Teaching and the good life: A critique of the ascetic ideal in education

Educational Theory

Volumn 53, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 131-154

  Higgins, Chris ^a  

^a Columbia University ^*  (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 16644393430     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00131.x     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Recruitment poster for the New York City Teaching Fellows Program, 2001-2002.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, "We Classicists," §64, trans. William Arrowsmith, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Unmodern Observations, ed. Arrowsmith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 19901, 340.
3. In what follows, I use the term "substantive ethics" as a term of art, referring not only to the contrast between substantive ideals and proceduralprinciples, but to the whole range of contrasts drawn in the new aretaic, agent-focusedethics. (On the distinction between "agent- focused" and "agent-centered, " see David Carr and Jan Steutel, eds., Virtue Ethics and Moral Educotion [London: Routledge, 1999],9-12.) As I develop these contrasts, I follow Bernard Williams in using the term "ethics" alone to distinguish eudaimonistic ethics from modem moralities of obligatory action.
4. See, for example, Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 19701;
5. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981);
6. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985);
7. and Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19891, especially Part 1. MacIntyre'sAfter Virtue will be cited as AV in the text for all subsequent references.
8. I hardly mean to suggest that these four authors have accomplished this task alone. Such an assertion would neglect one of the earliest critiques of morality: G.E.M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy, " Philosophy: The Journul of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 33,. 124 11958): 1-19.
9. It would also ignore one of the pithiest critiques: Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints" lournal of Philosophy 79, no. 8 (1982): 419439.
10. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 174 ff. For a thorough discussion of the ethics/morality distinction and its implications for education, see Chris Higgins, "Das Glück des Lehrers" [The Flourishing of the Teacher], trans. Thomas Fuhr, Zeirschrift für Pädagogik 48, no. 4 (2002): 495-513.
11. On the priority of the good, see Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good. On the concept of the life as a whole, see, for example, MacIntyre, After Virtue, chapter 15;
12. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, chapter 1; and Julia Annas, The Morality of Huppiness [New York: Oxford University Press, 19931, chapter 1.
13. On eudaimonia, see, for example, Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, chapter 3;
14. and Annas, The Morality of Happiness. Some important works in the revival of virtue ethics are Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978),
15. Nancy Sherman, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989);
16. and Michael Slote, From Morality to Virtue [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
17. On practical wisdom or phronesis, see Martha C. Nussbaum, "The Discernment of Perception: An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public Rationality," in Love's Knowledge: Essays on I'hilosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),54-105.
18. For a hermeneutic interpretation of phronesis, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method [1960), 2d rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 19931,313322.
19. See, for example, Iris Murdoch, "The Ideaof Perfection," in The Sovereignty of Good 1-45; and Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 127 ff.
20. See, for example, Carr and Steutel, eds., Virtue Ethics and Moral Education.
21. Many of these implicit ethics will strike us as questionable or highly attenuated. For instance, many educational activities are guided by an image of human beings as skilled instrumental reasoners. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize such cases as impoverished visions of human flourishing rather than as somehow beside the (ethical) point. Such ideas can and do substantially affect the quality, shape, and excellence of lived lives, in part precisely because of the myth that they do not. For the classic elaboration of this idea, see Philip W. Jackson, Robert E. Boostrom, and David T. Hansen, The Moral Life of Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993).
22. For a review of this literature, see David Hansen, "Teaching as a Moral Activity," in The Handbook of Research on Teaching, 4th ed., ed. Virginia A. Richardson (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association, 2000).
23. See, for example, Gary Fenstermacher, "Some Moral Considerations of Teaching as a Profession," in The Moral Dimensions of Teaching, eds. John I. Goodlad, Roger Soder, and Kenneth A. Sirotnik (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), 133-136.
24. See Michael Slote, "Self-Regarding and Other-Regarding Virtues," in Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, eds. Carr and Steutel, 95-106. Compare with John Cottingham, "The Ethics of Self-concern," Ethics 101, no. 4 (19911: 798-817.
25. R.S. Peters, Ethics and Education (Atlanta: Scott, Foresman, and Co., 19671, 22
26. Ibid., 71.
27. Ibid., 22-23.
28. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 32, passim. Compare with Annas, The Morality of Happiness 291.
29. Notable exceptions here include Maxine Greene and Margaret Buchmann. Greene has often reminded us of the need to view teaching as a project for the teacher. See, for example, "Teaching as Project: Choice, Perspective, and the Public Space" in Teacher Renewal: Professional Issues, Personal Choices, eds. Frances S. Bolin and Juth McConnell Falk (New York: Teachers College Press, 1987), 178 ff.
