Towards an ethically-oriented curriculum: resisting the growth of instrumentalism

Jim Neyland

Abstract

Instumentalism is a growing disposition of thought in authorised curriculum theory. It is detrimental to education because it enfeebles the curriculum’s ethical orientation. Instrumentalism reflects an “instrumental orientation” that is based on five myths: (i) society causes goodness; (ii) individuals are radically free; (iii) individuals can handle this freedom; (iv) a perfect society is a rational possibility; and (v) experts ought to be in charge. The ethical orientation in curriculum needs urgently to become a focus. It can be summarised as five assertions: (i) questions of purpose are crucial; (ii) knowledge and identity are framed by backgrounds of significance that cannot entirely be made foreground; (iii) self-identity is primarily ethical; (iv) creative thinking requires an ethical/aesthetical sensibility; and (v) know-how is ethical.

Introduction

People acquiesce to power in the form in which they encounter it. The 9-year-old avoids the neighbourhood bully. The adolescent drifts with the in-group. The teacher complies with the curriculum manager’s circumscribing rules. There are differences in intellectual maturity, but none in moral outlook. People adopt fads in their most prevalent form. Teenage girls express identity by wearing jeans on the hip. Public sector administrators distrust their staff. Curriculum managers value the “precision” of the outcomes-based curriculum. There are differences in social context, but none in ethical orientation. This article looks at the main ways in which the growing acceptance of instrumentalism in the curriculum is leading to a corresponding decline in the ethical.¹

We could say a great deal more on this topic, but space is limited; this is just a start. This discussion focuses primarily on the ethical dimension of curriculum. Where I have drawn on other dimensions—such as the political, sociological and psychological—I have done so only to articulate the ethical.² Overall, I will attempt to highlight the ethical poverty of authorised curriculum theory: that singular strand of theory, backed by national and state apparatuses, that has recently led to the so-called education “reforms” in a number of countries. This is an urgent task, on which the survival of education depends. Without an ethical orientation, there is nothing to distinguish education from other activities, however noble or debased, such as training for the labour market. If instrumentalism becomes supreme—and, regrettably, we are heading in this direction—education is dead.

A growing disposition of thought

I am not aware of any curriculum that is completely instrumental. Nevertheless, there is reason to think that instrumentalism is becoming an incontestable form of thought in modern societies. Instrumentalism is becoming naturalised. This is a trend. Trends imply and require opposing influences; a snowstorm today is a present reality, but global warming is the trend. The curriculum is on an instrumental course, but it still exhibits features that are not instrumental. Each trend needs to be evaluated on its individual merits. To show learners increasing respect; to view learners as future commodities in a transnational, neo-capitalist marketplace; to focus on the development of self-esteem while at the same time neglecting to foster esteem for things other than self; these are three current trends. As such, they need to be evaluated differently. The first should be encouraged; the second, resisted; the third, modified.

In my early years of teaching I rarely heard talk of “objectives”, “assessment”, or “standards”; “production function”, “provider capture”, “competencies”, and “curriculum outputs” were unknown. Things have changed. Like all naturalisation processes, this one has meant that certain ideas and practices have become taken for granted within a small domain, to spill over into wider fields of application—in this case, the institutions of Western culture.³ The social philosopher Charles Taylor (1989, 1991) in his two recent books, Sources of the Self and The Ethics of Authenticity, argues that Western culture is in the grip of a trend towards a largely unquestioned instrumentalism.⁴ He urges us to redirect this instrumental way of thinking towards the ethical. A number of writers on curriculum have made a similar diagnosis. One readable account is Postman’s (1995) The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School.

