Teaching all things to all people in all ways

Last month, I accidentally unloaded some of my beliefs on a friend with regards to how a number of issues that are reacted to by members in our society (US) appear to be fundamentally related to education. Generally, I feel that some appear to distinguish their general right of freedom of speech that they share with others as something entirely different when compared to “information”. These, however, are the same and the way in which we are educated is directly tied to the way that we interpret information. This is fundamental because information is how we distinguish reality. To clarify, when I refer to the first amendment I’m not referring to the freedom to “tweet”, host a blog, all-CAPS at individuals in a forum, etc. I’m generally referring to any and all possible material that can be used to learn all of the things that are ubiquitous to an individual.

To start on why I believe that information is worth reconsidering how we think about (especially in regards to how it works with capitalism)...We are currently in the information age, and our number one source of information is in a state of anarchy. If we interpret the first amendment in the way that I described it, then this is actually a good thing™. If we attempt to enforce order on this medium, then another market (that some refuse to acknowledge) will always appear thus tying this somewhat into capitalism. We all likely believe that “some” things should not be learned, but we need to always keep in mind that if we “censor” information, it doesn’t make it go away. It only drives up the value of said information elsewhere. Also, there’s two types of censorship to consider, one is the restriction of information, the other is the excess of information which has the same effect as censorhip. I definitely believe that the resolution of these apsects can be handled by some aspects of capitalism and its overall structure of values without needing to enforce/censor if given the right perspective (which I will get into in a later piece).

Regardless, as a society it appears that we are practically at a point where individuals can have a completely different perception of reality from another, and it seems as if it can escalate towards near-hostilities when another attempts to resolve it altruistically. This seems to be because of a difference in values or perhaps it’s simply when individuals are asked to perceive things differently. However, I think that this is actually because of our misunderstandings of the many aspects of information and how we use it universally. We seem to not acknowledge how it can be used to change one’s values through indoctrination, guide one’s ethics through unintended bias, or at the very least recognize these aspects in general conversation during the time that it’s most important...our education.

We also do not seem to understand (or recognize) what an information monopoly is, and we do not treat it as we treat (or should be treating) other monopolies. The value of a heterogenous(?) resource is not considered valuable anymore due to their seemingly low cost of “consumption”. This is where education can (and should) come in, as it has the power to change one’s system of values. I think it is an interesting coincidence that the first two amendments in the US constitution are freedom of speech and the right to bear arms as this coincides with only two ways to change someone’s values. These are either through education or suffering. This makes both amendments intertwined in that you really can’t have one without the other. Their priority, however, needs to be maintained because it is the second that supports the first. In a lot of cases, however, it seems that people think of both amendments as being distinctly separate from one another and which I can only interpret is a result of a misunderstanding of the purpose or semantics of the first.

I won’t go into too much detail about all of our misunderstandings because at the moment they’re anecdotal (and I’m unable to prove otherwise). But there’s the obvious ones of being able to distinguish misinformation from disinformation which is mentioned by Edward S. Herman. Essentially distinguishing the “intent” of information is as possible to determine as is the ability to read the mind of another (without any other context)...which of course, is impossible. When information propagates, not only is the intent even harder to distinguish due to its origin being lost, but there’s no way for one to determine whether the bad information was delivered altruistically (misinformation) or non-altruistically (disinformation).

Another symptom of this misunderstanding is how to distinguish factual information from non-factual information. Factual information has an inherent cost to it, but most will actually eventually distinguish it by determining whether the information aligns with their values. The other aspect about information (and what I believe is the most important part) is that it appears that in education there is something that is not always taught which influences the individual’s ability to discern fact with regards to learning. This I do not (yet) have a word for, but it is the simple benchmark that one uses to confirm that they did learn something successfully or that they did interpret something successfully.

An example of not having a “benchmark” (which seems to have a tendency to get highly politicized) is the idea of standardized testing with regards to public education. Testing of course is necessary and used to determine a number of things...However, we’ll focus strictly on financial gain or really resources. Anecdotally, I’ve encountered a number times where the student may not always get the results of their test back in order to benchmark themselves and distinguish what they “mislearned”. Thus, they’re unable to determine a path they could take in order to get better. In some cases this is because the results are abstracted behind a “score” or grade of some sort. In other cases, the results are not shared in order to avoid “cheating” which can happen in the future. It’s probably pretty important to note, that this hiding of the questions/answers hasn’t actually resulted in preventing cheating..but it’s instead driven up the cost so that only certain individuals can afford to cheat. This again seems to be an aspect we don’t seem to realize about both markets and information.