30. Buchmann precedes me in speaking of teaching as a "given form of the good life" in "Argument and Contemplation in Teaching," Oxford Review of Education 14, no. 2 (1988): 212-213.
31. Comparewith AlasdairMacIntyre, "Does AppliedEthicsRestonaMistake, " TheMonist 67 (1984):5 12.
32. This point has been made by Gary Fenstermacher among others. See, for example, Gary Fenstermacher, "On the Concept of Manner and its Visibility in Teaching Practice, " Journal of Curriculum Studies 33, no. 6 (2001): 639-654.
33. Compare with David Hansen, "The Moral Importance of the Teacher's Style, " Journal of Curriculum Studies 25, no. 5 (1993): 397-421.
34. Compare with Karl Hostetler, ed., Ethicalfudgment in Teaching (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), 205.
35. David Hansen often makes this point. See, for example, David T. Hansen, Exploring the Moral Heart of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 9, 119, 151, passim.
36. For Taylor's brilliant reading of the tradition of ethical atomism, see Sources of the Self, 35-40 and 185-198. I explicate these arguments in Higgins, "Das Cluck des Lehrers," 501-503.
37. Kenneth A. Strike and Paul L. Ternasky, "Introduction: Ethics in Educational Settings," in Ethics for Professionals in Education: Perspectives for Preparation and Practice, eds. Strike and Ternasky (New York:Teachers College Press, 1993), 2.
38. See, for example, Goodlad et al., eds., The Moral Dimensions of Teaching; and Kenneth A. Strike and Jonas Soltis, The Ethics of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 1985).
39. This holds true in professional ethics as a whole. Even Mike Martin's Meaningful Work, a book that explicitly promises to rethink professional ethics in the spirit of Williams' work, fails to address the questions of professional ethics as I have defined them. Martin barely touches on how vocations might be vehicles for the practitioner's own ethical quest, focusing instead on how personal ideals help professionals do the right thing and serve the good of their clients. See Mike W. Martin, Meaningful Work: Rethinking Professional Ethics (New York: Oxford university Press, 2000).
40. For that matter, even Williams himself does not seem to have drawn the implications of his own critique of morality for professional ethics. See Bernard Williams, "Professional Morality and its Dispositions," in Making Sense of Humanity Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19951, 192-202.
41. David Carr, Professionalism and Ethics in Teaching (London: Routledge, 2000), 14.
42. Hostetler, Ethical Judgment in Teaching. Hostetler invites philosophers of education to comment on brief fictional cases with the conceit that they will model practical wisdom in action. Unfortunately, many of the contributors refuse to work within the confines of their cases. This may be because Hostetler's cases do not have enough saturation of detail, compared to life or even literature, to genuinely proceed from particulars as a phronomos should. I am grateful to Jeremy Belarmino for bringing these issues to my attention in an unpublished review of the literature on teaching and phronesis.
43. Ibid., 204.
44. See, for example, Wilfred Cam, "What Is an Educational Practice?" Iournal of Philosophy of Education
45. no. 2 (1987); John Elliot, "Educational Theory, Practical Philosophy, and Action Research," British lournal of Educational Studies 35, no. 2 (1987): 149-169;
46. Shirley Pendlebury, "Practical Arguments and SituationalAppreciationinTeaching,"EducationalTheory40,n o. 2 11990):1 71-1 79;
47. andGary Fenstermacher and Compare with Virginia Richardson, "The Elicitation and Reconstruction of Practical Arguments in Teaching," lournal of Curriculum Studies 25, no. 2 (1993): 101-114.
48. Thanks to Jon Levison for bringing some of these references to my attention. If there is an exception here, it is Buchmann who tries to connect the exercise of phronesis in teaching to the eudairnonia of the teacher through the good of contemplation. See "The Careful Vision: How Practical Is Contemplation in Teaching?" American fournal of Education 98, no. 1 /1989): 35-61;
49. and "Beyond the Lonely, Choosing Will Professional Development in Teacher Thinking," Teachers College Record 91, no. 4 ( 1990): 481-508.
50. I have tried to redress this omission in Chris Higgins, "From Reflective Practice to Practical Wisdom: Three Models of Liberal Teacher Education," Philosophy of Education 2001: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed. Suzanne Rice [Urbana, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society, 2002).