Instrumentalism, like all trends, began as an exception to the accepted view of a particular period in time. In the mid-70s, Skilbeck (1976) published an overview of established curriculum models. The approaches that are now largely taken for granted were mentioned only in a footnote. He remarked that he detected on the horizon the emergence of an untried curriculum model: the technocratic-bureaucratic ideology. Skilbeck’s speculation was prophetic. What was non-existent in 1976 has hardened into orthodoxy today.⁵

Instrumentalism

Rock music is a feature of the latter half of the 20th century in many countries, but it is hardly characteristic of those years. Instrumentalism is different. In the West, in particular, it is characteristic of the last 200 years or so. Sociologists have charted its emergence and subsequent infiltration into modern culture. Weber (1958), Lukacs (1968), and Gramsci (1971), for instance, agree that modernity has given rise to a new form of cultural hegemony, a technological rationality that has vast implications for education, culture, and social life. Our forebears would be baffled by the extent of our reliance on instrumentalism. Future generations will probably find it a historical curiosity, much as we smile at Hegel’s assertion—made at the turn of the 19th century, and based on metaphysical arguments—that there could never be more than seven planets.⁶ It is not an exaggeration to say that instrumentalism has so penetrated modern consciousness that, chameleon-like, it nearly disappears; but we depend on it. Those in charge of our social institutions regard it as essential. The combined effect of this cultural invisibility and authoritative approval has been that instrumentalism has spread, with little restraint.

What is instrumentalism? It refers to the preoccupation with means in preference to ends, and with ends that are both narrowly defined and accepted without question. It is target-minded; focused on “how to do it” rather than “why do it”. It is concerned with a technical or engineering approach to situations or problems, and the associated values of efficiency and cost effectiveness. In education, it is also associated with the idea of utility. A preoccupation with means–end thinking and utility has meant that larger questions of purpose have been eroded. The triumph of instrumentalism has brought about something even worse: in place of the larger horizons it has obscured, we now have the elevation of the hollow ideals of narrowly defined and trivialised ends. The instrumental orientation does not usually lie behind the student’s question: “Why do I need to learn this?” It is there, however, in the teacher’s determination to answer in terms of the curriculum’s value for developing specific skills and competencies for work and life. You can also see it in an answer that focuses on the exchange value of the qualifications that schooling provides.

Stressing purpose does not automatically mean dismissing method, means, and utility, or even efficiency and cost effectiveness. Some instrumental questions do need to be given careful consideration. But education should also raise questions about larger directions and qualitative distinctions; and these should come before questions of means. Insofar as they are also questions about what is of greater and lesser worth, these larger questions are also ethical questions, and require an ethical orientation. The more rigorous face of instrumentalism is a form of reasoning called “instrumental (or technical) rationality”. This is the kind of reasoning we use when we calculate “the most economical application of means to a given end” and measure success by the “cost–output ratio” (C. Taylor, 1991, p. 50). In education, instrumental rationality is evident in the breakdown of the formal curriculum into a sequence of specific outcomes and standards.

Instrumentalism also has a legal face. Instrumental rationality and its accompanying methodology are now embedded within the public processes that operate in civic society. Instrumentalism is backed up by the mechanisms of “legal rationality”. The technical impulse (once optional) has now, in the form of scientific management, been made mandatory through legislation.⁷ By this means, the legislator becomes a technician with clout. The key factor here is not the decision to legislate—or even the fact that legal rationality becomes technocratic—but, as Bauman (1992) argues, that in the process “legal rationality” comes to be defined in terms of its opposition to “value rationality”.

How has this come about? Educational institutions are complex and ambiguous. So are the value frameworks they depend on. Ways of thinking that are based on ethical orientations by their very nature lack the sort of quasi-scientific precision and predictability that instrumental and legal rationality require. The difficulty of reconciling ethical and instrumental rationality leads to measurable rules and procedures being substituted for a prior commitment to “a sovereign good”,⁸ an overarching background of what we accept as significant for us, a background that cannot be codified or otherwise identified explicitly. Because of this, when we promote a technical–legal–utilitarian mode of administrative thinking, we at the same time weaken an ethical mode of thought. The ethical way of thinking, then, is not simply a blind spot in the instrumental viewpoint. Its devaluing is the result of a manufactured bias.

What is the alternative to the instrumental valorisation of skills, competencies, and the subdividing of knowledge? It is a refusal to accept the shallow, one-dimensional nature of instrumentalism and a deliberate focus, instead, on working with learners to help them to see the world more clearly and in a new way. Among other things, this entails learning how the past lives on in the present, and how the future can be anticipated with hope. It also entails learning, in an appropriate way, that we are “selves” only in relation to those who have significance for us; that our knowledge is framed in relation to backgrounds of qualitative discrimination that precede us, and that cannot entirely be made foreground; and that responsibility to others is at the heart of the social bond.

