What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun,” said the ancient preacher (Ecclesiastes 1:9, ESV), most likely after finishing a literature review on educational theories. “The sun rises, and the sun goes down” (Ecclesiastes 1:7), and another technology shows great promise and yet fails to satisfy. However, a closer look at some of these myths may reveal something flawed and yet oddly beautiful about myth-making.
The simplifying myths
The first thing we may notice about many myths about education is that they are oddly vague and simplistic. For instance, the myth that people have different learning styles has an immediate intuitive attraction; after all, we don’t all like the same teachers or books or subjects. However, without operational definitions of “learning” and “style,” the claim doesn’t really mean anything. An operational definition of “learning” needs to include basic cognitive science, and once you get into Broca’ area (Flöel, de Vries, Scholz, Breitenstein, & Johansen-Berg, 2009; Perani & Abutalebi, 2005; Yusa et al., 2011), cerebral cortex (Rakic, Bourgeois, & Goldman-Rakic, 1994), and mirror neurons (Gallese & Goldman, 1998; Giudice, Manera, & Keysers, 2009; Ramachandran, 2009), there’s a lot of uniformity across the species, and not a lot of room for “style.”
Likewise, the claim that “statistically significant results are practically significant” usually fails to provide an operational definition of “practical significance.” Without a clear definition of the end-game, the ultimate purpose, it is impossible to evaluate a tool’s effectiveness. For instance, a sledgehammer in my hands will produce more statistically significant results when applied with force to a wall than a finish hammer would in the hands of my daughter, but my daughter’s hammer would be more practically significant if the goal is to hang a picture. As C. S. Lewis wryly pointed out, without a clear definition of purpose, the “progress” of an egg may be appropriately called, “going bad.” (Lewis, 1970, pp. 47-48) “Practical significance,” though, is a question of ontology, not math, and those questions fall outside the domain of science. (Myers, 2014)
Simplification can occur through lack of clear definition, but it can also happen through logical fallacies and historical omissions, as with the claim that “technology is in and of itself deterministic.” The logical fallacy of reification occurs when an abstract concept is treated as a concrete agent. “Technology” is an abstract concept, and abstract concepts don’t have beliefs about causation. Reification attracts us because it allows easy categorization and assignments of responsibility to faceless entities (Trueman, 2010), but overlooks the exceptions to its claimed rule, such as many ancient civilizations preventing the spread of literacy , Tasmanians choosing not to use bows and arrows (Diamond, 1997), or the medieval Japanese choosing not to deforest their land (Bauer, 2007), or the 16th-century Chinese choosing to stop developing their potential maritime empire. (Bauer, 2010)
The self-justifying myths
While myths of vague simplicity attract us because they offer Tweet-length explanations for extremely complex systems, self-justifying myths attract us because they validate aspects of our identity that we want to believe are true.
For instance, saying “learning is neutral with regards to value or culture,” allows teachers, researchers, and policy-makers to feel impartial when making decisions that affect student lives. Take almost any book dealing with education, in fiction or non-fiction, from an author who is not, or whose protagonists are not, part of the culturally dominant class and you’ll find the same insights from Russia (Turgenev, 2008), Nairobi (Achebe, 1994), India (Umrigar, 2010), Italy (Eco, 1994), the southern U.S. (Walker, 2003), the northern U.S. (X, Haley, & Shabazz, 2017), Kazakhstan, (Aitmatov, 1988), Japan (Endo & Gessel, 1997), China (Buck, 1959), Colombia (Marquez, 2008) , … Education as a tool of power and oppression is such a major theme in world literature that the burden of proof lies with those who claim its neutrality. Yet the myth of neutrality allows dominant cultures to beg the question of whether it is ethical to create educational systems that indoctrinate the children of minorities.
Likewise, myths like “multiple intelligences” and “the mind is a muscle” reassure us that our success relative to others is a natural result of innate characteristics and hard work, rather than possibly the result of environmental factors such as poverty, corruption, or injustice. (Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Levitt & Dubner, 2009) Myths like “a new generation of digital natives” reassures us that we our historical uniqueness exempts us from needing to interact with and care for people we don’t consider our peers.
In defense of myths
Since these myths of education over-simplify complex issues and justify our self-serving biases, do educators have an obligation to destroy them and prevent new myths from arising? Yes, and no. We have an obligation to pursue and express truth, especially within our areas of expertise. That implies the use of restraint when making claims, and implies encouraging critical thinking about operational definitions, historical exceptions, logical fallacies, and justification of existing power structures when evaluating claims about “learning”, “teaching”, “mind”, and “intelligence.”
At the same time, attempting to squash all emerging myths is likely to end in grumpy exhaustion because, like all things, myth-making is nothing new. It’s part of our identity as humans. Creating a myth is beautiful, just as deconstructing it is necessary; and sometimes deconstruction can be an act of joy.
For example, on my daughter’s eighth birthday, she blew out her candles with the wish that all cities would be destroyed. I found this an area or concern. However, she explained it to me with a smile: “It’s so fun to discover things and build things, that it would be great to do it all again.” Not long afterwards, she heard me quote the passage mentioned in the introduction to this paper and commented, “If the sun always comes up, and there’s nothing new, then we don’t really have to be afraid of anything.”
She has a point: the sun rising, and the inevitability of potentially dangerous educational myths failing are very good things. It’s fun to come up with a myth, and it’s fun to tear them down; “a time to tear down, and a time to build up.” (Ecclesiastes 3:3) There’s a glory in making a theory, just like there’s a glory in building a tower, even if the tower is Babel.
References
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