Learning Constraints and School Difficulties

The final article on unschooling works through Gardner’s analysis of the constraints that shape later learning, and the resulting case that conventional schools struggle to address those constraints. It also closes the Philosophy of Education guide.

Schools then and now

Gardner gives a useful historical perspective on schools as institutions. Early schools, he observes, were institutions in which a group of young persons, rarely related by blood but usually belonging to the same social group, assembled on a regular basis in the company of a competent older individual, for the explicit purpose of acquiring one or more skills valued by the wider community.

The definition is precise. Early schools had a specific purpose: skill acquisition for community-valued ends. They served a small, privileged minority of the population. The materials to be mastered in schools were relatively unchallenging by modern standards. The performances counted as evidence of success were limited in scope.

Current-day schools, Gardner observes, have not evolved as much from this early model as the modern educational rhetoric would suggest. Not many schools have evolved beyond the purpose of inculcating literacy, and in essence they remain the same institutions whose purpose is the acquisition of skills and knowledge useful to the community at large. The fundamental institutional form has persisted; what has changed is the scale (universal rather than minority) and the content (more subjects covering more ground).

The burden, however, has changed significantly. Schools have become the logical site for the transmission of rapidly accumulating wisdom as well as for the inculcation of skills that will permit further discoveries to be made and deeper understandings to emerge. The cumulative cultural inheritance and the pace of skill development have grown dramatically; schools are asked to transmit and develop both in the same children in the same years. In Gardner’s opinion, this puts much unneeded burden on such young children. The school’s growing claim on what it should accomplish exceeds what young children can reasonably handle.

A specific weakness Gardner identifies in current schools is assessment. It is often left up to the operators of the schools whether the students are learning anything or not. The school decides what counts as learning; the school decides how to assess it; the school decides whether the assessment results count as success. The whole assessment system is internal to the institution being assessed.

Tests (standardised and others) are the most important way schools assess what and how much a student has learned. Gardner criticises this method of assessment because it fails to take into account all forms of intelligence. The tests measure mostly linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences within his multiple-intelligences framework. A student whose strengths are in other intelligences scores poorly on the tests despite genuine cognitive capacity in their areas of strength. The school then treats the test scores as accurate measures of overall intelligence, which they are not.

Flashcard

What does Gardner identify as the central weakness in school assessment?

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Answer

Tests measure mostly linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences and fail to take into account all forms of intelligence

It is often left up to school operators whether students are learning anything. The whole assessment system is internal to the institution being assessed. Tests (standardised and others) are the most important method. The tests measure mostly linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, missing the other five in the multiple-intelligences framework. A student whose strengths are in other intelligences scores poorly on the tests despite genuine cognitive capacity in their areas of strength. The school then treats the test scores as accurate measures of overall intelligence, which they are not.

Three constraints by learner type

Gardner identifies several types of constraints that shape later learning. Each of his three learner types (intuitive, traditional, expert) faces specific constraints intrinsic to that type.

The intuitive learner, the young child before formal schooling, reflects neurobiological and developmental constraints that are purely genetic in nature. The intuitive learner’s mode of learning is shaped by what the human brain at that stage can do. All human beings are subject to these constraints, regardless of culture or circumstance. The intuitive learning system has remarkable capacities but also has clear limits; some kinds of learning that are easy for older learners are impossible for the intuitive learner, and vice versa.

The traditional learner, the school-age child engaged in scholastic work, is often subjected to historical and institutional constraints that are embedded in schools. Schools have evolved over centuries to serve certain societal purposes in certain ways. These goals are often reflected in the school policies and pose a constraint to deep understanding and learning. The school imposes its institutional shape on the learner; the learner has to work within that shape, which limits what they can do. Different schools have different shapes, but every school has some shape that constrains the learner.

The expert learner, the skilled disciplinary learner, faces disciplinary and epistemological constraints that come to operate within any field of expertise over the years. A field of knowledge develops its own conventions, methods, vocabulary, and assumptions; the expert learner has to work within these to be accepted as competent. The constraints are not arbitrary; they have evolved because they make the work of the discipline possible. But they do limit what the expert can do; questions that fall outside the discipline’s conventions cannot easily be asked or pursued within it.

Each type of learner thus faces a different kind of constraint. The intuitive learner is constrained by biology and developmental stage. The traditional learner is constrained by school institutions. The expert learner is constrained by discipline conventions. Gardner’s framework gives a vocabulary for noticing these constraints; the educator who knows about them is better positioned to work with or around them than one who does not.

Flashcard

What three kinds of constraints does Gardner identify for the three kinds of learners?

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Answer

Neurobiological and developmental (intuitive), historical and institutional (traditional), disciplinary and epistemological (expert)

The intuitive learner (young child) faces purely genetic constraints from neurobiology and developmental stage; the intuitive learning system has remarkable capacities but also clear limits. The traditional learner (school-age) is subjected to historical and institutional constraints embedded in schools that evolved to serve societal purposes. The expert learner (skilled in a discipline) faces disciplinary and epistemological constraints that operate within any field of expertise.

More constraints on schooled learners

Gardner identifies further constraints that shape what schooled learners can and cannot do. The constraints are not unique to schooled learners, but they interact with schooling in specific ways.

Kantian-Einsteinian constraints. Schools cultivate a necessity of conceptualising the world in terms of objects, space, time, and causality. The Kantian-named constraint reflects the deep cognitive categories Immanuel Kant identified in his philosophy of mind: humans necessarily conceive the world in these terms, and education tends to reinforce the necessity. Einstein’s science reminds us that these built-in limits on knowledge can be revised, although very rarely, and at all times remaining within the existing theories of the world. The schooled learner has the Kantian categories deeply reinforced; revising them, as Einstein did, requires going against the grain of what schooling has installed.

