Stage Theory

EDU444 – Assignment #3-4 – Derek Carne 30506422 – 0419 837 087 [email protected]

Dialectical operations: adult learning and cognition – a phenomenological approach

Introduction

Lifelong learning appears in the literature of educational psychology as if it were

a recent discovery, the result of progress in cognition and learning research

(Gonczi 2004:23-29). It is odd that it emerges in a period when social and

education policy is increasingly determined by economic rationalist calculation.

Demand is attributed as much to the presence of a ‘market’ for adult learning

opportunities brought on by demographic and technological change (Whyte &

Crombie 1995:101-6), as to post-Fordist industry need for ‘flexible and

responsive’ ‘knowledge workers’ (Hill, 1998: 5-6).

There are traditions of lifelong learning in many cultures: indeed, the immense

diversity of languages, cultures and religions attests to the fecundity of the human

imagination for inventing projects of individual and social human attainment that

entail a trajectory of lifelong learning. The existence of societies in which social

status is based on knowledge and embodiment of these metaphysical projects,

rather than on the mere appurtenances of economic activity, arguably suggests

lifelong learning is a normal human aspiration.

Why then are ‘advanced’ Western societies, based on prodigious technology and

the penetrating gaze of social science, only now discovering that adults not only

can, but also often aspire to continue active learning throughout their lives? What

are the underlying beliefs, perceptions and assumptions that led to the truncated

view of human learning capability that characterised the Fordist industrial era

from which we have recently emerged? Given the fundamental contradiction

between the narrow economic rationalist conception of lifelong learning of policy

makers and the broad social and economic interests represented by participants in

the adult and community education sector, will these beliefs and assumptions

continue to detrimentally influence education policy and resource allocation?

My aim is to tease out some of the underlying beliefs and assumptions of Western

industrialised societies that shape beliefs and practices not only in relation to

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learning, but also to ideas about what it means to be human that motivate teaching

and learning. I will take a two-pronged approach. As learning theory takes as its

point of departure scientific studies that led to stage theories of cognitive

development, a critique of this theorising is a suitable point from which to analyse

Western cultural beliefs and to suggest alternative models of adult development,

cognition and learning. I will then outline from the anthropological literature

lifelong learning practices in a society that presents perhaps the greatest possible

contrast to the culture of Western industrialised societies. This, I hope, will

strengthen my argument for an educational philosophy freed from the materialist

paradigm of Western culture and a model of adult development that avoids the

presumed normative status of Western social and economic organisation.

History of evolutionary social thinking

Education theory is articulated within the evolutionary framework of modern

biological and social thought (Cross 1981:152-4, Squires 1993:90-1). The sharp

distinction today between vocational and liberal education, by focussing on the

instrumentalism of the one and social elitism of the other, reflects an ideological

contest over political control of education under an economic rationalist

hegemony, rather than a thoroughgoing analysis of learning theory and of the

appropriateness of the evolutionary metaphor to human development.

The idea of biological evolution existed from ancient times, and was only

formulated as a scientific theory in the 18th and 19th centuries by scientists such as

Lamarck and Darwin, who articulated plausible mechanisms by which

evolutionary change could occur (Wikipedia: Evolution). The epistemological

status of scientific accounts for biological evolution, although contested by

religion, is firmer than for evolutionary theories of social, cultural and personal

change (Wikipedia: Evolution, Socio-cultural evolution). Teleological ideas of

intrinsic and extrinsic purpose in biological evolution were ruled out by the

ineluctable mechanisms of natural selection, conceived of as “survival of the

fittest”. In social science, where teleological ideas have a stronger hold, evolution

has become synonymous with ‘development’, ‘growth’ and ‘progress’, assigning

unquestioned value to their correlates: control and change of nature, increase in


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Distinctions_between_theory_and_fact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#History_of_evolutionary_thought


size, and specific direction. Evolution, conflated with ideas of development and

progress, now embodies the idea of the unfolding, revealing and realisation of the

capabilities or possibilities of both social entities and individuals (Wikipedia:

Sociocultural Evolution).

