Abstract
The article links up with a lecture by Professor David Blumenthal (Professor of Judaic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta) in Prague in 2006. It deals with a question of competence to defy an order that goes against humanity, e.g. to kill someone. It shows direction we need to take for present-day students to gain the competence and asks if schools bring up independently thinking persons or rather submissive people out of pupils and students these days. In the other loosely linked part evaluation methodics of critical thinking competence and respect for life is outlined. The author suggests a research to evaluate competence to think in a critical way and respect for life of students coming from various countries taking part in SnowBlug project. The research situation is based on a topic from environmental education but goes beyond its limits.
Do our schools teach skill in defying evil?
I was wondering about this in an overcrowded room of Rafael Centre during a lecture by Professor David Blumenthal on the 7th April, 2006. Professor Blumenthal lectures at Emory University in the United States and investigates causes of the holocaust but also other inhuman cruelties that happened during history of mankind. Independently on one another, studies from various workplaces refer to the fact that it was not psychopathic personalities with high level of aggressiveness that committed cruelties and murders during the holocaust but (in more than 95 percent of cases) it was ordinary people - pot-bellied fathers of families, people of all age groups, with low, high and average earnings, educated at universities and without education, men as well as women. During postwar lawsuits, when asked why they had killed, they answered in a uniformed way: "Because a man so and so told me so." In the context of
the fact that no German soldier who had defied an order to kill somebody was shot dead because of disobedience (or killed in another way or tortured) during WWII such
submissive obedience seems utterly incomprehensible. Professor Blumenthal made us acquainted with Milgram´s experiments that had dealt with blind obedience. With a weight of his authority, an experimenter tried to make people manipulate a device about which they believed it gave stronger and stronger electric shocks to innocent people. Behind a screen, "victims" simulated pain by crying and later death by becoming quiet. People controlling an electric source did not suspect it was a mere simulation but still 50 to 60 percent of experimental persons (and even 85 percent in Germany) followed the experimenter´s orders to the limit of fatal amount of electric current. Milgram proved that the results did not depend on sex, age, education,
belief, locality or sophistication.
the fact that no German soldier who had defied an order to kill somebody was shot dead because of disobedience (or killed in another way or tortured) during WWII such
submissive obedience seems utterly incomprehensible. Professor Blumenthal made us acquainted with Milgram´s experiments that had dealt with blind obedience. With a weight of his authority, an experimenter tried to make people manipulate a device about which they believed it gave stronger and stronger electric shocks to innocent people. Behind a screen, "victims" simulated pain by crying and later death by becoming quiet. People controlling an electric source did not suspect it was a mere simulation but still 50 to 60 percent of experimental persons (and even 85 percent in Germany) followed the experimenter´s orders to the limit of fatal amount of electric current. Milgram proved that the results did not depend on sex, age, education,
belief, locality or sophistication.
Why did not experimentals from Milgram´s experiments stop in time? It seems that reasoning in lines "he ordered me to, I have to obey then" is a deeply rooted pattern of human behaviour.
We find a similar motif in a Bible story about Daniel´s friends and a blazing furnace. God´s punishment for throwing three innocent young men into fire did not fall on the king that had given the command but on the soldiers who executed it. By contrast, the Scriptures tell a story of midwives who defied the Pharaoh´s order to kill every newborn Hebrew baby boy.
As a child I once played at forfeits and believed that I had to eat up a dog cracker, or… Who did not experience anything similar?
Unfortunately, even in adult age more than half a humanity is not able to extricate from similar patterns. Jehovah´s Witnesses with sour faces stand on the same corner with copies of the Watchtower magazine every day because somebody told them so. Many a wife thinks she has to bear all of her husbands´ lapses, his moods, drinking, beating and insults. Employees accomplish even entirely senseless orders of their superior. Patients in hospitals obey nurses, nurses obey an attending doctor, the doctor obeys the head physician. And all of us shake when a pensioner - a lady custodian in a museum, gives us a shout.
And why did those who refused to continue the experiment at the cost of losing a job and earnings manage to stop? Milgram and his colleagues found out that this right decision was influenced by upbringing most. People who were able to defy had gone through relatively strict but just upbringing based on rules stated by adults during their childhood and teenage years but it was possible to discuss the rules. People from too authoritative families as well as people from families with too liberal upbringing did not manage to defy. They went on until the "death" of a person behind the screen.
Family plays the biggest role in forming character but right on the second place lands school.