Ontological constraints. These come in when defining particular objects and their categorisation. Young children do not put objects in categories of tangible, intangible, living, non-living, feeling, or non-feeling until they are taught to do so. The categorisation is not automatic; it is a learned skill imposed by language and culture. Once learned, however, the categorisation becomes default; the schooled learner sees the world through the categories without noticing they have done so. The categorisation has the value of letting learners communicate efficiently; it has the cost of constraining what they can see.

Strengths, tendencies, styles. These constraints vary from person to person. They serve to differentiate human beings within and across cultures. The biases in information-processing strength and style observable in early life include Gardner’s multiple intelligences and other cognitive variations. Children exhibit different kinds, arrays, and degrees of intelligence, even as they evolve characteristic ways of approaching problems and challenges. These cognitive tendencies are evoked as youngsters approach the school-going age. Sometimes they cause problems; sometimes they present opportunities. Schools are unable to always turn these tendencies into opportunities. Whether the tendencies become trouble or opportunities depends on the compatibility between the child’s cognitive and stylistic profile, the demands of the subject matter, and the presentation of the material.

Constrained theories. These constraints occur whether a child attends school or not. They are a consequence of the child’s personal experiences. A child formulates theories in response to their interactions with particular objects in the world. Not derived from formal study or from any pre-existing disciplines, these naïve, folk, or intuitive theories nonetheless achieve considerable potency. The child’s intuitive theory about how the sun moves, why animals look the way they do, why certain things hurt to touch, all influence later learning. A school that tries to teach the more accurate adult versions has to overcome the intuitive theories the child has already built; the overcoming is often incomplete, which is part of why the unschooled mind persists underneath the school’s content.

Contextual constraints. These reflect particular contextual elements in the child’s personal background. They include ethnicity, social class, parental styles, and values. These constraints affect the way a child interacts with and understands materials presented to them. A child from one cultural context engages differently with the same material from a child of another context; the school often does not recognise the differences and treats all children as if they were the same.

Gardner argues that children find it extremely difficult to master the agenda of the school, particularly to the extent that its mode of operation clashes with, or is irrelevant to, the biases and constraints that have emerged during the first half-decade of life. The conclusion is sober. The school cannot simply impose its agenda on a child whose mind is already shaped by intuitive theories, cognitive tendencies, and contextual constraints. The school has to work with what is there, and most schools do not do this well.

Flashcard

What further constraints does Gardner identify on later learners?

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Answer

Kantian-Einsteinian, ontological, strengths/tendencies/styles, constrained theories, and contextual constraints

Kantian-Einsteinian: schools cultivate conceptualising the world in objects, space, time, causality, which Einstein-style revision rarely overcomes. Ontological: categories like tangible/intangible, living/non-living are not automatic but learned. Strengths/tendencies/styles: cognitive variations differentiate humans within and across cultures. Constrained theories: intuitive theories from personal experience achieve potency that schools struggle to overcome. Contextual: ethnicity, social class, parental styles, values shape how the child interacts with material. Schools struggle with all of these.

Gardner’s conclusion and the case for unschooling

Gardner closes his account with a sober conclusion. Most of his research about the principles of human learning and development conflicts sharply with the customary practices of schools. The schools were initially concerned with a small and privileged minority of the population. The materials to be mastered in schools were relatively unchallenging by modern standards. The performances counted as evidence of success have been limited in scope. The combination of factors that made early schools work has not survived the transition to universal education with ambitious modern curricula and broad assessment requirements.

The conclusion has direct implications for unschooling. If most of what we know about human learning conflicts with what schools do, then the conventional schools are doing the wrong thing for most of the children they enrol. An alternative that takes seriously what we know about how children actually learn (their intuitive theories, their multiple intelligences, their developmental constraints, their contextual backgrounds) could do better.

Unschooling, in the strongest case for it, is that alternative. The unschooling family can respect the child’s intuitive theories rather than trying to override them. They can engage the child’s varied intelligences rather than focusing only on the two schools value. They can match the educational work to the child’s developmental stage rather than imposing a standard age-graded sequence. They can acknowledge and work with the child’s contextual background rather than treating all children as if they were the same.

The strongest case has limits. Not every family is positioned to do unschooling well; not every child thrives in unschooling environments; the conventional schools, for all their faults, do work for some children and offer resources unschooling families cannot match. A modern educator engaging with Holt, Gardner, and the unschooling movement does not have to choose between universal endorsement and universal rejection. The honest position is that schools fail many children in the ways unschoolers describe, and that unschooling offers real alternatives for families who can do it well, while recognising that unschooling is not the answer for every family or every child.

This closes the Philosophy of Education guide. The full sequence has covered the major thinkers and schools from Socrates through the modern unschooling movement. A reader who has worked through the whole guide has the philosophical foundation for thinking carefully about what education is for, how it should be conducted, and what an educator’s own role should be.

Flashcard

What is Gardner's final conclusion about the relationship between research on human learning and what schools do?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Most of his research about the principles of human learning and development conflicts sharply with the customary practices of schools

The conclusion is sober. Schools were initially designed for a small privileged minority with unchallenging materials and limited performances. The combination of factors that made early schools work has not survived the transition to universal education with ambitious modern curricula. If most of what we know about human learning conflicts with what schools do, conventional schools are doing the wrong thing for most of the children they enrol. An alternative taking seriously what we know about how children learn could do better. Unschooling, in its strongest case, is that alternative.