Teacher, Text And Thinking

Abstract

The paper aims at elucidating the essential link between teaching and thinking. It investigates the different dimensions of thinking and their relevance to teaching. The separation of mind and body and its potential for making our thinking a mere mechanical process of trial and error has been discussed in depth. The researcher has tried to explicate the complex act of knowing while drawing upon some of its essential conceptual and cerebral aspects. The researcher has also propounded a Teacher-Text-Thinking triangle which calls for rigorous reflection on the part of the teacher. Different strategies and approaches have been suggested to incorporate thinking in teaching and thereby rendering pedagogic practice more and more reflective, hence innovative. Thinking has been defined as an intentional endeavour to discover specific connections between something which we do and the consequences which result. For this purpose, the most important consideration is to conceptualize the issues and formulate appropriate cognitive parameters.

Headnote

Abstract

The paper aims at elucidating the essential link between teaching and thinking. It investigates the different dimensions of thinking and their relevance to teaching. The separation of mind and body and its potential for making our thinking a mere mechanical process of trial and error has been discussed in depth. The researcher has tried to explicate the complex act of knowing while drawing upon some of its essential conceptual and cerebral aspects. The researcher has also propounded a Teacher-Text-Thinking triangle which calls for rigorous reflection on the part of the teacher. Different strategies and approaches have been suggested to incorporate thinking in teaching and thereby rendering pedagogic practice more and more reflective, hence innovative. Thinking has been defined as an intentional endeavour to discover specific connections between something which we do and the consequences which result. For this purpose, the most important consideration is to conceptualize the issues and formulate appropriate cognitive parameters.

Keywords: Reflection, teaching, critical thinking, consciousness, text, technology.

Introduction

While living in an age of cyber technology, we are witnessing a waning and weakening of thinking as our mental as well as physical reliance on technology is increasing steadily. What we are experiencing as a species is a constant decline in genuine and productive thinking which in turn seems to have affected us enormously. We have plentiful evidence that our cyber culture is influencing the way we tend to use our thinking and we are now comfortable with absorbing only short snippets of information. This implies that people are likely to have an extensive coverage of knowledge but, at the same time, this knowledge is thin. Increasing number of researches and media experts are worried that a large number of people today socialize virtually rather than doing it face to face. This is likely to result in emotional and social issues, particularly for the young generation which always happens to be impressionable (Naughton, 2000). What is at stake is our ability to reflect and ponder with ingenuity and depth. Living in an age of machines undoubtedly brings undeniable advantages but it also exacts a huge cost and that cost is an imperceptible automation of your thinking.

When Rene Descartes, the father of modern European philosophy, split the world into mind and matter, it had far-reaching consequences for the conception and operation of thinking. This separation of 'mind' from direct occupation with 'objects', places undue importance on 'objects' at the cost of their relations and connections. It also separates perceptions from judgements. It also implies that mind perceives objects apart from their relations and forms their ideas in isolation - a manifest absurdity. In fact all knowledge is based upon understanding these relations and perceiving these patterns. For example we do not actually know an automobile by enumerating its various isolated functions. Instead it is a functional combination of all the parts which makes it an automobile and not a cargo ship. This is the synthetic approach to learning which is at a great risk in our present age of analysis. Through analysis we fragment a 'whole' into 'parts'. This is a compromise on the coherence and totality of the object of our learning. Once we destroy the coherence and totality of something and analyse it into fragments and constituents, it becomes extremely difficult for us to get hold of it conceptually.

Another problem we face in learning/teaching is that of a quick causality which we draw on very flimsy basis. Humans are basically pattern-seeking animals but it does not mean that the patterns sought by them always turn out to be valid and causally connected. In our everyday mode of thinking, we see that a certain way of acting and a certain consequence are connected but we miss many details of the connection and our discernment remains very gross. It is only by pushing our observation farther that we analyze the cause-and-effect relation between an activity and consequence. This extension of our insight makes our perception more accurate and comprehensive. But in Descartes' mind/matter split, this sense of relation and linkage cannot be accounted for because if mind and body are really incontrovertible then no sense of relation can be signified in our perception and it mars the possibility of genuine thinking about the universe of matter by the operation of mind. Pakistani jurist and philosopher A. K. Brohi exposes the Cartesian fallacy in the following words:

The foundation of modern philosophy is thus sandy one, built as it is on one of the most ridiculous assertions ever made by any philosopher - Cogito ergo sum.

