[This essay was produced in conjunction with Dr. Diane Allerdyce's Research Methods II course; Union Institute and University, Fall 2011].
Nicholas Maxwell’s discussion of the
intentions and purpose of scholarly inquiry are becoming increasingly salient
during this freshly academic century. As the economic and social position and
power of many groups becomes revised with each day’s set of headlines, and a
heightened rhetoric regarding national stability pervades our media outlets, new
definitions of rationality in academic research become critical. In
twenty-first century scholarship, Maxwell calls for a new Enlightenment,
specifically in higher education—that educators and scholars might seek to more
fully employ reason in new and humanistic methods in their research and
teaching. Maxwell’s critique of the scientific method and its rationality
necessitates an alternative hierarchy of knowledge. As the construction of
knowledge in higher education may, as characterized by Maxwell ‘suffers’ from “not
too much reason, but not enough” (p. 5), a brief survey of selected educators’
methods provide illustration of Maxwell’s thesis, and examples of aim-oriented
inquiry, following a discussion of terms essential to an understanding of
Maxwell’s critique.
A More Just Pedagogy: Application of Knowledge-Wisdom in the Classroom
Defining education as the broad
experience of an individual that invites or invokes the learner to acquire new
knowledge that may or may not be applied, much of Maxwell’s discussion becomes
salient to professionals beyond the realm of formal and scholarly academia. To
what extent do free, public K-12 education systems uphold the pursuit of “the
growth of knowledge and technical know-how” (p. 5) over the development of
responsible, ethical, and productive citizens? What core ethical beliefs lie
beneath mountains of technical data purported to be ‘essential’ in so many
vocational and technical pedagogies? Do institutions of higher education follow
pedagogical statements of purpose, established by elementary and secondary
education, only to compound learners’ knowledge acquired through earlier
endeavors? Some parents choose to provide early and elementary-level education
for their children within the home, or subscribe to alternative pedagogical
approaches—from Montessori to private religious institutions—making Maxwell’s
critique and call for empathy in humanities-based research and education all
the more relevant and presently useful.
Maxwell identifies Assessing scholars’
ability to work in synergy with social progress, and sees the Enlightenment as
having failed at such synergy. If formal academic scholarship is to benefit from
true inquiry into the humanities—and thus more fully benefit all of
humanity—Maxwell proposes four criteria for true rationality, fully separate
from the scientific method, to forward the identification of knowledge-inquiry.
1. “articulate and seek to improve
the articulation of the basic problem(s) to be solved”
2. brainstorm and “critically
assess” any and all solutions to the identified problem
3. “When necessary, break up the
basic problem to be solved into a number of preliminary, simpler, analogous,
subordinate, more specialized problems”
4. “Inter-connect attempts to solve the
basic problem and specialized problems” (p. 4).
This
procedure centers inquiry on an individual’s ability to create and apply
solutions—not to test strategic hypotheses or assert and support propositions. Education
may focus too greatly on what Maxwell identifies as a rudimentary “knowledge-inquiry”
(p. 5), at the risk of neglecting direct application of such knowledge. Citing
Einstein’s distinct categories of knowledge, Maxwell calls for academia’s
refreshed embrace and new application of the humanities: "Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored
in books, and alive in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the
essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior
position” (Einstein, as cited by Maxwell, p. 19). While Einstein viewed the
application of knowledge as essential, Maxwell establishes wisdom as the useful
and productive application of knowledge—how what we know encourages and changes
the way we live. It is a true revolution within scholarship that Maxwell calls
for: that the success for failure of academia may come not even in the
generated knowledge’s application, but a success that comes through the
researcher’s earnest and virtuous intentions.
