions they hold, especially those acquired in the courseof schooling?

They have adopted them on the naked authority of teachers who acted as if they wereproductive, not cooperative, artists--teachers who indoctrinated them by didactic instruc-

tion that was not accompanied by any acts of thinking or discovery on their part.

I have used the phrase "naked authority" to signify the authority arrogated to themselvesby teachers who expect students to accept what they tell them simply because they occu-

py the position of teachers. The only legitimate authority is the authority of the reasonsrelevant or the evidence supporting whatever is to be understood.

Opinions remembered, with that memory reinforced temporarily by "boning up for tests,"are opinions for the most part soon forgotten.

The understanding of ideas once acquired, has maximum durability. What is understood

cannot be forgotten because it is a habit of the intellect, not something remembered.

IV. CONCLUDING R EMARKS

The conception of the teacher as one who has knowledge of information that he or she

transmits to students as passive recipients of it violates the nature of teaching as a coop-

erative art. It assumes that genuine learning can occur simply by instruction, without actsof thinking and understanding that involve discovery by the minds of students.

teaching, learning, and their counterfeits by mortimer adler

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