VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 16, SECTION 3
Five Branches, and the Whole Tree
This chapter has called out five great minds of the West, Comenius, Rousseau, Dewey, Illich, Foucault. Four hundred years, five people, one direction each. This section gathers the five and sets them side by side, to see what each saw, and why each stopped in the same place. And with that, the sixteenth chapter is nailed shut.
Set each in one line. Comenius, 1632, saw that education should be for all, and built the class, the curriculum, the uniform pace, so that the classroom of the whole world is his drawing. Rousseau, 1762, saw that a child is not a small adult, but has a nature and a rhythm of his own that education should follow. Dewey, 1916, saw that education should not be walled off from the real life of the day, and that a person should learn in the doing. Illich, 1971, saw that the school had made attending equal to being educated, and turned a person into a permanent half-product. Foucault, 1975, saw that the school and the prison and the barracks and the factory are built alike, and that the tower stands on the back wall of the classroom. Five people, five things. And every one of the five is true. You cannot pick one out to curse, for each is a thing the man spent a lifetime seeing. But set the five together, and a strange thing shows. Comenius says, make it uniform, or you cannot teach all. Rousseau says, you cannot make it uniform, every child differs. Dewey says, tear down the wall, put education back into life. Illich says, tear down even the school. Foucault says, tear down or not, first look at this tower. Five people, quarreling with one another, each all but at war with the one before. Four hundred years, one generation shoving the last, and no one ever convinced anyone. Why?
Because they hit the same wall. And the wall is a stance. Take them one at a time. Comenius's stance was, all knowledge to all people, and to hold it he had to make things uniform, and once uniform, Confucius's teach each by his material had no place to stand. Rousseau's stance was, the child is good and society is dirty, and to hold it he had to wall the child in, and then he could no longer teach the child how to enter the world. Dewey's stance was, life against rote, and to hold it he had to dissolve teaching into life, and then both teaching and steeping went thin. Illich's stance was, the school is a robbery, and to hold it he had to cry abolish, and then no one took up the five layers of work. Foucault's stance was, discipline is a shackle, and to hold it he had to expose, and then he could tell only how the tower binds a person, and not that the yard also carries five layers of work for the society. See it plainly. Each first took a stance, and then, to hold that stance, pushed everything else to the opposite side. Take a stance, and you must pick a team, and once you have picked a team, your eyes can see only your own side. It is not that their eyes were poor. It is what a stance is. It gives you an edge, and it gives you a blindfold, in the one motion. Four hundred years, five men, each with a stance, each replacing the stance before. That is why the West's theories of education turn over every century or two. Not that the new is wiser than the old. The new stance has replaced the old stance.
Here a fair word is owed, the same one the thirteenth chapter of the first semester said of three other Western minds. Neither puff yourself up, nor belittle yourself. Do not puff yourself up, for each of these five saw finer and deeper and more particularly than we do. Comenius put a book into the hands of hundreds of millions of poor children, a merit past reckoning, and without him the grandfathers of many now reading would not have known one written character. Rousseau made the grown-ups of the whole world, for the first time, crouch down and look into a child's eyes. Dewey gave the classroom, for the first time, the sound of hands at work. Illich made people dare, for the first time, to ask by what right the diploma rules. Foucault made people see, for the first time, the tower that had been standing there all along. Their merit cannot be wiped away by a hair. And do not belittle yourself either, because each thing the five saw, the ancestors had already laid out, and laid out on a whole tree, not on a single branch.
Lay the tree out. Comenius said teach all. Confucius said it more than twenty one centuries earlier, teach all without distinction, and right on its heels said another line, teach each by his material. The door opens, and yet each is taught by his own material. Comenius took only the first line, where in Confucius the two lines stand together. Rousseau said follow the child's nature. The old book on learning said, two thousand years earlier, nurture the strength and remedy the failing, and set out the fires besides, lead but do not drag, brace but do not press, open the way but do not walk it for him. Rousseau gave the direction, and the old book gave how the hand actually moves. Dewey said education is life. The Great Learning had already laid the whole road two thousand years before, investigate things and extend knowledge and make the intention sincere and set the heart right and cultivate the person and order the family, the front of it teaching, the back of it steeping, the entrance and the extension, the front and the back segments of one road and not the same segment. Dewey mashed the two segments into one, where the Great Learning kept them clean and layered. Illich said the diploma makes a person a half-product. Han Yu, following Confucius's road, said twelve hundred years ago, no noble and no base, no old and no young, where the Way is, there the teacher is. The carpenter of thirty years, with the Way in his hands, is by Han Yu's position a teacher. That line has sat there twelve hundred years. Foucault drew the tower, and how discipline makes a person obedient. Confucius said, lead them with government and align them with punishment, and the people evade with no shame, lead them with virtue and align them with ritual, and they have shame and reform. Foucault's tower is the road of aligning with punishment, watching and punishing and measuring with one ruler until people are controlled. It works, and what it produces is people who evade with no shame, who only keep from being caught, with nothing of the thing inside them. Twenty five centuries ago Confucius not only saw the tower, he taught the other road, the road beyond the tower. Foucault saw the tower alone.
Five matched. Each thing the five saw, the ancestors have. And the ancestors have one thing more, the other half the five could not see. Why? Not because the ancestors were the cleverer. Because the ancestors were not working for one age. Comenius worked at his age's millions of children with no books. Rousseau moved against his age's rules that crushed the child. Dewey pushed against his age's classroom that stuffed the student like a duck. Illich tore at his age's monopoly of the diploma. Foucault exposed his age's discipline. Five people, five concrete jobs of work. And every job needs a verdict, for a verdict has force, and force is what pushes. A verdict is the tool you do the work with. The ancestors pass no verdict. Confucius, transmit and do not invent. Laozi, teach without words. They only lay the positions out and let the one who looks see for himself. A thing that only lays out a position cannot replace anything, and cannot push any one age forward. And it lasts twenty five centuries. The verdict follows the age, and when the age has passed, the verdict grows old. The position does not follow the age, and so it remains. This is not higher and lower. It is a difference of work. One does the labor, one holds the ground. One is this generation's hoe, and one is the root of thousands of years.
That closes the sixteenth chapter. Pull it together. Five great minds of the West, four hundred years, a direction each. Comenius saw that education should be for all, Rousseau that a child is not a small adult, Dewey that education should not be walled from the day, Illich that the diploma makes a half-product, Foucault the tower. Every one true. And every one hit the same wall, a stance, for to take a stance is to pick a team, and to pick a team is to see only your own side, so that four hundred years turned over one theory after another and no one was ever convinced. And each thing they saw, the ancestors had, with the other half besides. Confucius, teach all and teach each by his material. The old book, nurture and remedy, with the fires. The Great Learning, teaching and steeping kept as two segments. Han Yu, where the Way is, there the teacher is. Confucius, the punished evade with no shame, and the other road beyond the tower. The ancestors do not walk half, because they do not work for one age. The verdict is this generation's hoe, the position the root of thousands of years. A difference of work, not of height. That is the sixteenth stake this chapter drives. In teaching on education, a verdict narrows the road and ages in a century or two, and only a laid-out position goes far, so that five saw a branch each while the ancestors laid out the whole tree.
So the whole tree, what does it look like? From the fourteenth chapter to here we have had the school, and talent, and the teacher's way, and teaching, and steeping, and the five of our own age, six things in all. How do the six come together into one whole tree? The next chapter draws that tree. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.