I think therefore, I am. It is precisely out of this mode of regarding the Philosopher's quest, that the following dilemma was posed by a Chinese Philosopher of the classical times - as if to expose in advance the fallacy of Cartesian dogma. Said he, "I, as a philosopher, dreamt that I was a butterfly and now that I have been awakened from my dream, I am wondering whether I am not a butterfly who dreamt that he was a philosopher" (Brohi, 1975, pp. 304305).

This is how Rene Descartes gave rise to a serious challenge to the very question of thinking which had far-reaching implications not only for the act of thinking but also for the entire scheme of education. This challenge has grown in complexity with the advent of the machine age in which we are living. The advent of cyber-technology has further compounded this challenge. Nicholas Carr, a renowned technology writer describes the same problem with reference to our excessive reliance on Google:

But Google, as the supplier of the Web's principal navigational tools, also shapes our relationship with the content that it serves up so efficiently and in such profusion. The intellectual technologies it has pioneered promote the speedy, superficial skimming of information and discourage any deep, prolonged engagement with a single argument, idea, or narrative. "Our goal," says Irene Au, "is to get users in and out really quickly. All our design decisions are based on that strategy" (2010, p. 56).

Therefore, today we are confronting a somewhat depressive specter marked by a superficiality of thinking which is proving to be one of the major hurdles in the schools and colleges the world over. There are growing number of studies which consistently point to this conclusion: The way we are using technology is doing more harm than good and the long-term prospects are quite gloomy. In fact, it is largely due to a non-linear and exceedingly complicated relation between human beings and technology and there is nothing new about it. Bruno Latour, a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist of science, makes the point:

Technology always entails folds upon folds, implications, complications, explanations. Its canonical representation, thoroughly studied by the sociology of technologies, sketches it in the form of a series, often a very long series, of nested translations, a labyrinth (2002, p. 228).

Latour in his landmark book Aramis, or the Love of Technology (2002) narrates wonderful tale of a technological dream gone wrong. Latour argues that the technology failed not because any particular actor killed it, but because the actors failed to sustain it through negotiation and adaptation to a changing social situation (2002).

Defining Thinking

Next to this mind/body split lies the semantic problem as to the proper definition of thinking. It is amazing how many hues of meanings have been given to the word thinking ranging from problem-solving and comprehension to logicchopping and invention. The confusion is so deep-seated that we have to formulate a definition or at least a working agreement. At its simplest thinking is the method of intelligent learning. Unfortunately, we experience thinking as an activity, as something that we do, whereas Plato rightly conceived it as something which happens to mind. To Russell thinking and consciousness is not an entity, but a flux and system of relations and to Spinoza human mind itself is an eternal mode of thinking. But here we will take thinking as defined by American educationist John Dewey. To him:

Thinking...is the intentional endeavor to discover specific connections between something which we do and the consequences which result, so that the two become continuous. Their isolation, and consequently their purely arbitrary going together, is canceled; a unified developing situation takes its place (Dewey, 1916, p.176).

In this definition, Dewey postulates two things: action and its consequences, and discerning the connection between them has been called thinking. We should also note that it is by virtue of this connection that action is linked with consequences and is invested with meaning and insight. And it is this linkage of action with consequence which Alfred Whitehead calls activity in the presence of knowledge. Thinking is, therefore, equivalent to an explicit rendering of the intelligent element in our experience. It makes it possible to act with an end in view.

Modern diversification of knowledge has introduced many new subjects and skills with emphasis upon vocational and professional abilities not involving much thinking such as applied mathematics, musicology, typewriting, shorthand etc. Oral communication skills are also deemed crucial for addressing seminars and conference and giving presentations which can be a great help in achieving an upward professional mobility. In such situations, deeper realms of thinking are divorced from the operation of learning and apparently a student can go considerably ahead without seriously indulging himself in thinking. In language classes, it is all too customary for teachers to urge students to read with expression. It is erroneously assumed that in this way students will be able to bring out meaning by themselves.

Mechanization of Thinking and its Negative Effects

However what is forgotten is that the students are being unconsciously encouraged to use their eyes to comprehend the form apart from the meaning. The anxiety of pace and pronunciation in language learning forces them to go though the form irrespective of the meaning. The result is a total isolation of form and meaning and a persistence of this isolation makes reading more and more mechanical. This kind of practice in educational philosophy is known as sensory-motor technique - a method which does not call for attention to meaning. In this way the students develop a mechanical habit which later on makes it difficult to read with intelligence. Dewey makes an insightful observation:

Drawing, singing, and writing may be taught in the same mechanical way; for...any way is mechanical which narrows down the bodily activity so that a separation of body from mind - that is, from recognition of meaning - is set up. Mathematics, even in its higher branches, when undue emphasis is put upon the technique of calculation, and science, when laboratory exercises are given for their own sake, suffer from the same evil (Dewey, 1916, p. 176).