The basis of the instrumental orientation

The instrumentalism that increasingly permeates the authorised curriculum must be understood in the light of a wider-ranging orientation in Western culture. This instrumental orientation is based on five myths:

•&;&;&;&;society causes goodness;

•&;&;&;&;individuals are radically free;

•&;&;&;&;individuals can handle this freedom;

•&;&;&;&;a perfect society is a rational possibility; and

•&;&;&;&;experts ought to be in charge.

Myth 1: Society causes goodness

This myth is the basis of much orthodox social and educational thought. It is the self-congratulatory story that as people we have been redeemed from a pre-societal barbarous state by modern society’s institutions (including schooling). The corollary is that immoral behaviour is evidence of institutional failure. Accordingly, human behaviour, both good and bad, is seen as being caused by social institutions. Of the five myths that animate the instrumental orientation, this is the least questioned and the most entrenched. Bauman (1989, pp. 12–13) argues that this myth supports many influential social theories, and contrary theories have “a long way to go before they succeed in displacing [it] from public consciousness”. It is backed by “the chorus of experts who assure us that human problems are matters of wrong policies, and that right policies mean elimination of problems. Behind the alliance stands fast the modern ‘gardening’ state, viewing the society it rules as an object of designing, cultivating and weed-poisoning”.

As it applies to education, the myth boils down to the assertion that human beings are what they are taught to be. This is a half-truth. The fact is, society’s institutions manipulate, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, our pre-societal capacity for goodness. Efficient, well-planned, and rationally managed institutions can, and do, erode the social bond, frustrate human virtue, deprive us of our horizons of significance, and diminish the diversity of human subjective experience. Another influential idea behind this story is the belief—which emerged at the birth of modernity—that social diversity results from human cultivation. Cultural differences, not given much attention in the past, began to be noticed and explained as human constructs. Differences between distinct ways of living in the world came to be viewed as problems. This belief viewed these “problems”—all cultural differences, in fact—as human products that could be “fixed” by human intervention, often through education.

What has all this to do with instrumentalism? Inherent in the myth that society causes goodness is the conviction that human characteristics and behaviours are infinitely malleable, and must be shaped in accordance with some prior design; a blueprint that establishes society as an enterprise culture, for instance. It is a small step from this to the specification of skills and competencies as ends for schooling, as has happened in national and state curricula in a number of countries over recent years. Further, this myth recognises no worthwhile dimension of the human condition, or human knowing, other than characteristics that are amenable to calculation and engineering. Thus, the possibility that there is a component of human beings that might be (positively) fostered through a humanistic education, or (negatively) disrupted through an ill-conceived instrumentalism, is not even considered.

Myth 2: Individuals are radically free

This myth is a debasement of the edifying story of modern individualism, one of the central achievements of the modern era. The edifying story is that of the human person being called to be true to his or her uniqueness and originality as a self. The debased version is an egoistic distortion of this. Wrongly conceived, modern individualism can be taken to be a call to centre on oneself, to close oneself off from any recognition that being a self entails living in relation to others and that there are things that transcend self. Put differently, the debased version is an expression of the belief that I, alone in my radical freedom, determine who I am.

How is this belief debased and one-dimensional? Take a simple illustration: imagine that I am faced with two unrelated decisions. The first is whether or not I will devote more time to serving the disadvantaged in education. The second is whether or not I will dye my hair a new colour. Each involves a valid choice, one that I am free and entitled to make. But what I am not free to choose is the relative significance of the respective decisions. This, for the most part, is already determined. I know, even before I think about my decision, that serving the disadvantaged and colouring my hair do not have the same level of significance. This qualitative discrimination precedes me—it transcends my immediate self.

Subscribing to the narrowly egoistic view has two consequences: heroic self-confidence, and despondent self-doubt. These are two sides of the same coin. Each entails an excessive focus on the radical freedom of the individual—cut loose, as we’ve seen, from the prior background of qualitative distinction, abandoned to the (heroic) task of self-determination. But deep down I know that I, in isolation, am not equal to this task, and so I am left with feelings of inadequacy and despondency.

