I don’t buy the metaphor of education as evolution - that culture somehow improves (is refined) has improved. This myth of progress. Sure we know more in science. And the ‘we’ are a tiny minority. But how has English ‘progressed’, philosophy, history… That we are improving kids by filling them with these bits and pieces of accumulated knowledge (not how to build a nest or skin a deer but how to parse a line of poetry) is a good myth (good for me and you). That education (or reading) makes kids better? Knowing who was king in 989AD. That greater literacy is a good thing. I like to think so. But as with actual evolution - it’s not progress - just change to suit the new environment. No?
I don’t think I’ve used that metaphor, have I? My argument is that evolution + culture has resulted in coevolution. I’m not claiming progress is inevitable (have written about this before) but that education is a technology for transmitting accrued cultural knowledge.
Very good response. I think I must have read this before. Also - accumulate yes. But in no way better. Just as today’s fashion is no improvement. When the D Didaus of 3025 look back on the primitive ways of you and I today… they will be just as wrong as we are
I feel there’s an underlying assumption - else why bother ‘keeping pace’ with culture? Like, if we ask ourselves how / why greater literacy, beyond the basic, is a positive. We fall back on a lot of similar assumptions. Cultures don’t progress, or accumulate. They merely change. As do organic creatures. All we’re doing is acculturating kids. Making them like us. Is that good, an accumulation, progress, laudable? To the extent that they need it to thrive maybe
Culture (singular) *really* does accumulate. We have a lot more of it now that did 100, 1000 or 10,000 years ago. Whether individual *cultures* make progress is sort of a different argument and no one I'm exploring here. Here's a post from 2015 on the myth of progress https://learningspy.co.uk/featured/the-myth-of-progress/
Wonder what you think of the evolutionary psychology argument of Taylor and Vestergaard (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889245/full) arguing that the persistence of dyslexia in humans may be "search specialization" equating with what you call asocial learning perhaps. Whereas most humans are evolved for exploitation of existing skills and knowledge, the stubborn persistence of neurodivergent brains is a human adaptation that preserves the divergent learning/thinking required to get us new thinking when we need it. So when dyslexics say that schools are not built for them, that might be literally true as they are places of social learning vs places for search.
Love it. I wrote about Laland's Social Strategies Tournament here: https://www.textsavvy.org/blog/makin-copies.
I don’t buy the metaphor of education as evolution - that culture somehow improves (is refined) has improved. This myth of progress. Sure we know more in science. And the ‘we’ are a tiny minority. But how has English ‘progressed’, philosophy, history… That we are improving kids by filling them with these bits and pieces of accumulated knowledge (not how to build a nest or skin a deer but how to parse a line of poetry) is a good myth (good for me and you). That education (or reading) makes kids better? Knowing who was king in 989AD. That greater literacy is a good thing. I like to think so. But as with actual evolution - it’s not progress - just change to suit the new environment. No?
I don’t think I’ve used that metaphor, have I? My argument is that evolution + culture has resulted in coevolution. I’m not claiming progress is inevitable (have written about this before) but that education is a technology for transmitting accrued cultural knowledge.
Very good response. I think I must have read this before. Also - accumulate yes. But in no way better. Just as today’s fashion is no improvement. When the D Didaus of 3025 look back on the primitive ways of you and I today… they will be just as wrong as we are
We’ll be under the benevolent protection of our AI overlords by then
I feel there’s an underlying assumption - else why bother ‘keeping pace’ with culture? Like, if we ask ourselves how / why greater literacy, beyond the basic, is a positive. We fall back on a lot of similar assumptions. Cultures don’t progress, or accumulate. They merely change. As do organic creatures. All we’re doing is acculturating kids. Making them like us. Is that good, an accumulation, progress, laudable? To the extent that they need it to thrive maybe
Culture (singular) *really* does accumulate. We have a lot more of it now that did 100, 1000 or 10,000 years ago. Whether individual *cultures* make progress is sort of a different argument and no one I'm exploring here. Here's a post from 2015 on the myth of progress https://learningspy.co.uk/featured/the-myth-of-progress/
Wonder what you think of the evolutionary psychology argument of Taylor and Vestergaard (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889245/full) arguing that the persistence of dyslexia in humans may be "search specialization" equating with what you call asocial learning perhaps. Whereas most humans are evolved for exploitation of existing skills and knowledge, the stubborn persistence of neurodivergent brains is a human adaptation that preserves the divergent learning/thinking required to get us new thinking when we need it. So when dyslexics say that schools are not built for them, that might be literally true as they are places of social learning vs places for search.