Rational Humanism & Alternative Onto-Epistemologies

Katie Strom, PhD

Warm up: What is one takeaway from the homework readings? What wonderings do you have?

Central Question:

• Why are things the way they are in schools?

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The answer to this question partially lies in the thinking that informs our education systems.

Onto-epistemology

• A really fancy term for “Epistemology” (ways of knowing) and “Ontology” (ways of being)

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Onto-Epistemology

• A mash up referring to our logic patterns and way we exist in the world (what we do, how we live–i.e., humanity).
• We mash them up because these things aren’t separate- they create each other.
• Our ideas about knowledge/knowing (reason) inform our understanding of being (humanity)
• ONTO-EPISTEMOLOGY drives all systems and society.
• One of the keys to understanding why things are the way they are in schools is to understand the dominant ONTO-EPISTEMOLOGY that drives educational systems.

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But our ways of thinking-being create/reinforce each other…

“Recent and still ongoing scholarship on archaeo-astronomy has shown that all human orders...have mapped their "descriptive statements" or governing master codes on the heavens, on their stable periodicities and regular recurring movements (Krupp 1997 ). Because, in doing so, they had thereby mapped their specific criterion of being human, of what it was "to be a good man and woman of one's kind" (Davis 1992), onto the physical cosmos, thereby absolutizing each such criterion; and with this enabling them to be experienced by each order's subjects as if they had been supernaturally (and, as such, extrahumanly) determined criteria, their respective truths had necessarily come to function as an "objective set of facts" for the people of that society-seeing that such truths were now the indispensable condition of their existence as such a society, as such people, as such a mode of being human. These truths had therefore both commanded obedience and necessitated the individual and collective behaviors by means of which each such order and its mode of being human were brought into existence, produced, and stably reproduced. This, therefore, meant that all such knowledges of the physical cosmos, all such astronomies, all such geographies, whatever the vast range of human needs that they had successfully met, the range of behaviors they had made possible…had still remained adaptive truths-for, and, as such, ethnoastronomies, ethno-geographies.” (Wynter, 2003, p. 271)

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Dominant Onto-Epistemology: Rational Humanism; Eurocentric Thinking

• “Rational Humanism”: “reason”, Eurocentric thinking
• Rationality as the basis of humanity

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• Became the dominant way of thinking in the Western World as a result of the Enlightenment
• Has become so normalized that it is accepted as commonsense, just the “correct” way of thinking, and its characteristics have become invisible
• This has allowed rational humanism to become hegemonic.
• Everything in education is based on rational humanism (i.e., dominant understandings of onto-epistemology)

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Characteristics of Rational Humanism

• The world is a stable, ordered place that can be analyzed and known.
• The world operates via separations/binaries and hierarchies: mind/body, self/other, human/nonhuman, man/woman, Black/White, rich/poor…
• Negative difference; reproduction of sameness
• Humans are fully autonomous, agentic actors, with self-consciousness and the ability to reason (rationality)- “I think, therefore I am”
• Linear thinking, one-to-one correspondences (a+b=c; this leads to that)
• Universal (applies to everyone and everything) and transcendental (above specific contexts)
• Neutrality, objectivity

Arborescent or Tree Thinking:

“The oldest & weariest type of thought” (Deleuze & Guattari)

• “Arborescent” thinking (aka rational humanism or “Common sense” western thinking)
• Essentialized, universal
• Hierarchical, linear
• Dichotomous/binary, either/or
• Fixed, static
• Reproduces itself
• Closes off different thinking; Reinforces the status quo
• Creates a sense of false objectivity, transcendence
• “the voice from everywhere and nowhere” (Haraway)

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Eurocentric thinking

Rational Humanism (Eurocentric Thinking) & Education: Examples

• Learning is an autonomous act that can be accurately assessed by standardized tests (which are valid across contexts) (universal/transcendent; reproduction of sameness)
• Sets of standards should guide curriculum universally across contexts/populations (universal/transcendent; reproduction of sameness)
• Focus on outcomes like student achievement, rather than processes of teaching and learning (reductionism)
• Emphasis on competition/choice (individualism, negative difference)
• Meritocracy myth: work hard/do well in school=make money (individualism, linearity, neutrality)

The colonializing violence of rational humanism

• “I think, therefore I am” creates a mind/body binary that allotted consciousness, free will, and self-regulating capabilities to the rational thinker
• The Enlightenment/Scientific Revolution posited REASON as a superior, OBJECTIVE way of knowing.
• Onto-epistemology: Europe began to define the human as those possessing reason- and reason as the basis of being conscious, able to self-monitor, and self-govern.

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Justifying Colonialism & Enslavement

• Europe then used binary logic to posit an “other” without reasoning capabilities– and were able to define these groups as less than human.
• This created a new world order “based upon degrees of rational perfection/imperfection. And this was to be the new "idea of order" on whose basis the coloniality of being, enacted by the dynamics of the relation between Man...and its subjugated Human Others (i.e., Indians and Negroes) … was to be brought into existence as the foundational basis of modernity.” (Wynter, 2003, 1987)

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• By classifying “other” groups as less than human, western states could justify land grabs, colonial violence, and enslavement.

