This week's reflection has me concerned about the content of Chapter 5 in Gibson et al, 2007. Jones and Bronack make some pretty big leaps about the nature of knowledge in this chapter and eventually follow in the steps of American education pioneer and revisionist, John Dewey. Throughout this EdTech graduate program at Boise State the courses have tended towards the constructivist methods of education; that is, education that is socially constructed by students in their learning environment. It is said that this type of education tends to be more relevant and meaningful to the student - my assumption all along is that I am in agreement, as long as the instructor has a goal for the knowledge learned and the student meets those goals, however they arrive at them, is OK. Jones and Bronack turn around my perception of social constructivism and through their chapter build a case that all that is knowledge can only be known within a group of like-minded individuals. This strategy was at the very essence of philosophies and ideals embodied by Carl Marx and Joseph Stalin as they attempted to reform government through their radical ideas and anti-capitalist philosophies. If people could be made to think that there was no higher form of authority than what they collectively agreed to and if their collective agreement could be orchestrated by the welfare state then socialism and gradually communism would follow. Ironically each of these systems which appears to begin by empowering the people breaks down and ends up with the concentration of power by the elite few that first put these wheels in motion. Reference the following excerpt from the Communist Manifesto for a snapshot of where I think things may be headed:
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? (emphasis mine)
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.” (emphasis mine)
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Chapter 6, although legalistic was more concrete in the use of simulations for learning concepts of law and learning how to navigate and negotiate within the legal system. Page 119 in Chapter 6 also mentions in Table I that learning is 'pulled' by learners and sort of follows along the thoughts that I began in the last post regarding precognition. If Chapter 6 had any issues of concern it is in the referencing of bounded vs. unbounded instruction. Insomuch that unbounded instruction would have no constraints whatsoever and is left to the creativity and imagination of the student to construct their own knowledge as far as the practice of current law would allow. Unfortunately our present legal system seems to already be severely unbounded and like a house built ever bigger upon a deck of shiny new playing cards, seeks to establish precedent upon precedent such that eventually there is little resemblance to any law or public morality(whatever that is) at all. Is there an end or will society eventually decay to the point of desolation via class warfare (the real kind of war with weapons, etc.) and eventually wipe out everything out to the point where those that are left get to start over with a relatively blank slate?
This passage and indeed much of this blog seems to be overly concerned about the state of things educational with regards to new learning methodologies, but this is my blog and I would be remiss if I didn't express my struggles in attempting to assimilate the assigned reading!