Education in all cultures incorporates ideas of purpose, meaning and value. Much

learning, particularly that acquired early in life, is related to motor and mental

skill development for economic activity and social defence. It has a practical,

self-interested social survival objective. Culture is the activity or projects

communities and societies undertake once their living requirements and

necessities are met through economic production (Ortega y Gasset 1941a:106,

117), and is primarily an adult activity, through which social leadership and status

are attained (Geddes 1994:64)

Unlike most other cultures, in Western industrialised societies, economic

production has been made a cultural end in itself, and education has been

harnessed to the project of ever increasing economic production (Geddes 1994:98,

109, 1995:61-71). The prominence of material culture is so pronounced as to

constitute a “super-nature” – a total environment within which all basic

necessities are obtained without ever coming into contact with the natural

environment (Ortega y Gasset: 1941a:311). This technological super-nature is

objectified as the primary purpose and a self-evident cultural value under the

rubric of ‘the economy’. It is the visible evidence of the progress or advancement

of Western culture beyond any other, of having arrived at a superior state, of

having achieved “development”. The individual’s personal and civic purpose is to

maintain and promote the ongoing construction of this supra-natural environment,

to “make a contribution to the economy”.

The Aristotelian idea of entelechy, of an entity not yet being but actively working

to become itself, or achieve its potentiality or self-realisation (Wikipedia:

Entelechy), is truncated by materialist objectivism and the jural notion of the

private individual as a person. Anthropologists have observed that in many

cultures personhood is an idealised social archetype, which only few of its

members actually attain, typically through a social and moral career (La Fontaine


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entelechy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution.htm#Sociocultural_evolutionism_and_the_idea_of_progress


1985:123-4), a notion somewhat preserved in the English idea of a ‘personage’.

In becoming a ‘person’ therefore, an individual comes to perform or invent a

generic, socially recognised and valorised role, and is assigned a socially

recognised identity that transcends their individuality. In contrast, Western

individuals consider themselves ‘persons’ throughout life, the style or force of

their distinct, individual ‘personality’ alone growing or changing (Cross

1981:164-8, Perlmutter & Hall 1989:287-8). Belief in the normative status of

Western social and economic organisation is based on the valorisation of the

emergence of the individual as a person since the Renaissance as the morally and

socially most advanced form of human development (Fromm 1942:19-88).

Classical social evolutionists, drawing on the work of scholars like Comte, Tylor,

Morgan and Spencer, attempted to formalise social thinking along scientific lines

by developing theories of social development best described as unilineal

evolution, which was later influenced by the biological theory of evolution.

Sociocultural evolutionists such as Condorcet developed analogies between

human society and the biological organism, introducing ideas such as variation,

natural selection, survival of the fittest and inheritance to account for the progress

of societies through fixed ‘stages’, from savagery to barbarism and finally

civilisation. These ideas developed at the time anthropology, the study of newly

colonised ‘exotic’ peoples, developed, and lent weight to the assumption by

Europeans that their civilisation represented the pinnacle of human achievement

(Wikipedia: Sociocultural evolution).

Early in the 20th century, cultural anthropologists including Boas, Mead and

others achieved a more sophisticated understanding of indigenous cultures.

Historical events such as World War I and the rise of fascism in Europe weakened

faith in the intrinsic superiority of western cultures, strengthening their rejection

of the sweeping generalisations of unilineal theories of sociocultural evolution.

They argued that Spencer, Tylor and Morgan’s theories were not only speculative,

but misrepresented the ethnographic data. Theories regarding “stages” of social

evolution were criticised as illusions, as was the distinction between “primitive”

and “civilised” or “modern” societies. Theories of progression that terminated

with a stage of civilisation identical to that of modern Europe or North America


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution#Sociocultural_evolutionism_and_the_idea_of_progress


were not only ethnocentric, but also part of a prevailing Western myth that lacked

empirical basis. Critical theorists argued that notions of social evolution were

simply justifications for power by social, political and economic elites.

Importantly, they equated civilisation with material culture.

Stage theories of personal development

The conflation of evolutionary ideas from biology with social change readily

facilitated the transference of evolutionary ideas, including interpretation of

‘stages’ of development, to individuals. Caution has been expressed within social

constructivist educational theory about the validity of stage theories of personal,

social and cognitive development, particularly as they are applied to adults

(Squires 1993:96).

Stage and phase theories were developed largely on the basis of Piaget’s research

into cognitive development in children up to adolescence (Piaget 1972:2-6).

Although evidence for Piaget’s final stage of ‘formal operations’ was strongly

contested (Smolak 1993:91-94), many researchers carried out empirical studies to

extend Piaget’s schema to the whole of adult life. A plethora of multi-stage

models exist within the life-span developmental psychology school: Bühler’s five

phase biological and psychological model, Erikson’s eight-stage theory of

psychosocial development, Havinghurst’s six-stage developmental tasks model,

and Levinson’s fours stage ‘Seasons of Life’ model (Sugarman, 1986:76-97).

Similarly, Gould’s model focused on periods of crisis or transformation between

periods of stasis or consolidation (Perlmutter & Hall: 299-300). Schaie developed

a model on the basis of Piaget’s developmental stages under the rubric of

“knowledge aquisition” and posited a succession of subsequent stages of

“knowledge use” during the course of adult life (Smolak 1993:97-8).

