What is Education?- A thread on learning and teaching, the creative process, practice

[selil]

There is training and there is education. To understand the difference do you want your teenage daughter to receive sex training or sex education? This is how my first educational philosophy course as a doctoral student began.

I hate to link farm but I've written a lot about this topic.

Some highlights

The Socratic compass: Giving students directions not answers
Guiding students to the questions that they can answer.

How do we get there from here? (by my better half who is also a professor)
How does education define our society?

Education paradigm: How you get there may not be where you are going
This article in many ways describes the issues as talked about above.

The dark ages: Modern anti-intellectualism and failure of the thinking man
More on society and the anti-intellectualism that is fairly rampant.

What does the military want from the education system?
This one should be of substantial interest.

When the TRADOC RFI was posted here I didn't have much nice to say about it and after writing five pages trashing it. Well I decided if I didn't have anything nice to say I shouldn't say anything. So I self censored. All of the elements being discussed in this thread (with the mild prod by marct) are fairly well known in the education field. I guess I think it is funny that a bunch of soldiers who complain about the malfeasance and arrogance of civilians mucking about in military affairs have no issues tromping about redefining higher education.

As marct alluded to a lot of what we know now as higher education was began by John Dewey (1907ish). His books are available free online and are guiding principles on how we teach and educate. Bloom a 1950s era educator is how most of our outcome based education programs began. There is also Gagne and a few others. If we really want to start talking about philosophical differences we will have open up the constructivist versus behaviorist approach to education. Basically constructivists believe that you can educate from principles to knowledge (grossly simplified), and behaviorist believe that factual iteration (memorization) is the way to knowledge.

I imagine the discussion will be lively.

[Steve the Planner]

Sam:

Same issues on my end.

I had a small grad program in Planning and Policy. The program director loved to,once a month, find the public figure in the deepest trouble at the moment, invite them over to the Hopkins Club, get them drunk (back when people still did that stuff), and get all the dirt and intrigues behind the crisis of the moment.

Local politics is often dirty, nasty, and very personal, even when, as in Illinois, that local politics is carried onto a state or regional level. It's hard, complicated, challenging and dangerous work, and a highly specialized sphere in its own unique right.

My wife is an educator, and media specialist for a huge regional high school, so I know enough about your little professional education world to be dangerous, and more than I should about Dewey and his decimals.

I served on a lot of panels and committees on alternative school structures in the early-mid 2000s---urban school restructurings, charter school fights, alternative k-12 systems and strategies (magnets, alternate grade spans, decentralized schools, KIPPs, etc...). Nothing as bracing and "real" as going into a local community, or board of ed meeting, to delve into these kinds of issues with them. Yes, I've done those kinds of meetings where the walls of a gym are lined with police...(But I just do facility planning/organizational/finance stuff, not actual eduction (where the real politics of love and death reside).

It certainly would be fun to take some of our US diplomats into a few intense community meetings to make them realize what a safe and clean job they have (no heavy lifting).

Hard to get across to the uninititiated that, fighting aside, COIN is about that nasty local public community stuff, and conflicts are inherent in them---all by themselves,and especially at home.

Want to know about education? Call an educator.

Steve

[BayonetBrant]

There is training and there is education. To understand the difference do you want your teenage daughter to receive sex training or sex education?

Given that my daughter isn't projected to arrive until 2AUG10, this was probably an analogy I could do without!


However, I am going to delve into the terminology in the spirit of "let no indefensible position go undefended!"

The differences between
sex training
sex education
sex learning

have nothing to do with "training sex"... the emotional pull of that statement comes from the word "sex" - instantly assumed to have carnal overtones.

I want her to "learn" about what sex is, but I want her to learn "healthy behaviors around sexuality" (which is really what "sex education" should be and is just the shorthand term for it). Once that's done, I want her to have the opportunity to "train" those behaviors in an appropriate (ie, classroom) setting, especially when those behaviors involve things "how to say 'no' to peer pressure" or how to properly care for herself.

"Sex education" is not about "how to have sex" and the extrapolation from "sex ed" to "sex training" is a cute semantic twist of words, but crosses several conceptual lines.


