Culture, History and All That

I've been very frustrated with most of my studies as the big argument in educational theories for the past century or so has pretty much boiled down to one between the Behaviourists and the Constructivists. Behaviorism had a great deal in common with the industrial theories of the early twentieth century, and as such was more interested in what people did and how well they did it than what they thought. Since we couldn't look into people's brains anyway and could only see how they behaved Behaviorism was a pretty powerful theory, and for technologists the ideas of people like B.F. Skinner were pretty compelling. Also most of us adhere not to scientific concepts of pedagogy, but rather a folk concept of it, which ends up being more about behaviour anyway. Look at all the nonsense with school uniforms and such. People want kids to "behave" more than they want them to learn and they understand instruments like tests more than they they can grasp ideas such as portfolios and authentic assessment methods. "Is the children learning?" Sure hope so.

Progressives were more focused on the progress of the individual, so whether we it's Montessori or Debbie Meier there is and has been a deep dissatisfaction with Behaviorism. The Constructivist approach is clearly more supportive, and with the innovations of Piaget, Chomsky and Gardner as well as the growth of cognitive science and the experimental concept that computers can model human thinking we've seen Constructivism come to the fore over the years. It works as a theory and, if you are into technology it actually allows for some pretty cool stuff. So it works on many levels. The problem of course is that folk pedagogy, politics and Mayor Bloomberg don't need a stinking theory of the mind. They need statistics. They DEMAND statistics. They love tests. And then there is the practical concern that Constructivism is about the individual and classrooms, work environments and the body politic are about groups. We need a bridge of some sort.

Activity Theory might be, for me at least, the answer, or at least the bridge. It certainly provides an alternative to the binary B vs. C argument that the B side seems to be winning. And any theory that can pull together Marx, Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Dewey has to have something going for it. Also, it looks like it is amenable to the kind of historical and ethnographic work I'd like to do. So here we go...