An analogy may help to make this clearer. Imagine that you are the Prime Minister, and that you take it upon yourself to find solutions for every major problem facing the government, without either consulting with others or reading any background material. This means you do not tap into any frameworks larger than those determined by your own isolated thought processes. As time passes, the problems become more numerous and complex. Inevitably, you will find yourself switching between feelings of heroic confidence that all is under your control, and debilitating inadequacy, where you swing back to the former in order to overcome the latter.⁹ The way out of this continuous loop is to realise that both the brash overconfidence and the feelings of inadequacy result from your determination to take on the affairs of state in radically free isolation—to become aware that the seemingly opposite feelings have the same underlying cause. They are the two sides of the same coin.

Allied to the idea of radical freedom is the notion that we interact with others on the basis of calculated self-interest, articulated in social contracts in which the parties agree on terms, costs, and benefits. This myth, like instrumentalism, entails a contrived distraction from horizons of significance and, through the social contract, interpersonal relationships become infected by calculations of utility.

Myth 3: Individuals can handle this freedom

The two-sided coin of heroic self-confidence and despondent self-doubt is echoed at the existential level, that of our deeper awareness of the reality of our being in the world. On the one side is the (heroic) myth that Bernstein believes has a “seductive appeal” and from which we need to be liberated: that all is, at least potentially, under our control; that with proper attention to scientific and managerial detail, and an attitude of determined self-assurance, we can solve the puzzle of existence. On the other side is what Bernstein (1983, p. 19) refers to as “Cartesian Anxiety”—“the growing apprehension that there may be nothing … that answers to and satisfies our longing for … a stable and reliable rock upon which we can secure our thought and action”. This view excludes the possibility that our being in the world, and our larger orientation within it, is wondrous (can never be made fully explicit) rather than puzzle-like (that is, with the proper analysis, amenable to a complete explanation). From the more ethical, or wondrous, perspective, an instrumental determination to be in control is like throwing salt over one’s shoulder to ward off bad luck. It is a superstitious¹⁰ response; an effort to exercise control where none is warranted.

Myth 4: A perfect society is a rational possibility

This myth, otherwise referred to as monism, has been dominant throughout the history of Western thought and persists today, largely due to the additional impetus it has gained from the spectacular success of science. Monism is the belief that reality is a single rational system, explicable in terms of discoverable laws. Its opposite is pluralism, which the monists see as a precarious position. According to Berlin (1998), monism is characterised by four assumptions:

To each true question about the nature of the world we live in and how we live in it there can be only one true answer.

There are particular methods that lead clear thinkers to the correct answers. These true answers cannot clash with one another, and together form a harmonious whole.

Although at the moment we may be unable to find the appropriate way of answering, the answers do exist.

Once these solutions are discovered, people will want to adopt them. A perfect life is thus possible.

Berlin maintains that it is this vision of future perfection that drives the instrumentally-oriented managers of modern social institutions. Instrumentalism is the single approved method. Because a pluralistic situation cannot be controlled by instrumental means, instrumentalists see pluralism as a hazardous state that threatens future harmony. Pluralism implies that instrumentalism is inadequate, and suggests that something else is needed. This “something else” is the ethical orientation.

Myth 5: Experts ought to be in charge

Bauman argues that this myth rests on the assumption that doing things properly requires particular knowledge—of the methods of technical rationality, for instance—held by only a few, who are therefore responsible for how things are done, and who ought to be in charge. For the rest of the people, responsible action involves following the advice of these experts. This myth results in responsibility, formerly embodied by practitioners, becoming dispersed and free-floating, so that the ethical significance of any action drains away. This vanishing of responsibility goes unnoticed because it is replaced by a fake ethical mode: technical accountability. The effect of this myth, writes Bauman (1992), is two fold:

… the moralisation of technology, coupled with the denial of the moral significance of non-technological issues. It is the technology of action, not its substance, which is subject to assessment as good or bad, proper or improper, right or wrong. (p. 160)

An ethical orientation

A wave of large-scale education reform has recently passed over a number of countries, in what amounts to a new global trend in education. I can speak of “reform” rather than “reforms”, because in each case they were based on the same principles (Levin, 1997). This is the single authorised theory I referred to earlier. These principles are underpinned by the myths discussed above.¹¹ As a result, the tools of scientific management theory,¹² backed by government legislation, have been applied to all aspects of education.