One of my MMC professors at South Carolina once said of "higher education" -
As an undergrad we tell you what to think
As a master's student we teach you how to think
It's not until the PhD level that was ask "so, what do you think?" *

My training/learning difference has developed mainly in my studies/research of using games/sims for training/learning and there's an article about it that I wrote for a wargaming magazine that should be appearing soon, if anyone cares enough to check it out. ( http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?14@....1dd388f5/1822 )




* caveat: my experience with Ohio State these past 6 years has led me to believe that they are unable to get beyond step 2 in the process, and they reach that step only occasionally and almost always by accident.

[Ken White]

One of my MMC professors at South Carolina once said of "higher education" -
As an undergrad we tell you what to think
As a master's student we teach you how to think
It's not until the PhD level that was ask "so, what do you think?"

* caveat: my experience with Ohio State these past 6 years has led me to believe that they are unable to get beyond step 2 in the process, and they reach that step only occasionally and almost always by accident.

These two gems don't require much pondering.

I agree with Steve and Mark that it's a late 50s through the early 70s phenomenon (the lengthy adaptation period caused by geographical and demographic absorption variables) and with Marc that a return to pre-WW II norms would be beneficial. However, the terrible thing about the issue is the damage it had done to the Educational process and most of those who labor effectively (as the 'system' allows) in that milieu.

Not least due to the arrogance of the assumption that one cannot have valid or useful thoughts unless one is a PhD. Having known quite a few, most do not have that attitude -- but some do and they tar the rest. Pity.

Of course, in fairness and as a hat tip to Sam, there are also those in the Armed Forces who are foolishly convinced their rank accords them exceptional wisdom.

People are so annoying...

[Steve Blair]

I guess I think it is funny that a bunch of soldiers who complain about the malfeasance and arrogance of civilians mucking about in military affairs have no issues tromping about redefining higher education.

Interesting observation, Sam. I see this in ROTC a fair amount, and it's always interesting.

Back to Marc's point, I can relate mostly from the student perspective (most of the stuff I teach here is really along the lines of moderating and facilitating map exercises and developing those exercises, so it's more of an interplay with students as opposed to structured "sit there and learn" stuff). The best professors I have had didn't tell you what to think...they were more interested in helping you discover what you thought about the material and why you might think that way. And some of the more interesting discussions revolved around methods...and how thought about history and historical events have shifted over the years. The worst courses were "learn what I want you to learn" driven and had an agenda that would have made Stalin proud (not necessarily in terms of ideology - although it was close - but more in terms of method).

John makes some interesting points as well.

One of my MMC professors at South Carolina once said of "higher education" -
As an undergrad we tell you what to think
As a master's student we teach you how to think
It's not until the PhD level that was ask "so, what do you think?" *


* caveat: my experience with Ohio State these past 6 years has led me to believe that they are unable to get beyond step 2 in the process, and they reach that step only occasionally and almost always by accident.

And that to me is one of the lingering and most malign influences of the 1960s on higher education. And I have heard professors of that same mindset bemoaning the fact that their masters students can't write coherent papers or essays. They always got defensive when I pointed out that they had some of those same students as undergraduates and obviously failed to prepare them for the demands of a masters program.

Simply because the system currently functions that way doesn't mean that it's ideal or that it accurately reflects what education *should* be, both for the teacher and the student.

[marct]

Hi guys,

There is training and there is education. To understand the difference do you want your teenage daughter to receive sex training or sex education?

Yes, I always keep that one in mind even though my daughter isn't a teenager any longer .

I hate to link farm but I've written a lot about this topic.

Some highlights

The Socratic compass: Giving students directions not answers
Guiding students to the questions that they can answer.

I always liked this one, Sam. Then again, I like Socrates, so it's not surprising.....

As marct alluded to a lot of what we know now as higher education was began by John Dewey (1907ish). His books are available free online and are guiding principles on how we teach and educate. Bloom a 1950s era educator is how most of our outcome based education programs began. There is also Gagne and a few others. If we really want to start talking about philosophical differences we will have open up the constructivist versus behaviorist approach to education. Basically constructivists believe that you can educate from principles to knowledge (grossly simplified), and behaviorist believe that factual iteration (memorization) is the way to knowledge.

