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To what extent should we try to change people?
Where does education end, and manipulation begin?
The more efficient our teaching methods become, the more we run the risk of manipulating our students past what is morally acceptable. On the other hand, it can be argued that an education which doesn't change a person's outlook and behavior is pointless. There is an implicit superstition in educational circles that it is both possible and desirable to "neutrally and objectively" transmit information without changing the recipient, even though it should be immediately apparent that any such information would by definition be practically useless.
If we cannot teach our students without changing them, the question is: in what ways can it be beneficial and legitimate to change their minds and shape their behavior? If we accept that education should benefit both the individual and society, two legitimate goals come to mind:
The more efficient our teaching methods become, the more we run the risk of manipulating our students past what is morally acceptable. On the other hand, it can be argued that an education which doesn't change a person's outlook and behavior is pointless. There is an implicit superstition in educational circles that it is both possible and desirable to "neutrally and objectively" transmit information without changing the recipient, even though it should be immediately apparent that any such information would by definition be practically useless.
If we cannot teach our students without changing them, the question is: in what ways can it be beneficial and legitimate to change their minds and shape their behavior? If we accept that education should benefit both the individual and society, two legitimate goals come to mind:
1) Increasing students' agency
If we value freedom of choice and action, it follows as obvious that education should strive not to limit students' freedom. Beyond that, however, there is the question of whether (and how) an individual's freedom can be improved by education. In what ways are we less free than we could be after effective intervention?
Beyond not limiting students' freedom, what can we do to improve their agency? Where do our natural skills and dispositions fall short of what we can hope to achieve?
For one thing, we are hampered in our access to reality by numerous cognitive limitations and biases. Learning to recognize those biases in oneself and to find ways to correct for them would therefore be a legitimate sub-goal of education, even with the explicit intention of changing some of the fundamentals of our students' outlook.
Even if we learn to update our models of reality, the way we make decisions is provably flawed in many ways. Here, too, it is possible to learn to recognize irrational or counterproductive modes of decision-making, and to replace them with strategies that will serve students better in achieving their goals. (Note that none of this is about forcing any particular goals on students. In this regard, education must be open-ended; it must serve to help students find out what their goals are, and then help them achieve those, whatever they are.)
To sum up, education can benefit individuals by changing them insofar as this change enables them to gain an accurate and useful representation of reality, so that (based on that representation) they can make optimal choices to achieve their goals.
Beyond not limiting students' freedom, what can we do to improve their agency? Where do our natural skills and dispositions fall short of what we can hope to achieve?
For one thing, we are hampered in our access to reality by numerous cognitive limitations and biases. Learning to recognize those biases in oneself and to find ways to correct for them would therefore be a legitimate sub-goal of education, even with the explicit intention of changing some of the fundamentals of our students' outlook.
Even if we learn to update our models of reality, the way we make decisions is provably flawed in many ways. Here, too, it is possible to learn to recognize irrational or counterproductive modes of decision-making, and to replace them with strategies that will serve students better in achieving their goals. (Note that none of this is about forcing any particular goals on students. In this regard, education must be open-ended; it must serve to help students find out what their goals are, and then help them achieve those, whatever they are.)
To sum up, education can benefit individuals by changing them insofar as this change enables them to gain an accurate and useful representation of reality, so that (based on that representation) they can make optimal choices to achieve their goals.
What does this mean for our school?
These considerations have some strong implications for what we need to teach and practice (wherever possible in the context of practical applications rather than as theory):
These considerations have some strong implications for what we need to teach and practice (wherever possible in the context of practical applications rather than as theory):
- Internalizing the map/territory distinction
- Updating beliefs through evidence
- Recognizing and overcoming cognitive and social biases
- Decision-making tools such as goal factoring, "fast and frugal" heuristics, etc.
2) Practicing ethics of cooperation
There is some debate about the exact social structures in the ancestral environment in which our instincts for cooperation and comunication evolved; but whether it is families of seven to twelve people or tribes of around fifty, there is no doubt that we are frequently faced with situations today in which these instincts clearly and necessarily fail us.
To make up for this, humanity has developed a large variety of cultural and social techniques for bridging the divide between our social, ethical and communicative intuitions and the new necessities of first agricultural, then urbanized, industrialized and finally globalized societies. With rapid technological progress, these techniques are in constant need of updating: for example, our ability to communicate across the globe opens up entirely new ways of mass (and niche) collaboration, political action, and governance; and as our understanding of (and influence on) our biosphere grows, so does our responsibility (and with it the number of novel ethical quandaries).
As a result, it is both necessary and legitimate for educators to provide their students with the means of navigating these differences and developments -- that is, to equip them with communication techniques as well as tools for resolving conflicts and ethical dilemmas. (Again, this does not mean forcing any particular ethical stance on them, but helping them become aware of their own ethical intuitions, reflect on them, and be able to improve on them.)
To make up for this, humanity has developed a large variety of cultural and social techniques for bridging the divide between our social, ethical and communicative intuitions and the new necessities of first agricultural, then urbanized, industrialized and finally globalized societies. With rapid technological progress, these techniques are in constant need of updating: for example, our ability to communicate across the globe opens up entirely new ways of mass (and niche) collaboration, political action, and governance; and as our understanding of (and influence on) our biosphere grows, so does our responsibility (and with it the number of novel ethical quandaries).
As a result, it is both necessary and legitimate for educators to provide their students with the means of navigating these differences and developments -- that is, to equip them with communication techniques as well as tools for resolving conflicts and ethical dilemmas. (Again, this does not mean forcing any particular ethical stance on them, but helping them become aware of their own ethical intuitions, reflect on them, and be able to improve on them.)
What does this mean for our school?
Our students will
Our students will
- collaborate with others, both in-house and internationally, using various methods and platforms
- learn and use different strategies for communication and conflict resolution (e.g. nonviolent communication)
- develop and apply their own ethical positions in the context of school activities, leadership practice, debates etc.
External resources
- Wikipedia on paternalism and libertarian (or "soft") paternalism
- Wikipedia's lists of cognitive biases and logical fallacies
- Online tools for reducing bias and updating beliefs on clearerthinking.org
- Resources about the fast and frugal approach to decision-making
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