Cross-cultural and Historical Perspectives on the Consequences of Education

:

Implications for the Future

Michael Cole, University of California, San Diego

Considering Basic Concepts:

Culture

Culture 1. The entire body of socially inherited past human accomplishments that serves as the resources for the current life of a social group ordinarily thought of as the inhabitants of a country or region 2. The tending of something 3. Worshipful homage

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Considering Basic Concepts: Education

“The systematic instruction, schooling, or training given to the young in preparation for the work of life” (OED, 1971, p. 833) and To “educe,” the initial meaning of which was to “elicit or develop from a condition of latent, rudimentary, or merely potential existence” (OED, 1971, p. 834). Common emphasis on raising the young and underspecification of methods for doing so

1.

2.

3.

Considering Basic Concepts: Cross-cultural and Historical

Basic disagreements about extent to which cross-cultural research is simultaneously cross historical. Does socio-cultural evolution equal progress? Are consequences of historical change general or specific?

Answers to these questions shape conclusions about culture variation and education in a variety of ways

History, Social Differentiation: Is Education a Universal feature of cutlure?

• One popular view: “education,” applies equally across all societies at all times because “one of the fundamental characteristics of human civilization is a concern for the preparation of the next generation” (Reagan 2000), p. xiii).

• This view equates education and enculturation. • Denies the relevance of historical change • Leads to use of hedge terms such as “informal” or “education in the broadest sense.” • My view: the forms of education have changed historically and so have the forms of enculturation

Some Relevant Historical Changes

Small, face-to-face societies

1.

2.

J. Bruner: …“the process by which implicit culture is ‘acquired’ by the individual ... is such that awareness and verbal formulation are intrinsically difficult “(p. 58).

… i n watching “thousands of feet of film (about life among the Kung San Bushmen), one sees no

explicit

teaching in the sense of a “session” out of the context of action to teach the child a particular thing. It is all implicit.” (p. 59).

Small Face-to-Face Societies: Continued 3.

M. Fortes. Emphasizes that in Taleland, “the social sphere of the adult and child is unitary and undivided.... As between adults and children, in Tale society, the social sphere is differentiated only in terms of relative capacity. All participate it the same culture, the same round of life, but in varying degrees, corresponding to the stage of physical and mental development... 4.

Survey of 76 African societies: education “cannot (and indeed should not) be separated from life itself” (, Reagan, 2000, p. 29),

Rudimentary Forms of Separation Between Enculturation and Education • Where hunter-gathering becomes partially displaced by agriculture, but villages remain isolated and small,

rites de passage

into “bush schools.” expand • Children separated under supervision of selected elders to acquire basic social and economic knowledge for period of 4-5 years

Social Accumulation, Differentiation, and the Advent of Schooling • Bronze age in Euphrates valley and environs gave rise to new mode of life: “CSTEP.” • Requirements of coordination and control include invention of writing system for purposes of record keeping.

• First institutions recognizable as schools appear, a development which repeats itself in China perhaps a millenimum later

Earliest Known Example of a Schoolroom from Sumer, circa 3000 BC

Key Characteristics of Early Schooling 1. New form of social organization: – Separating generations – High student/teacher ratio 2. New Form of Mediated Discourse (writing) 3. New Form of Social Differentation: The literal, visible rise, of a “middle class” 4. Special ideological self-aggrandizement

The Consequences of Such Schooling I have seen how the belaboured man is belaboured – thou should set thy heart in pursuit of writing ... Behold there is nothing which surpasses writing ...

I have seen the metalwork at his work at the mouth of the furnace. His fingers were somewhat like crocodiles; he stank more than fish-roe ...

The small building contractor carries mud ... He is dirtier than vines or pigs from treading under his mud. His clothes are stiff with clay ... Behold, there is no profession free of a boss – except the scribe, he is the boss ...

Behold, here is no scribe who lacks food from the property of the House of the King – life property, health! .... (Quoted in (Donaldson 1978), p. 84-85)

Schools in Large Agrarian Societies • Schooling serves primarily for the “acquisition of virtue” (LeVine & White) • Close association between schooling and religions of the book, but literacy is highly restricted. “Koran=recitation.” • Schooling continues to be highly gender related • Practical skills province of a very few

Schooling in Industrializing Societies 1. The school has been internally organized to include age grading, permanent buildings designed for this purpose, with sequentially organized curricula based on level of difficulty 2. The incorporation of schools into larger bureaucratic institutions so that the teacher is effectively demoted from “master” to a low level functionary in an explicitly standardized form of instruction 3. The re-definition of schooling as an instrument of public policy and preparation for specific forms of economic activity – “manpower development” 4. The extension of schooling to previously excluded populations, most notably women and the poor.