[rant]
The constructivist - behaviourist debate, at least from what I have seen of it, is as chimerical as most of the other dualisms pervading our modern academic debates; Nature - Culture, Mind - Body, etc. Personally, I find most of these debates to be no more than an excuse for excessive logorrhea. They are situated within a cultural matrix that demands oppositional dualisms as a means to avoid examining what is really going on.
[/rant]

Now that I'm got that out .....

Most of the way we conceptualize the "debate" is predicated on an incorrect acceptance of mind-body dualism (check out Bateson's Angel's Fear). If we drop the dualism, as I think we should, then what we have is a variable membership function (actually, a fuzzy set membership value). Let me put this in the context of training vs education (another false dualism mind you ).

"Training", as most of us currently conceive it, is "physical" or, at least, primarily physical while "education" is generally perceived of as being "mental" or "intellectual". Really? If you look at most of the current neuro-psychological research on, say, learning music, one of the things you will find is that there are physical changes in the neural structures (specifically the creation of new neronal pathways and the myelinization of some of them). Education isn't separate from the physical, it just takes place in the neurons rather than in the muscles (which is the dominant sight for a lot of training).

One of the reasons why I think the constructivist - behavioiuralist debate is silly, is that they are both techniques for changing neuronal pathways. Furthermore, the way the debate is structured assumes (requires in fact) a standardized "student" which, to anyone who has taught, is somewhat laughable (i.e. there is a range of neuronal structuring amongst our students - we call this "learning styles"). Both stances may work, depending on the students.

One way to parse out what we are doing is to ask ourselves how much "freedom" do we wish our students to have in the exercise of their learned skills? If the answer is "not much", then we should aim at a more behaviouralist approach, and if it is "a lot" then at a more constructivist approach. And the initial decision, BTW, will depend on the area of knowledge, the "skill set" as it were.

Let me get back to this idea of "learning" for a minute. One of the things I realized quite early on, and it's one of the reasons I mentioned all that biographical data, was that learning takes place all the time, and that individual learning crosses all formal disciplinary boundaries based on internal analogs. It's the old "that reminds me of..." syndrome, and it operates because of the way our brains are organized. For example, I was trained in fencing when I was young, and I brought that with me when I was later trained in dancing and both of those feed into my singing which, in turn, feeds into my understandings of COIN.

When I wrote earlier that we can't control what people learn, this is the phenomenon I was referring to: association by analog. This very phenomenon is also critical in understanding how we construct our institutions, although that's probably the subject for another post .

[wm]

those who divide things into two categories and those who lie about it.

Consider a couple of things from the ancient Greeks;
techne (art/craft) is contrasted with episteme (knowledge/science) by Plato
sophia (wisdom) is contrasted with phronesis (practical wisdom/prudence) by Aristotle
Each of these early heavy hitters suggests that the path to the collections that fall under each term is not the same.

We could also compare/contrast theoria with praxis as ways of “knowing” God or sitting zazen with solving koans as ways of achieving enlightenment.

In English, I think it is worth noting that one learns “about” something but one trains “on” something. We also can note that English grammar and diction tell us that learning involves a relationship between a person and an object—“Larry learns logic.” while training involves a relationship between two persons—“Tom trains Toby.”

We may, with Rene Descartes among others, happen to accept the idea that we are born with innate ideas. We may, instead, agree with John Locke’s refutation of that position and believe our minds are blank slates. We can even take the Kantian line that our "understandings"are “hard-wired” in certain ways that allow (or force) us to make sense of the data presented to us. The beauty of this last position is that it is something of a synthesis: we are still blank slates in terms of content but have something like a syntax ( perhaps a Chomsky “deep structure”) or a file format (FAT32 or NTFS e.g.) to organize the content/lexicon/vocabulary that we acquire along the way.

BLAB (Bottom line at bottom)
Each of these metaphysical positions or presuppositions predisposes one to a certain solution set for the problem of how one figures out how to get along in the world. But, whatever way one comes down on the question of primacy of place, I trust we can all recognize that at least two different activities are involved and a complete solution requires the successful application of both.

