1 - Brian
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Virtue and Education
It seems to me that any society which decides to actively refrain from teaching morality or virtue is doomed to failure. A society of any organization can only sustain itself when people are trained to act, at least in part, for the good of the whole and not just for the good of the individual. A classical liberal education, or a traditional Aristotelian education, sought to produce good citizens and virtuous individuals, not well-trained individuals ready to join the work force (although it didn't entirely neglect this either). Seeing as how our (I'm thinking of America here, although I think these remarks are pertinent for Europeans as well) society does not teach people about morality, virtue, or citizenship, it is only a matter of time before our education system completely fails. As it stands, our education system produces students with lower and lower scores in reading, math, and science, and I think that this is probably related to the fact that we attempt to teach people technical skills without teaching them the value of things like moderation, prudence, contemplation or justice.
I am curious to hear other people's thoughts on this, but I am also curious about the following: Given the current political and social climate (which I take to be bleak and barren), what would a good education look like? This is a question I am curious in because I am an educator, but also because there are plenty of things that I am not educated in (being a product of modernity), and I am interested in finding my own flaws in this area..
Any thoughts?
- Etzelnik
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Re: Virtue and Education
I think the bare minimum for a Republic would be to provide an education not limited to the hard sciences, but also focusing on Natural Law, the morals and duties that result thereof (with focus on interpersonal and civic duties, a la Rousseau), and a solid grounding in the notion of virtue from such writers as Plutarch, Plato, and Cicero, as well as from the conduct of all virtuous men throughout history, from Cato to Washington. I say this as a 20 year old obliged to go down the autodidact road because society has failed miserably.
Last edited by Etzelnik (4/27/2016 3:43 pm)
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- iwpoe
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Re: Virtue and Education
*Given* our contemporary society and with no active rebellion against it a good education means what it is now: offering technical skills at a level where most people will take them semi-volentarally. For we respect the voluntarily chosen more than the disciplined. Even elite education is nothing but the heavily managed moderation of the choices children make. This means that the highest sucsess in education is now often attained only by the neurotic or the palpably mentally ill. High level STEM fields are parades of the autistic today, why? Because who else chooses advanced mathematics on the basis of mere undisciplined preferences?
A good education in this climate would probably be a boarding school, gender segregated, which taught well ordered desires and sorted children by an order of rank with respect to virtue, perhaps in partial secret so that you can tell the difference between those merely emulating higher rank peers and those who have internalized things.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- Mysterious Brony
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Re: Virtue and Education
Oh man! Things just can't any worse can't they! I do agree that modern American students (perhaps European but I will focus mainly on American) need discipline and virtuous behavior these days. Look at those "SJW activist" students whining and complaining about anything. Heck, even the smallest offense can be considered oppressive and evil. Call me crazy, but I don't think that it is such a bad idea to get rid of those crap "philosophies."
- iwpoe
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Re: Virtue and Education
At least SJW types know something is wrong. The real danger is the vast number of people who just think 'let's help people do whatever they fancy for whatever reason' is the same as education.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- AKG
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Re: Virtue and Education
Oh man, I know someone at school who is a SJW and she is so annoying. She complained because our school coffee shop had a book written by a conservative on its shelf and made a big deal about it. SJW would actually make great interrogation cops.
Criminal: If I tell you I'm the leader of the KKK will you shut up?!
I'm all for education systems to shut them up.
- DanielCC
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Re: Virtue and Education
General questions to the OP: are you asking what, practically speaking, is the best form of education a child could have OR what, practically speaking, is the best form of education society could provide?
If the latter then the question of how much this education is allowed to deviate from the norms of the current social and political climate will need to be asked. For instance I think it's ultimately arbitrary to teach norms and standards without admitting there to be an objective meaning to life (to be merely satisfied with this life is at the very least to show a chronic lack of imagination). This of course flies in the face of all Liberal attempts at metaphysical neutrality.
My own proposal would be at least part tuition up until a certain age, after which it could be reasonably hoped the individual would acquired an appetite for learning in their preferred sphere. The person should be given a good background of general knowledge both historically and culturally, so as to dissolve the idea of education as existing in a vacuum or merely being a perquisite for a carrier - so many people have little interest in fantastic subjects solely because they are not even aware such subjects exist. Ultimately the most important elements for education are motivation and resources. Thankfully one of the great achievements of the internet age has been to have gone some way in presenting a solution to that latter.
