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Megatrends, Whitehead and Education:
The General Educational Thought
of Alfred North Whitehead as
Seen in Light of Three of
John Naisbitt's Ten Megatrends.
presented by

Brian Lee Wood

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MEGATRENDS, WHITEHEAD AND EDUCATION: THE GENERAL
EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD AS SEEN
IN LIGHT OF THREE OF JOHN NAISBITT'S TEN MEGATRENDS

BY

Brian Lee Wood

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1987

Copyright by
BRIAN LEE WOOD
1987

MEGATRENDS, WHITEHEAD AND EDUCATION: THE GENERAL
EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD AS SEEN
IN LIGHT OF THREE OF JOHN NAISBITT'S TEN MEGATRENDS

BY

Brian Lee Wood

AN ABSTRACT OF

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1987

ABSTRACT

MEGATRENDS, WHITEHEAD AND EDUCATION: THE GENERAL
EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD AS SEEN
IN LIGHT OF THREE OF JOHN NAISBITT'S TEN MEGATRENDS

BY

Brian Lee Wood

The research entitled Megatrends, Whitehead and Educa-
tigfl is a partial response to the many critics and critical
reports which rail against America's educational systems and
a response as well, to some who are offering seemingly
unproductive solutions to these problems. Often the
response to the perceived failings of education is a call to
do more of everything and do it harder, and then demand more
testing.

This response may, ultimately, hinder progress towards
a solution. The research addresses the problem by preposing
the adoption of some different educational perspectives.
These perspectives are, for the most part, informed by
researching and illuminating the educational writings of the
great educator, mathematician, and philosopher Alfred North
Whitehead and resonating these writings with the evolving
future as seen by John Naisbitt.

The research is in the main analytical, but methodolo-
gies are also borrowed from historical and philosophical
research models. The combined techniques not only help to

render the data but also foster its analysis which

Brian Lee Wood

ultimately leads to the wanted conclusions. Initially,
Naisbitt's Megatrends are reviewed as a body, and then
reduced to three trends which are then each supported by
other educator/authors. This portion of the research,
primarily in chapter two, provides the context for the
subsequent application of Whitehead's work. The context for
A. N. Whitehead's work is offered in a brief overview of
British history focusing on the time frame of Whitehead's
educational writings. By analysis and extrapolation, six
Whiteheadian educational tenets are rendered. They are
systematically resonated with the three specially selected
trends and those findings arediscussed in light of more
contemporary research, most notably that of John Goodlad.
Finally, implications and recommendations from the
applications are discussed with that discussion focused on
four areas. The first centers on reconceptualizing our
approach to people in general. The second focuses on
reconceptualizing our approach to working with colleagues.
The third area discusses some implications resulting from
reconceptualization of the first two areas. The fourth area
briefly covers reconceptualizing our ideas of "prOper"
research methodology in order to allow additional studies of

the kind employed in this research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Chapter I

Research Goals ....................................
Definitions .......................................
Limitations .......................................
Overview of the Study's Rationale .................

mbww

Chapter II

ove rView Of the Ten Trends I I O O O I O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O O O O O 0 lo
OPPOSitj-on to Megatrends O, O O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O 26
Three Specially Selected Trends ................... 28

Chapter III

Great Britain in the International Community ...... 45
Socio-Political Developments ...................... 51
Scientific and Technological Advance .............. 57
Educational Developments .......................... 61

Chapter IV

Whiteheadian Educational Tenets ................... 74
Commentary on Whitehead's Educational Thought ..... 88

Chapter V

A Preparatory Word on Methodology ................. 97
Chapter Five Rationale ............................ 98
Whitehead's Tenets in Light of Naisbitt Trends .... 101
Four Areas of General Application ................. 114

Chapter VI

Implications for Personal Interactions ............ 123
Implications for Interactions with Fellow
Educators ....................................... 127
Implications for a More Productive Educational
Perspective ..................................... 128
Implications for Methodology .........£............ 138