The scientific management of education through legislation requires four things: an unambiguous and detailed statement of curriculum outcomes to be produced; a theory of compliance that ensures teachers play their functional part; auditing agencies to monitor the degree of compliance; and mechanisms that lead to the provision of precise information to aid rationalistic decision making aimed at “adjusting” the education “production function”. The biggest problem with the scientific management of education is that it vastly underestimates the complexity of knowledge, curriculum, the processes of teaching and learning, and human beings and their relationships. An ethical dimension contributes to this complexity.

Ball (1997) drew attention to this when he wrote:

Schools are complex, contradictory, sometimes incoherent organisations … They are assembled over time to form a bricolage of memories, commitments, routines, bright ideas and policy effects. They are changed, influenced and interfered with, regularly and increasingly. They drift, decay, and regenerate. Furthermore, as ‘values’ organisations they interweave affective, ideological and instrumental engagement— although a good deal of this is conveniently ignored or set aside in much of the contemporary work on school organisations … [And] schools … are produced and articulated by disparate discourses … that sometimes grate and collide, (pp. 317–318)

The ethical dimension can be summarised as five assertions:

•&;&;&;&;questions of purpose are crucial;

•&;&;&;&;knowledge and identity are framed by backgrounds of significance that cannot entirely be made foreground;

•&;&;&;&;self-identity is primarily ethical;

•&;&;&;&;creative thinking requires an ethical/aesthetical sensibility; and

•&;&;&;&;know-how is ethical.

Questions of purpose are crucial

Few would disagree with this. Yet instrumentalism, the current orthodoxy, eclipses many larger questions of purpose. How has this come about? I have already noted that technical thinking appeals to the modern sensibility, which values neutrality in matters of significance, and it gels conveniently with the scientific and managerial impulse. Furthermore, it “appears” to be educational. Target-minded thinking reflects the fact that education is an intentional activity, in which a desirable situation is envisioned and a specific method is adopted for achieving it. It is easy, therefore, to drift into thinking of this approach in terms of images such as a journey, or a production process. A journey has a chosen destination (for instance, the railway station) and a means of transport for getting there (the bus). Production involves an end product (for example, a piece of pottery) and the process that leads from the initial design to the finished article. In education, such thinking is misguided.

Dewey (1910) argued that curricular aims should not be conceived as, or aspire to be, comprehensive statements of purpose and direction, but specific focal points for collaborative attention when new priorities are identified. He did say that knowledge should be useful, but here he was making a distinction between knowledge that has relevance and knowledge that is meaningless and is merely “debris” cluttering the mind. Whitehead (1929, p. 1) argued that it was important for teachers to have a very definite idea of what they want students to know, but he was not talking of target-minded education. His recommendation has to be interpreted in the context of his disapproval of “scraps of information” and his insistence that education should foster “receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling”.

Peters, too, considered that aims were subsidiary to something larger, as they help to focus efforts in a specific, chosen direction. He argued that in education “the model of means to ends is not remotely applicable to the transaction that is taking place,” and that “values” are essential to any undertaking we might call educational. In stressing the limitations of the means–end model, he referred to overarching levels of “more general aims” and “very general aims”, and pointed out that these cannot be achieved through schooling in the same way as getting on a bus achieves the target of getting to the railway station; nor are they produced “out of the material of the mind in the same way as a pot is produced out of clay”. He concluded that these “very general aims are neither goals nor are they end products” (Peters, 1970, pp. 177, 380).

For Peters, utilitarian goals are not educational, either. The fact that schooling is used for these ends does not make them educational; it means that schools are also used for non-educational purposes. He rejected the vocational view that worthwhile education is an unaffordable luxury, arguing that either productive work must itself be accorded “ultimate significance”, or it must be supportive of something else that is. Similarly, the aim of knowing a lot about a particular subject is inadequate, because education:

… implies a [person’s] outlook is transformed by what [he or she] knows … To be educated is not to arrive at a destination; it is to travel with a different view. What is required is not feverish preparation for something that lies ahead, but to work with precision, passion, and taste at worth-while things that lie to hand.