My Site of Earliest Inquiry: Green Ridge Elementary
Green Ridge Elementary, located in
Aston, Pennsylvania, may have existed in both places of inquiry Einstein named:
from the “inferior position” of unapplied knowledge to the “essential one,” a
place where new understanding leads one to applications and solutions. Green Ridge existed in a school system that
was formed during a period of rapid economic growth. The oldest section of
Green Ridge was built in the 1920s, on a hill known to be a Lenni Lenape
(native population) burial ground. This section of the school had high ceilings
and cracking plaster walls, two massive steel front doors that were not used,
covered by two overgrown pines. Originally Green Ridge served the children of
those who worked in the nearby Delaware River industries: shipbuilding and oil
refining, later Boeing and chemical factories. After World War II, as returning
soldiers settled in the Philadelphia suburbs, the population of Delaware County
exploded, and subsequently, the school district became more formalized; Green
Ridge literally doubled in size. Twice as large as the old wing, a 1954
addition held K-5 classrooms, a multi-purpose gymnasium/auditorium/cafeteria,
and administrative offices. While the plaster walls of the old wing were
painted a stale, light green color, the 1954 expansion was made of a different
pale-green, polished cinder block, stretching down long, carpeted hallways.
Each classroom had a massive slate chalkboard, deteriorating aluminum frame
windows, and a strange, splinter-dispensing wallboard that was supposed to
absorb sound—not to mention asbestos padding beneath the carpets, carbon
monoxide being emitted from the heating system, and lead in the drinking water.
The week I graduated from high school, Green Ridge was demolished, having
quickly outlived its life as a viable, affordable school.
Risking overgeneralization, many of my
teachers at Green Ridge were of a similar age: from their mid-thirties to their
late fifties; it is likely they have all retired from their profession. I
entered first grade in 1986, long after Maxwell’s initial critique of the scientific
method and the dissemination of his theories on knowledge and wisdom. While I
might never know what pedagogical foundations were at work in specific
classrooms at Green Ridge Elementary, a brief survey of some educators’ methods
may provide hints of teachable wisdom, if not a useful application of knowledge,
or simply an innovative pedagogical stance.
Ms. Hanson was my first grade teacher: a
tall, imposing woman whose techniques of student discipline were effective
perhaps because of her physicality, especially in the eyes of us first-graders.
I remember a few field trips in kindergarten and first grade, though none as
vividly as the overnight trip to Ms. Hanson’s house. In a practice that may
today appear highly personal and excessive, Ms. Hanson spoke directly with each
student’s parents, securing permission for her entire class, two at a time over
a series of weeks, to stay overnight at her house. We ate at Pizza Hut before sleeping
in the spare bedrooms in her townhouse in nearby Media; I remember little that
was remarkable about the visit, except that it happened. I referenced Ms.
Hanson, and her overnight field trips recently, as a friend and co-worker and I
were spotted in town by a group of students, who stood slack-jawed, surprised even
at the post-secondary level, to see teachers outside the classroom. While this
discussion may reel in the modern legal and social implications of an
elementary school teacher taking her entire class, if possible, out for pizza
and to stay over at her house, we first-graders realized even then that Ms.
Hanson had a goal of “teacher” demystification in mind: that if knowledge may
someday turn to wisdom in her students, that a general and honest humanity was
essential. Whatever “new kind of academic inquiry that gives intellectual
priority to promoting the growth of global wisdom” (Maxwell, p. 4), Ms.
Hanson’s experiential pedagogy—one that involved students’ taking part in her
own daily rituals and inquiry—may have established a challenging intersection
of personal and professional experiences.
Aim-Oriented Empiricism and the Ubiquitous School Science Project
I called a friend a month ago, to tell
him how lucky we were, to have obtained the education that we did, when we did.
In third through fifth grade, some students in Penn-Delco School District were determined
through standardized testing to be eligible for a “gifted” program: a
distinction that we, even as third graders, knew sounded snobby. Participating
students were bused in from the other three elementary schools to a central
classroom at Green Ridge, where, under the direction of Mrs. Hansell and Mrs.
Joyce, we progressed through units of science, art, and history. I believe now
many interesting pedagogies were at work in this specific classroom, as a great
deal of the material we covered held in its focus both creative and social,
experiential development—one culminating project was a mock checkbook, savings
account, employment, and economy running for weeks within the classroom.
