The Aims of Education?

The ideas about our systems and institutions of education that I am starting to explore owe a lot to a book chapter written by Noel Castree entitled Whose Geography? Education as Politics, published in Questioning Geography. This post outlines some of the ideas expressed in that chapter, and explores some links.

Lefebvre states that:

[Hegemony] is exercised over society as a whole, culture and knowledge included, and generally via human mediation: policies, political leaders, parties, as also a good any intellectuals and experts. It is exercised, therefore, over institutions and ideas (Lefebvre, 1991: 10).

Thus, Lefebvre suggests that we would be wise to look at our institutions, and ask where hegemony is present and how it might be conditioning the nature of these institutions, and the education that their students gain. If hegemony were indeed present in conditioning the nature of our educational institutions, then these institutions are acting as a tool through which our very identities are shaped, since education forms such a central part of our identity formation.

Castree opens his chapter with this very point. He states that:

Education is not just about the inculcation of knowledge (or at least it shouldn't be). Rather, education is part of the process through which we become the kind of people we are: it shapes our very identities as thinking and acting beings (2005).

- and that as such, education is inherently political and deeply consequential for society. The element of Castree's subsequent discussion that interests me the most is his link to the work of the philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who described ideas of knowledge as falling into three types - analytical, hermeneutic and critical (see this article by Paul Terry for more detail). Habermas' idea was that these three types of knowledge are promoted in a range of places and situations in society, but that educational institutions are one in which they are delivered formally. In simplified terms, Habermas viewed the sciences as delivering largely analytical knowledge, and the arts and humanities as more hermeneutic and critical.

Castree describes how geography degrees, in their unusual arts-and-sciences position, expose their students to all three knowledge types, which encourage different modes of thinking: instrumental-technical, interpretive-hermeneutic, and critical-emancipatory respectively. Yet Castree argues that if students remain unaware of these distinctions, and unaware of the inherently political nature of the education process, then they risk "being the objects, rather than the subjects, of [their] education". Therefore, if students view education as a process of knowledge-accumulation, ignoring the emancipatory potential of critical forms of knowledge, then education can purely serve a 'legitimation function' in society, making the status quo seem 'normal' (an idea proposed by the geographer Allen Scott).

The questions that this line of thinking raises for me revolve around the way in which our education institutions function, and whether the hermeneutic and critical knowledge types could come to occupy a more prominent role. But would such efforts run up against the hegemony that Lefebvre describes as exercised through these institutions? All ideas that have been explored by others before I expect, but catalysts for me nonetheless.