Another aspect of testing is where test results become the currency that schools compete with. As a result, there are certain academic institutions whom explicitly design their curriculum around the ability of their students to succeed at the standardized test issued by the board of education. This unfortunately re-educates the student about what their educational benchmarks should be and forces schools to continuosly adapt to testing and policies in order to compete for available resources/rewards. Really, though, the currency of the school should be the students themselves with their opinions.

The way that testing has been applied to our system of public education has resulted in taking away the students ability to benchmark themselves and takes away their ability to reward one school for teaching them better than an alternative school. Ideally it could work similarly to how voting (or really the number of people) is used to determine a person that is put into a position of power. By giving students the results of the information (that they helped create), this could enable them to vote on which school should get more resources/benefits. By forcing the school to compete with a different currency, parents/students will be able to learn the capabilities of their school with regards to their own education and even participate in supporting it if not.

Regardless of how our public education specifically applies information, our general education is fundamental in that it results in a sort of “standard” (or a “baseline”) that each of us utilize to interact with each other. This enables us to form our communities/tribes (and a number of other things), but it most importantly is what enables us to interpret information similarly. If you think about it, speech (or general language) is a very unique tool composed of inaccuracies which enables us to communicate. Although I have not read the entirety of Forrest Landry’s work, his breaking down of the way that we experience our surroundings via the intuitions of symmetry and continuity seems very relevant here. We produce context from our own individual experiences, and we infer the meaning of other contexts by combining it with our own experiences. Despite all of the inaccuracies that exist in communication because of our own individuality, we are (reasonably) successful at it due to our ability to recognize symmetry and distinguish it from asymmetry.

Our education teaches us how to interpret and act on information, and with it enables us to question whether information is accurate or inaccurate, useful or non-useful, relevant or irrelevant. Without having access to all the information about a particular topic/field (really context), we are forced to make an assumption about it, or to put our faith in the altruistic intent of a purveyor of that particular type of information. Thus, not having access to the necessary information results in an “opacity” which has a high cost if one wishes to resolve it.

Having some opacities, however, are perfectly fine for a number of things. They are a problem, however, when these opacities are in areas that are ubiquitous to us and thus their comprehension is a necessity to live the life that we each wish to live. I believe that a number of comunication problems actually occur because of these opacities that exist in a number of ubiquitous areas. This is very abstract, but I’m not referring to opacities in regards to the opacities that we have and others do not, but rather the paths that we have towards resolving our opacities that others do not. Namely, the difference in ability towards resolving an opacity is not relevant, but rather the knowledge of how one may resolve an opacity is. In a later piece I will elaborate on “ubiquitous opacities”, but one can think of them as simply something that we all use/interact-with everyday that we are not taught in school. This includes inferred things (trust, lies, respect, etc.), simple institutional concepts (like paying taxes, court system, voting...although it seems that it’s being made to be more “difficult”, etc.) and non-simple things (like insurance, credit scores, becoming a political candidate, etc.).

As we know, truth (the resolution of an informational opacity) has a non-monetary cost and not everybody knows that cost or the path that one must take to “pay” that cost. This doesn’t need to apply to everything, however, only to the things that are ubiquitous to us or that went into the development of the institutions that we use in our daily lives should be focused upon. If any of these things that we use are opaque to us, it gives someone an opportunity for them to profit off of that opacity. Education about these opacities and the path to resolving them allows one to value the information they receive and distinguish its relevancy.

Due to the abstractness of the word “opaque”, there are a number of examples that exist. A basic example of being opaque is the knowledge to understand what goes into creation of an advertisement. Advertisements seem to take advantage of an opacity that the consumer might have about a product and because of the consumer’s potential inexperience about a product what’s relevant in a particular type of product, they may succumb to a particular feature or gimmick that may not actually be applicable in regards to what they need that product for. In essence, it can be hard to distinguish whether the particular advertisement is altruistic/non-altruistic. This, of course, can be resolved by having information about that particular field either through teaching or through practice (recall that practice requires a non-opaque benchmarking). Education can’t cover all marketing, though, but it can teach the paths one would need to follow in order to understand it.. We do not teach anything about the ubiquitous advertising/marketing in our society, accepting it as just something we have to deal with individually. However, due to its ubiquity, it should be mentioned and taught enough about in order to understand how it can be used or misused.

