Published by Catherine L’Ecuyer
By Catherine L’Ecuyer, originally published in El Mundo. 5/12/23
To what can we attribute the widespread collapse in PISA results, seemingly signalling a decline in Western culture? It appears that there is ever more education in the classrooms; yet, paradoxically, less education within the students themselves. This decline in educational standards is not merely a crisis of education per se, but rather a far deeper crisis in the theory of knowledge. Does reality exist prior to being known, or is it the student who ‘constructs’ it at will?
It is no secret that, following a widespread disenchantment with behaviourist-mechanistic education (misleadingly dubbed ‘traditional’), Spanish education has, over the past decade, gradually abandoned strict adherence to teacher authority, the hierarchy as sole source of knowledge, and rote memorisation. At the same time, it has embraced the ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ doctrines of the new education and its underpinning educational theory: constructivism, which stems from the Romantic-idealistic philosophical tradition. The emphasis shifted towards discarding knowledge in favour of innovation, emotional education, competencies, tablets, and constructivist methods of pure discovery learning. Thus, students moved from reading lengthy texts to pasting sheets on a mural, cutting and pasting from Wikipedia, or even inventing their own version of history. Instruction shifted from direct teaching to pure discovery learning, where the child ‘learns to learn’. There is no shortage of gurus warning against the dangers of the lecture method — yet after two hours of preaching on this, their own lecture is met with applause. But the fundamental question remains: can a learner know what they need to know if they do not yet know what they have yet to learn?
This is not a matter of choosing one error over another, or finding a middle ground between two mistaken positions. The current educational crisis is a metaphysical one. Reality is neither instilled nor constructed; it is discovered. It is discovered precisely because it exists prior to being known by the student. It is no coincidence that constructivists are not fond of assessments and tests — these acknowledge reality as a measure, which for them it is not. They prefer to speak of emotions, values, and competencies — concepts more experiential and subjective.
Reality is not instilled (that much we know), nor constructed (that we are beginning to see), but transmitted and discovered. This is the stance of the realist philosophy underpinning classical education. To discover a fact and situate it within the whole of reality, we need a teacher who knows their subject well and can convey it with passion. That is not, and never will be, the role of Mister Google, ChatGPT, or the role of the favoured vehicle of constructivism (the tablet). Fascination is not the same as wonder; openness to reality is not the same as being dragged along by frequent, intermittent stimuli that distract from learning. Education is a human matter, not a technological one; it requires reflection and deep concentration. Teaching and transmitting culture is, and always will be, the role of the learned and dedicated teacher who seeks the encounter with the attentive gaze of each of their pupils.
There is reason for hope: we stand at a turning point. We are still in time to aspire to be guardians of the finest knowledge inherited in the West over centuries.
