educational myths and realities

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or claims. While he attacks the "systems" model he does not present any other model that could be used to link education and politics. Furthermore, his misuse of certain concepts (e.g., the notion that "politics declined" and "flourished") and his simplistic assertion that "political education is learning to use the essential language of politics" suggests that his knowledge of

346 political and social science is quite obsolete. (He must not have received much in the way of political education, to use his own words, since he has obviously not learned to use the language of politics. )

I believe that every statement in Mr. McClellan's review can be challenged, but I do not wish to belabor the point. Perhaps his naivet6 in the field of social science can be excused. But for a man whose job is to analyze and clarify words and concepts the reviewer has done a very sloppy job which, hopefully, does not represent the efforts of all "students of philosophy."

V I N C E N T C R O C K E N B E R G

University of California, Davis, on

E D U C A T I O N A L M Y T H S

A N D R E A L I T I E S

by I R A S T E I N B E R G

Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Mass., 1968

Ira Steinberg's Educational Myths and Realities is a difficult book to contend with, partly because the book is overlong and in bad need of editing, but also because the author's rambling style often obscures his main arguments. The book's four parts gather loosely about the theme of the "muddling through" that charac- terizes decisions about educational policy and practice in a pluralistic society distinguished by agreement on ambiguous conceptions of the nature and function of education. I shall review each part in turn and try to make clear what I take to be Stein- berg's major points and arguments, some of which I shall take issfe with.

I

Part 1 is concerned with "Aim, Policy, and Criticism in

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Education," and Steinberg begins his discussion by asking, "What is involved in taking seriously talk about the purposes of education?" He answers by arguing that in a way of life that is as politically pluralistic and socially diverse as ours, there can be no standard, omni-contextual meaning of the term education from which the true purposes of those activities called educational can be read off. He then asks, "Can there be no justification for specific policies affecting decisions of [say] pupil placement and curricular offerings and requirements?" He answers, again, by reiterating that questions of this sort cannot be answered by re- course to the meaning of the term education. "Indeed, deeisions regarding practices and policies, when called to the bar of justification, bring purposes more dearly into focus and in the proeess the 'meaning' of edueation is elucidated" (p. 23). He goes on to reject a summary definition of education, that the purpose or meaning of education is merely the sum of the purposes of each of the subjects in the curriculum.

Thus, while Steinberg has claimed that decisions about policies and practices, "when called to the bar of justification," help define and give meaning to the term education, he has provided no definition or conceptual understanding of the telTn such that we could know with any certainty what is legitimately to count as a justification when we see one. He has rightly rejeeted a summary definition of education, but he has suggested no other definition or conceptual understanding of education that would make sense of or give point to justifying activities.

Steinberg does seem to suggest, however, that education is more appropriately thought of in terms of a praetice definition, as, for example, "practice" is understood by John Rawls. In "Two Concepts of Rules," tlawls defines a practice as "any form of activity specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defenses, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure." And, indeed, this is where Steinberg's analysis seems to go.

For he claims (p. 24) that the activities of individuals and groups that have interests to support in and through schooling are essentially political and, as such, are governed by the rules defining appropriate political ae t iv i ty - in this ease, the procedural rules of democratic decision-making. Michael Oakshott defines polities as "the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom choice or chance has brought together" ("Political Education"), and Steinberg is using the term in essentially the same way. The consequence, however, of viewing

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educational decision-making as essentially political is, according to Steinberg, that long-range or "synoptic" planning in education is rendered difficult if not impossible because of the diverse political and social ideas contending for control of the schools.

Shy of one group's imposing its "ideological blueprint" on the schools, the only solution Steinberg sees is some form of democratic political compromise. How is this process to be con- ceptualized? Steinberg first considers a form of decision-making proposed by Charles E. Lindblom called "Partisan Mutual Adjust- ment" (PMA), which is simply "decision making by interested individuals promoting their interests or their proposals ff and as they can" (p. 47). The theory of PMA holds that as these interests contend for influence and control over the schools, a form of progress ensues by what is called "disjointed incrementalism," in this case the educational counterpart of the hidden hand of classical laissez-faire economic theory.

The difficulty with the combination of PMA and disiointed increnaentalism as a theory of decision-making in education is that it results not so much in a solution of the problems of educational policy and practice as simply in their temporary settlement. Steinberg rightly rejects PMA because it fails to incorporate rational debate and reasonable projections of the consequences of alternative policies and practices, and he likewise rejects disjointed incrementalism on the grounds that it does not and cannot raise essentially normative issues. PMA and disjointed incrementalism exemplify the "muddling through" that is Stein- berg's concern in this book. What Steinberg prefers is a form of PMA that incorporates rational debate over educational means and ends. What he does not answer, however, is why we should expect such a discussion to have point or meaning ff social pluralism encourages a politics of partisan interest and ff there is no overriding and commonly held conception of what education ought to be. What form, if any, could a justification of policy or practice take in such a situation?

In a discussion of the various forms of criticism that concludes part 1, Steinberg tries to answer this question by setting up the ground rules for debate on educational policy and practice. At its best, he claims, the critique of education takes the following form: "It is examination undertaken in accordance with the canons of precision and clarity for the purpose of arriving at as clear and precise an understanding as is possible of that which is under examination. It is the attempt to find fault for the sake of clear understanding and thereby involves the elucidation of

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merits as well as defects. It is basic in the sense that the criteria for the identification of faults and merits may be specified differ- ently according to the differing characters of the questions raised for examination in the respective practice of the various disciplines" (p. 85).

But this kind of empty formalism gets the analysis nowhere. We are still left with pluralistic conceptions of what education ought to be and thus with diverse standards of merit and defect in education. Steinberg claims, on the basis of the above definition, that "a synoptic overview is called for" (p. 89), but we are left with doubts whether such an overview doesn't merely remove PMA and the old disagreements about policy and practice in education to a new but no more soluble level.

