Education, Dialogue, and Hermeneutics

摘要

Introducing his edited volume, Education, Dialogue, and Hermeneutics, Paul Fairfield writes that education involves leading the mind out of its ignorance, narrowness, and self-satisfaction in a process that is difficult and unending. Like Socratic dialogue, the educative process carries us along in a logic of question and answer in which no one has the last word. It forms the soul and leaves us not in secure possession of the truth but in its relentless pursuit. (EDH, 3) Compare Fairfield's words with the following request for proposal (RFP), recently posted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: As a field, we undervalue learning to improve in a way that is systematic and organized, and we have in the past lacked a methodology to guide it. This strand will introduce participants to groundbreaking organizations that have achieved better educational outcomes through the use of improvement science methodologies, turning knowledge into practice. Three differences between these texts are apparent. First, the Carnegie RFP conceptualizes learning in terms of achievable outcomes. Fairfield, by contrast, conceptualizes learning in terms of forming the soul. Second, while the Carnegie RFP assumes that we can systematically improve learning by deploying "improvement science methodologies," Fairfield assumes that the educative process "carries us along" and that this process is difficult and unending. Finally, the Carnegie RFP assumes that knowledge must be converted into practice. Fairfield, by comparison, assumes that learning is a Socratic dialogue that contains an internal logic of asking and answering questions.