Moreover considering thinking as a physical activity makes teachers order the students to think as if it is an act of volition. In asking students to think, what is ignored is the fact that thinking cannot be performed at will like kicking a football or shutting a door. Thinking necessitates the presence of a supportive environment. In such an environment, it flourishes on its own and not by virtue of any imperative or command. Moreover thinking does not exist in vacuum and it is conducted within the matrix of experience. In fact, experience delineates the context for thinking and furnishes resources for coping with the difficulty at hand. Experience both stimulates and strengthens thinking and in response gets stimulated and strengthened by thinking. Thus both move in a dialectical fashion complementing and synthesizing each other. Therefore, the experiential dimension of thinking (or the conceptual dimension of experience) should be accorded fuller recognition.

Another problem is that of too much familiarity which brings proverbial contempt. Sometimes, students are exposed to extremely familiar objects and, as a result, they can recall the facts independently. The familiarity of objects brings the facts to the minds of students without their being involved in any kind of thinking. Such an attitude not only lets occasions for thinking go unused; it also retards it. The origin of thinking is some perplexity or confusion which is an indispensable stimulus to thinking. But sometimes a formidable difficulty can also submerge thinking. So the challenge posed by difficulty should be partly familiar to be reckoned with and partly unseen in its nature. After all, all knowledge is a leap from known to unknown and an element of inventiveness and novelty is always present in all knowing. Thus the job of a teacher is to create balance between familiarity and difficulty. So in addition to the confusion attending the novel elements, there should be familiar features from which helpful suggestions may spring.

This calls for caution on the part of the teachers. It is not rare to come across the pedagogic situation in which the problem-solving activities are used and the students are given extremely difficult tasks. This, eventually, turns out to be counterproductive. The level of difficulty which students have to face happens to be too high for them. It results in more confusion and perplexity on the part of the learners and, in the long run, can cause a serious demotivation. Therefore, while immersing students in the problem-solving situations, a certain amount of familiarity and facility must be retained. This familiarity should not be looked down upon. It is always a great help for the learners and gives them a good start. Taking their initiative from this familiar they can bring about some novelty. Therefore the trajectory which begins from familiarity ends at novelty.

The link between familiarity and novelty has another dimension to it and that is to discover novelty within familiarity. When Sir Isaac Newton presented his seminal theory of gravitation, his creative genius was not found in its materials. They were quite familiar - sun, moon, planets, weight, distance, mass, etc. His creativity, however, lay in the use to which these familiar materials were put by their introduction into an unfamiliar context (Dewey, 1916). It was perhaps in this vein that the British Physicist Lawrence Bragg said that the important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them (see Jenkin, 2008). Another problem is caused by proclaiming finality by the teacher in answering or explaining something. The starting point of all thinking is something going on or something to be improved upon. So a good teacher always leaves some lacunae to be filled by the creative and expansive thinking of students. Thus the job of a teacher is to paint a rough sketch to be coloured by the constructive imagination of students. All these features make our learning more reflective and set it apart from a mere process of trial-and-error.

Text: A Gateway to Comprehension

Now we will move to the text and its relation to thinking. A text is a collection of written words. It can be a sentence, a poem, a book, or even a grocery list, not to mention films, music scores, a painting or sculpture, even a human body. Texts have immense power and play crucial role in forming perceptions and dispositions. A good reading of the text deals with not only what is behind the text and in the text but also what is ahead of it (Ford, 1999). This engagement with it can generate fresh meanings and novel insights. Text comprehension has been seen as a cumulative and synthetic process. If William James claimed that experience is the basic stuff from which both bodies and minds are constructed (1911), we can say that the text, in an extended sense, is the basic stuff from which teaching and thinking comes forth. Traditionally the text is seen as a repository of reality which is somehow transparently reflected in it.

However the Structuralist Revolution dismissed this ideal and postulated that the text is not a linear communication between writers and readers. The text is seen to be structures constructed from the various elements available from their social and cultural paradigms. Meaning is the result of relationships made possible by an interplay of paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures. The following five points are suggested to deepen our understanding of the text:

* Ask about the genre of the text - was it intended as history, literature, science, or something else?

* What is your interest in the text? Why are you engaged with it?

* Ask 'suspicious' questions - both of the text and of yourself. A text can be redeeming, instructive, as well as distorting or oppressive.

* Ask about the actual and potential implications of a text.