5. Traditional forms continue to exist, now as expression of community values left behind.

Consequences of Education in Post Colonial Societies • During colonial period, education seen as tool of colonial power, secular missionaries of European civilization (“A second wave of troops”) • Forms of education identical to those in use in Europe and North America, including hand-me-down textbooks

Formulations of the Post-Colonial Policy and its Foundations: UNESCO “the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of human beings for justice and liberty and peace, are indispensable for the dignity of man” (UNESCO 1951), frontpiece) ...ignorance is not an isolated fact, but one aspect of general backwardness which has many features, like paucity of production, insignificant exports, poor transport and communications, deficient capital and income, [etc.] (UNESCO, 1951, p. 4)

Post-Colonial Policy and its Foundations: Developmental Social Science 1. Daniel Lerner: The uneducated lack empathy and ability to take another’s perspective. Empathy “is an indispensable skill for moving people out of traditional settings... Our interest is to clarify the process whereby the high empathizer tends to become also the cash customer, the radio listener, the voter." (Lerner, 1958, p. 50). 2. These ideas embodied in scales of modernity which correlated positively with schooling

Post-Colonial Policy and its Foundations: Developmental Psychology • Two decades of research using psycho- logical tasks suggested that, despite some disclaimers, elementary education required to achieve pattern of cognitive development found in industrialized countries • Examples from both Piagetian research and research in learning theory traditions • Hallpike (1979) uses this evidence to argue that primitives, do indeed, think like children.

Post-Colonial Policy and its Foundations: Developmental Psychology: Doubts • Are the results of school-non-school comparisons logically defensible?

• Irvine on conservation: shifting procedures, shifting results • Sharp et al on changes in structure of the lexicon: are differences procedure specific (duck/swim/fowl)?

• Wagner on development of memory for location: the materials are familiar, but what about the procedures?

Example from Wagner memory study

The Flawed Logic of Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Cognitive Performance 1. When, except in school or on a quiz show, does one encounter such a task such as those discussed? Might it not be the case that in school children learn relatively restricted cognitive skills and do not undergo any general cognitive change?

2. The logic of comparative work demands that we find tasks that schooled and unschooled children encounter with equal frequency, and then demonstrate that children who go to school solve the problem in more sophisticated ways tied to specifically their schooling. Failure to find tasks of equal familiarity, in effect, meant that we were treating psychological tasks as neutral with respect to their contexts of use, when this was patently false.

Responding to the Challenge of Comparative Work on Consequences of Schooling • Acknowledge social ecologies where learning in school is likely to fit life circumstances: ... the information-processing skills which school attendance seems to foster could be useful in a variety of tasks demanded by modern states, including clerical and management skills in bureaucratic enterprises, or the lower-level skills of record keeping in an agricultural cooperative or a well-baby clinic (Sharp, Cole et al., 1979, p. 84).

Responding to the Challenge of Comparative Work on Consequences of Schooling- Continued • Seek examples of activities apparently shared in and out of school, and assess different consequences of engaging in them in the two contexts – Nunes and colleagues on mathematics learned outside of school: clearly a “cognitive task” • In this case, logically identical problems shown to be responded to differently, with schooling at low levels often producing less effective results.

Broadening the Search for Consequences: Childrearing • Robert LeVine and colleagues follow the path not taken from experimental work. Their starting point is demography, not psychology. They propose a set of consequences that impact childrearing and

its

consequences.

• Focus on: 1)new discourse skills relevant to bureaucratic settings, 2)models of teaching/ learning including ability to adopt both teacher and student role and 3) acceptance of information through mass media and its ideological underpinnings

LeVine et al Model for Consequences of Schooling

Cultural Variations Involving Industrially Advanced Nations • 1. Two major kinds of comparisons, between nation – states and within nation states.