(Of course this all presupposes an ideal situation where everyone has enough money, foreknowledge and time. It might be adapted more to home-schooling though)
Furthermore past a certain point (12-13 or puberty) every effort should be made to encourage the individual to think of themselves as an adult. This means engaging them in intellectual conversation and activities (say appreciation and discussion of the fine arts) and generally not-dumping things down for them. If they look at themselves and others of their age as bearers of the same responsibilities - not alone, the tacit encouragement to think of maturity as a time where one is on one's own and without support is toxic - there will be less occasion for folly later.
Brian wrote:
A society of any organization can only sustain itself when people are trained to act, at least in part, for the good of the whole and not just for the good of the individual.
Can you clarify this? If by it you mean any society that promotes satisfaction of one's own ends, and the arbitrariness of these ends, will lead to people, should they take up this view, not caring about society on a wider scale then I agree. One might make the case though that one doesn't need to teach others to act with the good of the whole in mind as long as they act good individually - the former will follow on the latter without unnecessary reification.
A good education in this climate would probably be a boarding school, gender segregated, which taught well ordered desires and sorted children by an order of rank with respect to virtue, perhaps in partial secret so that you can tell the difference between those merely emulating higher rank peers and those who have internalized things.
Out of interest why do you feel gender segregation would be so beneficial?
Last edited by DanielCC (4/28/2016 7:33 am)
- Brian
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Re: Virtue and Education
General questions to the OP: are you asking what, practically speaking, is the best form of education a child could have OR what, practically speaking, is the best form of education society could provide?
Neither really. I am asking what is the best education one would promote in our society. I take this to be different than 1) the ideal education of the ideal rational animal and 2) the best practical education any society could offer. I think those are both excellent questions, but for the sake of this thread, I am curious what you might do if you were in charge of educating a young person today, in contemporary America.
(Of course this all presupposes an ideal situation where everyone has enough money, foreknowledge and time. It might be adapted more to home-schooling though)
Home schooling seems to me to be an ideal form of education for our society. Unless the teacher does not have the time to invest, it seems almost guaranteed that the student will become more proficient at the basic sills public education is supposed to be teaching (reading comprehension, math, intelligent writing), plus the student would have a good one-to-one education in things like reasoning, rhetoric, and personal decorum, which are lacking in our system. Not to mention the extra time (usually wasted in schools) that the student could use to develop a serious interest suited to their personal temperaments and inclinations.
A society of any organization can only sustain itself when people are trained to act, at least in part, for the good of the whole and not just for the good of the individual.
Can you clarify this? If by it you mean any society that promotes satisfaction of one's own ends, and the arbitrariness of these ends, will lead to people, should they take up this view, not caring about society on a wider scale then I agree. One might make the case though that one doesn't need to teach others to act with the good of the whole in mind as long as they act good individually - the former will follow on the latter without unnecessary reification.
What I mean is that society and civilization are relatively fragile things, and people (especially the counter-culture generation and after, including us) tends to forget this. Freedom, to some degree, seems essential to a good life. But a society devoted to freedom can't possibly expect to create citizens up to the task of ruling fairly and wisely. At best they will produce people who are completely self-sufficient, but this seems to be inferior when compared with a civilized culture that puts a premium on being virtuous.
I would disagree with you to some extent. Unless you have a whole society of virtuous saints (which is a utopian fantasy), you need to teach people to put the good of the city before the good of the self. It may be that for the saint and the virtuous wise man, those two goals are identical (I'm not positive of this though). But for the average person who cannot reason through all of these sorts of things, it seems imprudent to tell them to pursue their own good and hope that it all works out. I think this way of thinking is a sort of magic trick that capitalists are always trying to pull: If one person is selfish, it is a bad thing, but if you can get everyone in a society to be selfish, then you will have the most prosperous nation of all, because the invisible hand guides them. Invisible indeed. I realize that this was not your argument, but I think that short of everybody being highly rational, we need to teach people to put the city before the self. This topic opens a huge can of worms, but I think it is really fascinating an worth exploring further.
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Thread Starter- iwpoe
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Re: Virtue and Education
Out of interest why do you feel gender segregation would be so beneficial?
Two reasons:
1. Pre-puberty gender segregation is less important but still may be useful insofar as girls generally express preferences different from boys and vice versa (I think there's evidence that this is so, but it would need to be worked out in the hypothetical educational context) and to the extent that education in the virtues must ultimately account for human sexual difference. I would be open to accounting for more subtle individual differences in preference tendency pre-puberty (provided that information about these can be had apart from the more annoying aspects of the motern academic political agenda), since gender may not be the most obvious way to sort children before a certain age.
