The Having of Wonderful Ideas - The virtues of not knowing

Elanor Duckworth was once asked to distinguish between passive and nonpassive intellectual virtues. Sounds like a pretty dry exercise. What must passive virtues be? "Knowing the right answer," Duckworth believes, must be the most passive intellectual virtue. She then relates two inspiring anecdotes about children not knowing the right answer. Duckworth ends by confronting the demon of standardized tests: "it would make a significant difference to the cause of intelligent thought, in general, if teachers were encouraged to focus on the virtues involved in not knowing." What does she mean?

In most classrooms, it is the quick, right answer that is appreciated. Knowledge of the answer ahead of time is more valued, on the whole, than ways of figuring it out. Knowing the right answer requires no decisions, carries no risks, makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless.  […] It is a virtue—there is no debate about that—but in conventional views of intelligence, it tends to be given far too much weight. 

Duckworth then attends to "what is involved when the right answer is not already known." First, she describes some wonderful exchanges—experiments, they were called—with children in Europe carried out by Barbel Inhelder, a collaborator with the innovative epistemologist, Jean Piaget. Inhelder used a clever device which allowed a child to move an amount of liquid between containers of differing widths. The children were first allowed to move a given amount through the containers to see how the levels changed. Then they were asked to make some predictions and play them out. "That's really funny!" "It looks like too much, doesn't it?" "I know, it's like last time!" "How come?" "Wait! I know. All the time it's still less on that side…" Duckworth summarizes the work of this 6-year-old child: "Surprise, puzzlement, struggle, excitement, anticipation, and dawning certainty—those are the matters of intelligent thought. As virtues, they stand by themselves. Even if they don't, on some specific occasion, lead to the right answers. In the long run, they are what count."

The work the child went through above is what "constructivist" educators mean when they say that children construct their own knowledge. By manipulating materials, they find discrepancies between what their mind holds and the actual world. They struggle to reconcile the two, driven by their own internal desire to understand their world. In the end, the individual child knows a simple thing more deeply. Along the way, they experience what I call "fun," and what the physicist Richard Feynman called "the pleasure of finding things out."

Then, Duckworth gets more deeply into the matter.

In a story about a star 10-year-old student exploring a pendulum with focus and verve while his classmates perfunctorily go through the exercise, a conflict develops when the student mistakenly predicts, with confidence, that the pendulum need not slow down to turn around. The teacher says nothing as the class watches a film-loop of a pendulum draining sand from its bob as it swings. Eventually, a classmate speaks up to say that that idea doesn't make sense if the sand piles up at the ends instead of in the middle. The star pupil holds his view as more students point out problems. Finally, he concedes, quietly.

In less able hands, this might be a parable of overconfidence and simple common sense. Think of the movies in which some know-it-all gets his comeuppance. Here's what Duckworth says: "The class played out in public view the virtues concerned with courage, confidence, caution, and risk." Who played what role?—what do you think?

"The courage to submit an idea of one's own to someone else's scrutiny is a virtue in itself—unrelated to the rightness of the idea." Alec, the star student, was wrong—though confident. It might seem like egotism, but as Duckworth points out, his first try and his defense was what allowed the intellectual case to build to where everyone agreed that the pendulum must slow down. The evidence demanded it. Theory demanded it. "The other children were right, but they would never have arrived at the right idea if they had not taken the risk—both with themselves and in public—to question Alec's idea." In adults, this is what we call scholarship, academia.

And what about the teacher? What did she do?

But think back about Duckworth's ending idea. Standardized tests focus on the virtue of knowing the right answer. Even if a child has to figure out the right answer, the intellectual virtues illustrated above are not used, not tested, not seen, not valued. And they may just waste time. The students in this class got the right answer; however, the teacher spent a lot of class time letting them get there. This is an intellectual atmosphere. It requires that Duckworth's virtues of not knowing be given ample time in class along with the more passive virtue, easily tested, of knowing the right answer.

Duckworth—The Having of Wonderful Ideas

The Having of Wonderful Ideas
Eleanor Duckworth, Teachers College Press, New York, 2006

I ran into this while pulling together a bibliography on the teaching of science to young children. Eleanor Duckworth writes simply and clearly…not a common practice among educational academics.

Here is a teaser quote from her introduction:

These two [pernicious ideas] support each other beautifully: 'There is one best way to understand.' 'Many people are not smart enough to understand.' Once we believe those two ideas, a third harmful idea is implied: 'If someone does not understand our way, it is not that there is any problem with our insisting on our way; it is that there is a problem with that learner."