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In part 2, "Behavior, Behaviorism, and Teaching," Steinberg attempts to evaluate the merits and defects of behaviorism as conceptual scheme and as educational program.

He begins by defining behavior heuristically as "willed activity," that is, as bodily movements done on purpose. Starting from the premise that "that which serves a purpose, however well and however consistently, is not necessarily done for that purpose even though it is done on purpose or for other purposes" (p. 99), he argues that the language used to understand behavior is inescapably interpretive and normative, thus going beyond pure observables. This aspect of behavior is, however, offset to some degree by the semiautomatic, habitual aspect of much of human behavior. "It is for this reason that the study of behavior would seem able to dispense with a serious concern for intention" (p. 103).

Steinberg goes on to seek a definition of behavior and behaviorism that will "distinguish among practitioners within the behavioral sciences," and he proposes the following: a behaviorist is "one who studies behavior in order to and in such fashion as to test and correct his preconceptions and to develop the material for new conceptions about that portion of the world's populations which behaves. Behaviorism is viewed as the enterprise of studying behavior in such fashion and for such purposes." He concludes from his definition, not surprisingly, that "one may participate in the behavioristic enterprise without being a behaviorist" (p. 111) and, later, that "it is not easy to draw the lines between behaviorism and nonbehaviorism" (p. 131).


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One can only wonder from this exercise whether Steinberg has violated his own injunction, stated implicitly in part 1, against seeking satisfactory omni-contextual definitions of terms with several distinct uses. As he admits, his definition fails utterly to distinguish the behaviorist from the nonbehaviorist, which was the stated purpose of the search for a definition. What makes the admission so strange, however, is that Steinberg nowhere in his analysis looks at the term as it is used to mark off different approaches to inquiry in psychology and other disciplines. Surely both B.F. Skinner and Carl Rogers could fit under Steinberg's definition of behaviorist, yet they certainly see many differences between themselves in both conceptual schemes and research procedures. Maybe these differences cannot withstand scrutiny, but the failure even to look at the claimed differences among those who call themselves behaviorists and those who eschew that label does little credit to the analysis.

Going on, however, Steinberg argues that, given his definition, teachers must be committed to behaviorism as program; that is, they must be committed to testing out the efficaey of their teaching by observing its impact on their students. While supporting behaviorism as program in education at least to this extent, Steinberg is quick to point out what he sees as some of the dangers of its too great and too uncritical acceptance: (1) an overemphasis on testing that courts the "danger that pupils will be rated in aeeordanee with the sorts of ratings the tests administered to them permit" (p. 143); (2) the reduction of the teacher, as technology becomes more sophisticated, to the role of "a more or less competent worker tending his machine in the education industry" (p. 145) ; and (8) the possibility that the tests may, in the end, come to be held as a set of normative principles determining the content of the curriculum (i.e., teach only that which can be reliably tested).

Concluding, Steinberg argues that we cannot, in fact, set up a series of behavioral "recipes" for teaching, nor can we define such valued objectives of teaching as practical intelligence in strictly behavioral terms. In effect, he argues that to do so would be to mistake intelligence for a purely descriptive term when in fact it also functions evaluatively. "When we talk about how we know it [thinking] is purposeful, or intelligent, or thoughtful, we talk about the criteria and evidence for evalu- ating performance as nonaeeidental, as suited to a purpose, as complex or intricate, as well organized or structured, as im- pressive in its novelty, or whatever" (p. 153). And we cannot

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give the necessary and sufficient rules for guaranteeing this kind of performance. And this seems essentially correct.

I I I

Part 3, "Motivation, Indoctrination, and the Mythology of Democracy," begins by raising the question of the moral legitimacy of school practices and policies as these relate to the problem of student motivation. The question of what Steinberg calls "the morality of the teehnology of motivation" arises because students often do not want to do the things teachers and administrators deem necessary for proper learning, and teachers and administrators are then faced with the necessity of justifying school practices and policies to students in such a way that they will become "properly" motivated.

What form can these justifications take? Can schooling be justified in terms of the intrinsic worth of the activity of learning itself, that is, the pursuit of knowledge and truth for its own sake or for the ennoblement of man? Steinberg rather abruptly rejects this as an adequate justification because he considers intrinsic worth to be a "right feeling" rather than a "right reason." Since right reasons are required for justification, appeals to intrinsic worth, as he understands it, cannot justifiably warrant demands on the time and activities of students.

The argument then continues in roughly the following manner: (1) if the worth of such learning activities is not communicable to those who have not been initiated into them and experienced their worth at firsthand; (2) given that we have no right to assume that students are eager to develop their reasoning abilities if [only] we would give them the opportunity and the help; (8) if we want students to come to hold that the development of their reasoning abilities is a worthy thing; then (4) we may have to indoctrinate students into a belief in rationality. Hence, "the worshipper of rationality may be drawn to act con- trary to principle in the name of his principle" (p. 191). The appeal to intrinsic worth to justify schooling is, then, according to Steinberg, either simply mistaken or ultimately self-contradictory.

Can schooling be justified in terms of ultimate utility? Stein- berg likewise dismisses this by arguing that school learning will be useful ultimately only to a few, and since we cannot reliably predict who those few will be, "to require all to undergo an initiation appropriate only to a few is either to fail to initiate

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the many appropriately, or it is to initiate the many to frustration, on the one hand, or on the other, to aeeeptanee, though not neeessarily frustrated acceptance, of the fact that they are the many losers in an important eompetition" (p. 185).