Professor Blumenthal spoke about a programme rising at his university the goal of which was training university students to be able to defy, not to allow others to manipulate them, to think in a discerning way. He said the accomplishment of the programme unfortunately meets with opposition on the part of some university educators…
What about our schools? Do we bring up blindly obedient citizens (potential murderers), or individuals able to think critically, ones able to think and even act against immoral orders? The subject under discussion is not only human life but respect for life as a whole. Why not apply this philosophy and experiments to the area of environmental education? An investor orders to destroy a beautiful protected area and someone (a worker, a lumberjack) blindly executes. Is that all right?… Here a school caretaker orders to throw a nest with fledglings down. What about a pupil?
And how do you lead your pupils? To be honest, a class full of obedient, submissive and quiet pupils is much more controllable than a class full of individuals learning to think critically and often in trivial cases training their competence not to agree with an authority. Next time, when your pupils start to argue in class whether or not it is right to clean rubbish they had spilled or if you are allowed to give them detention, think of Professor Blumenthal, just smile and congratulate yourself - you lead them to critical thinking and do not bring up future mass murderers! It is naturally much more difficult than to "lash at them" and punish them, to sternly force them into accomplishing your ideas of a course of teaching. But you are taking a good way!
At a swallows´nest or can we evaluate competences?
Evaluation of competences1
- students perceive life as the highest value (RVP or Frame Educational Programme, Cross topic Environmental Education, chapter 6.5) and
- students think critically, make prudent decisions, are able to defend them, realize
responsibility for their decisions, and evaluate results of their deeds (RVP Key - Competence chapter 4,
that I formed to meet needs of a research part of my dissertation. While unpacking competences we will notice that these two abilities are closely connected and their joint evaluation is logical. For instance Albert Schweitzer, the theologian, thinker and physician was a personality remarkably endowed with competences mentioned above.
Teacher acts out a short story with simple puppets and a prop of a school building. The story takes place in front of a school building and inside. Its actors are a school caretaker, a pupil, and of course swallows or rather their nest.
The caretaker introduces himself to pupils, introduces the school, etc. He explains that he has been very busy this week, has not been able to do his work in time because swallows had made a nest above the school entrance. He would not mind, he says, let the nest be where it is, but fledglings have been hatched and are doodiing out of the nest. White droppings are piling up under the nest and he has to clean them up. And this is of course what matters to the school caretaker. He has decided to throw the nest down but an airing window through which the nest is attainable is too narrow, and the burly caretaker will not pull himself through it (we will act out with a puppet).
The caretaker picks on a pupil then, Joe the rascal, noted for getting in every place, and tells him to pull himself through the window to the nest and throw it off. The caretaker speaks to the pupil from the position of an adult and a school employee. He explains truly how difficult and time consuming cleaning of the droppings is. He reasons and gives questionable information that droppings are a potential source of dangerous bacteria (for the droppings to be really dangerous, children would have to get in direct contact with them e.g. eat them; coughing classmates represent a much more weighty source of infection). He also argues falsely that due to the droppings in front of the school building there will be more flies - carriers in classrooms (we all know what swallows hunt). In the end he shows himself as a good man to the pupil - he explains that he loves swallows and everything living but as the poor little things chose such a bad place to nest, nothing can be done about it, it must be removed.
Then we interrupt the puppet play and offer the pupils to decide how to continue. Every pupil is given voting cards (YES, NO) and without a possibility of consulting the matter with friends decides: Will Joe throw the nest down?
According to my individual belief I assume that a right respond of a pupil is to defy the instruction and not to obey the school caretaker (to vote with a NO card). A
pupil should be able to evaluate false and questionable information as such and not to deal with it. He should be able to suggest a conciliation solution, e.g. to take on the cleaning for three weeks before the fledglings have been hatched (or do it with his friends). A pupil should vote NO even if he gets financial reward for throwing off the nest ("to buy an ice-cream").
pupil should be able to evaluate false and questionable information as such and not to deal with it. He should be able to suggest a conciliation solution, e.g. to take on the cleaning for three weeks before the fledglings have been hatched (or do it with his friends). A pupil should vote NO even if he gets financial reward for throwing off the nest ("to buy an ice-cream").
1 In the Czech republic competence teaching has been enacted since January 1st, 2005. Due to the fact competence teaching is new in curriculum circles, considerable attention has been paid to it.