Stage theories have been criticised for abstracting individuals from their social

and economic contexts, and being too individualistic (Squires:1993:96). A more

plausible model of adult cognitive development is Riegel’s fifth stage of

‘dialectical operations’, which describes the way adults typically reconcile

contradictory ideas and experiences. Riegel’s model is built on a critique of the



underlying assumptions of the life-span developmental school – he points to a

disjunction between theory and practice, and to the questionable idea that human

development is a gradualist, evolutionary affair (Squires, 1993:93). Although

classified as a fifth or adult stage of cognitive development, ‘dialectical

operations’ do not necessarily require achievement of Piaget’s ‘formal operations’

(Squires 1993:93-4).

By stressing the importance of crises, Riegel distinguishes historical and

contextual influences on adult development from the idea of organic or

biologically programmed development. Characterised as phase or life task, rather

than stage theories, they nonetheless only partially free themselves from the

rigidities of stage theories, with which they are seamlessly interwoven. Fixed

sequences (Cross 1981:168-176) and decline or disengagement in old age

(Squires 1993:91) remain unquestioned assumptions. This inflexibility can be

attributed to a common evolutionary gradualist or continuity model of individual

and social development. It is reflected both in the loss by industrialised societies

of ritual, jural procedures for the admission of juveniles to adult status, and in the

dominant economic rationale that requires labour mobility, isolation of the

nuclear family and institutionalised warehousing of the elderly. In addition,

empirical studies of adult development have mostly been undertaken in Western

industrialised societies (Sugarman 1986:89-97, Tenant & Pogson 1995:67-97).

In Western culture then, the gradualist evolutionary model of human development

drawn from biology is paralleled by the jural recognition of the individual person

from conception or birth, but the lack of jural or socially decisive admission to

adulthood.

Separating evolution and development

To understand the limited metaphorical value of the idea of evolution to human

development, it is necessary to understand just what biological evolution entails.

In the first instance the mechanism of gradual genetic drift, lending selective or

survival advantage through chance genetic mutation, is not the only mechanism of

evolutionary change: there is a strong argument for rapid or quantum changes

leading to the emergence of new types of organisms (Wikipedia: Punctuated


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium


Equilibrium). Secondly, ‘survival of the fittest’ is often understood, particularly

by social scientists, in the ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ sense, rather than in

terms of the central mechanism of selection identified by Darwin and other

evolutionary biologists: sexual selection. Thus societies were seen to advance by

prevailing in war, usually by virtue of technological advantage. The less ‘fit’, if

they survive, do so by strategic or tactical ingenuity, and if not, their

disappearance is rationalised in terms of inherent or evolutionary inferiority.

Masculinist interpretations of evolution conveniently ignore the role of sexual

selection, particularly in human evolution. A fruitful avenue of research in

support of my contention that the Western preoccupation with the economic or

material means of existence is a deficient or retrograde basis for a social template

may be cross-cultural surveys eliciting female motives for mate selection: do

women, where they are able to exercise the choice, select mates, as most western

theorists believe, on the basis of their economic ability to provide security for the

procreative task, or on socially constructed assessments of the genetic, social-

collaborative attributes they may impart to their offspring? In other words, do

culturally constructed social templates or ideals of human character and behaviour

influence human evolutionary choice independently of economic exigencies?

So where does evolutionary programmed development end? In addition to

genetic and morphological similarities between organisms and the fossil record,

biological evolution is strongly evidenced by embryological development, in

which ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. The human embryo exhibits the

physiological characteristics of successive evolutionary stages (presence of gills, a

tail, &c) prior to mammalian maturity at term. Evolution-determined genetic or

organic programming therefore reaches its terminal point at physiological

maturity, whereupon social templates rather than biological/environmental factors

affect sexual selection. In mammals, birth is variously positioned, nearer or

further from the end of this natural process: amongst placentals in many species

newborns survive only because they can walk within minutes, and achieve

reproductive maturity early in their potential life-spans. As adaptive generalists

with effective social defence, human are able to undergo much longer biologically

programmed development ex utero, taking 1-2 years to walk, and generally




achieving reproductive maturity at 12-15 years, until which point biologically

programmed development asymptotically concludes.

Piaget was fortuitously correct in refraining from formulating a ‘hard-wired’

cognitive developmental stage beyond adolescence. The dispute over his fourth

or ‘formal operations’ stage points to the elusive terminal point of biologically

programmed development, and to Piaget’s culturally determined valorisation of

Western hypothetical-deductive or scientific reasoning as the most advanced form

of human cognition (Smolak 1993:91).

