Rob Grant has written a book about a school called The Institute, where students are used as a resource “to be shaped and moulded for profit”. It’s fiction but elements of the story – society’s emphasis on economic success and parental and media obsession with educational rankings – are all too real.
The Institute, or more precisely the Secondary Training Institute for Lifelong Employment (STIFLE), promises “the best education money can buy” as “an exclusive club – a club made up of winners”. Under dastardly headmaster Dr Finnegus Pummelcrush, it runs weekly tests, there is no playing allowed (“serious exercise only”) and students say a daily prayer: “I aspire to surrender my mind, my body and my soul. I surrender them to the almighty, all-knowing system…”
Aha! But the Institute didn’t count on the Philosophy Resistance Squad…
Think David Walliams’ World’s Worst Teachers meets Plato’s Republic and you roughly have Grant’s entertaining and thought-provoking story, which is geared for the nine-plus age bracket.
Grant – or Dr Grant, more precisely – is a tutor of philosophy at Trinity College Dublin and an accomplished musician. He is also a co-founder of the Philosophy in the Community Project, an initiative aimed at bringing insights from Socrates to Sartre to a wider audience.
He is firmly convinced of philosophy's value to education and wider society. However, debate continues over how exactly the subject helps individuals, with a major research project in the UK recently reporting that teaching philosophy had no discernible impact on students' maths or reading performance.
In Grant’s Institute, Pummelcrush is foiled by dissident teacher Ursula Joy who encourages students to think for themselves. But, in the real world, is there a risk of exaggerating the benefits of doing philosophy?
Grant answers the questions as this week’s Unthinkable guest.
Claims made in a 2015 school trial linking philosophical inquiry to higher grades in reading and maths have not been corroborated by the larger study last March by the UK Education Endowment Foundation. How do you respond to the latest findings?
Rob Grant: “I’ve always been wary of claims that situate philosophy as an instrumental tool that is valuable because it brings about some other end. If a study can show a causal link between philosophy and another skill, then great. But philosophy shouldn’t be used to produce a pre-defined type of person with a pre-defined set of skills, mathematical or otherwise.
“In fact, approaching the practice of philosophical inquiry with a pre-determined outcome in mind can corrupt the process. By deciding in advance what counts as worthwhile, you close off possibilities of thought and imagination.
“Philosophy requires a commitment to a radical sense of openness towards the new: new ways of thinking, new ways of being. This is especially important when working with younger people who have a real opportunity to see and do things in ways we cannot imagine.
“Of course people who engage in philosophical exploration on a consistent basis may be transformed, but who are we to say what those ways should be?
“This is what [Dutch pedagogue] Gert Biesta calls ‘the beautiful risk of education’. The risk is that it may not go where you want it to go, it may not produce the type of person you want it to produce.
“Students should have the space to explore philosophically because it is part of what it means to be human: to engage with the fundamental wonder of human existence and push the limits of thought and understanding. What comes out of that practice is up to them.”
One of the themes running through your book is how traditional, exam-focused education can make students feel bad about themselves. What is your thinking on that exactly?
“The story takes place inside an oppressive techno-dystopian school… engaged in an industrial-scale brainwashing operation to remove the student’s will to think for themselves, turning them into mindless slave-workers to be sold to the highest bidder.
“The day-to-day experience of the school is designed to demoralise the students by removing any opportunity for them to creatively engage with their environment. Everything is pre-programmed so that the students become like objects on a conveyor belt being poked and prodded into shape.
“This is what makes the students feel bad about themselves. It’s the institutional setting that removes any capacity for them to actively create their own world. We are very familiar with these types of institutions in Ireland. Institutions that demand absolute obedience to a narrow standard of ‘normal’ in order to have our human needs met, spiritual, social, intellectual, or physical.
“The theologian and social critic Ivan Illich describes these as manipulative institutions, where we are constantly ‘taught, socialised, normalised, tested, and reformed’. He argues that these ‘manipulative, industrial, bureaucratic institutions are a major factor in the amorphousness and meaninglessness of life’.
“For the kids in the story, their natural instincts to play, create, argue and joke are treated as abnormal and deviant. They internalise a message that there must be something wrong with them because they cannot adapt to a system that society holds in such high esteem.
“Part of what Ursula, their philosophical guide, does is invite them into a space where they can begin to shape their own world, at least through ideas. As Illich puts it, ‘people feel joy to the extent that their activities are creative’.”
You’re also involved in a community-based philosophy project. How does that differ from school-based philosophy?
“Together with Senator Lynn Ruane and John Bissett – the Aristotle of Rialto! – and with support from Prof Aislinn O’Donnell, I run a project that brings philosophical dialogue into communities around Ireland.
“It is similar to school-based philosophy in that it invites people who may not have formal training in philosophy to bring their native intelligence to bear on questions of fundamental importance.
“In our dialogues, listening is key. It shifts the quality of philosophical conversation away from striving for solutions towards a ‘bearing witness’ to complex ideas and alternative perspectives. As Gadamer says, ‘anyone who listens is fundamentally open’.
“We go around the world and assume that we should only listen once we notice something worthwhile being said. But perhaps it’s the reverse; perhaps it’s only when there is proper listening that something worthwhile can be said.
“Maybe listening is a condition for, rather than a reaction to, meaningful thoughts. And, like Plato’s intellectual midwife, maybe proper listening can help birth a depth of understanding not immediately present when we are focused on waiting for our chance to talk.”
The Philosophy Resistance Squad by Rob Grant is published by Little Island
Irish Young Philosopher Awards
President Michael D Higgins is another keen advocate for philosophy in schools, and last week he addressed the fourth Irish Young Philosopher Awards festival, which took place online this year.
Philosophy brings “the right questions to the table, the difficult and often awkward questions”, he told the more than 500 participants. Sure enough, there were awkward questions aplenty among the entrant projects, including “how do we know that history is true?”, “why do we respect the dead more than the living?” and “is going back to normal from lockdown a good thing?”.
The overall winner was Faith Njekwe, a third year student at Our Lady’s College, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co Louth for her project “Artificial Intelligence: Should we grant AI human rights? If so, when?” The inaugural international prize went to Sophya Yanis, from Letovo International School, Moscow, Russia for her project on “Short-term solidarity”.