In the spring of fifth grade, those of
us in the “gifted” program were asked to identify a problem and find a
solution, and make accompanying visual materials to present to the class—a
‘science fair’ of sorts, but one built of problem-solving alone. The
educational aim matched well with Maxwell’s call for a rational wisdom that “is
devoted, in a genuinely rational way, to promoting human welfare by
intellectual means” (p. 9). My entry into this missed the mark, leaping quickly
to how to light a light bulb using a battery, without determining an exact
application. I was already fostering a fascination with circuitry, and found
artistry in using different switches to light different lights, or segments of
a numeric display, or to create different flickering patterns using gates. Mrs.
Hansell and Mrs. Joyce didn’t allow me to use the prefabricated projects found
in my beloved Radio Shack kits, but insisted I establish something on my own.
There were no grades assigned, but everyone got a ‘medal,’ inscribed in Sharpie
marker. Mine read “Best Application of Knowledge Learned,” a phrase that appears
now to be ironic—I have never actually used a battery to light a bulb in that
manner since—but have benefited from the application of that knowledge
elsewhere. At the time, I felt my medal equated to a mediocre grade.
Two years later, in a general
science classroom, I became further enlivened and challenged as part of a
second science fair, the aim of which I recall to be even more clearly
congruent with Maxwell’s calls for “wisdom-inquiry,” where “the basic aim of
inquiry is to help us realize what is of value, “realize” meaning both to apprehend, and to make real” (p.
19). Mr. Dargay’s charge for our projects was again to solve a problem, to make
a solution more clear through our ‘apprehension’ of knowledge, changing the way
we might live our lives. Mr. Dargay encouraged me when I expressed an interest
in writing a computer program that would convert metric measurements to English
measurements. Though I found this project far more daunting than I imagined (I
was using a computer that was already antique, a Texas Instruments 99/4a, and
writing in the archaic programming language Basic), Mr. Dargay was supportive
and positive. He acknowledged my understanding of how technology might be used,
and that the program’s ultimate ability—to perform calculations faster than one
may by hand—was not diminished by the age of the technology employed. Mr.
Dargay’s motivation in the classroom was remarkable; I believe he was cognizant
of the vast wave of technology that we would be witness to, and that he viewed
his classroom as one of the best vehicles to allow us—seventh graders, in
1992—the best access to that technology. Because he made clear to us the
importance, and the practical and human relevance of the study of science, Mr.
Dargay’s science fair reinforced distinct ethics of academic inquiry: that work
in a classroom may blur with work outside any formal education, and that “academic inquiry has,
as its fundamental aim, to help promote human welfare, then the problems that academic inquiry
fundamentally ought to try to help solve our problems of living, problems of action” (p. 6).
These early experiences in education
continue to inform my professional and personal inquiry: prior to encountering
Maxwell’s “Revolution for Science and Humanities,” I had sought—without exact
pedagogical cause—to challenge students through posing ‘projects’ and the
compilation of portfolios of generated knowledge. Students enrolled in my
classes at Vermont Technical College seek careers in the sciences; the
scientific method riddles their academic inquiry across all other courses.
Taking Ms. Hanson’s first-hand experience for her students in her home as a
workable metaphor for the time my students and I share, I seek to engage
students in conversation based on their own and most-salient wisdom at the
moment; as beings in transition, college students often represent Maxwell’s
cultural characterization of inquiry: “a collection of intellectual spectacles,
telescopes and microscopes, manufactured for us to use in order to aid our exploration of our world” (p. 19). This
nature of collection—of humans, individuals, and stories—thread my language
arts pedagogy with a focus on those alive and willing, in the classroom and in
the world, aware.
Works Cited
Maxwell,
N. (2007). From Knowledge to Wisdom: A
Revolution for Science and the Humanities. 2nd Ed. Retrieved
from http://www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk/essays.htm#abstract
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