Uncertainty as to the terminal point of biologically programmed development can

be attributed social factors as well. Western industrialised or ‘advanced’ cultures

are distinguished from other societies by the almost complete disappearance of

formal rituals of initiation into or declaration of adult social status (Squires:

1993:87), procreation rights and responsibilities, and induction into socially

sanctioned projects of humanisation. Belief that biology is constitutive of

humanity produces a situation where achievement of adult status is considered a

natural rather than a social process and jural or declaratory rituals are no longer

felt to be necessary. Adulthood is conceded, or attained adventitiously, through

economic or reproductive activity. Prolongation of the physiological and

psychological transition to adulthood, or adolescence, and the lack of a regulative

and inductive institutional framework, is characteristic of Western industrial

societies (Zoller Booth, 2003, Adolescence), strengthening Western belief in the

gradualist human developmental model rooted in biological thinking.

In contrast, in societies that precipitately induct their young into adulthood,

initiation rituals often involve seclusion, of females in the home or under the

protection of a matrilocal residential group, and of males in martial training and

rituals of ordeal throughout the period of physiological maturation, whereupon

reproductive rights may still be constrained by social mechanisms such as

domestic tutelage and social assignment of labour power. Initiation usually marks

the commencement of a potential lifelong career of cultural knowledge

acquisition and status attainment.


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_150_38/ai_109027876


Phase theory: phenomenology vs. empiricism

Riegel’s contextual, historical approach not only frees cognitive changes after

maturation from evolutionary and biological determinism, it advocates a fluid

‘phase’ rather than a fixed ‘stage’ approach to interpreting cognitive change

through adult life (Squires, 1993:95). Life-phases refer to chronological periods

in the life span that are, within wide margins, age related, and which are

summarised by different cultures under similar formulae: Aristotle’s three stages,

Confucius’ six stages, and Shakespeare’s seven stages of life. Developmental

psychologists describe these phases in terms of characteristic life tasks. Unlike

the biologically hardwired early stages of development, life phases are, along with

other contextual models, adventitious or elective – they vary, in order and age,

from individual to individual and from culture to culture, may be influenced by

historical and economic circumstances, all of which, when considered in an adult

learning context, can influence cognitive development and adult learning

objectives (Wolf 1994:2).

Nonetheless, most developmental psychologists appear unable to break out of the

evolutionary, biological framework to apply the techniques of interpretation

appropriate to the historical, contingent and contextual nature of their subject.

They lament the failure of phase theories to “take account of the unique trajectory

of individual lives, and the deeper kinds of changes that take place.” (Squires,

1993:96) To explain these deeper changes, resort is almost always made to stage

theory, empirical evidence for which falters at Piaget’s disputed adolescent formal

operations. Erikson’s theory of personality development (1968), followed by

Loevinger (1976), Perry’s work on cognitive and ethical development (1970),

Kohlberg’s theories of moral development (1973), Peterson’s theories of career

development (1996), all share common biologically rooted ideas about the nature

of human existence. Squires believes it is their “failure to identify a path of

development which is … based on [a] coherent or consensual view of human

existence” which is their chief problem (Squires, 1993:96).

If the task is to find a coherent and consensual view of human existence, it must

encompass the broadest cultural range of human experience. This may not be as



difficult as it at first appears. The observation that such a task was easier prior to

the emergence of modern, pluralistic and sceptical cultures because dominant

ideologies or religions (Christianity, Buddhism &c) held sway in large areas on

the world (Squires 1993:97), betrays little understanding of religious belief or

theological speculation. The psychosocial orientations of major religious

traditions are not as fundamentally irreconcilable as is commonly thought. The

altruistic self-sacrifice of the Bodhisattva, for instance, in giving up his or her

right to escape the cycle of death and rebirth to assist others on the path towards

enlightenment, indicates that the Buddhist ideology of detachment is not

antithetical to Western notions of commitment (Govinda 1960:232-4).

Mazirow analyses adult learning using Habermas’s theory of learning, which

differentiates three generic domains in which human interest generates

knowledge:

1. the area of ‘work’ which involves instrumental action to control or

manipulate the environment, exemplified by the empirical-analytical

sciences (e.g. physical sciences, technology);

2. the ‘practical’ area, involving interaction to clarify the conditions for

communication and intersubjectivity, exemplified by the historico-

interpretive science (e.g. history, theology, descriptive social sciences

including psychology); and

3. the ‘emancipatory’ area, involving an interest in self-knowledge and self-

reflection, exemplified by the critical social sciences (e.g. psychoanalysis,

the critique of ideology).

