Technicism is not simply an over-fascination with technology as a means of stimulating learning out of students, though that problem plagues conventional education as well. Instead, I use the term ‘technicism’ to refer to a broader ideological approach to education that has become captivated by quantitative measurements and the economic evaluation of success. In technicism education has been reduced to something that can be measured in numbers alone. Teachers are made into technicians, who simply pull the levers and push the buttons assigned to them by the ruling technocrats. Technicism focuses on quantities and techniques, rather than quality and values.
It is not only the classical education renewal movement that views technicism as a problem. For instance, in a leading educational journal David Carr and Don Skinner note the wide influence of technicist models on theory about learning and the professional role of the teacher, and then bemoan how “their baleful influence—on, for example, latter day talk of learning objectives, attainment targets, performance indicators and curriculum delivery—is everywhere apparent in the contemporary ‘audit culture’ of educational theory and policy….”[1]
Now let’s not get this wrong. An ‘audit culture’ is a very fine thing, if what we are concerned with is factories, markets, money and products. But it is at least a questionable theoretical assumption that schools should be modelled on this plan. Inevitably, such a pattern turns the focus away from many of the things that really matter in education, like the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. A government bureau of education can hardly be concerned with such things, when handy charts and graphs stand before them emphasizing the bottom line and the achievement gap.
Defenses of Technicism in Education
If there is a defense given for a technicist model of education, it rests on the assumption that education is an applied science, like the medical practice. In this line of thinking teachers themselves need not be concerned with the theory behind the practices they employ (Who cares for all that heady stuff, anyway?), only with efficiently employing them in order to get results, measured of course in high test scores.
After all, the average doctor only needs to be able to diagnose and treat patients, rather than understand all the detailed scientific theory that may undergird such practices. It is hard to argue against an analogy with so revered a profession as medicine, but here the analogy must fail.
Who will be a better teacher? One who has been given five ways to manage behavior in the classroom and eight types of lesson plans, or one who has refined and honed teaching practices over years of seeking the truth in the theories of educational philosophers? How can an unreflective teacher impart and embody wisdom?
An Antidote to Technicism
The theology of wisdom in Proverbs 1-9 provides an antidote to the technicist over-fascination with techniques and quantitative assessment. The Hebrew concept of ḥokmâ or wisdom likely grew out of the idea of skillful expertise in some craft, i.e. technical skill. Yet in Proverbs we see it broadened and deepened into the masterful understanding for life that the English word ‘wisdom’ evokes for us today. The roles of parent and sage are fused within this holistic and value-laden passing on of the tradition.
It’s interesting to note that in Aristotle, likewise, the term ‘wisdom’ (Greek sophia) could be used to refer to a competent artisan, a person skilled in some technē. Such was the language of common speech. However, Aristotle prefers to reserve ‘wisdom’ for the highest philosophic wisdom that joins scientific knowledge (episteme) with intuitive reason (nous).[2] Here too then we have a broader conception of wisdom in the Greek philosophical tradition than mere craftsmanship, even if craftsmanship was still included.
Being wise may include technical skill, but it also transcends it. But how does this broad understanding of wisdom help us avoid technicism in education?
(Enjoying this article? Check out its twin: The Problem of Scientism in Conventional Education.)
A Holistic Wisdom Manual
Proverbs 1-9 is, in many ways, the prime educational text in the Bible and therefore relevant for a Christian philosophy of education. In Proverbs the prototypical son is being educated for life, the royal son is being educated to rule, and the noble’s son to carry out his official duties in the royal court. The book bears all the marks of being a training manual for these various domains. But at the same time this training in technical proficiency is carried out by the father/sage in a heavily value-laden context. The student is to love wisdom and to seek it above riches; he is to reject folly in both his princely duties and his personal life.
In Proverbs wisdom is not broken apart into pieces, but instead includes both the training for practical duties and the moral formation for a wise life.