In addition, it is morally questionable, daims Steinberg, to argue that students ought to develop their powers of reason in order to pursue interests requiring advaneed reasoning abilities "if we eannot guarantee to develop their powers of reason to a level consistent with the hopes engendered" (pp. 195-96).

Given the dilemma, then, that a justification of schooling in terms of intrinsic worth of the activities of schooling is ultimately self-contradictory and that a justification in terms of ultimate utility is morally dubious, and given that Steinberg is not willing to question the value of rationality, he shifts to a critical attack on what he believes to be the root of the dilemma: the assumption in democratic thought, which he believes unwarranted, of the universal educability and intelligence of all men, and the resultant demand on the schools, also unwarranted, to turn out educated and intelligent men in accordance with this assumption. If, as Steinberg argues, we are not in fact equally endowed with the capacity for filling the various offlees of the society, then the only purpose served by the schools in their teaching of democratic "mythology" is to indoctrinate students into a belief in democracy in a self-justifying way. That is to say, we want students to develop an optimistic view of human nature, and "we want them to believe that their optimism is justified and to grow up to make it justified. We want them to believe that democratic citizens are wise and benevolent, and we want them to be democratic citizens who are wise and benevolent" (p. 208).

The school policies and practices to which democratic ideals give rise, however, are mistaken, according to Steinberg. For he claims that some men are in fact better and wiser than others, and, whatever may be possible in the future, it is dearly the ease now that some students are brighter than others and, conversely, that some are duller. If we legitimately expect schools to help fit the young to adult social roles, some of which require greater intellectual capacity than others, and given the fact of unequal intelligence and edueability, then, Steinberg claims, a ease can be made that children ought to be grouped in schools according to ability. For classes of mixed ability unfairly hold back the learning of the brightest and deprive political society of their fully developed talent.

Despite all this, however, Steinberg still contends that per-

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haps the myth of democracy ought to be taught in the schools anyway, for such an indoctrination, despite its lack of factual warrant, may be the glue that holds together the rich and the poor, the dull and the bright in an otherwise fragmented society.

Part 4, "Crisis and Ambiguity," comprises two relatively short arguments. Steinberg first argues that the practice in the United States of laying on the schools the blame for and the 353 responsibility to alleviate social crisis is misguided and wrong- headed. First, the schools have very little control over the full range of circumstances that contribute to social crisis, but secondly, and more importantly, by their misguided attempts to indoctrinate students into a commitment to untenable beliefs in the universal intelligence and edueability of all men, the schools in fact contribute to the crisis itself.

The second argument in this section is over the: value of ambiguity. Despite the problems raised by ambiguity, Steinberg suggests that agreement on such ambiguous objectives as progress and improvement in education have at least the merit of per- mitting people to compromise on interpretations of these objectives "without feeling that they are compromising their principles" (p. 288). He then concludes, somewhat surprisingly in view of his argument in part 1, that PMA incorporating rational debate over means and ends, which he had earlier favored, is not a workable decision-making procedure. "In the face of ambiguity, from which everything follows and so not one thing alone, and in the name of democracy [because we do not want to give up educational decision-making to monolithic agencies], we must give up the notion of educational decision-making by synoptic overview. We must recognize, for example, that alternate synopses are compatible with ambiguous objectives. We are thus committed to a conception of the American educational enterprise where the pushes and pulls of partisan interests are advanced and defended, perhaps as they should be, in the name of the public interest" (p. 240).

Several aspects of the arguments in these two sections de- serve eomrnent. First of all, Steinberg's treatment of the concept of intrinsic worth is surely inadequate, and he might do well to look at analyses of intrinsic worth that do not so quickly dismiss it as mere "right feeling." A. E. Murphy, for example, in his Theory of Practical Reason, argues that to assert the intrinsic worth of an activity is to claim that the activity meets well the understood requirements of a worthwhile practice of which the activity is an instance. Further, such a claim is a good and


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sut~cient reason for acting that presupposes publicly discoverable facts by those concerned and competent to satisfy the standards of the practice. Steinberg's treatment of intrinsic worth does not constitute a major fault, however, for he seems to recognize Murphy's point when he goes on to argue that the worth of certain learning activities is not communicable to those who have not been initiated into these pursuits and experienced their worth at firsthand.

A more important objection, however, is that Steinberg ac- cepts, or seems to accept, the necessary and unalterable "brightness" and "dullness" of children and our present incapacity to do much to alleviate or to eliminate failure in the schools. First of all, brightness and dullness, as these terms are used in the schools, are largely a function of test and quasi-test performances, and Steinberg's use of these terms seems to be at odds with his own strictures, cited in part 2, against rating students in accordance with "the sorts of ratings the tests administered to them permit." Given existing educational environments, there is certainly some truth in the claim that some children are brighter than others; and given the present state of educational research, we do indeed seem to be limited in our capacity to eliminate failure in the schools. But it may be premature to conclude that some children are necessarily and unalterably brighter or wiser than others and that, hence, belief in democratic egalitarianism is untenable, however necessary it may be socially.

If individuals differ, as they surely must, in their aptitudes and abilities, diversity in educational environments should be encouraged - students with an inaptitude for existing educational environments should be provided qualitatively different environments more suited to their demonstrated aptitudes. Empirical research on this is not far advanced and there is admittedly the possibility that the whole enterprise of fitting educational environments to individuals in such a way as to ensure school success might be misconceived. But it is still reasonable to think that if we knew enough about the aptitudes related to learning and if we were creative enough in our teaching and curriculum strategies, we could, as Lee Cronbaeh puts it, "choose the environment to fit the individual instead of relying on fortuitous correspondences." We could, in at least this way, alleviate and possibly eliminate school failure without being forced to set up qualitatively different goals for different students, and also meet, head on, Steinberg's objection to justifying schooling in terms of ultimate utility.