Importantly, it is noted, “each of these three areas has its own techniques of

interpretation, assessment and enquiry, and its own needs” (Mazirow, 1981:124).

I would not make such a firm distinction between the ‘practical’ and

‘emancipatory’ domains. The domain of work I would designate ‘practical’, and I

prefer to amalgamate the latter domains to emphasise the continuity between

social communicative and the individual reflective and representative activity.



Mazirow argues that the ‘emancipatory’ domain is of particular interest to adult

educators, and is characterised by a dialectical process of “perspective

transformation”, or “becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of

psycho-cultural assumptions has come to constrain the way we see ourselves and

our relationships, reconstituting this structure to permit a more inclusive and

discriminating integration of experience and acting upon these new

understandings.” (Mazirow: 1981:125). Squires objects to the notions of

emancipatory knowledge and perspective transformation as “a blurring of the

conventional distinction between what one knows and what one is.” (Squires,

1993:107 fn3).

But this is precisely my point: this conventional distinction is a false one. It

assumes humanness as a given, as being constituted by the biological substrate,

upon which the prodigious capabilities which distinguish us from mere animals

are grafted. This could not be more wrong (Ortega y Gasset 1941a:137). Taking

the notion of the social construction of knowledge to its logical conclusion, both

identity and humanity too are pure invention, socially and individually

constructed, and the aim of education is to consciously and socially formulate and

justify models or templates of human character and behaviour and the moral

action required to fulfil their embodiment.

Dematerialising ‘human nature’

My argument, then, is that the application of ideas from biological evolution to

social and individual change, and to education, obscures the historical, intentional

and jural character of human status. What is human about human behaviour is that

they invent and construct what it is to be human, as individual and social actors.

Alternative metaphors and concepts of a social-phenomenological rather than a

biological character are necessary to wrest learning theory from culturally

determined materialist models, and appropriate techniques of interpretation,

assessment and enquiry applied to them. In such models, ‘human nature’ and

‘human instinct’, as popularly conceived, do not exist: they are not biological

attributes. Instinct is pre-human and humans are not natural creatures (Ortega y

Gasset 1941:88). Humanness is not a given, but, restating to the Aristotelian ideal,



a task to be accomplished, a becoming, a cultural artefact and a product of human

imagination, in fundamental and necessary tension with, even contradiction to

nature. To use Ortega y Gasset’s phrase, “human life in its most human

dimension (is) a work of fiction” ... “man (sic!) (is) a sort of novelist of himself

who conceives the fanciful figure of a personage with its unreal occupations and

then, for the sake of converting it into reality, does all the things he does.”

(1941a:296-7)

The appropriate techniques of interpretation, assessment and enquiry, are

therefore phenomenological and existential, rather than biophysical and

psychological. A useful Western example of an adult development model, and the

appropriate techniques of interpretation and enquiry, is Ortega y Gasset’s ‘theory

of generations’ (1941:30-84). It proposes that at any point in time two

“generations” or “groups of coevals” are bound in struggle over the fundamental

convictions that shape and drive their world. Each new generation (“childhood”,

ages 0-15), learns through its collective experience of institutional education and

work how the world works (“youth”, ages 15-30), then launches into the world of

work and human affairs to bring about a reformed world they envision

(“initiation”, ages 30-45) with the objective of supplanting the generation in

power and whose convictions prevail (“dominance”, ages 45-60). Supplanted by

their successors, the senior generation (“old age”, ages 60 plus) have experience,

knowledge and wisdom, and seek to temper the hubris of their successors through

their avuncular role as mentors to the antepenultimate generation (Ortega,

1942:60).

Education, then, is the process by which societies initiate their members into the

meaning and the means to accomplish projects of becoming human within

prescribed cultural templates. Pedagogy, as preparation for the adulthood,

prescribes values representing endorsed social or cultural templates. Andragogy,

as guidance to aspirants, advocates specific choices amongst all possible modes of

thinking. As Squires points out, the distinction between child and adult learning

is the presumed status of the adult qua adult (Squires 1993:87,94-5): the adult has

a different jural status: he or she is an initiate who is already engaged in the social

project of defining and refining cultural templates. Progress in conforming to



these social templates is a dialectical process of reconciling accumulated bodies

of knowledge and experience, of resolving contradictions between the rationalities

applicable to different realms of knowledge and experience, the physical/

technical, the social/behavioural and the religious/ethical.