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research in no small way is the result of the
combined efforts of many mentors. It is with sincere
appreciation that I thank:

Dr. Donald Lammers for his special help and insights
with regard to British History;

Dr. Susan Florio-Ruane for encouragement and sugges-
tions for applications and for being a willing sounding
board;

Dr. Glenn Berkheimer for his direction of my studies in
Great Britain and his unfailing belief in the necessity of
this work;

Professors Darling and Shanks for their Special teach-
ing style and the sacrificial giving of part of their
summer;

Dr. Sedley Hall for his encouragement and the quiet
steadiness that he has afforded me as a member of my
committee, and continually since my undergraduate years;

Dr. Robert Hatfield for his able role on my committee,
for keeping me honest, and for being one of the best
researcher/instructors that I have ever encountered;

Dr. Benjamin Bohnhorst for his diligence on my commit-
tee, his exceptional editorial help, and his friendly

guidance through a number of years;

ii

Dr. Roger Niemeyer, my chairman, who has worn many caps
so ably, and without whose help I would not only not be
completing a dissertation, but would not even be pursuing
the degree;

Keats R. Wood for his proofreading and example, and
Neoma P. Wood for her manuscript preparation, tireless

efforts, and supreme example of motherhood and womanhood.

iii

CHAPTER I

New studies detailing the woes of public education have
become such frequent occurrences that they have had an
almost numbing effect upon the educational community.

Whether it's A Nation at Risk, A Place Called School, or Why

 

Johnny Can't Read, Part II, all have provided their share of

 

doom and gloom. Many of our society's educational pundits
are attacking not only the skills and content of today's
education, particularly kindergarten through grade twelve,
but also attacking the system itself. One often cannot tell
if the voices are many or just loud or both. Sometimes
extravagant claims are made that America's schools are
turning out products who are not capable of functioning in
the present society, let alone the one of the near future.

In Writing A Place Called School, noted author and

 

researcher John Goodlad, speaks pointedly of these attacks.
He notes that a growing number of Americans do not seem to
perceive the importance of the relationship between the
public schools and the attainment of the highest order of
democracy. As Goodlad puts it,

It is not easy, however, to convince a majority of

our citizens that this relationship exists, and

that schools require their support because of it.

It is especially difficult to convince them if
they perceive the schools to be deficient in

2
regard to their traditional functions. Unfor-
tunately, the ability of schools to do their
traditional jobs of assuring literacy and eradi-

cating ignorance is at t e center of current
criticism, which is intense.

Thus, our graduates so it is claimed are less literate, less
skillful, and probably less confident than those of previous
generations. Some claimants, too, see the problem as the
inferior preparation to today's youth and after typically
laying the problem at the doorstep of public education, most
think that they have the answer. Most in fact do have the
answer if the question is one of raising test scores. The
answer, according to many claimants, is time, and much more
of it; more time on task, more time in the school day, and
more time added to the school year.2 More time translates
into the memorization of more facts which translates into
higher test scores. If such a proposition leaves some
readers uneasy at this point, they should be advised that
they are not alone.

Of course the fallacy here is that higher test scores
may or may not indicate or even predict one's future ability
to function in society. This kind of fallacious thinking
almost insures the fact that the problem of preparing
today's youth will not even be addressed, because turning
the ”means" of education into the "ends" of education yields
a narrow and unproductive perspective. The ultimate folly
of such a perspective is a race between "content memorizers"
and "information generators," and the generators are not

only going to win every race, but win by progressively

3
greater margins. Quite possibly educators need a new set of

perceptions in order to find solutions to existent problems.

Research Goals

The following research has a primary goal which may
foster potential directions. The goal is to extrapolate and
present the tenets and perspectives of the general educa-
tional thought of the great educator, mathematician, and
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. This presentation forms
a major portion of the content of the research. The second
goal is to develop and use a research technique which
provides the comparison of concepts from differing time
periods but in similar contexts.’ The central question is,
does this method valuably facilitate the application and
illumination to current contexts of Concepts and principles
drawn from Whitehead and his times?