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In other words, the assumption of the universal intelligence and educability of all men may not yet be reduced to untenable "'myth" whose primary function is to act as social glue. Rather, it may be part of a larger set of democratic beliefs that is capable of functioning, if we let it, as an ideal that we can work to approximate. Functioning as an ideal, a belief in democratic equalitarianism may even lend a kind of ethical imperative to the research on schooling mentioned above. Until such research has been undertaken, to distribute educational opportunity and the social rewards contingent on school achievement aeeording to the "dullness" or "brightness" of children would seem to constitute a clear violation of justice.

An objeetion must also be raised to Steinberg's seeming acceptance of the hypoerisy involved in teaching democratic "myths" in the schools while practicing elitism in the form of homogeneous ability groupings. Why he expects students or anyone else to accept the contradiction between the myth and their everyday experiences, especially given the recent student protests over precisely this contradiction, is never made clear.

Finally, a comment on the dilemma Steinberg sees in the attempt to justify schooling. Steinberg rightly claims, early in part 8, that ultimately "% man's motives are grounded in what he wants and in what he wants to avoid" (p. 169). And he admits that students, at least many of them, want to avoid what they consider to be the dreariness, stupidity, and inappropriateness of mueh schooling. Students' dislike of sehooling is not, however, as he seems to suggest, necessarily tantamount to a rejection of or laek of appreciation by these students for the value of rationality.

Murphy, for example, again in The Theory of Practical Reason, develops a eonception of rationality in which the possibility of rational action presupposes a framework of both wants and the shared understandings and jointly maintained praetiees that define community. It is only within this framework that rationality has either point or meaning. And it would be wrong to assume that students have not developed in at least some aspects of their lives, for example, within the activities of family and friendships, the shared concerns presupposed in rational action. Perhaps educators might consider that there is, in the shared activities of ehildren and in those genuinely shareable with adults, the basis for the development of rational capacities that does not at all require or suggest indoctrination.

It is ironie, however, that the people who have been pressing

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for change in education along these l i nes - Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, and George Dennison, among o the r s - have not been able to work within the structure of PMA that Steinberg ultimately, if somewhat unhappily, leaves us with. One of the practical ditfi- culties of pluralism as a basis of decision-making is that only established interest groups are recognized as legitimate participants in the debate over decisions of policy and practice. Unless there is some way to guarantee the full and equal participation of all groups with interests in education, and the most obvious groups presently excluded are the students themselves and those forced to work within the framework of the so-called "free schools," no form of PMA can be even minimally satisfactory.

The upshot of Steinberg's argument is, that in spite of its inadequacies, decision-making in education will have to proceed by PMA without synoptic overview. A more reasonable, and perhaps more drastic conclusion would be that if schooling can be justified neither intrinsically nor instrumentally, and since we can not yet fit educational environments to the appropriate learning aptitudes, schooling as we presently have it should either be disestablished (i.e., access to social position and reward should not be monopolized by the schools) or eliminated and replaced by what Goodman and Illich call "incidental education." But this conclusion only follows, of course, if one believes in democracy not as myth but as ideal.

I R A S. S T E I N B E R G ' S

R E P L Y T O V I N C E N T C R O C K E N B E R G

Educational Myths and Realities is a difficult book to contend with primarily because it is neither an argument nor a polemic comprised of main arguments. It is advertised in the subtitle as a set of Philosophical Essays on Education, Politics and the Science of Behavior. As is stated explicitly in the foreword, these essays are more or less intertwined, but each is on a general topic of sufficient independent interest to be pursued in depth in its own right. It is also stated explicitly that the concern is to display complexities in questions dealing with educational ends and educational means and in the questions of philosophy to which these are related. "If we do not answer these questions

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at least we indicate some of the obstacles and confusions in attempting to answer them." And, "the approach represented most consistently throughout the essays is that of uncovering and classifying ambiguities in concept, conceptions, and misconcep- tions and in positions and arguments which figure on debate over educational means and ends."

Now, while at times I do put forth an argument here or there which is not merely adopted for purposes of discussion, it would be a mistake to presume that the several essays are intended as a vehicle solely, or primarily, for the development and propagation of key arguments or positions on education. If a reviewer were looking for such a vehicle, he might complain about the length or the editing or the difficulty of digging out the main arguments amidst the ramblings of the author. Such a reviewer has my sympathies. His job would be easier if the essays were much more intertwined, or ff they involved considerably fewer independent lines of investigation. In any case, I have given fair warning in the foreword, or I thought I had when I wrote it. I shall now proceed to respond to the particular points in Mr. Crockenberg's review more or less in turn.

It is not too unfair to say, as Mr. Crockenberg does, that my position in the first essay boils down to the conclusion that given our socially diverse and politically pluralistic way of life, there can be no standard omni-contextual meaning of education from which the true purposes and practices of education can be read off. In fact, it may be possible for all to define education in the same way and still differ as to practices of education. The point is that where people seek a definition of education specific enough to single out particular practices and purposes to the exclusion of others, then alternative definitions which are practice specific may be advanced. Where a more general definition is sought, it is ambiguous with respect to purposes and practices. Accordingly, definition is hardly the way to justify choice among claims for the educational legitimacy of alternative educational practices and purposes. One hardly needs a definition of education to decide whether to have kids spend more time in English class or in vocational shop. (It should be noted that one can make a case for carrying on an activity in the schools without any reference to its educational benefits, e.g., an antimeasles innocu- lation program.) Certainly one could find relevant considerations for an intelligent discussion of such an issue.