* The reader does not just question and interpret the text, the text also questions and interprets the reader. Thus the reader should enter into a transformative relationship with the text (see Perrot, 1982).

David Ford, a Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, has postulated three elements - world, self and language - which are in endless interplay. He explains the process of knowing by taking the example of an apple (1999, p. 145). We first learn about an apple through linking the word apple to this sort of object and then building up associations with it by experience. Now what is really involved in knowing? The first level is experience - in relation to the apple, probably first through seeing it. So we see something in a fruit-basket. But sometimes seeing can be just gaping and we also have to imply a question - what is it? By getting the answer, we achieve what might be called insight. But the insight might be wrong as it might be an imitation of an apple. So we imply further questions to validate our insight. We can smell it and even bite it and it adds empirical dimensions to our insight and our insight becomes our judgement.

It is only at this level that we can claim to have knowledge. But we reach this level after a process of experiencing, questioning, understanding, and countering questioning. This is of course a simple and ordinary example and there is not likely to be much dispute about knowing an apple. But when we come to know and understand complex texts we encounter enormous difficulties. What Professor Ford, however, is dealing with is largely the knowledge of isolated words and their meanings. But we face further problems when the words are contextualized within the polysemic structure of the text. Words usually get their meaning from the company they keep. For example the word Creation can have one meaning in a religious scripture and yet another in a science fiction:

At the level of the book, you will understand it very differently if you think it is a novel and not a work of biography or history. This is what is known as the question of its 'genre', and in theology there have been massive arguments about whether, for example, the opening chapters of Genesis are history, scientific statement, liturgy, myth, saga, or something else (Ford, 1999, p.128).

Understanding involves complex procedure, but the basic point is clear: the reader learns the skills of discovering meaning by making significant connections between words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, and genres. It is customary to see monolithic readings done in the classrooms. Usually the text is given one 'standard' reading by the teacher and the students are then expected to endorse it. The multiplicity of readings based on the polysemic nature of the texts should be accorded due recognition. What has to be understood is a basic fact that there is no such thing as the 'absolute reading' of a text. All readings are interpretations of textualities (Tompkins, 2011). All we have to do is to make this act interpretation rigorous and more inclusive in its operation.

At the same time, a sizable body of research studies demonstrates a consensus among the theorists and scholars which also shows a direct relationship between reading, thinking and prior knowledge. This relationship is interconnected i.e. prior knowledge functions as a schematic foundation for thinking. Thinking and inference-making operate as active means which triggers the prior knowledge we have. The so-called schema theory furnishes effective rationale and theoretical premises of constructing an interactive model for interpreting how reading comprehension develops by utilizing the interconnections between reading comprehension and critical thinking (Tompkins, 2011). The schema theory is one of the most relevant contemporary theories which has exercised an enormous influence on our conceptualizations of reading comprehension and its relation to thinking:

New views have forced us to rethink the act of reading. For a long time we thought reading was the reproduction of the ideas on the page; our goal was to have students produce a "photocopy" of the page. Schema theory has moved us away from a reproductive view to a constructive view. In that view, the reader, rather than the text moves to the center of the construction process (Wadsworth, 1996, p. 3).

Conclusion

To sum up we revert to Descartes once more who reduced ontology to epistemology and compartmentalized the universe into mind and matter. Ever since, we are in search of a principal of stability and a coherent interpretation not only of the text but also of the universe. In fact what Descartes did was a sudden dismissal of synthesis followed by fragmentation and dichotomy. It led to the impoverishment of philosophy. This 'most intelligent manner of being unintelligent' prepared the ground for that skepticism which in turn was dislodged by existentialism. The overall epistemological scheme of existentialism also did not prove to be much favorable to the cultivation of creative and constructive thinking as the basic temper it promoted was, in the final analysis, quite nihilistic. It termed most of our endeavors on this planet absurd and meaningless. This, to the researcher, is also likely to have played a role in pushing us deeper into the realm of pessimism and doubt. More recently, the field of cyber technology and artificial intelligence also raises interesting questions about our thinking and reading comprehension. Artificial intelligence aims at developing computers that can mimic human behaviour. Many scientists, however, are doubtful that true and independent artificial intelligence can ever be developed. Whatever the advances of science, one thing is certain - only human thinking is competent enough to comprehend the rhythm of the cosmos, the qualitative nature of time, the inward nexus of matter, ecstatic moods of consciousness, the willing sufferings of parents and lovers and the patient bounty of the mother nature. Only through thinking deeply and passionately can we realize that our life and intelligence are not superadded realities and humans are not just animated chunks of matter or walking androids.

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