Duckworth is an educator in the fashion of my heart's desire for children. She listens—with great respect and real interest—to children explain their own minds, and she asks questions—as an adult who knows something about the world—to bring children forward to explore. She is excited by watching others build understanding.

The title comes from an anecdote about watching a child take over a experimental task she had set up for him. He wanted to show her what he had thought off to do with her materials. He had had a "wonderful idea" and was all about showing her what it was. Duckworth goes from there to say

The having of wonderful ideas is what I consider the essence of intellectual development. And I consider it the essence of pedagogy to give [this boy] the occasion to have his wonderful ideas and to let him feel good about himself for having them.

Yes.

Eleanor Duckworth is interested in the intellectual development of people—children, teachers, herself. This is something that schooling as an institutional machine is not geared for, I believe. I am very much looking forward to exploring this book and the works of Eleanor Duckworth in earnest.

Polanyi -- The Tacit Dimension

The Tacit Dimension

Michael Polanyi, Anchor Books, Garden City (1967)

I picked up this book some years ago at some used book store. I had run across references to Polanyi, I think, when I was working on my Master's in Teaching. He was a scientist who wrote about how people solve problems, 'problem solving' in the literature.

This is one direction my PhD work will be going, so I decided to look into this before I dig into the current literature on the matter.

Polanyi was an interesting guy. To illustrate, here's a little quote from the first page of the introduction:

I first met questions of philosophy when I came up against Soviet ideology under Stalin which denied justification to the pursuit of science. I remember a conversation I had with Bukharin in Moscow in 1935. Though he was heading toward his fall and execution three years later, he was still a leading theoretician of the Communist party.

'Heading toward his fall and execution.' Talk about an attention getter at a party.

For those in the know, Stalin is synonymous with state terror and Bukharin was a darling intellectual of the early party in revolutionary Russia. Polanyi was circulating in some tough circles.

From the tiny biographical note in the book:

Dr. Michael Polanyi was born in Budapest in 1981, and received doctoral degrees both in Medicine and in Physical Sciences from the University of Budapest. In 1929 hd was made a Life Member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, and in 1933 was elected to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the Victoria University of Manchester, England. He exchanged this Chair for a Chair in Social studies in 1948, and has lectured since then, as Visiting Professor, or Senior Fellow, at the universities of Chicago, Aberdeen, Virginia, Stanfard, and Merton College, Oxford. in 1965-66 he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University.

I especially am interested in him since he was a practicing physical chemist—a hard scientist—who became absorbed in the question of how knowledge is built by humans. That is, he was a well-developed practitioner of a mathematical science looking inside, at how this business works.

Lermontov - The Rock Ledge (1841)

Through the night, a golden cloud lay sleeping

On the breast of a gigantic rock ledge.

In the morning, early, off she hurried;

Through the azure, carefree, she went playing.

But a trace of moisture was still clinging

To the wrinkled rock ledge. Old and lonely,

He stood there as though in sad reflection—

In the empty spaces softly weeping.

—translated by Guy Daniels, 1965, in 'A Lermontov Reader.'

Lermontov - The Angel (1831)

An angel was flying through midnight's deep blue,

And softly he sang as he flew;

The moon, and the clouds, and the stars in a throng

All listened: in heavenly song

He sang of the blessings of souls without sin

In the gardens of Paradise; hymns

To God the almighty he sang, and his praise

Was pure and completely unfeigned.

He carried toward earth, with its tears and its grief,

A soul just beginning its life;

And long, long thereafter the soul could still hear

The song he sang—wordless, but clear.

The soul languished long it is worldly attire,

Still knowing a wondrous desire;

And that heavenly music was never userped

By the wearisome songs of the earth.

—translated by Guy Daniels, 1965, in 'A Lermontov Reader.'

Lermontov

A Lermontov Reader, Edited and translated by Guy Daniels, Macmillan, New York (1965).

I picked up an old favorite of mine last night, a discovery from back in the old days of reading Russian literature, mainly up in Minneapolis, in my young twenties, while floundering as a Chem Physics student or an activist.

Among the big names—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin—I would find references and seek them out in used book stores, and gathered quite a collection—maybe thirty books on a dozen different authors— some of which I read. Notable for me were Krylov and Lermontov. Lermontov is considered a 'romantic' poet; but what could that mean to someone?

I looked it up online right quick:

Of or pertaining to romance; involving or resembling romance; hence, fanciful; marvelous; extravagant; unreal; as, a romantic tale; a romantic notion; a romantic undertaking. [1913 Webster]—Dictionary.com, apparently quoting an old Webster's

What? I tried again:

4 a : marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized–Mirriam-Webster's Online Dictionary

Yuck. I could not survive as a literary critic. The little I've read of Lermontov I like because it gives voice to a tender homunculus I fancy is bound up in men, perhaps by artifice, perhaps by nature.