(Peters, 1973, pp. 18, 20)

Aims cannot be separated from means, as the means–end model requires. Not all means to an end are appropriate—attempting to become a first-rate historian by simply popping a pill, for instance. Choice of means should be guided by larger backgrounds of significance rather than a narrowly determined end. Some means conflict with stated aims, and must be rejected; for example, means that require students to suppress reason and defer to the authority of a teacher or textbook. Some means are aims in themselves; for example, respect for evidence. An educational aim should not be viewed instrumentally, as “some end extrinsic to education which education might lead to or bring about” (Peters, 1973, p. 27).

Knowledge and identity are framed by backgrounds of significance that cannot entirely be made foreground

We appear to be caught between the comfort of certainty and the anxiety of its loss. If I take comfort in the thought that identity and knowledge are unchangeable, I may as well accept without question who I am and what is true. In this kind of scenario, identity and fact can safely be handed down from a higher authority, which in pedagogical practice usually means the authority of the teacher, the textbook, or an assessed curricular outcome. In this case, a pedagogy that also identifies the humanistic processes that lead to knowledge and the formation of identity is hardly justifiable. But we know that such comfort is misplaced. We know that this absolutist view is untenable; knowledge is provisional, and results from a process of human investigation. Our ideals are not absolute—for instance, we cannot have both perfect justice and perfect mercy.

Concepts cannot usually be made fully explicit, or defined in operational terms. Take, for example, the concept of lying. We understand it, and disapprove of it in most situations; otherwise, social cohesion would break down. The concept of lying, then, is largely understood in terms of a functional requirement. But this operational understanding does not recognise an additional evaluative component of lying: we also disapprove of it because we value truthfulness. We could find many other examples; many mathematical concepts, for instance, are similarly difficult to pin down and make explicit.¹³ The self is not predetermined, or fixed. More importantly, it cannot be defined in functional terms, whatever the manipulators of “self-image” would have us believe. Behind the absolutist view is a need to be in control of things. But, as we saw earlier, this attitude is potentially pathological—a self-diminishing and superstitious response to our existential condition.

So what are we left with? We find ourselves face to face with a new reality: our ideas, knowledge, and sense of self are framed in terms of backgrounds of significance that cannot be made fully explicit. Knowledge and identity are related to our horizons (or conceptions) of qualitative distinction, much as an index relates to the contents of a large book; the index refers to the content, but never makes it completely explicit. Indeed, we cannot fully investigate our horizons because we are too busy depending upon them.

There are two responses we can make to this loss of certainty. The first, stated starkly, is this: if absolute truth is unattainable, a big lie is no worse than a fib. (Less starkly, if I cannot know for sure who I am and what is what, then nothing has particular significance.) The consequence of this is that knowledge and identity are unstable and can be altered at a whim—even my own. If knowledge is arbitrary, I may as well approach it instrumentally. If identity is free-floating, I alone must decide at any moment just who I am. Otherwise, the question of my identity must be sidestepped, and I must assume an (instrumental) role—for instance, I become, or allow the education system to make me, a commodity or a functional part within and for the service of the global economy. This situation is made worse by contemporary thinking that embraces what Charles Taylor (1991, pp. 17–18) calls the “liberalism of neutrality”, in which “the culture of tolerance for individual self-fulfilment” dictates that the “vigorous defence of any moral ideal is somehow off limits” and that a “liberal society must be neutral on questions of what constitutes a good life”. The second response requires us to adopt an ethical orientation. The world is not a riddle to be solved, and then subjected to control; nor is it arbitrary, or to be viewed instrumentally. Instead, I am immersed within, and must live in, the world, with its horizons of significance that precede me. I alone do not determine what is significant. I alone do not determine my identity.