The research proceeds in a somewhat non-traditional
manner. Traditional behavioral science models usually lack
stages and progressions necessary for illumination of such
tenets as Whitehead's and the form for comparing concepts in
differing historical contexts. The methodology and style
employed have similarities to critical research as one might
find in the field of literature. More will be said with

regards to methodology in chapters five and six.

Definitions
In this study the researcher used a number of key words

which are defined in the following discussion. The word

4
"context" is used to mean the circumstances surrounding
actions and/or events. The term ”perception” is used to
reflect the attainment of awareness or realization.
“Perspective" is here understood as the aspect in which a
subject or its parts are mentally viewed. The word
”resonate” is used to express the meshing and often the
amplification that an idea or precept bears with and upon
another. ”Useful" is normally taken to mean serviceable to
a beneficial end, and "utilization” carries the meaning of

turning to profitable account or use.

Limitations

Limitations are innate in studies of this type. The
study is subjective in its rendering of Whitehead's work and
in its applications. In addition, it is subjective to some
extent in extrapolating and comparing the necessary contexts
for both the megatrends (to be discussed later) and
Whitehead's work. The reader should be advised that though
education and educators in Great Britain and the United
States are strikingly alike, one is not an exact copy of the
other. Enrther, it behooves the author to be as conscious
of his passions as possible, and to be dispassionate in
rendering the propositions in chapters two and four. Though
it is important to be dispassionate in assembling the
components of the research, one should not construe such
dispassion as negating the fundamental propositions of the
paper. In due course, particularly in chapters five and
six, some degree of passion is useful and expected else the

work may lack some necessary expressive qualities.

5

The remaining portion of this first chapter highlights
the main thrust of each of the succeeding five chapters
beginning with chapter two. The second chapter is the
presentation of present contexts using John Naisbitt as
spokesman. Chapter three sketches the era of Alfred North
Whitehead's educational writings. The fourth chapter
discusses the tenets of A. N. Whitehead as well as his own
background, which will be formulated in a manner similar to
the discussion of Naisbitt. Chapter five is the systematic
application of Whitehead's tenets and their resonation with
three specially selected Naisbitt trends. The sixth and
final chapter is a presentation of implications and/or
recommendations drawn from the application of Whitehead's
tenets to the selected Naisbitt trends, and includes
applications of the thought of B.F. Skinner, Arthur Combs

and others.

Overview of the Study's Rationale
In summary, what the following pages hope to accomplish
will pursue this line of argument:

1) The general outline of Naisbitt's work will be
presented, representing current contexts.

2) Three of the ten Megatrends will be specially
« selected and supported by other authors.

3) The context for A. N. Whitehead's education
writings will be established.

4) A. N. Whitehead's general education tenets
will be extrapolated and receive comment by
additional authorities.

5) Whitehead's tenets will be systematically
applied and resonated with three specially
selected trends per Naisbitt.

6

6) Implications will be drawn from the applica-
tion of Whitehead's tenets and the selected
Naisbitt trends, including applications as
they might pertain to other selected educator/
authors.

The study, then, is an attempt to articulate the tenets of
Alfred North Whitehead and their appropriateness to the

context of our times as defined by Naisbitt.

CHAPTER I FOOTNOTES

1John I. Goodlad, A Place Called School, (New York,
1984), p. 2.

ZFenwick English, An address to American Association of
School Administrators, 1979.

CHAPTER II

Chapter two formulates present day context drawing upon
Naisbitt as spokesman. Because this chapter includes the
body of John Naisbitt's ten trends, along with three trends
selected for special elaboration, an awareness of Mr.
Naisbitt's background and the role of the Naisbitt Group
will prove useful.