• Each kind of comparison involves difficult methodological problems that limit conclusions regarding culture and education

Cross-National Studies • For past 20 years, performance of school leavers has been a major issue leading to sophisticated cross-national comparative studies. • This work aided by presence of a “common task” across cultures. The curricula from country to country are closely related to modern disciplines and virtually identical

TIMSS: Math/Science Comparisons • Began with only a few countries and has now expanded to more than two dozen • Quantitative comparisons are easy to make, their explanations are far more difficult to agree upon.

• Following slides, taken from TIMSS researcher James Stigler at UCLA give a flavor of quantitative results for 8 th grade.

Algebra

Geometry

Data Representation

Overall Performance

Explaining the Differences. What’s Cultural?

• Based on ethnographic analysis

within

German, American, and Japanese classrooms, Stigler and Hiebert conclude: – 1. German teaching focuses on

developing advanced procedures

. The teachers lead the students through the development of procedures, including their rationale and the general classes of problems for which they are appropriate .

– 2. T he Japanese teachers organize

structured problem solving

. They present demanding problems and organize the students to engage in active problem solving. Their major role is to design and orchestrate the lessons – 3. The U.S. teachers seek to have their students

learn terms and practice procedures

. The content of the lessons is less demanding and less mathematical reasoning is expected

Cross-National Comparisons: Factors Operating Outside Classrooms • Amount of time spent in the classroom doing mathematics • Resources devoted to education co-vary with performance across societies • Educational level of parents, amount of time spent doing homework, and respect accorded the teaching profession all co-vary with performance • Belief in effort versus natural endowment, characteristic of Japanese, another, co-varying, cultural factors

Within-Country Variations in Culture • Issue of within-country cultural variations in school performance is painful subject all over the industrialized world.

• Issues complicated by deep divisions over social policies stemming from the consequences when colonial peoples from “over there” now appear “over here.” • Covariation of cultural, ethnic, economic issues makes intellectual problems as difficult as political ones

Varying Responses Within the U.S

1. Historically, invocation of “separate but equal” schools, America’s response to the end of slavery and imposition of de facto apartheid. Still separate, never equal. 2. Adapt school classroom cultures to incorporate local cultural practices either as bridge to mastery of local educational norms or as policy promoting bilingual/biculturalism.

3. Obliterate the cultural barriers between home and school by various means: inviting parents to teach, inviting teachers into home and communities to find local funds of knowledge, use of new communications technologies to open classrooms to the world.

4. Impose local national cultural and linguistic standards in an attempt to obliterate cultural variation

Two Perplexing Contradictory Tendencies 1. Centralized standardization versus decentralized variation. a) The intensification of a trend tends toward ever more restrictive demands for standardization, increasing value of high-level certification, and hierarchicalization of society based upon educational achievement versus b) b) a trend toward decentralized control at all educational levels emphasizing collaborative problem solving, teamwork, that appears to mimic and perhaps serve changing models of work

Contradictory Tendencies- Continued 2. Separation versus embeddedness a) b) The rise of cities and centralized state apparatuses, has been associated with separation of the school from society producing a form of efficiency in the transmission of technical skills deemed essential to the society’s maintenance but a the cost of encapsulation of school-based learning and devaluation of knowledge acquired in other settings.

Revulsion at the disutilities of this system have produced efforts to re-integrate the school into the community, and the rise of both alternative conceptions of education and alternative theories of learning (e.g., communities of learners, cultural-model-based approaches to education

By Way of a Conclusion To a very great extent, the outcome with respect to the two issues I have singled out to end this discussion will depend on the nature of society that emerges from the current round of globalized, just-in-time, more-or less instantaneous interactions at - a - distance that have come to be the hallmark of modern life. Sumer was the perhaps the most totalitarian society of all time. If the model of education it promoted continues to dominate the world, it bodes ill for us all, because that form of education has brought us to the brink of self-extermination. But whether, and how, a more horizontally organized, distributed, democratic and locally controlled form of societal interaction and enabling forms of education can compete with the Leviathan of history is highly uncertain. That alternative will be, if and when it comes into being, a hybrid of new and old forms, of the standardized and the locally adapted. It will eschew the notion of human education as the preparation of children to triumph over nature and teach us how to live within, as a part of nature, including nature’s multicolored, multicultural, enormously heterogeneous forms of society .