Self-identity is primarily ethical

This has been systematically argued by Levinas (1969, 1998) and elaborated by Ricoeur (1992) and Bauman (1993). Levinas showed that the ethical dimension of individuality, the ethical self, is not caused, and nothing is prior to it. Rather, it depends on the direct encounter with another person in need. What would happen if this were not so? Imagine that I am caused to be responsible for other people (students and colleagues, for example) who need me—caused by an ethical code, or by a chemical reaction in my brain. This causal thing then comes before my ethical response and, in effect, my response is therefore not primarily ethical. Imagine that the ethical self is not caused, but that something else is prior to it—for instance, my rational choice that to be ethical is in my best interests. Such a response is not primarily ethical, either; it is primarily rational. If I freely choose to relinquish self-interest in order to be ethical, both self-interest, and the rational decision to relinquish it, again come before the ethical self. What we are left with is either to deny that there is any ethical self—this is the purist instrumentalist position—or to affirm that the ethical dimension of individuality is not caused and nothing is prior to it.

The ethical self is not indestructible. Instrumentalism erodes it, and as a consequence damages the very basis upon which the social bond depends; that is, instrumentalism diminishes self-identity. Why is this? We have seen that instrumentalism is inherently rational. It is a target-minded and engineering approach aimed at maximising efficiency. But the ethical self is inherently non-rational, and is paralysed when technical modes— authorised procedures and regimented action—dominate. Instrumentalism places an emphasis on the learnable knowledge of codes and the regulation of behaviour, shifting the emphasis away from the ethical—the primordial demand of my ethical self-consciousness or the other who needs me. To be ethical, the response to these demands must take precedence over any instrumental matching of means with ends, or any calculation of propriety. The ethical self, then, is not based on any compliance with authorised procedures and protocols. Personal responsibility is not a consequence of society’s code of action. The ethical self is not for regulating. It cannot be made predictable. It is a free and unregulateable response to the other; and, as such, is unavoidably ambiguous and uncertain. A non-ambiguous ethical self is a contradiction in terms. To be fully a self, I must be an ethical self. A purely instrumental self is a diminished self.

Creative thinking requires an ethical/aesthetical sensibility

This has been argued, in different ways, by Russell (1961), Papert (1980), Claxton (1998), and others. The kernel of the argument is this: creative thinking requires the unconscious mind to work in concert with the conscious mind; the products of the creative unconscious cannot be accepted without some form of checking by the conscious mind; the critical factor in the unconscious that releases material to the conscious mind is the ethical/aesthetical sensibility—that is, to be creative, one has to develop a sense of what is good or beautiful in the area of creative endeavour. Too strong a focus on the deliberative mode of conscious thinking incapacitates the workings of the unconscious mind and inhibits creativity. We can draw two conclusions from this. First, education must maintain a focus on the ethical/aesthetic domain; the problem is that an instrumentalist curriculum recognises no such domain. Second, an excessive focus on deliberative thinking, of the sort encouraged by the instrumentalist breakdown and sequencing of the curriculum, diminishes creative thinking (Claxton, 1998; Csikszentmihalyi, 1991; Neyland, 2004b).

Know-how is ethical

This is the argument made, in different ways, in Wittgenstein’s later work (1953) and by Sudnow (1978) and Varela (1999). It bears some resemblance to our previous point, but the emphasis is different. In essence, the argument is that the greater part of our knowing (our know-how) is best described not as actions performed in response to directives of the conscious mind, but as an all-in and immediate response to a catalytic situation; this knowing response resembles the “intuitive” or “spontaneous”. Importantly, this kind of know-how is not a developed habit; precisely because it is not predictable and regimented, it is exercised afresh in each situation, because it arises from an ethical orientation. A simple example is the know-how of the musician. A pianist knows how to perform a piece of music out of habit. The necessary finger movements are so well rehearsed that the fingers work “on automatic” and the mind can be far away—planning the evening meal, for instance. This is not ethical know-how. Ethical know-how is when the pianist improvises, spontaneously creating original music. Here the musician—and this has been fully documented by Sudnow—needs to throw herself into the musical situation, focus on the beauty and power of the music, and let her hands do the playing. Many conclusions from this argument have immediate relevance for the curriculum. A particularly important one is that ethical know-how is weakened when the myth that experts ought to be in charge carries the day; as it does in the officially recommended, top-down research–development–dissemination model of curriculum development.