John Naisbitt grew up in-a strict Mormon family in
Utah. .After leaving high school at the tender age of
fifteen, he spent two of the succeeding four years in the
United States Marines and followed that stint by going home
and enrolling in the University of Utah. In succession, his
work experiences include: the public relations department of
Eastman Kodak, the Unitarian Service Committee, the Great
Books Foundation, the public relations department of
Montgomery Ward, the director of information with the
National Safety Council, the U.S. Commission on Education in
Washington, a special assistant on John Gardner's staff, and
two years with IBM in Chicago. Shortly after leaving IBM,
and additionally' after‘ being influenced. by reading iBruce
Catton and reading of the research methods that he used in
putting together his great works on the Civil War, Naisbitt

produced the first of his now well—known Trend Reports,

 

9
which used a modified version of Catton's newspaper analysis

style. The Trend Report, then, provides the cornerstone of

 

the activities of the Naisbitt Group of which he is
chairman.

The Naisbitt Group functions in three major areas. The
first is that of analyzing the data that are received from
Newsbank, a newspaper-article-clipping-company which
Naisbitt helped found. The company is responsible for
scanning some 200 plus newspapers a month. The analysts at
the Naisbitt Group categorize and analyze the respective

articles which become the content of the Trend Report, the

 

production of which is the second major area of endeavor.
The Trend Report costs $1,250 per year for the National
Report and $875 per year for a regional one. The Report
comes in the form of a loose-leaf binder, and it is filleo
with various pie charts, bar graphs, and with narrative
reports as well. The third area is that of conducting
seminars for the executives of America's leading businesses
including General Motors, ABC, and Sears, Roebuck and
Company. For $15,000, a company can receive the Trend
Report and the opportunity to send their executives to
Washington, D.C. for a full day workshop, or for $3,500, a
Naisbitt staffer will come and make a one to two hour
presentation locally. The prices may sound steep, but the
information is obviously valuable, as some forty of

America's leading businesses subscribed to the Trend Report

 

in 1982. If $15,000 is out of the question then Megatrends,

10

which is a compilation of the research of the Naisbitt Group
reduced to ten important areas, is an available resource.

The ten trends as discussed by Naisbitt are reviewed as
a body in the following paragraphs. There are several
reasons for this. The ten trends provide an outline for the
information included in this chapter. The other information
is complementary and supplemental. The second reason is
that the trends probably should be seen as a body or a
loosely fitting unit. Though each trend is not necessarily
directly linked to each of the others, leaving out a trend
would seemingly diminish the possibility of acquiring an
understanding of the evolving society. The third reason is
much like the second in that giving a short summary of each
of the trends should provide a framework for the discussion
of the three trends that are considered for a more detailed
treatment and possible application. The final reason is
that by providing a look at the entire body of trends, one
will more easily understand both what is presented and
hopefully what follows. Each trend, then, will be briefly
reviewed both in its general thrust and in the support which

Naisbitt supplies for it.

Overview of the Ten Trends
The first of Naisbitt's ten trends is that which he
characterizes as "the megashift from an industrial to an

information society."1

He bases part of his evidence for
discerning this trend on an event that took place in 1956.

In that year clerical workers began to outnumber blue-collar

11

workers. In other words as early as 1956, people who worked
with information outnumbered those who produced goods, and
the ratio of those two working groups has never been close
since then. In addition, Naisbitt sees the advances of
technology of transportation, such as the various satellites
and space shuttles, as fueling the explosion of information
even more than opening the frontiers of space travel.
Rather than pushing back the frontiers of the universe, each
has contributed to reducing the size of our earth. In the
area of jobs, he notes that in nearly every year in the past
decade over three-fourths of all new jobs created in this
country are directly related ‘to information generation
and/or processing. Scientific and technical information is
said to be generated at a rate that causes it to double in
quantity at least every twenty-four months.

Five supplemental points are offered for this first
trend. Though not all of these points are stated as
documentation for the trend, Naisbitt obviously sees them as
germane. The points are listed here.

