Technopoly (25 page)

Historians know all of this—it is a commonplace idea among them. Yet it is kept a secret from our youth. Their ignorance of it prevents them from understanding how “history” can change and why the Russians, Chinese, American Indians, and virtually everyone else see historical events differently than the authors of history schoolbooks. The task of the history teacher, then, is to become a “histories teacher.” This does not mean that some particular version of the American, European, or Asian past should remain untold. A student who does not know at least one history is in no position to evaluate others. But it does mean that a histories teacher will be concerned, at all times, to show how histories are themselves products of culture; how any history is a mirror of the conceits and even metaphysical biases of the culture that produced it; how the religion, politics, geography, and economy of a people lead them to re-create their past along certain lines. The histories teacher must clarify for students the meaning of “objectivity” and “events,” must show what a “point of view” and a “theory” are, must provide some sense of how histories may be evaluated.

It will be objected that this idea—history as comparative history—is too abstract for students to grasp. But that is one of the several reasons why comparative history should be taught. To teach the past simply as a chronicle of indisputable, fragmented, and concrete events is to replicate the bias of Technopoly, which largely denies our youth access to concepts and theories, and to provide them only with a stream of meaningless events. That is why the controversies that develop around what
events ought to be included in the “history” curriculum have a somewhat hollow ring to them. Some people urge, for example, that the Holocaust, or Stalin’s bloodbaths, or the trail of Indian tears be taught in school. I agree that our students should know about such things, but we must still address the question, What is it that we want them to “know” about these events? Are they to be explained as the “maniac” theory of history? Are they to be understood as illustrations of the “banality of evil” or the “law of survival”? Are they manifestations of the universal force of economic greed? Are they examples of the workings of human nature?

Whatever events may be included in the study of the past, the worst thing we can do is to present them devoid of the coherence that a theory or theories can provide—that is to say, as meaningless. This, we can be sure, Technopoly does daily. The histories teacher must go far beyond the “event” level into the realm of concepts, theories, hypotheses, comparisons, deductions, evaluations. The idea is to raise the level of abstraction at which “history” is taught. This idea would apply to all subjects, including science.

From the point of view of the ascent of humanity, the scientific enterprise is one of our most glorious achievements. On humanity’s Judgment Day we can be expected to speak almost at once of our science. I have already stressed the importance of teaching the history of science in every science course, but this is no more important than teaching its “philosophy.” I mention this with some sense of despair. More than half the high schools in the United States do not even offer one course in physics. And at a rough guess, I would estimate that in 90 percent of the schools chemistry is still taught as if students were being trained to be druggists. To suggest, therefore, that science is an exercise in human imagination, that it is something quite different from technology, that there are “philosophies” of science, and that all of this ought to form part of a scientific
education, is to step out of the mainstream. But I believe it nonetheless.

Would it be an exaggeration to say that not one student in fifty knows what “induction” means? Or knows what a scientific theory is? Or a scientific model? Or knows what are the optimum conditions of a valid scientific experiment? Or has ever considered the question of what scientific truth is? In
The Identity of Man
Bronowski says the following: “This is the paradox of imagination in science, that it has for its aim the impoverishment of imagination. By that outrageous phrase, I mean that the highest flight of scientific imagination is to weed out the proliferation of new ideas. In science, the grand view is a miserly view, and a rich model of the universe is one which is as poor as possible in hypotheses.”

Is there one student in a hundred who can make any sense out of this statement? Though the phrase “impoverishment of imagination” may be outrageous, there is nothing startling or even unusual about the idea contained in this quotation. Every practicing scientist understands what Bronowski is saying. Yet it is kept a secret from our students. It should be revealed. In addition to having each science course include a serious historical dimension, I would propose that every school—elementary through college—offer and require a course in the philosophy of science. Such a course should consider the language of science, the nature of scientific proof, the source of scientific hypotheses, the role of imagination, the conditions of experimentation, and especially the value of error and disproof. If I am not mistaken, many people still believe that what makes a statement scientific is that it can be verified. In fact, exactly the opposite is the case: What separates scientific statements from nonscientific statements is that the former can be subjected to the test of falsifiability. What makes science possible is not our ability to recognize “truth” but our ability to recognize falsehood.

What such a course would try to get at is the notion that science is not pharmacy or technology or magic tricks but a special way of employing human intelligence. It would be important for students to learn that one becomes scientific not by donning a white coat (which is what television teaches) but by practicing a set of canons of thought, many of which have to do with the disciplined use of language. Science involves a method of employing language that is accessible to everyone. The ascent of humanity has rested largely on that.

On the subject of the disciplined use of language, I should like to propose that, in addition to courses in the philosophy of science, every school—again, from elementary school through college—offer a course in semantics—in the processes by which people make meaning. In this connection I must note the gloomy fact that English teachers have been consistently obtuse in their approach to this subject—which is to say, they have largely ignored it. This has always been difficult for me to understand, since English teachers claim to be concerned with teaching reading and writing. But if they do not teach anything about the relationship of language to reality—which is what semantics studies—I cannot imagine how they expect reading and writing to improve.

Every teacher ought to be a semantics teacher, since it is not possible to separate language from what we call knowledge. Like history, semantics is an interdisciplinary subject: it is necessary to know something about it in order to understand any subject. But it would be extremely useful to the growth of their intelligence if our youth had available a special course in which fundamental principles of language were identified and explained. Such a course would deal not only with the various uses of language but with the relationship between things and words, symbols and signs, factual statements and judgments, and grammar and thought. Especially for young students, the course ought to emphasize the kinds of semantic errors that are
common to all of us, and that are avoidable through awareness and discipline—the use of either-or categories, misunderstanding of levels of abstraction, confusion of words with things, sloganeering, and self-reflexiveness.