51. See, for example, Aristotle, Nichornachean Ethics, 1129b4-6 and 1141b29-30.
52. For three important exceptions to this rule, see Maxine Greene, Teacher as Stranger (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1973);
53. David Blacker, Dying to Teach: The Educator's Search for Immortality (New York Teachers College Press, 1997);
54. and David T. Hansen, Exploring the Moral Heart of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001).
55. Most discussion of the rewards of teaching takes place in an inspirational mode, Short on argument and analysis, such celebrations of the teaching life ring hollow when they fail to acknowledge how difficult it is for teachers to make their practice a vehicle for their own self-cultivation. Two of the more philosophical and balanced of these works are Robert Inchausti, Spitwad Sutras: Classroom Teaching as a Sublime Vocation (Westport, Connecticut: Bergin and Harvey, 1993);
56. and Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life [San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998).
57. For a sympathetic discussion of this literature, see Stephen Preskill, "Narratives of Teaching and Quest for the Second Self," Journal of Teacher Education 49, no. 5 (1998): 344457.
58. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 363.
59. Dan Lortie, Schoolteacher (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19751, 28.
60. John I. Goodlad, A Place Called School: Prospects for the Future (New York McGraw-Hill, 1984), 171.
61. Susan Moore Johnson, Teachers at Work: Achieving Success in Our Schools (New York: Basic Books, 19901, 37.
62. Quoted in Abby Goodnough, "Sensing Higher Calling in the Classroom," The New York Times, 1 August 2001, New York Region edition.
63. For an important, Murdoch-inspired attempt to articulate an altruistic vocational ethic, see Larry Blum, "Vocation, Friendship, and Community: Limitations of the Personal-Impersonal Framework," in Moral Perception and Purticularity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19941, 98-123.
64. Taylor discusses hypergoods in Sources of the Self, 63-73.
65. Quoted in Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 58.
66. Here I am following Taylor's history of the rise of "agape, later sliding into benevolence or altruism," Sources ofrhe Self, 3 14. In remarks scattered throughout this book, Taylor offers something like agenealogy of the modern altruism/self-interest and inclination/duty distinctions.
67. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals [ 1785) in Foundations of the Metaphysics of MoraIs and "What is Enlightenment," 2d rev. ed., trans. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997), 13. This book will be cited as FM in the text for all subsequent references.
68. This is Taylor's phrase. Though his critique of modem moral philosophy is similar to that of Williams, Taylor chose to distinguish between narrower and broader conceptions of the moral rather than trying to distinguish ethics from morality.
69. Thanks to James Stillwaggon for pointing out the need for this clarification.
70. Martin Buber, "Education," (1926) in Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 95.
71. I discuss this question in detail in Chris Higgins, "Teaching and the Dynamics of Recognition," Philosophy of Education 2002: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed. Scott Fletcher (Urbana, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society, 20031.
72. Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Education," in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, trans. Denver Lindley (New York: Viking Press, 19611, 196.
73. For Arendt's conception of action, see Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 19581, part 5.
74. Johnson, Teachers at Work, 55-56.
75. Jim Garrison, for instance, acknowledges the Eros of the teacher, only to assure us that Eros is a "bestowing" rather than a "grasping" form of desire. See James Garrison, Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997).
76. Hugh Sockett, The Moral Base of Teacher Professionalism (New York: Teachers College Press, 19931, 130.
77. Ibid., 129-130.
78. Ibid., 132.
79. See, for example, Nel Noddings, Caring (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1984), 74and 196197.
80. Ibid., 49.
81. See, for example, Ibid., 100.
82. Ibid., 67-72; compare with 196.
83. Nel Noddings, "Caring: A Feminist Perspective," in Ethics for Professionals, eds. Strike and Ternasky, 48.
84. Langston Hughes, "Harlem [2]," Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad /New York Vintage Books, 1994), 426.
85. See, for example, Samuel G. Freedman, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).
86. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil § 78, trans. Arrowsmith. Quotedin William Arrowsmith, "Teaching and the Liberal Arts: Notes Toward an Old Frontier," in The Liberal Arts and Teacher Education: A Confrontation, ed. Donald Bigelow (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), 12.
87. See, for example, Taylor, Sources of the SeIf, 516-518
88. Doris Santoro has documented the prevalence of this assumption in an unpublished review of the literature on teaching and self-knowledge.
89. Arrowsmith, "Teaching and the Liberal Arts," 14.