[marct]

BLAB (Bottom line at bottom)
Each of these metaphysical positions or presuppositions predisposes one to a certain solution set for the problem of how one figures out how to get along in the world. But, whatever way one comes down on the question of primacy of place, I trust we can all recognize that at least two different activities are involved and a complete solution requires the successful application of both.

Yup. I was wondering when you would weigh in WM .

Without a (fairly) clear metaphysical model that, BTW, I would argue has to include those of our current and potential opponents, we are dead in the water.

Then again, just mention "metaphysics" and it scares the snot out of most materialists (the dominant metaphysical paradigm in the Industrial Age)....

[wm]

[QUOTE=marct;93528]Yup. I was wondering when you would weigh in WM .QUOTE]


I subscribe to the idea that we will serve no bottom line before its time and finally decided, "it's time."

Metaphysics is not always about things, btw

[marct]

One of my MMC professors at South Carolina once said of "higher education" -
As an undergrad we tell you what to think
As a master's student we teach you how to think
It's not until the PhD level that was ask "so, what do you think?" *

* caveat: my experience with Ohio State these past 6 years has led me to believe that they are unable to get beyond step 2 in the process, and they reach that step only occasionally and almost always by accident.

And that to me is one of the lingering and most malign influences of the 1960s on higher education. And I have heard professors of that same mindset bemoaning the fact that their masters students can't write coherent papers or essays. They always got defensive when I pointed out that they had some of those same students as undergraduates and obviously failed to prepare them for the demands of a masters program.

What I find fascinating about BB's quote is that it is really a fairly recent introduction to the academy showing up (variably) in the 1950's-60's. It is tied into a couple of important social changes that happened post-WW II: increasing credentialization, loosening of overt class boundaries, etc.

Simply because the system currently functions that way doesn't mean that it's ideal or that it accurately reflects what education *should* be, both for the teacher and the student.

Yup. Of course, Steve, that "should" is predicated on an idealization of the pre-WW II (more likely WW I) values of "education" .

This "should" idea is worth expanding on significantly since it relates to a whole slew of issues. Let me first expand it by analogy: we talk a lot about "ends" and "means". What is the desired end state of an education / training course / program / career? All of the discussions around pedagogical tactics and strategies rely on implicit ends, including "shoulds", but what are they?

For one thing, the choices made will inevitably impact the class structure of the society in question. Go back to Dewey and the Industrial Age education system he was pushing, and you will see that it lays the formal basis for a society where class is based on a combination of economic status and social positioning based on educational credentials (the infamous socio-economic status). Implicit, and by the 1960's it was explicit, this system is predicated on some variant of the Fordist production system where wealth is generated through the transformation of raw materials into consumer products. Does that sound like the type of society we have today? If it does, not only do you fail SOC 101, I also have some great waterfront acreage in Florida for sale .

Okay, let's shift it to who we are fighting. Would you train people in Napoleonic tactics? Unless you're a Napoleonic recreationist, I would hope not . How about other Industrial Age tactical systems - what we (inappropriately) call "Conventional Warfare" (it's inappropriate because it is a recent convention stemming from the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century). Um, yeah simply because other groups still use it, just not the ones we are currently fighting. Of course, the people we are currently fighting don't use it; they are using a totally different conceptualization of warfare, so we have to educate (and train) for that as well.

So, if we take as an operating assumption that both training and education have to be focused on both "conventional" and "non-conventional" forms of conflict, one of the first things we should be doing is analyzing exactly where the overlaps and disjunctures are, i.e. mapping out the total area of knowledge. The ACC and ALDS did this to a very limited degree, at least at the broad (pseudo)concept level, with details promised "later".

[pup]

Very interesting discussion and one that I have spent some time dealing with for the last few years. I come from a different perspective then most of the posts on this page; in that I am an internet educated holder of an associate’s degree in general education; however I am also a CSM and responsible for training, educating and developing junior leaders for our army.

Since the discussion started with TRADOC I went back to the latest DRAFT of FM 7.0 Training for Full Spectrum Operations and looked at their definitions of training and education.

Paragraph 3-5 states;

"The Army Training System comprises training and education. Training is not solely the domain of the generating force; similarly, education continues in the operational Army. Training and education occur in all three training domains. Training prepares individuals for certainty. Education prepares individuals for uncertainty. Education enables agility, judgment, and creativity. Training enables action."

