Review of Perkinson, part 1

[Alan Forrester]

This is part 1 of a review of "Teachers without goals, students
without purposes" by
Henry J. Perkinson. This part is a review of Part One of the book.

This is a book about education inspired by Popperian epistemology. I
give a summary of material in the book with comments by me in
brackets.

Overall the book's biggest problem is that it tries to address
education without ever discussing the anti-liberal methods used by
parents and teachers against children.

--------------

Part One Against Modernism (Modernism is jargon for standard ideas
about teaching.)

1 Against Learning

Criticises the idea that knowledge can be transmitted to children and
that a teacher's job is to promote learning. The child has to recreate
knowledge himself. The standard idea is that students receive
knowledge from teachers. Teachers provide problems to students and the
students learn by solving those problems. That is, the problems come
from outside the student and this somehow makes the student develop
the right knowledge. But this doesn't make sense since knowledge has
to be created by producing variations on existing knowledge and
selecting among them. (I found this chapter a bit unclear since he
presents a lot of it in terms of history of who said what.)

2 Students without purposes

Teachers say they can't make students learn. The student has to want
to do it and if he doesn't learn. If child doesn't learn he didn't pay
attention. Knowledge is created by conjecture and criticism. Claims
that humans have an advantage over animals because humans can
formulate their knowledge in language and criticise it. (This is
wrong. Humans are different from animals because animals don't create
new knowledge.)

In biological evolution organisms don't adapt because of a purpose.
Rather, organisms just adapt because the environment. (This is wrong.
Animals don't adapt at all. Their genes adapt.)

Likewise, students purposes don't matter to the growth of their
knowledge. They will just find flaws in their knowledge and fix the
flaws. Students may have purposes but teachers don't have to pay
attention to them. He claims that his students say they have to want
to learn in order to do so and he denies this. (This is bad. If an
adult wants to help a child he might say. "Okay, you want to be
President, but that's not something you can do right now and you might
change your mind. So what are you interested in doing now." In that
sense, some plan a child has could be irrelevant. But whether the
child is interested in what he is doing now is highly relevant. If he
isn't interested in something and you try to make him do it you're a
scumbag. Perkinson is not clear about this.)

3 Teachers without goals

Teachers try to transmit knowledge to students, but this is impossible
and it's a bad idea to try for three reasons. (1) It's immoral.
Teachers have to ignore their fallibility and deny agency to their
students. (2) Attempts to transmit usually fail. Students often forget
knowledge teachers try to transmit since the student didn't create it
and kept it separate from their own knowledge. (3) When knowledge is
successfully transmitted the students usually regard it as true
uncritically, which hampers the growth of knowledge.

Teachers should create an environment that is free, critical and
supportive. ("Supportive" is never properly explained.)

Teacher should ask the student to do some relevant task, e.g. - write
an essay or dance or do some woodwork, without punishing him for
things he gets wrong. This initial performance can then be criticised
to help the student improve. Getting the student to repeat the same
performance many times is pointless since we don't learn by induction.

Criticism is threatening and provokes anxiety for most people. But the
teacher should support the student, not make him feel threatened or
anxious. The teacher should criticise the performance but not the
student. The student can solve problems with his ideas, so he is not
the problem, the bad performance is the problem. (Criticism is not
inherently painful and he doesn't ask why many people find it
painful.)

Teacher should present some material and ask for criticisms of it. The
teacher would then reply to the criticism, possibly after trying to
improve it. The teacher uses the material to find out about the
student's ideas and improve them. (Perkinson doesn't mention the
possibility that the student might have better ideas than the material
presented.)

Modern teachers (his name for normal teachers) have a problem of
motivating their students to learn since they have some preselected
stuff that they want the student to do that they might reject.
Critical teachers (those who do what Perkinson recommends) want the
students to criticise their material not absorb it and so don't have
to motivate them. If a student refuses to engage in criticism the
teacher should just make the environment more supportive. (Again,
Perkinson doesn't address why students might dislike making or
receiving criticism. Since he is not specific about this, how is he
going to make the environment more "supportive"? This whole business
of the environment doesn't make much sense and treats the problem as
if the student is passively responding to the environment rather than
understanding a real danger. That is, often if a student criticises an
adult [parent or teacher] the adult will go out of his way to hurt the
student.)

Modern teachers have to pay a lot of attention to order of material
because they plan to show the student the One True Path to
Enlightenment and Wisdom by choosing the right foundation and building
from there. A critical teacher doesn't have to do this since there is
no foundation. He presents stuff for the student to criticise.

Modern teachers might say they are teaching stuff that is right. But
no current knowledge is perfect, so students have to be able to
improve material they come across not regurgitate it.

Progressive teachers (hippies) like to start with a problem for the
student to explore. He intervenes to give the student help or tips in
solving this problem. So the student will discover the right answer
and will remember it. Perkinson points out that this assumes the
teacher knows the correct solution and is just trying to get the
student to reproduce it, which is wrong. Also assumes the student
learns by getting stuff to work rather than by discovering flaws and
improving on flawed knowledge.

Alan

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

> On Mar 17, 2014, at 3:48 PM, Alan Forrester <alanmichae...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Teacher should ask the student to do some relevant task, e.g. - write
> an essay or dance or do some woodwork, without punishing him for
> things he gets wrong. This initial performance can then be criticised
> to help the student improve. Getting the student to repeat the same
> performance many times is pointless since we don't learn by induction.

I don't think the teacher-directed approach is good, but why is induction the issue? If, on each repetition, the student is creating a new theory of how to do the task, and continually revising that theory based on criticism, then aren't they learning/creating knowledge?

[Alan Forrester]

On 19 March 2014 04:58, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum

If the student is trying to revise his ideas to do better next time,
then he might learn. But repetition without paying attention to how to
improve is pointless. Since many teachers don't go out of their way to
help the student learn what he's doing wrong, they can't be thinking
of it in terms of criticism. The excuse for doing this is that the
student just needs to do the task often enough and then he will learn.
I think the actual reason is more along the lines of teachers needing
to find makework for their students because most of the students are
being coerced into doing the work and so won't do it well.

Alan