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Individualistic Thinking

• Rational humanism constructs the human as separate from nature, as free, agentic, self-sufficient, autonomous, intentional, and ahistoric individuals.
• A “bio-centric” definition of the human: the human is understood only in terms of biology, separate from culture/society/nature (rather than both creating/being created by)
• This informs the American and neoliberal notion of individualism, the notion that we are isolated and autonomous actors in the world who can “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.”

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Individualistic Thinking in Education

• Individualistic, bio-centric thinking
• drives the myth of meritocracy,
• equates poverty with laziness, and
• constructs students of color as containing the problem (e.g., they are “at risk” or are “low performing” students), rather than victims of an institutionally racist system.

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• It also underscores the educational ideal of the teacher who transmits knowledge to students or “controls” or “manages” her classroom.

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WHAT EXAMPLES OF INDIVIDUALISTIC THINKING DO WE SEE IN EDUCATION CONTEXTS?DROP YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE CHAT.

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A-historical and A-contextual thinking

• This type of thinking posits the world as neutral, objective, and a-political.
• It creates an interesting paradox:
• On a micro-level, we are completely agentic beings who can pull ourselves up by our own boot straps…
• Yet, on a macro-level…
• agency is assigned to supernatural or extra-human factors (science, the invisible hand of the market, the constitution)...
• ignoring the human part in the creation of those factors.

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Objectivity and Disconnect

• Rational humanism demands decisions be made on “the facts” or “the numbers” …
• without connection to different contexts, situations, or historical events that have led to particular material conditions….
• Or accounting for human agency in perpetuating those conditions.
• So the work of teaching is seen as objective and a-political; curriculum/knowledge and teaching is neutral; no accounting for unequal power relations or other shaping forces.

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WHAT OTHER EXAMPLES CAN YOU THINK OF? DROP YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE CHAT.

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Critique AND Creativity

• While critical perspectives can help visibilize the invisible, we also need perspectives to help create alternatives for our complex present.

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• We need ways to think about the world that are collectivist, connected, fluid, situated, and see difference as a positive and creative force.

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Critical Complex thinking (AKA Critical posthumanism, neomaterialism, ecological thinking, indigenous perspectives)

Complex Thought: Rhizomatic Thinking

1. Multiplicity: many decentered elements- no core
2. Connection: the elements are connected at many different points
3. Heteogeneity: the elements are all different
4. And, And, And: Each connection produces an expansion or differentiation; dynamic
5. Hybridizing: Because of its multiple elements becoming-different together, it is constantly hybridizing, producing something qualitatively different…
6. Which can open up new, previously un-thought or unimagined possibilities

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How can critical complex perspectives help us think differently? An example

Rational Humanist Logic:

Teachers learn to teach in their preparation programs→ They transfer that learning into practice in their classroom→ Their students learn → Students show that learning on tests.

THEREFORE, we can use those tests to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers AND teacher prep programs.

From a complex critical perspective...

1. Teaching and learning are jointly produced activities

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• At every stage in the previous process (from teacher learning to students showing their learning) there is an assemblage of human, nonhuman, material, and discursive factors, as well as affective and political forces (power flows), that co-produce the learning.

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A TEACHING ASSEMBLAGE

From a critical complex perspective...

Therefore, quantitative measures that cannot take these situated assemblages into consideration are likely meaningless… AND because of their inability to take local differences into consideration, disproportionately hurt students of color living in poverty and their teachers… while making a lot of money for a handful of corporations (like PEARSON).

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WHAT IS YOUR REACTION TO THIS REFRAMING? DROP YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE CHAT.

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Why else? Pluriversality.

1. Traditional logic is built on the idea of binary (“either/or”) and negative difference: that which is not like me/the norm is bad. So, everyone has to adhere to the one right way of being, doing, knowing (which of course is Eurocentric).
2. BUT, in a critical complex perspective, logic operates on the AND- you and me and… And difference is positive: the more difference you introduce into a situation, the richer whatever it produces will be.
3. So, for example, in a classroom, diversity of language, culture, and experience are VALUED. Because the more languages spoken, cultures honored, and different experiences included, the more EVERYONE learns, and the more multifaceted their experience is.
4. This orientation is known as PLURIVERSALITY.

Politics of Location/Radical Accountability (Haraway/Braidotti)

1. U.S. work using critical pedagogy typically doesn’t account for the decisions that the teacher has to make, or take a nuanced perspective on power.
2. We are never outside the system- and we don’t control power. By announcing we are now teacher-learners and learner teachers, we may be unintentionally reproducing oppressive power relations.
3. Politics of location: feminist posthuman concept of accounting for the “cuts” you make and the ways this shapes the knowledge produced (and material impact).

What are some of the influences you bring into your work with you (experiences, your background, your geographic home)? What systems are you connected up to that shape/influence your work?

Wrap Up

What is a takeaway you are leaving with from the lecture?

What questions or wonderings are you leaving with?