It may be objected that this is to narrow the definition of education to mere

philosophy and to ignore the economic realities and necessities that drive

education policy. In Western industrialised societies individuals without

accumulated capital, who have only their labour power to sell, will almost always

apply economic rationalisations to their learning choices, even if these are not the

central motivational influences. Older adult learners who seek to learn new

technical and social skills do so in the context of a broader agenda the result of

their total life experience, generally conceived of within the framework of a

social, community or political commitment (Squires 1993:94-5).

Philosophical issues are crucial to education policy and practice. Taking as

analogies from scientific cosmology the notion of singularity and from religion

that of idolatry or fetishism, I argue that the humanising aim of education is to

inculcate a permanent readiness and capacity to dialectically engage with the

experience of contingency and uncertainty, deliberately avoiding the illusory,

indeed dangerous certainty of final, totalising structures and their social

objectification. The mandate for such avoidance is intrinsic to the teaching and

learning process.

Totalisation and singularity

A constructivist, phenomenological approach potentially divests the discourse of

cognitive development of erroneous and confusing assumptions, both in respect to

biology and to the sociology of knowledge. In regard to the latter, a theoretically

possible outcome of ‘dialectical operations’ is the choice to settle upon an

integration of contradictory ideas and experiences into a totalising ‘singularity’ or

unified theory within which all knowledge is subsumed.



The strength of final syntheses, and the reason they are chosen, is extrinsic– they

potentially confer, through social and material objectification, enormous social

power. They also constitute a danger, implicit in the social objectification of the

singularity at their core, because their validity, based on a closed self-referential

system, is incontestable. As effective ideological systems they satisfy an induced

craving for certainty and security. Their weaknesses, inasmuch as they are closed

to disconfirming evidence, are firstly, that they mark the end of the dialectical

process that gave rise to them and upon which their relative validity depends, and

secondly the social interpretation of the complexity of human affairs, history, is

contested and defies encapsulation within all but imposed singular cognitive

models (Laing & Cooper 1964:11).

The dialectical process is itself relentless, to uses Sartre’s terminology, an endless

cycle of totalisation-detotalisation, or Hegel’s, the cancellation of each viewpoint

achieved by the next and higher viewpoint or synthesis (Laing & Cooper 1964:10-

11). The choice to end the dialectical process is a moral one because adults, unlike

children, are able to choose what they will believe from among the convictions

they invent or select from those made available to them. Isolated adults seized of

a single overwhelming but socially ineffectual idea, a “fixed false belief”, may be

declared insane or otherwise jurally relieved of adult responsibility. However

social contagion of singular convictions, racial, religious or political, have the

potential to draw reluctant participants into moral and active complicity with

those who seek power by the social objectification of singular convictions, of

racial superiority, manifest destiny or religious certainty. The mass psychology of

fascism has been interpreted at the individual level as a flight from the

responsibility of freedom to the certainty and security of mass participation in a

singular belief (Fromm 1943:117).

All conflict and competition, political, economic or religious, is the outworking of

subsistent singularities, held in check by social resistance. For example, economic

rationalism represents the singular conviction that human behaviour can be fully

explained, controlled and predicted by economic incentives, given systematic

expression in neoliberal economic theory. The social objectification of this idea

through the reorganisation of work practices and conditions, and the subjection of



ever increasing areas of human activity and experience to commercial exploitation

and regulation is tolerated at population level even though its social consequences

are intensified economic marginalisation of socially and economically vulnerable

groups. As a global process, its international economic consequences are far

more severe, although largely invisible to Western populations whose status

seeking behaviour depends upon ever-increasing consumption of resources on a

global scale, and produce counter singularities both nationalist and religious

arrayed against ongoing post-colonial influence and intrusions by the West.

Marx characterised the Western capitalist subjection of every aspect of social life

to an economic rationality as “commodity fetishism” (Answers.com: Commodity

Fetishism) in an ironic critique of its purported scientific or rational character. His

intent was to draw attention to the transference of value from human and social

exchange to the material commodities exchanged, as both a calculated technique

of exploitation and as an irrational obsession with the material rather than the

human (Wikipedia: Commodity Fetishism). Originating in the study of West

African religion, the term is also used as a synonym for idolatry, or the

transference of worship from the deity to an object purported to represent the

deity (Wikipedia: Idolatry).

That the avoidance of singularity is intrinsic to the learning process can be

inferred from curriculum theory. Tripp (1994) draws attention to the meta-

curricular approach to learning theory: a specific fact in any domain of knowledge

can be shown to be an example of a factual statement at a higher level of

generalisation. For instance, in a curriculum in which the topics Aborigines and

Pioneers are studied, it can be shown that the different shelters they built have in

common the fact that “the kinds of dwellings people build are related to their

culture and environment”. This fact is a species of a higher-level factual

generalisation, namely: “people are related to their environment”, which includes

lower order facts from other domains of knowledge such as technology, health,

diet, clothing, agriculture and so on. Going to a higher, meta-curricular level, the

preceding is an example of the fact that “everything exists in an environment”.