Implications for curriculum development

This article lays the ground for a wider discussion of the relationship between instrumentalism and the ethical as it pertains to curriculum. I noted at the outset that, although instrumentalism can be discussed from other perspectives (such as the political, sociological, and psychological), this discussion is based on the ethical. In conclusion, I present eight issues arising from this discussion that need particular consideration in future, ethically-oriented deliberations on the curriculum. A number of these issues also require action at the political level.

1.&;&;The great perennial question—what is the purpose of education? — needs to be asked anew, and answered. Asking this question requires public leadership at a time when education is dominated, not by leadership, but by public relations management, image manipulation, and the kind of bureaucratic control that has already been discussed in this article.

2.&;&;In searching for an answer, we must give priority to helping learners acquire a new and viable map of the world in which they live, so that they experience the past as a living present, and anticipate the future with hope.

3.&;&;Answering this question requires the curriculum to become public; that is, to become publicly owned and debated in the public arena. Over the last decade we have witnessed the contrary: the privatising of the curriculum.

4.&;&;Such a debate would, at the very least, involve difficult decisions, ambiguity, and a struggle to find the best way forward. This is because we live in a pluralist, imperfect, and complex world—one in which backgrounds of significance cannot be entirely harmonised or made explicit.

5.&;&;A serious debate of this issue requires that we abandon the instrumental curriculum, which is at best neutral in relation to the ethical matters discussed here.

6.&;&;Because a curriculum based on an ethical orientation cannot be based on statements of outcomes (which are inherently instrumental in character), it will probably be based on programmes of work (because these can better accommodate ethical backgrounds of qualitative distinction).

7.&;&;The question is likely to bring up for debate some themes with distinctly ethical dimensions, such as:

•&;&;&;&;globalisation;

•&;&;&;&;consumerism;

•&;&;&;&;the commodification of people and things;

•&;&;&;&;transnational capitalism;

•&;&;&;&;the fading of public democracy;

•&;&;&;&;the ecology;

•&;&;&;&;learning to esteem something other than self;

•&;&;&;&;multiculturalism and diversity;

•&;&;&;&;the position of very poor—the underclass that educational theory forgets; and

•&;&;&;&;what it means to transcend instrumentalism, and foster an ethical orientation instead.

8.&;&;What education requires today is a series of narratives that are capable of supplanting the five instrumental myths we have identified, and of putting curriculum flesh on the five ethical assertions this article has discussed.

References

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Notes

1&;&;&;&;Instrumentalism, and the connection between education and an ethical orientation, are described later in the article.

2&;&;&;&;Instrumentalism can be discussed from perspectives other than the ethical. My focus is the ethical. For this reason the books and papers referred to are in the main those that address ethical theory.

3&;&;&;&;More on this can be found in O’Neill, Clark & Openshaw (2004), and in Neyland (1997, 2003, 2004a, 2005).

4&;&;&;&;Other social theorists have made similar arguments; for instance, Sennett (1977, 1998), Whyte (1957), Bauman (1987, 1992), and Giddens (1991).

5&;&;&;&;This model did not arise through a seamless historical process. It was to a significant extent driven by a particular group of influential, efficiency-minded administrators. However, the success of this intervention can, in part, be attributed to a wider cultural malaise that was, by comparison, pace Foucault, gradual.

6&;&;&;&;Science discovered an eighth planet the following year.

7&;&;&;&;The four consequences of the scientific management of education being made compulsory through legislation are discussed under the heading “An ethical orientation”, on p. 118.

8&;&;&;&;The notion of a sovereign good is explained and discussed by the philosopher Iris Murdoch (1997) in her essay, “The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts”.

9&;&;&;&;This description is not entirely fanciful. According to some commentators, Winston Churchill tended to swing between feelings of indomitable self-confidence and depression. He often spurned advice that differed from his preconceived plans, and so made rash decisions that cost thousands of lives.

10&;&;&;&;Wittgenstein’s word.

11&;&;&;&;I have argued this in Neyland (2004a).

12&;&;&;&;Developed by Frederick Taylor (1967).

13&;&;&;&;One example, well documented, is the definition of a polyhedron.

The author

Dr Jim Neyland has been a classroom teacher and a pre-service and ongoing teacher educator. He has worked in curriculum development at the national level. He is currently a senior lecturer in the School of Education Studies, Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington.

Email: jim.neyland@vuw.ac.nz