Below is an extraction of the Biographical Note at the front of the book.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in Mosco on October 2 (O.S.) 1814. He entered Moscow University at age sixteen. Two year later, he suddenly left Moscow for St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Cavalry Cadets' School. He was commissioned 'ensign' in the Life Guard Hussars in 1834, and began, so it would appear to lead a rather dissipated life. In 1837, Pushkin was killed in a duel and the younger poet wrote his famous accusatory poem, 'Death of a Poet,' for which he was court-martialed and 'exiled' to the combat zone in the Caucasus. The rest of his brief life was a whirlwind of activity: constant quarrels with the authorities, banishments, feats of bravery in battles, fleeting love affairs, and (miraculously) intensive literary work. In the summer of 1841, less than four years after Pushkin's death, his rightful successor met the same fate: he was killed in a duel.

God. A biography -- I am written about, therefore I am.

I've gotten stuck on this book, stuck trying to write about Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the shift from this crazy primordial genesis to a personal god who gives a fuck about people and has some shred of personality. Why, in the midst of all this is it supposed to have chosen 'Israel' I can't fathom, but the shift from Genesis to Exodus is astounding. Out of nowhere, this story about all the world turns into a story about a very, very, very small slice of the now known world. And we buy it. We all buy it. Eats me up.

I wrestle with trying to extricate myself from this 'book.' Biblical scholarship points out that these writings are not to be taken literally, that it is only loosely tethered in history. I want to scream. And laugh.

The point: why would anyone ever ever entertain the idea that this was actual history? I did. I still do! I can't get myself out of the feeling that all this stuff is somehow real. I mean, I never thought there was a real talking snake, at least not past the point of actually thinking, but when he mentions the Nation of Israel, the Tribe of Levi, the House of Joseph, it takes over my mind and I cannot keep it from becoming history.

Now we have scholars, grown, learned men and women, saying that the Exodus was not what the book portrays. Listen to this line:

It is reasonable to infer from the central place assigned to the Exodus in Jewish tradition that Israel did win liberation and a victory of some kind over Egypt and that its confidence in God surged in consequence. (p108)

What does he mean, 'Israel?' An inference back to an actual social group that called itself that then, or some imagined historical founding? Why the capital 'E' in Exodus? Is it a thing outside of these writings? History assigns a place to Egypt. Pharaoh was there. We know about 'Israel' from where?  What does he mean, 'God?' Why isn't Pharaoh still a god; why don't we talk about him?

Listen to this:

The Israelites [in Egypt] are not a small, oppressed minority seeking release from bondage. One of the reasons Pharaoh refuses to let them go is that they are already more numerous than the original inhabitants of the land (5:5). The census of Numbers 2 finds 603,550 adult males, not counting adult males of the Tribe of Levi. Counting wives, children, and servents, the number could perhaps be seven times that large. In short, the Israelites are a majority whom Pharaoh, a god in his own right, of course, according to Egyptian beliefs, was attempting to dominate. But their departure from Egypt is not, despite its later use in liberation movements, a victory for justice. It is simply a victory, a demonstratioin of the power of the Lord to pursue fertility for his chosen people and wreck it for their enemy, a proof that "the Lord makes a distinction" when and as he chooses. (p103)

I am not a Biblical scholar, but I dare say I know more about the discourse on semitic history then most Americans, more then most Europeans? more then most the people in the world? Yet when I read these passages, I get confused about whether the author is talking about a story or about reality, and so am left with the necessity of believing in this stuff firmly pressed further into my being. And then:

No responsible historian believes that at the time of the Exodus the Israelites actually outnumbered the Egyptians or that a company of 4 or 5 million people made its way through the desert and into Canaan. Despite the lack of any historical record outside the Bible, most historians do not believe that the story of the Exodus is a total fabrication. … Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, with its mighty throng crossing the sea, may be truer to the intended literary effect of the Book of Exodus than scholarship's reconstruction of a band of minor tribes slipping through the marsh. (p105).

'Band of minor tribes?' Yet, I fight to keep the notion of a small band of semitic refugees escaping the empire in my mind; what lasts, even through this treatment, is The Exodus, Israel and the Israelites, and God.

This may sound like whining; maybe it is. But damn, I can't help but think that if a group cold deflate this stuff, they could rid themselves of a lot of nutty and pernicious ideas. I know we're all supposed to be grateful for 'ethical monotheism' and all, but I'm not sure the baggage is worth it.