The pedagogical objective is to enable learners to see the relationship between

disparate facts through these higher-level generalisations of which they are


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idolatry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

http://www.answers.com/topic/commodity-fetishism



members. Facts at a high level of generality are easy to teach and to learn, and

almost always find common agreement across social and ideological boundaries

(Tripp 1994). Only at the highest level of generalisation, the level of singularity,

in this instance “in the material universe, nothing exists independently of

everything else”, does factuality come into dispute and fundamental disagreement

emerge (Tripp 1994).

The process of incorporating knowledge of discrete facts in broader generalised

factual statements that bridge knowledge domains is the process of dialectical

operations. Its product is knowledge in the form of philosophical generalisations,

to which all derivative knowledge is constantly in the process of integration and

harmonisation. It is a forever-unfinished process, unless the ultimate step of

embracing a singularity is taken, in which case all new knowledge is ruled invalid

or deformed by the rational requirements of the central singular obsession. While

disagreement at the highest level of generalisation is generally thought to separate

different religions from one another, and from those to espouse no religion, it

should not be assumed that singularity is a universal characteristic of religion as

distinct from secular or scientific thought, or of any one religion. It is arguably

true in the case in most species of religious fundamentalism, but much theological

speculation addresses ethical issues arising from singularity in faith and practice,

and scientific thought, inasmuch as it proceeds by the method of doubt, is

inherently dialectical.

The appropriate techniques of interpretation, assessment and enquiry applicable to

human or adult development, considered as social and cultural inventions or

metaphysical projects, are therefore philosophical, not biological.

Lifelong learning in the primordial present – an example

Drawing upon the work of Myers (1986), Strehlow (1947), Tonkinson (1978) and

others, Geddes outlines the lifelong learning trajectory of Australian Aboriginal

Pintupi speaking men living in the arid region of northwestern Australia. Like

most anthropologists who have worked with cultures considered exotic by

Western urbanised societies, and witnessed the impact of Western social and



economic influences upon them, Geddes believes what is common to all human

communities are reintegrative mechanisms to attain and maintain status and

fundamental organisational forms. Any activity, internal or external, which

threatens the status of people or challenges present forms of social organisation

triggers social activity aimed at reasserting statuses and restoring or reinforcing

organisational forms (Geddes 1994:64). The social templates of any society are

the means by which statuses and organisational forms are reasserted. To

understand social templates it is necessary to grasp the essential or cosmological

understandings that underpin them, and the values, beliefs and experiences that

influence the trajectories of members in their efforts to give expression to their

social templates.

Western social templates are economically oriented, focus directly upon the

production and consumption of goods and services, and are based in individual

competitive opposition. Individuals gain status and respect through the

competitive accumulation and consumption of goods and services Geddes

1994:64-5, 98-100). In contrast, for the Pintupi and most other Aboriginal

communities, status is obtained through increasing knowledge of the metaphysical

basis of community life (Geddes 1994:65).

For the Pintupi, unlike Westerners, there is no clear line of distinction between the

material and non-material realms – between mundane human beings and the

ancestral supernatural beings that provide models for present social interaction,

and empowerment to those who seek to emulate them (Geddes 1994:66). The

presence of and empowerment by ancestral beings points to a different perception

of time to the serial, elapsed mundane time by which Westerners regulate their

economic lives. Primordial or sacred time, in which supernatural, part-human,

part-animal ancestral beings tracked across the country and created places and

peoples, inheres in the present. If a woman crosses the path of a creator being,

she is likely to conceive. Children are born into the world as spirit beings clothed

in human form, who will relive their lives in the present – their task is to become

the spirit beings whose alter egos they are. Each generation is a replication of the

primordial period. By gaining knowledge of the ancestral beings, their

wanderings and interrelationships, people learn how they should organise their



lives. They must not only learn the stories to gain insight into the primordial

period, they must conscientiously perform the rituals that enable contact between

themselves and the primordial beings their task it is to become, to gain the

knowledge necessary to become themselves (Geddes 1994:66-67)

The old demonstrate maturity and the right to respect through the extensiveness of

their knowledge and by diligently guarding the knowledge entrusted to them. The

young demonstrate their trustworthiness and reliability through the seriousness

with which they seek the goodwill of the old who might pass on knowledge and

the means to prestige and status (Geddes 1994:68).

