The Radical Impossibility of Teaching
Posted on | June 5, 2007 | 10 Comments
I have been reading a paper by Ron Burnett, President of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, entitled Learning to Learn in a Virtual World.
Ron takes as his starting point, the paradoxical statements of Socrates (Plato’s words in Socrates’ mouth, really) and Freud about the ‘radical impossibility of teaching’ (a turn of phrase used by Shoshana Felman in an essay written in 1982). Ron’s paper is very well written and highly readable.
Is the whole process of teaching a paradox? When teachers teach and learners learn, what is the nature of the causal link between the two, if any? How does teaching produce learning? Does teaching produce learning? Is learning merely an accidental consequence of teaching?
One thing is clear to Ron, that: “….a recognition of the “impossibility” of teaching, enables and encourages the development of new and innovative approaches to pedagogy and learning. The contradiction is that learning can never be reduced to the way information and ideas are structured for communication. The core confusion is between the authority of the teacher and the authorship that goes into various educational discourses and the manner in which those discourses are exchanged
among learners and teachers.”
Recognition of the ‘radical impossibility’ of teaching at once affirms and negates the pedagogical activities that contribute to learning, since, on the one hand, “…learning is a part of everything we do as human beings;” while on the other hand, “…we have developed models of human thinking and models of mind that could best be described as functionalist and reductive in orientation. These models narrow the potential for learning and particularize the processes that make learning possible.”
For Ron Burnett, a recognition of this ‘radical impossibility’ is the first necessary step towards fully understanding the need for a new education narrative, one in which teacher and learner are conjoined as mutually supportive learners.
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June 6th, 2007 @ 7:19 am
I like the phrase. It really does capture what happens. When things go well, we take credit for the work but if a student is struggling, it must be the student or something else. Yet, as you describe the nature of learning, it does seem to be something that is “unnatural” in how schools have departmentalized learning and moved it from an experience to a reception. However, with the advent of tools that allow us to get beyond the reception to being able to once again thrill to enjoy experience and create using that experience combined with our new understanding, we have the opportunity to move schools and pedagogy in a new and exciting way. Hopefully it won’t continue to be the radical impossibility of teaching but the radical possibility of learning.
June 8th, 2007 @ 12:50 am
[...] from Stephen Downes OLDaily comments on the post The Radical Impossibility of Teaching. Downes mentions that he thinks the teacher is limited to modeling and demonstrating. Once again, I concur with his view of the role of teaching in learning. The Radical Impossibility of Teaching http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=378 John Connell, Weblog ————————————————————- I take thi as a serious question: “Is the whole process of teaching a paradox? When teachers teach and learners learn, what is the nature of the causal link between the two, if any? How does teaching produce learning? Does teaching produce learning?” I think the causal relationship between teaching and learning is much less direct than popular wisdom suggests (which is why on my own account the teacher is limited to modeling and demonstrating). [...]
June 9th, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
[...] Is teaching a “radical impossibility?” Is learning actually a product of teaching, or is it a natural consequence of human behavior? In this blog, John Connell reviews a paper by Ron Burnett called Learning to Learn in a Virtual World (PDF file). The review is interesting–the paper is fascinating. [...]
June 10th, 2007 @ 8:43 pm
[...] The Radical Impossibility of Teaching06/09/2007 08:37 pm3 Comments [...]
June 13th, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
[...] Welcome! If you’re new here, you may want to sign up for email updates (look to your right) or subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! I came across an interesting post today on John Connell’s blog entitled The Radical Impossibility of Teaching. I considered a lengthier response to this as the philosophy of education is of particular interest to me, given my academic background. However, I shall have to put it on the backburner for the time being. Suffice to say I agree with the following extract of a quotation from Ron Burnett, cited in the post: “The contradiction is that learning can never be reduced to the way information and ideas are structured for communication.” Amen to that. Popularity: unranked [?]Bookmark:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
June 24th, 2007 @ 3:33 am
As the author of the paper being discussed in this blog, I wanted to express my appreciation for the responses and John’s initial commentary. I taught a graduate course this year at Emily Carr Institute and it was a wonderful experience largely because I kept on referring to the challenges of learning, never accepted anything that did as a given, and always challenged the students to explore their learning assumptions as much as the material that we were studying.
June 24th, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
Ron – how nice to hear from you, and thank you for the kind words.
I think you make an important point in constantly challenging your students to explore their own learning assumptions – that is a strong counter to the risk we all run of challenging only our own assumptions about the nature of learning and forgetting that teaching/learning is, at the very least, a 2-way process (actually much more complex than that, of course).
August 5th, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
[...] æ•™å¦çš„ä¸å¯èƒ½æ€§ 我把这看作是一个相当严é‡çš„问题：”整个教å¦è¿‡ç¨‹æ˜¯ä¸€ä¸ªæ‚–论？教师教å¦å’Œå¦ç”Ÿå¦ä¹ 这两者如果å˜åœ¨å› 果关系，其性质是什么？教å¦æ˜¯å¦‚何促æˆå¦ä¹ 的？教å¦æ˜¯å¦ä¿ƒæˆå¦ä¹ 呢？”我想教与å¦çš„å› æžœå…³ç³»å¹¶æ²¡æœ‰åƒå¤§ä¼—所认为的那么直接（这也就是为什么在我看æ¥æ•™å¸ˆåªæ˜¯åšæ¦œæ ·åšç¤ºèŒƒï¼‰ã€‚John Connell, Weblog June 7, 2007 [原文链接] [Tags: Online Learning] [å‚与评论] [...]
August 10th, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
[...] The Radical Impossibility of Teaching08/05/2007 02:46 pm8 Comments [...]
January 1st, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
[...] reminds me, again, of the notion of the radical impossibility of teaching described so effectively by Ron Burnett in his paper: Learning to Learn in a Virtual World. [...]