(1) The information society is an economic reality

not an intellectual abstraction. (2) Innovations

in communications and computer technology will

accelerate the pace of change by collapsing the

'information float.‘ (3) New information

technologies will at first be applied to old

industrial tasks, then gradually give birth to new
activities, processes, and products. (4) In this
literacy-intensive society, when we need basic
reading and writing skills more than ever before,

our education system is turning out an

increasingly inferior product. (5) The technology

of the new information age is not absolute. It

will succeed or fail according to the principle of
high tech/high touch.

12
According to Naisbitt's definition, the "information float”
is the amount of time elapsing from the moment a sender
sends a piece of information to the moment that the
recipient receives same.

In Naisbitt's second trend, he proposes that, ”We are
moving in the dual directions of high tech/high touch,
matching each new technology with a compensatory human
response."3 In other words, the new technology affects us
as well as having an effect upon us. We find ourselves
seeking new, different and better ways of interacting with
one another. We spend more time around the television set
and yet hoards of us go camping, when gasoline supplies
permit. When gasoline supplies do not permit we rediscover
walking, biking, canoeing, jogging, cross-country' skiing,
and most recently orienteering. This is to say that we find
ways of partially escaping the technology and spending extra
amounts of time finding ourselves, whether it be in our-
selves or in others.

A partial listing of Naisbitt's insight in this second
trend might be reflected as follows:

(1) The introduction of the high technology of

word processors into our offices has led to a

revival of hand written notes and letters ....

(2) The more technology we put in our hospitals,

the less we are being born there, dying there-and

avoiding them in between... i.e. (3) The high

technology of heart transplants and brain scanners

(has) led to a new interest in the family doctor

and neighborhood clinics... and (4) High-tech

robots and high touch quality circles are moving

into our factories at the same time - and the more
robots, the more circles.

13
In a final note from this section, Naisbitt once again
alludes to education. ”As computers begin to take over some
of the basics of education, schools will more and more be
called upon to take responsibility for teaching values and
motivation, if not religion."5

The third of the ten trends focuses on the fact that we
are moving from a national economy to a world economy. No
longer is America the industrial country of the industrial-
ized world. America no longer supplies everyone with steel
and automobiles, indeed in many instances, America no longer
supplies America with these items. in) understand our
industrial losses as merely Japan's industrial gains is also
to miss the point. The industrial gains in the world are
not being made by the likes of Japan, the United States or
even West Germany. The fastest industrial growth is
‘occurring in places such as Singapore, South Korea, Mexico
and Brazil. A "word to the wise” for America might be that
she ought to seek to forge the best of relationships both in
business and politics with many of the ”up and coming” third
world countries.

As support for this third trend, Naisbitt offers the
following points. While America's economy, as well as other
traditional industrial leaders, grows by less than a couple
of percentage points per year, and Japan, the superstar of
the lot grows at about four percent a year, many third world
countries are at the very least doubling those numbers.

Annually over the last decade, Mexico's economy has grown at

14
a steady eight percent, and the Dominican Republic eight
percent. The average annual growth over the past decade of
Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil

6

has been over nine percent. Americans, however, perceive

Japan as having the world's best economy, but Naisbitt
offers that, "Japan is number one, but that is like a new
world champion in a declining sport...." and for America,
"It is too late to recapture our industrial supremacy
because we are no longer an industrial economy."7
Additionally, he notes, "Economists predict gloom because
they focus on industrial companies; that's like predicting a

family's future by watching 'only the grandparents."8

Finally, under this section, Naisbitt says that, "For
Americans, it is self-evident that this is the time to learn
another language--and learn it well...." and "To be really
successful, you will have to be trilingual: fluent in
English, Spanish, and computer."9

We are restructuring from a society run by short-term
considerations and rewards in favor of dealing with things

"10 This fourth trend

in much longer-term time frames.
mirrors a characteristic of the society in general with a
particular emphasis on the way that it is applied in
business. That characteristic is simply ”instant gratifica-
tions." In the business world, the "instants" are three
months long or quarters. The majority of management

personnel in America's businesses are planning from, looking

for, pushing for, and bending every effort for an increase

15

in profits every quarter. The increase can be ever so
slight, but it must be an increase nonetheless. That is,
America's businesses - the large established ones, not the
small entrepreneurial types - make their number one priority
an instantly gratifying profit increase. In this way many
of America's largest and most important companies have won
numerous battles and have either lost the war or are in the
process of receiving the terms of surrender. Fortunately,
more and more companies are catching hold of the need for
longer term planning.