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I do not quite know what to make of Mr. Croekenberg's reference to Rawls and his notion of practice as in "Two Con- cepts of Rules." It is not that I don't know what Rawls is talking about, for I believe that I do. I cannot make head or tail out of Crockenberg's attempted transition from my position against justification by definition, through practice definition to Oakeshott's definition of political activity. The procedural rules of democratic decision-making and rules defining practice where "'education' is more appropriately thought of in terms of a practice definition," to quote Crockenberg, must be rules about different sorts of things. The rules of decision-making about education do not define the practices of education. I shudder at the thought that I might seem to suggest this muddle and hasten to disclaim any of it.

This brings us to the discussion of decision-making and policy-planning as essentially political. While it may be a bit too grand a way of putting it, Crockenberg's statement of my position is not bad for openers: "long range or 'synoptic' planning in education is rendered difficult if not impossible because of the diverse political and social ideas contending for control of the schools." More simply put, different people want different things for their children, themselves, and for society, and it is rather hard to write a blueprint for all possible futures when one man's idea of Utopia is another's idea of hell.

And then as he introduces the discussion of Partisan Mutual Adjustment (PMA), Crockenberg demonstrates his confusion as to its point and mine. Steinberg does not see political compromise as the solution to the problems of educational policy and practice. Surely, Lindblom in his notion of disjointed incrementalism does see PMA as providing the solution to such problems. PMA, or partisans advancing their interests as they can, is somehow in the aggregate or long run to lead to progress and improvement according to Lindblom. He advances it optimistically (and in accordance with American democratic traditions) as the sensible way to arrive at ultimate solutions to the problems of social and political concern. I do not reject PMA as a description of how decision-making in fact occurs; it is itself ambiguous enough to cover anything from decision by coercion to decision by mystical conversion so long as there is a converter and a convert. I do not reject PMA because it fails to incorporate rational debate and reasonable projection of alternative policies and practices. I do not reject disjointed incrementalism because it does not and c a n -

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not raise essentially normative issues. I reject the claim by Lind- blom that we ought to accept PMA because of disjointed incrementalism and because decision by synoptic overview is impossible.

Disjointed inerementalism is a faith in the idea that PMA with or without rational debate and projection leads to progres- sive benefit to society. PMA carries within it no peculiar safe- guards against rule by tyranny. Lindblom sort of presumes that a more or less democratic atmosphere will continue. But disjointed decrementalism is consistent with PMA, if disjointed incrementalism is. Disjointed inerementalism is not to be faulted for not raising normative issues. It is a faith that things get better rather than worse for all if we each pursue our own interests. It is because I cannot accept such a faith very easily that I should like to see PMA influenced by rational consideration and projection of consequences of alternative actions. I should like to see partisans contending for rational acceptance of policies intended not only to advance their own selfish interests but also to account for and enhance the pursuit of the interests of others.

Still, I could not take this as offering the solution to social problems or problems of educational policy or practice. For, I do agree with DeJouvenel that political problems are not solved; they are settled. I do not reject PMA for offering settlements rather than solutions. I reject Lindblom's attempt to offer PMA as a method of solution rather than as a method of settlement. If, ~n fact, people may legitimately differ in what they want and what they think best and if their wants and ideals may change over time, it does seem odd to expect unique once and for all solutions to such problems as "what purposes and praetiees ought we to adopt and follow in our schools?" Does this mean there can be no justification of school policy or practice at any time? Of course not. It does mean that at some times we may not be able to justify particular school policies or practices.

Somehow, Mr. Crockenberg got the idea that I intended to solve the problem of pluralism of interest in my discussion of eritieism and critique. I did not so intend and he is correct in concluding that I did not succeed. Still I may have been a bit more informative than Mr. Croekenberg sees fit to recognize. After all there was quite a bit of classification of types and levels of criticism with examples of application to education before the definition of critique (in general and not merely of education) which Mr. Croekenberg quotes at length. Whether that definition is an empty formalism or a good structural generalization in the

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philosophic sense depends upon what one is looking for. I was interested in the problems of criticism; Mr. Crockenberg was looking for the solution to the problem of pluralism.

I am afraid I might have exacerbated the problem for him in that essay. For, if anything, I suggested more strongly just how diverse the standards of criticism applied by different interested parties might be. Thus, for example, "an architect, an economist, and an artist in their professional roles would ask different questions and tlnd different sorts of faults when asked to evaluate a particular structure." Imagine that the structure in question is a school building. A community is considering putting up a school and is trying to decide among alternative structures including this one. The school board receives its evaluation from the panel of professionals. The criteria are incommensurable, but somehow they must be put together in an evaluation of the various structures for rank-ordering of the alternatives. No one structure comes out clearly on top by the criteria of all the professionals taken severally. No one structure is clearly on the bottom of all of the professional lists taken severally. If they are going to build a school and if they are going to choose only among the set of alternatives agreed on, then they must settle on something. Now it is not on the basis of definition of critique that some sort of synoptic overview is called for. Bather, synoptic overview is called for because of the need to decide specific eases and to adopt specific policies at particular times in particular places in the face of incommensurable criteria of evaluation.

Moreover, we do not always believe that our settlements are merely arbitrary, though, of course, they often are. At times we compromise for the sake of compromise and agree to take that to which neither of us is unalterably opposed. Or, one person appears to have the power to force his will on others who therefore let him have his way. Still, there are times when we consciously and deliberately seek to set out the criteria from each of the networks in which they are embedded and to create a new, though decision specific, balance sheet on which we may agree. Thereby, we may create a settlement for which we can provide the justification. We may be able to point to our agreement, after all, on the relative importance of specific criteria to our resources, interests, concerns, and felt needs. It may not be the uniquely determined choice given these factors, but it appears as a not unreasonable choice. What more could one reasonably hope for? Of course, what it is reasonable to hope for, may not in given instances be reasonably expected.