Which finally brings me to what actually motivated me to write this long piece (the point). There seem to be two people that have so far interested me in regards to looking into some of the issues that we have in the US in regards to education. One of them is John Taylor Gatto whom I of course believe is altruistic. For the sake of brevity, his aim has resulted in focussing on trying to diminish the “meaninglessness” of education in the eyes of the student and has advocated for Praxis Tests which have the goal of measuring subject competency of the teachers themselves. Gatto seems to do this by referencing Alexander Inglis’ six functions of public education as per Inglis’ book, “Principles of Secondary Education”. I do not mean to belittle his work by not discussing more about it, and thus suggest that the reader themselves learn more about his efforts and their results.

With regards to the functions of public education, I do not believe that his suggestions are the correct path for education to take within the context of the current age that we live in. This is because I do not believe in using indoctrination as an educational tool. The ubiquity of information that has become pervasive between all of us in our society should instead be leveraged, and being able to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information should be our focus. This requires that education must provide a constant and reliable benchmark to the student so that they may judge for themselves whether they are learning a particular piece of information properly and also given the guidance to help correct themselves if they are not. During the information age, we should all be focused on not the “having” of information, but how to “distinguish” said information before we consume it.

Although I do not yet know how this would actually work (in practice), the idea aims to shift the role of the teacher towards a mentorial position in regards to the student’s ability to learn which should be similar to the role of a thesis advisor from higher education. This is exactly what parents do, but there are a number of things that are ubiquitous to individuals that a parent is also unable to teach (because they are still learning about it as well).

Nowadays, pracitically everything is (near-)referenceable and as such should not require explicit memorization. However, there’s still the skill of having enough familiarity with the material in order to distinguish a relevant source of information from one that is irrelevant. Anything can be learned if one is willing to do the work to familiarize themselves with the field in question and has a way to measure themselves on whether they are actually learning the material or not. In this way, they are given material that allows them to practice and perform research as necessary in order to learn.

Thus with regards to public education, anything that is being taught opaquely should be questioned. We are all the same in that we interpret things through the mostly the same senses, but we are different in that we all have different experiences and different ways that we interpret signals from those same senses. It should be openly recognized that learning is different between individuals and that we should each help one another to learn the things that are relevant to all of us. Thus anything that actively hinders us in this endeavor (be it material, tests, or tools) should be actively and openly questioned. If either of these things are “unfixable” because of there being no other resources (perhaps a monopoly of some sort), then it can be discussed openly (at the very least) and without bias in order to resolve it. This could enable the information provider to improve their resource in some way, or at least allow others to recognize that an opportunity to provide better information is available.

Ideally we do not impose policies or reward institutions by their adherence to policies or their meeting of standards, without enabling the users of these institutions to benchmark themselves and allowing them to determine whether the institution is satisfying their needs. The way that we reward education for adherence to policy (with currency) seems to misplace the goals of the institution. So, not only do the users of education need to be enabled to benchmark themselves, but the currency that is awarded should be scaled based on the number of students that consume the resources of said institution (perhaps with voting, once a benchmark is available). This could allow education to be fair and allows receivers of education to judge whether the leadership of their academic institution is using their resources effectively.

Both of these suggestions seem to resolve an opacity in that the consumers of those materials are now empowered to distinguish whether some tools are better than others, and the users of these institutions can now compare them to other institutions. This allows them both to compete satisfying one of the aspects of capitalism. One side effect of enabling consumers to distinguish their tools from one another has the side effect of removing the need to “cheat”, instead reserving the requirement of opaque testing for whatever mechanisms that higher-level academic institutions wishes to use for distinguishing candidates from one another.

Hopefully a re-thinking of education with an aim to resolve informational opacities that are ubiquitous to us, allowing students to benchmark themselves and enabling them (as consumers) to drive the competition between the producers of the material that they learn from, and re-considering the methodology that we use to determine how an educational institution should be rewarded will bring the fundamental aspect of capitalism of competition back to the way in which we are educated. As education is the baseline for which we all communicate, this could result in all of us understanding how to distinguish good information from misinformation/disinformation rather than settling on our own individual values. Starting out by focusing on the things that are ubiquitous to us (as opposed to our fields/subjects, cities/states, etc). will keep people informed on what’s actually relevant, and only then does it make sense to refine education around specific fields. We must always aim to resolve the opacities from the things that are ubiquitous.