Christian classical education in the tradition of Proverbs does not reject technē, all the techniques and quantitative measures. It simply puts them in the proper role of subservience under qualitative values and ideals for life. This new role will inevitably transform modern techniques for teaching and grading, since all the techniques classical educators use must be fitted to wisdom’s ends.
Nevertheless, the techniques, arts, and judgments themselves remain intact under the guidance of wisdom. After all, Wisdom herself rules over all technē as a master craftsman, who was with God at the beginning as he wisely ordered all of creation:
22 “The Lord possessedme at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
26 before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
when he establishedthe fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man. (Proverbs 8:22-31 ESV)
God’s wise ordering of creation is here paralleled with the wisdom sought by sage and student alike. It’s as if, hovering in the background of this passage, the doctrine of the image of God is asserting wise culture-making as the proper role of human beings. Through participation in God’s wisdom, we too can become master craftsmen, wisely ordering God’s world for his purposes.
The note of delight and rejoicing likewise signals the way it should be. Just as wisdom rejoices in God’s creation, sage and student rejoice in the flow of thought as they contemplate God’s “inhabited world” and his image: “the children of man.” What a contrast to the sour faces and frenetic atmosphere of so many schools and classrooms run by the technicism of modern grades and manipulative behavior management systems.
The Teacher as Philosopher rather than Technician
This holistic vision of a wisdom education in the vein of Proverbs requires much of the teacher. In classical education, likewise, the teacher must be a magister of the arts, a sage, a philosopher; must be a participant in the Wisdom that comes from above. Only then can the teacher cultivate wisdom in the young and simple. Only then will the teacher wisely order techniques, practices and assessments to the right ends.
Part of the problem with technicist education is how the quantitative measures lure us in to blindly trusting them in spite of the value judgments that they represent. The modern system of grades is perhaps the easiest example of this. Teachers indoctrinated into conventional education regularly create assessments and assign quantitative measures (numbers or points of some kind) to various questions and tasks they have posed, almost arbitrarily. But once they have done so, they have almost undying faith in the trustworthiness, fairness and objective truthfulness of those point values. They never question their own process of value judgments that went into the test they created. The numbers are simply “objective facts,” givens in a world of subjective preferences, and therefore any deviation from them or questioning of their own assumptions is tantamount to falsehood and deceit. To such technician teachers, for a hard-working student to appeal a grade on a test is tantamount to a rebellion against modern know-how, a return to a time of barbarism and superstition.
Perhaps even worse is a belief in the perfect truthfulness, fairness and objectivity of any particular curriculum purchased from a publisher, as if it were impossible for a fully vetted curriculum, complete with quizzes and assessments, review assignments and extra practice sets, to be in any way deficient. Of course, I do not discount the value of well-made curriculum programs; in the best cases the vetting process ensures that common sense and experience will trump some of the absurdities that an individual teacher could descend to. But my point is that we have too much blind faith in such things. We are not philosophers enough to doubt the assumptions on which such elaborate systems of “learning” are based.
Let those of us who teach be always sure to consider wisdom more valuable than gold and silver. Numbers only make sense within a story of value. When we fall into the technicist trap, we abandon our God-given capacity for wise rule over creation. We end up trading in quality for quantity and are left wondering why our proven techniques have not yielded the promised results.
[1] David Carr and Don Skinner, “The Cultural Roots of Professional Wisdom: Towards a Broader View of Teacher Expertise,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41, no. 2 (2009): 144.
[2] See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics VI.7, 1141a.
Nota Bene: An earlier version of this article appeared on Forma: The Blog of the CiRCE Institute, January 2015, under the same title: https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/problem-technicism-conventional-education.
Like this article? Check out its twin: The Problem of Scientism in Conventional Education.
Fully agree, Jason, and I see this occurring in the workforce as well: engineers, scientists, sales representatives that ‘save the day’ or make this month’s numbers (be it measured in dollars or prototypes developed) are reward, while those who build a solid foundation that may take months to yield results are let go. Then, 6 – 12 months later, the organization runs out of ‘easy’ numbers, and when they go one level deeper for the next round … they fail because the foundation is non-existent and thus not producing.