Texts:1986 Interpretation and Explanation

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Robbie

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Interpretation and Explanation

Some Methodological Reflections on
the Study of Technology, Education, and Communication

A Departmental Colloquium Presentation

Robbie McClintock

February 20, 1986

The point to be got, or the moral of the tale to come.

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I don’t admire an over-flowing virtue such as bravery unless I see at the same time an overflow of the opposite virtue, as with Epaminondas, who was both extremely brave and extremely kind.... One does not ascend to greatness by being at but one or the other extreme, but by touching both at once and by filling what’s between.

Biaise Pascal, Pensees. Paris: Editions Gamier Freres, 1958, #353, p. 162

Ah! it is clear! To propose that iife is ’’pricipaily” this or that is supremeiy dangerous, for in an instant it wii! be ’’exciusiveiy” either this or that. Then terribie things happen.... it wouid be an easy job to exist if we couid do things uniiateraiiy. But — and here is the probiem! — to iive is to trave! at one time in every direction of the horizon; to live is to have to do with both this and that.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, ”Un rasgo de la vida alemana,” 1935, Obras completas, Vol. 5, Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1961, p. 191.

You would not find out the boundaries of soul [psyche], even by travelling along every path: so deep a measure [logos] does it have.

Heraclitus, Fragment 45 (Dieis), as translated in G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962, p. 205.

General Outline I) Neuhumanismus and the start of educational research

a) The French Machtstaat versus the German Erziehungsstaat

b) The basic question: What educates? How? Why?

c) The methodological polarity: Schleiermacher and Herbart

II) Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776-1841: The study of education should utilize ethics to ensure that what is to be taught is not morally pernicious and then use scientific psychology to find the most effective way to ensure that the student will learn what is to be taught.

a) A major paradigm of educational research

b) A paradigm about which educational researchers have become highly sophisticated.

III) Friedrich E. D. Schleiermacher, 1768-1834: The study of education should use history and other cultural methods to interpret the place of the student in the social milieu and the place of the available cultural resources in the civilization to understand how the interaction of student and culture may limit or liberate his or her human potential.

a) A major paradigm of educational research

b) A paradigm about which educational researchers have not become highly sophisticated.

IV) Post-Schleiermachian methodological traditions

a) The Kantian foreground: The Critique of Pure Reason and ’’The Analogies of Experience” — The Principle of Causality and the Principle of Reciprocity.

b) Wilhelm Dilthey, 1833-1911, Schleiermacher’s biographer, theorist of the Gelsteswissenschaften. methodologist of the hermeneutic circle.

c) Max Weber, 1864-1920, student of Dilthey, proponent of Begriffbildung, methodologist of ideal-type construction.

V) Exemplifications from last-week’s presentation

a) The need of interpretation: text-context and their interactions. To what degree do the tapes speak for themselves?

b) The role of ideal-type construction: reproduction, empowerment, and self-expression — three ideal-types of education applicable to the tapes.

1. Reproduction: Pierre Bourdieu, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.

2. Empowerment: Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Antonio Gramsci and the critique of cultural hegemony.

3. Self-expression: Rousseau, Emile, and education in accord with nature.)

c) A parting question: Would examples of education through computing, analogous to these examples of education through video, so lend themselves to such interpretation?

Some Sources

Neuhumanismus:

Andreas Flitner, Die Politische Erziehung in Deutschland: Geschichte und Probleme, 1750-1880 (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1957) is about a slightly broader topic, but it gives much insight into the movement.

W.H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: Bildung from Humboldt ot Thomas Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) gives an excellent critique.

Herbart:

Harold B. Dunkel, Herbart and Herbartlanism: An Educational Ghost Story (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970) attempts to help readers separate what Herbart really thought from what his self-proclaimed followers propounded in his name.

Haroid B. Dunkel, Herbart and Educatglon (New York: Random House, 1969) is a useful, brief survey.

Schleiermacher:

One awaits the transiation of Diithey’s great biography of him: Wiiheim Diithey, Leben Schlelermachers (2 vois., Martin Redeker, ed., Beriin: De Gruyter, 1966).

It is virtually impossible to study Schleiermacher as an educational thinker in English: despite his prominence in the history of educational theory as viewed by German’s, nothing on his pedagogy has been written in English. For a good collection of texts, see Wilhelm Flitner, ed., Schleiermacher: Padagogische Schrlften (2 vois., Dusseldorf: Verlag Kupper, 1957).

Fortunately, the widespread interest in hermeneutic interpretation has prompted the translation of Schleiermacher’s seminal work on the theme: F. D. E. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts (Heinz Kimmerle, ed., J. Duke and J. Forstman, trans., Missoula, MO: Scholars Press, 1977).

Kant and the analogies of experience:

See Immanuel Kant, Critique o| Pure Reason (Norman Kemp Smith, trans., Neww York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), especially pp. 208-238.

Diithey:

A good selection of texts for these themes is Wilhelm Diithey, Selected Writings (H.P. Rickman, trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

Good Interpretative works are Rudolf A. Makkreel, Diithey: Philosopher of Human Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) and Theodore Plantinga, Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Diithey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1980).

Diithey has a very high reputation as an educational theorists in Germany, an aspect of his work completely ignored in English. See Ulrich Herrmann, }tiDie Padagogik Wilhelm Diltheys: Ihr wissenschaftstheoretischer Ansatz in Diltheys Theorie del Geisteswissenschaften} (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971).

Weber:

With respect to the themes accentuated here, two anthologies of Weber’s work bear mention: Max Weber, The Interpretation of Social Reality (J. E. T. Eldridge, ed.. New York: Schocken Books, 1980) and W. G. Runciman, ed., Weber: Selections in Translation (Eric Matthews, trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), a very excellent anthology.

Two good, specialized studies of Weber’s methodological significance are H. H. Bruun, Science. Values and Politics In Max Weber’s Methodology (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1972)and Thomas Burger, Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation: History, Laws, and Ideal Types (Durham: Duke University Press, 1976).

Bourdieu:

See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Sage, 1977) and Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Richard Nice, trans., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).