God. A biography - Why Israel?

This language bit is getting me down. Do I say the god of the Hebrew's because all this is written in Hebrew? Do I say the god of Abraham because he is the one that fecundity was first promised to? Do I say the god of Israel because he is the first one that chose his god? Do I say the god of Judah because those are the people that were ascendent when the books were compiled? Do I say the god of the Jews, because that is the name most commonly used today?

Do I say they are all the same thing? This I can not do. I am trying to understand something, not pretend that I do. And I am trying to free myself just a bit from the fetters that other's language keep me in.

God. A biography -- Friend of the family, Judge of All Earth

It's all very confusing to me: Jews, Hebrews, Judah, Israel, Semites, people, tribe... writers, editors, redactors... somehow, someone wrote all this stuff down--over how much time? Who can it be said of, that they created this god, and by extension a whole race? I think, it can be said of no one, that's my guess. It's like Reagan's America: a nostalgia for a past that never was, and the memory of that nostalgia is fueling new stories and new adepts and new faithful.

But regardless, at some point, there it was, a body of stories, a wrestling match between this god and these people. What would it feel like to believe it were true?! Here's how Miles describes it:

In the remainder of the Book of Genesis, the Lord God will be spoken of (an on occasion will identify himself) as 'of ' one patriarch or another. The Lord, the god of Abraham, will become the god of Isaac, the god of Jacob, or 'the god of your father.' As this happens, he will come to seem, often enough, more like a busy friend of the family than like the Judge of all the earth, as Abraham called him at Sodom. His help will be sought for conception and other human needs, but, significantly, the initiative will be on the human side. He will not attempt again to assert the same sort of control over reproduction that we have seen him attempting to assert over Abraham's reproduction. He will claim only what Abraham has already conceded. Yet the modest storms and calms of the house of Abraham will not be quite his concern. At times, the masterful, abrupt, inscrutable being we first me will return, for the radically unpredictable creator and destroyer personalities of yahweh and 'elohim remain in him alongside the loyal advocate now called 'god of your father.' All are in him, in a combination whose explosive potential will only gradually be revealed. (p66).

For my own purpose, I see in this part of Genesis (1:1 -25:11), the acknowledgement that the universe is not on humans' side, that it is unpredictable and unaccountable, ready to take back whatever it gives, or smear it around and leave it horribly disfigured; but it's base power thinks like us, and that by wrestling with it, you can make a deal of some kind, at heavy cost; and that that deal includes instrumental control over every fucking thing that is. There's a contradiction latent there. I think it's still here.

God. A biography - O Lord, God of my master Abraham

O Lord, God of my master, Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham. (p 62).

So says Abraham's anonymous servant, gone to the well in a city in a foreign country, looking for a bride for Abraham's grown son, Isaac. Sarah has died. Abraham has purchased his first piece of promised land, a burial cave for his wife. This is, of course, after the big catharsis, after the games. Life has settled down. But, in the story, a revolution has happened.

To this point in God's story, God's actions have been all but motiveless and therefore numinously, ominously unpredictable. Suddenly, and this is a measure of the victory that Abraham has won over God by raising his knife against Isaac, God is beginning to become a known quantity, defined and constrained by his past commitments. (p61)

But even more, Abraham is counting on his god as an instrument. "Ancient Mesopotamian religion did know a category of a god with whom dealings at this level and in this manner were standard. This was the personal god, typically referred to by the name of his client; that is , as 'the god of X,' 'the god of Y,' and so on." (p63). Contrast this to the Canaanite god, El, "him whose authority over nature and society was broadest but whose involvement in any individual human being's life was smallest." (p61) A close, local fit to the Lord, yahweh.

It's like, in this part of Genesis, a single person, Abraham, is getting connected with personal agency, the big deal in Christianity, saved through your personal savior, protected by the hand of your god, grace. The ties that bind. "Abraham's servant knows that his master worships a god named yahweh, 'the Lord,' but he sees fit to address him doubly: 'O Lord [yahweh], God of my master Abraham.'"

It is just by such shifts, as one person talks about another's god, that religion changes. Some of the changes are deliberate, others accidental. (p64)

So in the story, this crazy, unpredictable personality, becomes intimately available to a figurehead as a personal agency, through a compounding of local ideas on divinity, through an identification of names. A plausible etiology of the compound character evolving through this story. But, regardless, the change is evident in the story, without explanation. Later, this agency is passed on through the generations: "the God of Isaac," "the God of Jacob." After that, it is passed on to a tribe or whatever--a people, a nation, Israel.