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I can think of no exercise less fruitful for advancing understanding of the study of behavior than another stereotypical disquisition on B .F . Skinner, behaviorist, and Carl Rogers, counselor. And my concern is "with behaviorism as science, a complex of approaches to the study of behavior." Mr. Croekenberg states (and I quote him) that I proceeded "to seek a definition of behavior and behaviorism that will (and here he quotes me) "distinguish among practitioners within the behavioral sciences." This excerpt is taken from a summary criticism of a particular sort of move in attempting to define behaviorism. If my intentions were in question, Mr. Croekenberg might better have quoted the following remarks at the opening of the section on behaviorism.

Not all who study behavior w o u l d be called behaviorists or would call themselves behaviorists. Nor do the lists of all those who call themselves behaviorists necessarily coincide with the lists of all those to whom the term is applied by others. At times "behaviorist" functions as a compliment and at other times it is intended as an insult. To presume, then, to come up with an easy definition that would distinguish the behaviorist f rom the nonbehaviorist would be misguided. Perhaps though we can identify the poles to i l luminate the grey area . . . .

If so much of the study of h u m a n behavior is carried on in that grey area between the arch types, how are we to proceed in mapp ing the grey area? In fact we shall not provide a map bu t ra ther a sketch of the cartographic problem.

In fact in the second page of the essay, I indicated rather explicitly (requiring no reference to implicit statements in the first section) that my intention in pursuing definitions of behavior and behaviorism was not to provide satisfactory omni- contextual definitions. Rather it was to show how these terms "function in various ways within a given context and that they function in diverse contexts. Perhaps then we might see why it does not make much sense to take a stance of 1984 horror over behaviorism, or for that matter, a stance of Skinnerian optimism either." There is little doubt that people in education are prone to take such stereotypical stances. And as I noted (p. 107) this infects other fields as well, as witness the controversies within political science, for example.

Moreover, Mr. Croekenberg failed to note that the definition of the behaviorist that he quoted was introduced explicitly for

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heuristic purposes. Finally, it is most peculiar that Mr. Crocken- berg finds it :trange, given the above introductions, that I have concluded that my definition fails to distinguish between the behaviorist and the nonbehaviorist. He quotes in evidence my statement that "it is not easy to draw the lines between behaviorism and nonbehaviorism." This statement is lifted from the concluding paragraph of the essay.

Well, as promised, we do not have nice clear definitions of behavior or behaviorism. Even our definition of behavior as willed activity, turned out to be rather ambiguous. And, as we have just seen, it is not easy to draw the lines between behaviorism and non-behaviorism. We are not sure how to draw them or where to draw them. Nevertheless, having wandered through the swamps of behaviorism in the study of behavior, we are, hopefully, better prepared to explore behaviorism as program or the behavioral

influence on education.

If Mr. Crockenberg could find what he chose to quote from this paragraph, he might also have taken note of its opening promise. And then he might not have been so surprised or confused as he appears to be. For, delivery on a promise is not usually taken to be a strange admission. Furthermore, in view of the fact that my discussion of behaviorism proceeded primarily through an extended discussion of the activities and intentions of various sorts of practitioners in psychology and other disciplines, it is hard to see that my failure to do so would make this purported admission so strange. What is strange is Mr. Crocken- berg's misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the essay.

Turning quickly to the treatment of behaviorism as program, I have two corrections to make in Mr. Croekenberg's account of my position. First, I do not say that given my definition of behaviorism, teachers must be committed to behaviorism as program. "In teaching we are limited to the view from the outside. As teachers we are, no matter what our views on behaviorism, committed to behaviorism as program." We cannot somehow get inside our students, we cannot perform surgery on them to teach them. We have to do things and we have to get them to do things that they might leana and that we might find out whether we are teaching them. At least this is true if we think teaching involves responsibility for getting students to learn. And then I go on to discuss this and related issues.

Secondly, I do not conclude "that we cannot, in fact, set up a series of behavioral 'recipes' for teaching." That depends upon what one would teach. If one wished to teach people particular

I r a $. S t e i n b e r g

skill~ or particular information, it is conceivable that particular teaching programs would be developed that are generally success- ful for students of appropriate backgrounds (a programmed instruction course in introductory statistics would be inappropriate to students with no background in arithmetic operations). There are many things we would teach which cannot be neatly programmed, especially such things as coming up with one's own idea or figuring something out on one's own. Still, while we cannot define "figuring something out on one's own" in purely behavioral terms, we might develop programs increasingly sophisticated in their capacity to encourage and elicit responses which are inven- tive, imaginative, or insightful. After all, we should be able to find some program writers who are intelligent, sophisticated, and knowledgeable both in what they would teach and in the arts of teaching it. The statement that there are no necessary and sufficient rules for guaranteeing that these responses will be elicited is a confusion. There are no necessary and sufficient rules by which human beings can guarantee that any human performance will occur. The point is that we must be wary of those who claim too much for their specific programs as well as those who, offering little, claim that there is no possibility or sense in offering more.

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I I I

It is mainly in the third section of his review that Mr. Croekenberg has decided to discover my theme and my argument. He has failed in the attempt, of course, for he merely selects from among alternative themes and positions developed and illuminated throughout the essays those roles in which he would east me. Unfortunately, what I have to say gets bent a little, but I am not sure whether this is a result of design or of confusion. The effects are the same.

The essay on "Motives, Motivation, and Morality" was not intended either as a defense of intellectual elitism or as an argument that anyone who opposes the academic orientation of the curriculum is anti-intellectual and against the development of rationality. But anyone reading the review might think it was so intended. The essay on "Intelligence and the Myth of the Educated Citizen" was not intended as further support for intellectual elitism and an apology for ability grouping, though it is made to seem as such. The final essay was not written to argue either that misguided attempts to indoctrinate students in the


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belief in the universal intelligence and educability of all men contribute to social crisis (though I did say that they may) or that PMA incorporating rational debate over means and ends is a workable decision-making procedure (in fact it is not, but for reasons to be discussed below).

