User:Mokurai/What should education be?

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 8:05 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk@redhat.com> wrote:

> I am a novice in the language of constructivism,

and Constructionism, too. And unclear on the difference.

Seymour Papert admits to a similar problem. "...when the concept itself is in evolution it is appropriate to keep intellectual doors open and this is where we are now." Let us begin with what Papert himself wrote.

http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html

That essay is the first chapter in Seymour Papert and Idit Harel's book Constructionism (Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1991). Out of print. $186.83 used.

http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/ Constructionism vs. Instructionism, lecture

The following is my interpretation.--Mokurai 10:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Constructionism should not simply be defined, Papert says, because that would trivialize it. What we are looking for, in the spirit of Costructionism itself, is ways to guide people to create the kinds of experience that allow them to construct similar concepts in their own worlds. Those who already have such experiences get much of the idea immediately. A suitable construct is already there, waiting for its new name. Those who are ready to try the experiment at length and in detail can readily grasp more and more of its meaning over time. The problem comes if you encounter somebody who responds to the question, "You know how you built up your own understanding of the world, don't you?" with some version of "No, I don't, and you can't make me." Since they are very likely correct on both points, it is quite difficult to help them. But not impossible.

In such a case it sometimes turns out that the other person has been given incorrect information, and correctly rejects it, or has misunderstood something. But I have encountered naysayers in this and other realms who are basically not listening because they already know the truth, and do not wish to be confused by the facts.

It would be an interesting study for some to find out how such people constructed their intellectual fortresses, although the answer in many known cases is quite depressing: Their parents forced it on them. Cults, Flat-Earthers, and other such closed societies. In other cases, it results from reaction to mortal fear: AIDS deniers, knee-jerk Islam-bashers, Crusader-bashers. Cognitive dissonance is the phenomenon in which a conflict between belief and fact makes belief stronger, resulting in rwars in religion, politics, software preferences, and education theories. Sometimes, we just don't know.

The most direct way to get a handle on the real meaning of constructionism is to pay attention to the ordinary misunderstandings that occur in your life, and what it takes to clear them up. Not what you suppose it takes, or what others tell you it takes, but what it actually takes. Observing the residue of misunderstandings that don't get cleared up is also essential, although in that case you only get to observe what didn't work.

The great task for children is not to get the facts right. Nobody gets to do that. Sure there are plenty of facts, but which are they, and what do they mean?

The great task is to construct a personal epistemology, ontology, and ethics, not as a formal system, but as behavior, even brain structure. Epistemology is the construction of personal standards for telling fact from fancy, truth from fiction, and certainty from doubt. Ontology is the construction of theories of what exists. Ethical constructions remind us of what we think we should do even if we don't want to, and why. Everybody has them, and normally no two of us agree on them. The epistemology of Prussian-style education is, the King and his ministers are always right, and even if they weren't you would have no business questioning them. Or, at the classroom level, "It's true because I said so, now shut up and sit down!" The same attitude is common, even usual, in ontology and ethics as well. It's real because I said so, You have to because I said so.

Most people assume that mathematics is a science of perfection in which everything is proved with complete certainty. Mathematicians don't agree. The divide into Idealist/Realist (Mathematical objects and ideas have independent reality) and Nominalist/Formalist camps (Math is just syntactic games with symbols, and isn't "about" anything), among many others. (See Philosophy of Mathematics at Wikipedia for a good sampling.) They don't agree on what constitutes a proof, either.

The situation in all other subjects is, of course, far worse than that. Descarte's epistemology, starting with, "For all my doubting, I cannot doubt that I doubt," led him to an ontology in which people have souls and animals don't, so animals don't have real feelings, and from there to the ethical proposition that people can do anything they like to animals, and nobody has a right to object. Every other formal epistemology and ontology proposed in philosophy, religion, politics, or "practical" life seems to have similarly dubious ethical consequences. Certainly the people who hold quite other theories all think so.