Individuals gain a unique identity; initially a name and characteristics associated

with the place from which the spirit being came that entered their body at

conception. Through life, as they travel and experience events and places, they

acquire other names and characteristics from other places and groups with whom

they have contact, and the stories associated with those places. As they gain more

detailed knowledge about the stories associated with the places they visit and their

links to their own conception sites, they gain insight into how to become

themselves, how their own life story makes sense in terms of the primordial

present. Each individual is a separate, autonomous being, with his or her own

distinctive ‘story’, but they are integrated with all others who share the same

identity through the same ancestral beings and their wanderings and activities.

The primordial period not only ties people to each other, but also to the

environment, which is linked to the primordial beings through the tracks they

followed and the sites at which significant activities took place. Each person’s

identity is mapped in space, as are their relationships with all other persons and

the environment (Geddes 1994:72).

Geddes makes no mention of perhaps the most significant event in the distinctive

story or experience of individuals: male initiation. For this I recall my own

observations and personal informants over 10 years amongst the Arrernte of

Central Australia. The only qualifying remark I make is that the equivalent

female rite of passage is the ordeal of childbirth, and that attention to distinctively



male cultural practices does not imply either the inferiority or absence of female

status or cultus.

Individuals are launched on their learning career at puberty. With the consent of

their mothers, pubescent boys are seized by senior men in charge of ceremonial

activity for the area with which they are associated, for the initiation season.

Snatched out of the world of women and children, they are inducted by the ordeal

of circumcision into the world responsible men and oriented to the social template

of proper behaviour and self-realisation under the tutelage of the senior man

responsible for them. Initiation is experienced as death and rebirth, the end of

childhood and awakening to the task of adult life. The jural declaration of

adulthood is made socially effective through the welcome ceremony at the end of

the initial period of seclusion, in which boys are returned to their mothers and

families as man, entitled to respect, amid dancing and celebration. Induction into

the society of their seniors lasts for several seasons, during which traditional

sanctions regulate adult responsibilities, such as marriage and reproductive rights.

Young men are encouraged to defer marriage or to marry out and to travel widely

and gain friendship and acceptance in distant places, and gain knowledge from

those places that will enrich their understanding of the Dreaming of their own

area and enhance their status.

As individuals mature and gain authority and prestige from their knowledge of the

Dreaming stories and rituals, they acquire interpretive discretion to elaborate,

modify and add to the stories they hold. In this respect Aboriginal traditions, like

those of all societies, are not forever fixed and unchanging, but subject to

inventive elaboration (Hobsbawm 1983:1-14). The most senior exponents rule

on the legitimacy of changes, whether they are refinements of or contradictions to

the complex web of knowledge that guides social behaviour (Geddes 1994:69-

71).

Having placed themselves in tutelage to senior knowledge holders over a wide

range of places and gained a ‘global’ insight into their own Dreaming places,

older men tend to return to their home country which gives them their identity and

become the authoritative exponents for it. Those elders who hold the deepest



knowledge and understanding of places along the ancestral track have become,

indeed are the Dreaming.

The Dreaming provides Aboriginal people with an all-encompassing social

template, through which people gain knowledge of themselves, of their

environment and their social relationships, and achieve respect and status. The

aim of life is through learning, social participation and co-operation with their

neighbours, forming alliances and bonds of affinity, to become the eponymous

ancestral being that they are.

Conclusion

Learning theory and human development are conceived within a biological

evolutionary framework that allows the rationale and purpose of education to be

confined to relations of economic production, namely the social and intellectual

construction of labour, rather than of citizens. Taken to its logical conclusion,

objectivist or materialist conceptions of human status lead to the articulation of

education as the production of discrete quanta of knowledge and performance

input and output in the production relations of a global economic system. Liberal

education philosophy preserves the notion of a humanising cultural project

(Whyte & Crombie 1995:94) but lacks a “coherent or consensual view of human

existence” (Squires 1993:96) necessary to persuasively contest a dominant

economic rationality.

A radical departure is required that adopts a phenomenological and culturally

relativist approach, and a consistent rejection of materialist ideas of human

existence, to redress this imbalance and the socially detrimental objectification of

the central economic rationalist idea of human nature and purpose. A dialectical

understanding of the historical ascendancy of Western capitalism and the

phenomenon of economic and cultural globalisation has not altered the fact that

modern “freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed

of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence

afforded by the old feudal arrangements.” Not only has “the history of their

expropriation been written in the annals of mankind in letters of fire and blood”



(Marx, 1867, vol 1, pt 8 ch. 26 in Geddes 1997:197), but also that of the rest of

the globe is still being so written.

(6,643 words)



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