I don’t particularly disagree with the statement. Training prepares one to act, and education prepares one to adapt those actions to meet success. That makes sense to me. What does not make sense to me is the ways in which the army has separated the two. As an enlisted soldier and later as an NCO, I have been “Educated” in only 4 schools in the Army; PLDC, BNCOC, ANCOC and the USASMA. Every other TRADOC experience I have had has been focused on “training”. Likewise I was never “educated” in unit training. The Army accounts for this by specifying three domains of training, one of which is self-development. That catch all says that if you need to know it, it is your responsibility.

That brings me to paragraph 3-9 which states;

“Traditional training and education may not meet all the needs of an expeditionary Army. The Army is adapting training and education as appropriate to meet the conditions of today‘s operational environments. Developing new approaches may be necessary to ensure Soldiers and Army civilians are confident in their ability to conduct full spectrum operations anywhere along the spectrum of conflict with minimal additional training.”

The reason for this paragraph was to give the opportunity to develop approaches to training such as Outcome-Based Training and Education (OBTE) of which I am a firm believer. The core idea behind OBTE is that simply training on a skill or learning new knowledge is not sufficient to develop soldiers capable of success in full spectrum operations. One key aspect of FSO that everyone can agree on is that there is no certainty on which to train. Every event will be new, different and unexpected, and it will come at a rapid pace with little time to prepare. What is necessary for success in FSO are soldiers who have been developed, through their training and education, to be adaptable leaders who are confident, inventive and who hold themselves responsible for meeting the strategic commander’s intent.

To get back to the original question; “what is education” I would say that education is half of the requirement to prepare soldiers for Hybrid Warfare and FSO (as stated in A Leader Development Strategy for a 21st Century Army, 25 Nov 2009). Education cannot be separated from Training if we are attempting to develop soldiers who can adapt their training to meet the demands of the current conflicts. Education is understanding the skills that one is trained on and how they interrelate, vital to understanding how to adapt those skills to uncertainty later in life.

This brings me to another point that I would like to bring up about Training and Education in our Army. FM 7.0 states that the goal of training is mastery (paragraph 2-42). It then defines mastery as being able to perform the task intuitively without having to think about how to perform it, and being able to perform the tasks to standard regardless of the conditions.

I disagree with the first statement that mastery is not thinking. I think a true master is someone who understands the task to the level that he can adapt it to any situation. I think that is summed up in the second half of the statement about performing to standard in any condition. By linking mastery to uncertainty (unknown conditions) Education becomes necessary to being labeled a “master”. I then think that TRADOC needs to relook in FM 7.0 the ideas of Mastery to incorporate execution of the task to standard (training), and understanding the task (education) to the level that it can be adapted to any conditions.

[marct]

Hi pup,

Very interesting discussion and one that I have spent some time dealing with for the last few years. I come from a different perspective then most of the posts on this page; in that I am an internet educated holder of an associate’s degree in general education; however I am also a CSM and responsible for training, educating and developing junior leaders for our army.

Excellent! We need someone who will go "Uh, guys, do you realize you are about to walk over a cliff?"

Since the discussion started with TRADOC I went back to the latest DRAFT of FM 7.0 Training for Full Spectrum Operations and looked at their definitions of training and education.

Paragraph 3-5 states;

"The Army Training System comprises training and education. Training is not solely the domain of the generating force; similarly, education continues in the operational Army. Training and education occur in all three training domains. Training prepares individuals for certainty. Education prepares individuals for uncertainty. Education enables agility, judgment, and creativity. Training enables action."

I don’t particularly disagree with the statement. Training prepares one to act, and education prepares one to adapt those actions to meet success. That makes sense to me. What does not make sense to me is the ways in which the army has separated the two. As an enlisted soldier and later as an NCO, I have been “Educated” in only 4 schools in the Army; PLDC, BNCOC, ANCOC and the USASMA. Every other TRADOC experience I have had has been focused on “training”. Likewise I was never “educated” in unit training. The Army accounts for this by specifying three domains of training, one of which is self-development. That catch all says that if you need to know it, it is your responsibility.

