Judging the Adequacy of a Learning Theory

(I was tempted to add a tag line to the title above such as, “...a Deweyan perspective,” but I aspire to a John Dewey and Richard Rorty informed perspective on everything I write here.)
 
I argued in the last post that accuracy as adequacy to reality is an unworkable notion for settling the choice between the various theories of learning currently available because “objective reality” doesn’t simply present us with a set of standards for what it means for a theory to be adequate to itself. Instead a theory can only be judged with regard to adequacy to particular human concerns, but since the purposes to which a theory either succeeds or fails to be adequate are implicit in or specified as part of all the theories of learning under consideration, accuracy as adequacy to our purposes won’t settle any disputes between such theories either. As in the Kuhnian description of scientific revolution where one paradigm for theory and practice in a given science eventually wins out over another, if there is to be a settled paradigm for thinking about learning theory, the winner won’t succeed because of better meeting some set of standards that are simply given. A paradigm becomes dominant only through persuasion about what the standards for a good theory ought to be and demonstration of the success the new paradigm has in meeting those new standards in the form of examples of what a solved problem looks like, and it only happens within a human social context. 

A particular difficulty of settling on a particular paradigm for a scientific theory of learning as compared to such settlement of opinion for other sciences is made clear when considering that before deciding between a Newtonian and an Einsteinian paradigm for the study of physics, we didn’t need to get consensus on the sort of community we ought to have. Nazis, Communists, Royalists, Papists, democrats, and others can all agree on a shared vision for what the physical sciences ought to do and what a solved problem in physics looks like. It is not so with education. The sort of learning theory that best guides the nurturing of Maoists or Islamic Fundamentalists is not likely to be the same one that fosters the best democratic citizens.  

Community life in Dewey’s democratic vision is not a matter of conformity of behavior but of shared interpretations of experiences. It is an egalitarian dialogue aimed at consensus rather than a dictatorial monologue demanding compliance. In a democracy, the shared goals which constitute the fabric of society are always themselves subject to the need for on-going renegotiation. Society in Dewey’s democratic utopian vision is not a fixed entity but rather a promising project. It is not aimed at adequacy to something pre-existing but the endeavor to bring something new and better into being. The goal of rearing children to eventually participate fully in such a democratic dialogue must be kept at the forefront of consideration of theories of learning. The question is not merely, “Does this theory work?” but also, “Work to what ends and by what means?” We must pay attention to both means and ends since there is always a continuity between them. A democracy which seeks to perpetuate itself through anti-democratic means undermines itself, so a learning theory aimed at democracy must be one which achieves its democratic ends through democratic means.

Dewey left it to better poets such as Whitman and Emerson (the latter he called the “Philosopher of Democracy”) to paint word pictures of democratic vistas. He did not, at least through direct argumentation, try to convince us that democracy is the sort of community we ought to want. His pragmatism cannot offer a philosophical grounding for democracy. He does not claim that a particular blend of individual freedom combined with human solidarity is somehow demanded by Nature as other philosophers have tried to demonstrate. Instead he admits that he knows of no other way of grounding our preference for democracy than in our commitment to the belief that the democratic social arrangement is our best hope for a good quality of life as well as our best hope for making life even better in the future. Taking for granted that what we want is democracy, Dewey pointed out that the democratic community itself is the end we need to keep in mind for education. With agreement that it is such a democratic vision for the future that we hope to achieve through education, that vision must inform our view of how the learner is viewed, what education is, what sort of learning a learning theory must account for if it is to be descriptive of education, and to which human purposes such a theory must be adequate.