Mein...

Hitler would have said 'Kampf' and meant it in a completely different way. I'm a researcher in the sociological 'sciences' and I have a problem, if not a struggle. The thing is that education, now globalizing like everything else these days, has got to think about what to do with itself.

As many people have commented, 'education' is from Latin educaré — a 'drawing out' or 'drawing forth' of something. That is why it's important to think about what rabbits you are planning to pull out of what hats. Stalin is reputed to have said, "Education is like a weapon; its effects depend on who holds it and at whom it is aimed."

Well, in that case, we need to think seriously about what to teach and how to educate — that is, what rabbits are to be pulled forth and how. How is the world to survive and make good the potential of billions? One kind of eschatology would say that it won't matter in 'the end' — but even that kind must admit that from now to the end, we owe it to the educable to educate them or at least offer them a good chance of a good education.

But what is a good education in this age? Is it different from that in any other age? And what do we educate ABOUT?

An example: in the sciences, we sometimes take for granted that objectivity levels the playing field for all subjects — if a subjective viewpoint cannot be dominant, then all of us are equal; therefore, teach more science and convert the humanities and aesthetics through postmodern strippery.

I don't subscribe to this at all. Science is supposedly neutral, but it comes easier to those reading a dominant corpus in a dominant language. Like money, it is a neutral tool. But like money, it also heavily favours the possessors, holders and users of such tools; it 'privileges' them, to use a popular discourse-perverted term — it makes them privy to secrets and powers and 'specials' which nobody else has.

So you can have a financial priesthood and a technological priesthood, and inequality will grow. But the other arguments all lead to inequality as well, it appears. Perhaps one should just adopt a Sam Harris style 'major in empathy and common sense without religious irrationality and you'll be fine' approach.

It looks good. But again, 'empathy' would require trying to think in the black cave of ignorance and 'irrational' belief and intuition without actually being in there. All scientists are human. They admit to leading irrational lives, but they try to rationalize them in a way that... makes them happy. And having the power to do so, they are good at effective trying sometimes.

But still, it doesn't answer the question of what to teach and how to teach it. It's not that I don't already have many answers. I have to question all the answers if we're going to do anything useful with the trillions of silver pieces yet to be spent on an education-hungry world.

Wonkiness

No... no... I am becoming a wonk. Or perhaps a sub-wonk. 'Wonk', if you must know, is 'know' reversed. Or it is a cross between 'won' and 'monk'.

Exhibit A:

From this researcher’s personal perspective, Mittelman’s overall philosophy seems akin to the idea that the same electromagnetic field can produce different effects in different contexts and be perceived and evaluated differently when different instruments and media are used — light, after all, still acts paradigmatically as both wave and particle, and has a dominant role in both optics and visual arts, among other disciplines. Hence caution is required when asserting the primacy of an existing paradigm for subsuming the new data, or when asserting that a completely new paradigm exists based on the new data.

Globalisation: In The Field

By now it should come as no surprise to anybody that my research area is within that widely-dispersed and contestable phenomenon (or, to the hardcore, 'presumed phenomenon') known as globalisation. It is indeed a fiercely contested phenomenon, because many heavyweights have attempted to define, counter-define, or redefine it; some have sought to rubbish it as just a convenient term to cover many other phenomena that just happen to interact across the globe.

But something from a recent paper by Susan Robertson resonated within me. And, as a former communications specialist, I realised how appropriate that metaphor was.

You see, globalisation is indeed a field. Like the many fields we encounter in physics, defining it is often based on empirical research concerning how it acts upon (or otherwise interacts with) other entities. In the case of a modulated radio-wave field, it induces a variable current in a conductor (or antenna), which we can convert to audible sound waves.

Similarly, globalisation is a field with many components. Some components can be measured by effects on entities (such as 'education sectors' or 'markets') and sub-entities thereof (such as 'schools' or 'businesses'). Some can be measured by less quantitative effects and other debateable phenomena such as human well-being and quality of life.

The lessons we learn from investigating the field of globalisation therefore depend very much on which instruments we use and what entities we observe interacting with that field. Since the primary observers, investigators and participants are all human, globalisation field theory is thus a human science, and can be treated as a multi-disciplinary area of expertise much as complexity theory.

But is globalisation a real phenomenon? Undoubtedly it is. It is real in the sense that it is not ideal, but actual; it is also real in the sense that discussing it as a phenomenon allows us to say it is one, since it is a human phenomenon. After all, we have no doubt that 'love' is a real phenomenon even though some people say it all boils down to oxytocin levels.