We finish the puppet story. If the nest stays where it was, the children start helping the school caretaker with cleaning and watch and take pictures of the fledglings. It does not last very long - the young leave the nest before three weeks´ time is over. The children write about it in a local magazine, win a prize for the best story, and the like. Next year the children look forward to the swallows very much. They get ready to have them. If the nest is thrown down, the swallows - parents fly sadly around it, Joe suffers from remorse, his classmates find little dead bodies and feel very sorry for them, when parents and conservationists hear of throwing the nest down, they start looking for an offender and so on.
The choice of words is what matters very much. When instructing with words "remove the problem!", "throw the nest down!" "kill the swallows!" "kill the trash!" the pupils will not respond the same way. In fact, it probably depends on their ability to think critically, make prudent decisions and realize they are responsible for their decisions. Fewer children subject to an instruction saying "kill the beautiful and useful birds´young" than to words "remove the source of dangerous infection". However, children with acquired competence of critical thinking should be able to interpret even the most suggestive instructions rightly (to translate them). It is exactly this competence we should lead them to at schools.
I am wondering if children from countries participant in our project will respond the same way at a swallows´nest. Or will differentiation due to different education systems come out?
While evaluating it is important to explain to pupils (or to revise) that there are situations when it is necessary not to obey an adult. (The question of killing is undoubtedly the most significant of them.) We guide children to realize that even an adult does not have to give true information and that a way of telling an instruction can be misleading. And also to an idea that even if they fear direct opposition, they can evade a situation, e.g. "I will consult it with…first", "I am sorry, I suffer from dizziness", "I am hurrying to…". Thus the evaluation becomes teaching at the same time.
Of course it could be possible to test childrens´ reactions to orders of another kind. I chose swallows as these are popular birds, made very well-known by folk tradition (they are called "luck birds" in Czech fairy tales), and their nesting in houses has been recorded many times. The common swallow is also protected by Czech laws. I perceive a lot of competence formulations stated in the new Czech curriculum document called Frame educational programme (RVP) as very vaguely formulated philosophical problems. I do not feel competent enough to express myself to all of them but let us have a look at a competence called "perceiving life as the highest value" which RVP classes among a cross topic of environmental education.
The competence of "perceiving life as the highest value" here comes from the commandment "you shall not murder". We all agree with it but shall we agree as to what exactly hides behind it?
Let us ask a simple question: "What kind of life?" and there will arise a major philosophical problem, an everlasting one, which every teacher will present to children in a slightly different way, everyone according to one´s own belief and opinion background.
What sort of life must not be destroyed? What kind of life is allowed to be destroyed in exceptional situations? And is really no life allowed to be destroyed? Is a white man´s life of higher value? Is life of a protected animal of higher value? Is also life of gnats or lice in a child´s hair of the highest value? What about abortions? Euthanasia? Vegetarianism? Is life of a plant really of inferior value than the one of an animal? Let us admit that there is no universal and all-embracing answer to these questions.
You would hear a different answer from a soldier and still a different one from a priest. Different from a Christian, an Arab, a Hinduist, an atheist. A man living in the Middle Ages would have answered differently from a man of our time. (Did you know that as late as in 1906 white men would release permits to shoot bushmen called the Sans, authors of beautiful cave drawings, as shootable game? An Indian monk who constantly sweeps a path under his feet to prevent stamping on an ant would answer in a different way than an American who owns a modern car, a speedy boat, and perhaps a private aeroplane and does not even think of lost lives of insects, birds or fish knocked down or crushed by his machines.
In comparison with the Bible that clearly explains what to visualize under the "shal not kill" commandment, RVP unfortunately does not deal with an answer to this philosophical question (and many others) more deeply. The authority to form School Educational Programme (ŠVP) and this competence by means of it is thus placed into hands of a school/teachers/a form master or mistress. Why not, after all?
Immediately a problem appears in the question of evaluation, however. Not the inner evaluation - true, to form instruments for evaluating pupils by a teacher will be demanding but conceptional for a responsible teacher. The teacher will explain his or her point of view and be hopefully able to test its understanding and use properly (as I did in the former half of the article for instance). The problem wil consist in evaluating a teacher and school by an outer evaluator. How to evaluate a competence whose interpretation is not stated in RVP and is philosophical throughout?
Do any participant countries have experience in evaluation of competences (skills and attitudes)?
Bibliography
MILGRAM, S. Obedience to Authority. Harper Colophon, 1974.
SCHWEITZER, A. Zastánce kritického myšlení a úcty k životu (The advocate of critical thinking and respect for life). Prague, Vyšehrad, 1989, p.308. Philosophical ideas of a famous physician. For a teacher´s need.