That said, training in the so-called martial virtues: courage, honor, physical prowess, and focused expertiese are at least more likely to be compatible with the soul of men and boys, though I wouldn't avoid teaching them to girls for whom nature has made it possible. Also there are still feminine virtues having to do with sexual selection and motherhood more generally, which men should be aware of, even taught if they can manage it, but which are something more necessary and natural to women on the whole. It is concievable that this part of eductation begin pre-puberty, if only just.
2. Post-puberty sexual difference turns education time towards a sexual dynamic. It is important for children to become acquainted with this, but unnecessary that they be occupied by it with it present at all times. The scene of flirting in the classroom is ubiquitious in teen media because it is unbiquitious in life. Sexual desire, as long recognized, is also the strongest occasion for confusion about virtues.
I ageee with Plato that, in principle, reason is not split between the sexes- with one having all of it or the best of it and the other not: men and women are both frequently fools -but I think their is a pedagoligical difference and certainly a difference in ethical focus on the whole between the genders. A woman must especially learn how to choose men well and not based on the arbitray advice of friends and society, and in a way very different from how a man must, since she will generally be the object of constant even deceptive attention, and a man chosen "for his hair" or some other merely airy criteria- even apart from pregnancy -can easily damage her soul for years.
Also, strengthening of sexual selection criteria generally makes men fall in line. If women want a clear set of things, men generally fall in line, and we want them to want a set of virtues, not something else, nor even mere occasional signs of them.
Last edited by iwpoe (4/28/2016 1:56 pm)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- DanielCC
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Re: Virtue and Education
Thanks for the replies! Responses to follow:
Home schooling seems to me to be an ideal form of education for our society. Unless the teacher does not have the time to invest, it seems almost guaranteed that the student will become more proficient at the basic sills public education is supposed to be teaching (reading comprehension, math, intelligent writing), plus the student would have a good one-to-one education in things like reasoning, rhetoric, and personal decorum, which are lacking in our system. Not to mention the extra time (usually wasted in schools) that the student could use to develop a serious interest suited to their personal temperaments and inclinations.
Sadly (not to mention ironically) one of the problems with home schooling is that in order to do so it requires a level of general education and well roundness most people don't have.
What I mean is that society and civilization are relatively fragile things, and people (especially the counter-culture generation and after, including us) tends to forget this. Freedom, to some degree, seems essential to a good life. But a society devoted to freedom can't possibly expect to create citizens up to the task of ruling fairly and wisely. At best they will produce people who are completely self-sufficient, but this seems to be inferior when compared with a civilized culture that puts a premium on being virtuous.
I had a wider and possibly more Kantian notion of autonomy in mind, rather along the lines of if x fulfills his duties to everyone within his sphere of influence - for want of a better word - he has no additional duties above and beyond to the community/city. That complete fulfillment is probably an ideal goal, but then again so is the perfect fulfillment of civic duties.
I would disagree with you to some extent. Unless you have a whole society of virtuous saints (which is a utopian fantasy), you need to teach people to put the good of the city before the good of the self. It may be that for the saint and the virtuous wise man, those two goals are identical (I'm not positive of this though). But for the average person who cannot reason through all of these sorts of things, it seems imprudent to tell them to pursue their own good and hope that it all works out.
Okay, I was playing Devil's Advocate there and arguing for a far stronger thesis than I'd actually endorse (I do think there are specifically civic virtues i.e. virtues to community qua community albeit they're posterior to and emergent on personal virtues). There is sometimes a need to challenge the notion of civic virtue, at least in the form of there being anything innately good about obedience to the community in and of itself. Maybe the example of Socrates in the Platonic Dialogues is is flawed - I'd make a case that he a duty to flee Athens and denounce as categorically wicked any city that would sentence an innocent man for civil benefit.
I realize that this was not your argument, but I think that short of everybody being highly rational, we need to teach people to put the city before the self. This topic opens a huge can of worms, but I think it is really fascinating an worth exploring further.
This is an issue forum regulars and I have touched on in debate many, many times. The practical contention I'd give here is that people who are unlikely to fulfil personal duties are even more unlikely to fulfil civil ones - particularly those that are prudential rather than absolute. Personal responsibility is prerequisite to civil responsibility, and, whilst the former can exist without a concept of the latter, ultimately the more fundamental of the two.
(Also I'm not sure how feasible such notions are in the specifically modern environment - they seem suited to small city states where there is a tangible as opposed to merely formal community. For all I know that's an argument in favor of small city states)