The first of these three essays begins wth a discussion of alternative conceptions of motive and moves to a discussion of motivation. The distinction is made between two general concerns in discussion of motivation: the concern to understand what moves people and the concern to move people to do or want to do what one thinks they ought to do or want to do. There is a general discussion of the possible (and legitimate) alternative inteq~retations of the slogan "Teaching best proceeds if it is consistent with the interests of the students." These discussions take us through roughly one-half the essay at which point the question is raised: "If we are to justify motivating students to want to study certain things rather than others, how are we to do so?" And, in order to make the task difficult rather than easy for ourselves, we have chosen to examine the supposedly "en- nobling or elevating" subjects and our "nobler" justifications and motives.

This took us into a discussion of iustification in terms of intrinsic worth, of appeal to the obligation to meet the potential of man for uniqueness among the animals as a rational and aesthetic being, of the attempt to justify on utilitarian grounds everyone's working through study of academic disciplines to enhance the development of his own rational capacities to their fullest, among other things. In other places in the book we have managed to question the justification of other activities, policies, or practices of the schools. Here we focused on the attempts to justify commitments to the academic disciplines and student acceptance of the obligation to enhance his capacities for reason and feeling through them. We ask "Do we want the student to be motivated to learn history for the right reasons or for the right feelings?" If we answer in terms of the intrinsic value of learning history, we admit that we want the student to be motivated by the right feelings.

This raises two quite different though related sorts of questions. "What makes some feelings more right than others?" These are moral questions. It is to these moral questions that the re- mainder of the essay is devoted as it explores the sorts of justification mentioned above. In particular it takes seriously the student's questions "Why should I want to study history? ~ and


"Why should I want to be as rational as you want me to be?" It does not answer these questions. It examines and finds difficul- ties with alternative sorts of answers, especially in the light of the requirement to consider the different capacities for and legitimate future interests that might be built upon alternative subjects and activities of study and training.

Now Mr. Croekenberg seems to be quite concerned over 365 my treatment of intrinsic worth in all of this. He does appear to recognize finally that if the student does not see the intrinsic worth of something one can't give him reasons for it. My point is that one cannot do this because it would be rationally contradictory to do so. To justify in terms of intrinsic worth is to say something is good or is justified because it is deemed good or justified or because there is something about it of an unspecified or unspecifiable sort which makes it good. If one could specify the quality or qualities that made it good or justified, one would be saying that it is good or justifed because it has these qualities.

Just because a particular group believes something good or all believe anything is good or some activity is justified as intrinsically worthy of pursuit, does ,not mean that it is justified that all so believe. After all, social taboos are defended on the claim of their intrinsic appropriateness. When the question of the appropriateness is called, the would-be reformer is not hesitant to point out the lack of rational justification for them. If we want to say that such a move is improper for the would-be social reformer, what is he to say in defense of c h a n g e - that we should form a new eonsensus? But, how does one decide whether he ought to belong to the new consensus or the old? Clearly one cannot do so by reference to intrinsic worth. Competing claims of "intrinsic" worth seem to be opposed. And, in a pluralistic society there are always competing claims of intrinsic worth.

This brings us to the essay on "The Myth of the Educated Citizen." If there is any primary theme in this essay, it is that the notion of undifferentiated homogeneity with respect to the meaning of democracy, the capacities of its citizens, their interests, aspirations, and visions of the ideal society in form and content may function as an ideal but is in fact mythological. The intention of the essay is to display differences, especially in notions of democraey, to show how these pull at cross purposes, particularly as they impinge upon consideration of educational policy. Different individuals come to controversies over curricular content and tracking, for example, with different ideas and ideals grounded in different and historically respectable conceptions of democracy.


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A given individual may be torn between the conflicting dictates of these traditions as he recognizes, say, his allegiance both to the concern for protecting the rights of each citizen against undue infringement by pursuit of the interests of others and to the concern to promote the pursuit of the interests of each of our citizens in the advancement of the improvement of social well- being. We seem at one Land the same time to want to trust in m a n as we are constrained by hard experience not to trust fully in m e n .

I.n the end I suggest that if we are to have a society in which our ideal is to bring men to be more trustworthy, we may have to continue to promote a good bit of the mythology of the intelligent democratic citizen. As I noted, whether this will work is an empirical not a philosophical question. It might very well entail the promotion of hypocrisy. For it would require us to continue to promote the belief that men are what they are n o t - namely, equal in capacity for wisdom and enlightened taste, judgment, and decision. It is conceivable that some day all men might yet so be. It is patently obvious that at present they are not.

It is absurd to suppose that making them so is a matter simply of educating them to be so. Each medical advancement doeumenting the diagnosis and treatment of chemical factors in- fluencing cognitive capacity or emotional characteristic serves to inform us of the likelihood that there are numerous people in society for whom such diagnosis was not available at crucial points of development. It serves to remind us that there are other such influences yet to be diagnosed and treated if possible. There is no e d u c a t i o n a l remedy for prenatal protein starvation and its effects on brain formation in the newborn. If we take seriously the notion that people are different in capacities and we take seriously our commitment to pluralism and given that people may have different interests to pursue ,and we wish still to promote the idea of the intrinsic worth of each individual as an individual, then we come to the issue of curriculum and tracking with a host of conflicting considerations. For we cannot, in fact, do everything in school for each person nor, given the antisocial character of some interests, would we want to. We cannot guarantee to identify the specific capacities and potential interests of each individual, but in the aggregate we can do so roughly for large numbers of people. It is n o m o r e undemocratic to force an individual into a particular curriculum which is inappropriate than to deny large numbers of individuals entry into particular curricular programs which are appropriate and desired by those


individuals. The tensions in the requirements of democracy are not to be swept away by ,arbitrarily deciding on policy and label- ing alternative policies undemocratic. Nor should we delude ourselves into believing that mouthing slogans about respect for the capacities and interests of students gets us off the hook of discovering what those interests and capacities might be for specific students.