Of all the disciplines that might be included in the curriculum, semantics is certainly among the most “basic.” Because it deals with the processes by which we make and interpret meaning, it has great potential to affect the deepest levels of student intelligence. And yet semantics is rarely mentioned when “back to the basics” is proposed. Why? My guess is that it cuts too deep. To adapt George Orwell, many subjects are basic but some are more basic than others. Such subjects have the capability of generating critical thought and of giving students access to questions that get to the heart of the matter. This is not what “back to the basics” advocates usually have in mind. They want language technicians: people who can follow instructions, write reports clearly, spell correctly. There is certainly ample evidence that the study of semantics will improve the writing and reading of students. But it invariably does more. It helps students to reflect on the sense and truth of what they are writing and of what they are asked to read. It teaches them to discover the underlying assumptions of what they are told. It emphasizes the manifold ways in which language can distort reality. It assists students in becoming what Charles Weingartner and I once called “crap-detectors.” Students who have a firm grounding in semantics are therefore apt to find it difficult to take reading tests. A reading test does not invite one to ask whether or not what is written is true. Or, if it is true, what it has to do with anything. The study of semantics insists upon these questions. But “back to the basics” advocates don’t require education to be
that
basic. Which is why they usually do not include literature, music, and art as part of their agenda either. But of course, in using the ascent of humanity as a theme, we would of necessity elevate these subjects to prominence.

The most obvious reason for such prominence is that their subject matter contains the best evidence we have of the unity and continuity of human experience and feeling. And that is why I would propose that, in our teaching of the humanities, we should emphasize the enduring creations of the past. The schools should stay as far from contemporary works as possible. Because of the nature of the communications industry, our students have continuous access to the popular arts of their own times—its music, rhetoric, design, literature, architecture. Their knowledge of the form and content of these arts is by no means satisfactory. But their ignorance of the form and content of the art of the past is cavernous. This is one good reason for emphasizing the art of the past. Another is that there is no subject better suited to freeing us from the tyranny of the present than the historical study of art. Painting, for example, is more than three times as old as writing, and contains in its changing styles and themes a fifteen-thousand-year-old record of the ascent of humanity.

In saying this, I do not mean to subsume art under the heading of archeology, although I should certainly recommend that the history of art forms be given a serious place in the curriculum. But art is much more than a historical artifact. To have meaning for us, it must connect with those levels of feeling that are in fact not expressible in discursive language. The question therefore arises whether it is possible for students of today to relate, through feeling, to the painting, architecture, music, sculpture, or literature of the past. The answer, I believe, is: only with the greatest difficulty. They, and many of us, have an aesthetic sensibility of a different order from what is required to be inspired, let alone entertained, by a Shakespeare sonnet, a Haydn symphony, or a Hals painting. To oversimplify the matter, a young man who believes Madonna to have reached the highest pinnacle of musical expression lacks the sensibility to distinguish between the ascent and descent of humanity. But
it is not my intention here to blacken the reputation of popular culture. The point I want to make is that the products of the popular arts are amply provided by the culture itself. The schools must make available the products of classical art forms precisely because they are not so available and because they demand a different order of sensibility and response. In our present circumstances, there is no excuse for schools to sponsor rock concerts when students have not heard the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, or Chopin. Or for students to have graduated from high school without having read, for example, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Keats, Dickens, Whitman, Twain, Melville, or Poe. Or for students not to have seen at least a photograph of paintings by Goya, El Greco, David. It is not to the point that many of these composers, writers, and painters were in their own times popular artists. What is to the point is that they spoke, when they did, in a language and from a point of view different from our own and yet continuous with our own. These artists are relevant not only because they established the standards with which civilized people approach the arts. They are relevant because the culture tries to mute their voices and render their standards invisible.

It is highly likely that students, immersed in today’s popular arts, will find such an emphasis as I suggest tedious and even painful. This fact will, in turn, be painful to teachers, who, naturally enough, prefer to teach that which will arouse an immediate and enthusiastic response. But our youth must be shown that not all worthwhile things are instantly accessible and that there are levels of sensibility unknown to them. Above all, they must be shown humanity’s artistic roots. And that task, in our own times, falls inescapably to the schools.

On the matter of roots, I want to end my proposal by including two subjects indispensable to any understanding of where we have come from. The first is the history of technology, which as much as science and art provides part of the story
of humanity’s confrontation with nature and indeed with our own limitations. It is important for students to be shown, for example, the connection between the invention of eyeglasses in the thirteenth century and experiments in gene-splicing in the twentieth: that in both cases we reject the proposition that anatomy is destiny, and through technology define our own destiny. In brief, we need students who will understand the relationships between our technics and our social and psychic worlds, so that they may begin informed conversations about where technology is taking us and how.

The second subject is, of course, religion, with which so much painting, music, technology, architecture, literature, and science are intertwined. Specifically, I want to propose that the curriculum include a course in comparative religion. Such a course would deal with religion as an expression of humanity’s crea-tiveness, as a total, integrated response to fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. The course would be descriptive, promoting no particular religion but illuminating the metaphors, the literature, the art, the ritual of religious expression itself. I am aware of the difficulties such a course would face, not the least of which is the belief that the schools and religion must on no account touch each other. But I do not see how we can claim to be educating our youth if we do not ask them to consider how different people of different times and places have tried to achieve a sense of transcendence. No education can neglect such sacred texts as Genesis, the New Testament, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita. Each of them embodies a style and a world-view that tell as much about the ascent of humanity as any book ever written. To these books I would add the
Communist Manifesto
, since I think it reasonable to classify this as a sacred text, embodying religious principles to which millions of people have so recently been devoted.