You know, I was never taught how to teach either, but I've been doing it for 15 years now, so I am very familiar with the "self-development" domain . Part of the problem I had when I started teaching was this training / educating dichotomy. I rapidly realized that most of my students just weren't prepared for what and how I wanted to teach, so i had to adjust to a more training based model. "Frustrating", since I was teaching in a university, doesn't even come close to it!

By the second time I taught a class, I had come to the conclusion that my students had never gone through what I would call "Basic [Academic] Training" - they couldn't write, they didn't know how to read like a scholar, and their most frequent question was "Will this be on the exam?" I *think*, I'm not sure, that a rough equivalent would be you teaching at an SNCO school and having a bright student ask you how many men where in a rifle platoon.

Every since then, I have had to assume that my students didn't have "the basics" - and that has held true for classes from Intro To.... through to graduate level courses - so I have had to structure the courses to assume that they were missing. Occassionally, all of my students have had the basics, and I have been pleasantly surprised; rapidly reworking my lectures as I go .

To get back to the original question; “what is education” I would say that education is half of the requirement to prepare soldiers for Hybrid Warfare and FSO (as stated in A Leader Development Strategy for a 21st Century Army, 25 Nov 2009). Education cannot be separated from Training if we are attempting to develop soldiers who can adapt their training to meet the demands of the current conflicts. Education is understanding the skills that one is trained on and how they interrelate, vital to understanding how to adapt those skills to uncertainty later in life.

I would agree with that with one, minor, proviso - that the training include training in how to adapt. This, to me, seems to be one of the stumbling blocks.

This brings me to another point that I would like to bring up about Training and Education in our Army. FM 7.0 states that the goal of training is mastery (paragraph 2-42). It then defines mastery as being able to perform the task intuitively without having to think about how to perform it, and being able to perform the tasks to standard regardless of the conditions.

I disagree with the first statement that mastery is not thinking. I think a true master is someone who understands the task to the level that he can adapt it to any situation. I think that is summed up in the second half of the statement about performing to standard in any condition. By linking mastery to uncertainty (unknown conditions) Education becomes necessary to being labeled a “master”. I then think that TRADOC needs to relook in FM 7.0 the ideas of Mastery to incorporate execution of the task to standard (training), and understanding the task (education) to the level that it can be adapted to any conditions.

You know, the concept of "mastery" ties directly back to that old, Guild system I was talking about earlier: Apprentice, Journeyman, Master. "Masters" or "mastery" implies someone who has internalized an area of knowledge so well that they are not only licensed to make changes in it, they are noth capable and required to do so.

Years ago, back when the guild system was really operating, in order to gain recognition of "mastery" each candidate had to produce a "master piece" (NB: TWO words, not one). This was the piece of work upon which their mastery would be decided by other masters of the guild. In academia, we have a remnant of that still with the idea of defending a thesis / dissertation, but it has disappeared in most other areas.

[Ken White]

I would agree with that with one, minor, proviso - that the training include training in how to adapt. This, to me, seems to be one of the stumbling blocks.

Very important. It is easy to do yet is rarely done. Really good leaders will do it in subtle ways but too many will avoid it due to the subjectivity required in evaluating success. I believe it is mostly not done due to the fact training or educating to a sliding standard or a 'no right or wrong answer' solution make many uncomfortable. Shouldn't -- and it is absolutely NEEDED in warfighting!

Such a lack of 'objectivity' (and metrics...) definitely makes many in the US Army uncomfortable nowadays and I blame that largely on the Task, Condition and Standard training regimen.

That and the Congressional demand that the Army be able to show 'objectivity' in training and education to insure the supposed overseers that fairness reigns.

You know, the concept of "mastery" ties directly back to that old, Guild system I was talking about earlier: Apprentice, Journeyman, Master. "Masters" or "mastery" implies someone who has internalized an area of knowledge so well that they are not only licensed to make changes in it, they are noth capable and required to do so.

While I and many would agree with you, the bureaucracy would not -- having the unannointed (non-LTC and above command selectees) make changes to processes or products is definitely a 'No-Go.'

[rizythomas]

Are all those posting here military mens. I saw in one picture the training and the education in military services, it's really tough job right. But still it hold it importance from protecting the country from all sides. it's a awesome duty. Proud to be a soldier.