Moreover, it is confused to suppose that one can provide appropriate educational environments so that "everyone can be beautiful in his own way" without identifying in what ways alternative environments may foster the development of each sort of beauty. It is easy to point out inequities in present forms of schooling and curricular placement. To suggest that we can correct these inequities if we only do not try to identify them specifically and to come up with appropriate programs to do a better job, is to confuse the provision of environment and atmosphere with the provision of assistance in development. An atmosphere of openness and tolerance for new ideas is necessary; the disen- shrining of the academic rigidities is necessary in order that new programs might thrive. One cannot swim without water, but if one is at a lake and does not know what swimming is, that some people enjoy it, that it would save one's life to know how to swim, that there are easily learned routines (and techniques for teaching them) which can enhance proficiency in swimming, then one may be no better off for being in the right environment for learning how to swim. To wipe the slate clean may be necessary if one is to write something new on the slate. It is to provide the necessary environment for things being written. One should not forget that if all he has done is to wipe the slate clean, he is left with nothing written.

Now, I hold no special brief for the status quo. In fact, I am rather hard on the sorts of justifications that are generally given for maintaining it. I am equally hard on the typical sorts of justifications that we hear for change. If we are not doing what we claim to be doing for the reasons we give for doing them, still it is no better to claim justification for not doing them which are positive sounding but vacuous translations of the claim that we are not going to do what we have been doing. While we may be hard pressed to come up with a proper answer to the question '~vVhy should anyone take (or be required to take) Latin in school?", we might ask as well whether we could come up with an equally proper answer to the question "Why shouldn't anyone take (or be required to take) Latin in school?" No one

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should merely chant that requiring students to take things is bad. They must provide an appropriate argument to that point.

Some people believe that school should not be thought of as a place where students are to learn what others deem it necessary for them to learn. Clearly our schools are not merely such places now, given the host of extra- or "co-" curricular

368 activities that go on in them or are supported by them. This may mean that there are some people in society who would attempt to view the schools, schooling, and investment of public resources in .a manner rather different from the way most people have and continue to view these things. In my concluding essay I am concerned with the burden that differing social and political concerns attempt to place upon the schools. To an extent the schools are scapegoat and battleground for contending parties to social debate and controversy. One cannot wish this away.

Furthermore, if one takes his democracy seriously and i f he recognizes the tensions and contradictions in it, then he cannot wish away the facts of pluralism in the vain and vague verbal wanderings about shared understandings in community. We live in many communities and we share many understandings with specific groups. Whatever form of the City of God we may some day come to, we should remember (and A.E. Murphy among others saw fit to remind us) that we as a society are rooted in specific traditions and limited understandings- that first and fore- most we are real people with real purposes and institutions that developed for serving purposes. That institutions are called upon to serve conflicting purposes of groups and the individuals within them cannot be denied or ignored. And the schools are just such institutions. Different people have different ideas and ideals of and for .schooling. Accordingly, it is ridiculous to propose that w e disestablish schooling (the monopolization of access to social position and reward according to Crockenberg) "and replace it by incidental learning." First, as we have indicated, the latter is a cop-out. But secondly, w e can't disestablish anything.

We can enter the arena of educatiorml-social policy debate as partisans of this conception of the general well-being. This is precisely what Crockenberg is doing in the course of his review. The arena of PMA in education is not confined to a particular institutional governmental structure. This should have been clear from its explicit presentation. As we enter the arena, we may do so not merely to promote our own specific interests but also our conceptions of the general interest as well. So too may other partisans of private or general interests.


I do not, however, offer PMA with enlightened concern for the general good as an ideal solution to social problems. If in fact there may be legitimate alternative conceptions of the common good, there may only be settlement of such "problems" and ,not solutions. If in fact one is committed to the legitimacy of pluralism and to respect for the ideals and ideas of others, and ff one conceives of democracy as at least embodying the notion that no particular group in society shall be empowered in perpetuity to determine what is in the interests of all of society, then one must be prepared to tolerate PMA which might be considerably less enlightened than he might wish. Again I do not promote PMA as the solution to any problems. I suggest that in more or less democratic form one can best describe educational decision-making in terms of PMA in our society, as settlement rather than solution. If there is to be settlement we must often seek grounds for compromising alternative interests and conceptions of the general interest. If we are to promote any interest at all, often, we must have settlement on policy. As I point out, this is where ambiguity of principle is helpful. We must feel able to agree in principle without feeling that we have coin- promised our principles.

This is not presented as a normative program. It is an attempt to describe how settlement works and to point out that the costs of "solutions" are inherently prejudicial to one set of soeial-individual interests or another. There are individual costs entailed in return for the benefits of society. Perhaps if we were to concern ourselves more properly with normative considerations, we might propose that people address themselves to an examination of the openness of the settlement arena and to the problems of checking and balancing existing unfair advantages of partieu,lar partisans and the positions they represent. PMA is not a way of solving problems. It is the ways in which they get settled. I eneourage people to try to develop their own conceptions of the best educational interests of our society, but I am concerned that we recognize that these conceptions must come together again and again in an arena of publie diseussion and at the bar of public interest. In the end and often we must come to the public to determine the publie interest. And, there are many publics. We should not forget it.

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educational myths and realities

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