One of Naisbitt's prime examples of surrender is that
of America's railroads. "The great business lesson of
unrecognized absolescence is rum: buggy whips, it's the

"11 Railroading men believed in the perpetuity of

railroads.
their beloved railroads, while never really understanding
their role in the transportation business. Running down the
same instant gratification road is the automobile industry.
"As with the railroad industry, it is difficult for us to
believe that we are in the process of losing the automobile
industry that has served so well and has in fact been the
economic underpinning of this society for so long."12
"Those companies that are looking to the long term success-
fully are the ones which have taken the time and initiative
to conceptualize what their business is or ought to be.
Naisbitt's most dramatic example is Sears, Roebuck &

Company. Sears reconceptualized their role as remaining the

top American retailer and becoming America's top banker.

16

They pursued their banking interest by making large
purchases in the areas of: stock brokering, real estate, and
money-market funds. "To banks, stock brokers, and realtors,
it will very much feel as though Sears is in their line of
work." Thus the example of a more long term outlook.
Naisbitt has words for those in education: "In education we
are moving from the short-term considerations of completing
our training at the end of high school or college to
lifelong education and retraining. The whole idea of what
education is will be reconceptualized during the next
decade."13

From centralization to decentralization is Mr.
Naisbitt's title for this fifth trend. He describes the
trend this way: "In cities and states, in small organiza-
tions and subdivisions, we have rediscovered the ability to
act innovatively and to achieve results - from the bottom
up."14 America has rediscovered federalism, though probably
not to the extent that she is ready to go from fifty states
back to fifty self-governing colonies, but certainly to the
extent that many are deciding to accept responsibility for
governing in their own spheres of influence. Propositional
elections, state referenda, recall elections, numerous
petition drives and the like are becoming standard local
political fare. The business community, too, is receiving
its share of petitions and local input, and many businesses
have begun to cater to local diversities by at least

cosmetically tailoring their products and practices to meet

local desires.

17

There are several contentions that Mr. Naisbitt advan-
ces to support this fifth trend. Most notably, he stresses
the "where" of the lawmaking process, and ”where" is now in
the legislative bodies of the fifty states. During the
1981-82 session of the United States Congress (the ninety-
seventh), approximately 15,000 bills would be introduced and
about 500 of them enacted into law. At the same time the
various state legislatures would introduce some 250,000 and
enact almost 50,000 of these into law.15 Many decry the
lack of voter participation in national elections. Only
fifty-three percent turned out to elect Ronald Reagan in
1980, and approximately thirty-five percent voted in the
1978 Congressional elections. During the same period,
participation in excess of seventy percent was noted on a

16 Federalism,

number of local initiatives and referenda.
states' rights and Naisbitt's term ”regionalism“ are
emerging on the scene, and in the vocabularies of many
politicians. Mr. Naisbitt notes Arizona Governor Bruce
Babbit's remark as an example. "It is long past time to
dust off the Federalist Papers and to renew the debate
commenced by Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson."17 Many
businesses are not bothering with the debates, they are
giving their regional offices much greater control. "Even
McDonald's, that ubiquitous American institution, no longer
builds the exact same restaurant in each new location."18

Once more, America is changing and growing from the bottom

up.

18
The point of Naisbitt's sixth trend is that, ”We are
shifting from institutional help to more self-reliance in

all aspects of our lives."19

Whether it was the totality of
the disruption of most peoples' lives brought by the
depression and World War II, or the intimidation of the
scientific and educational discoveries of the World War II
era, or simply the lack of desire in taking responsibility
for their own lives, Americans seemingly gave themselves
away in the 1950's. They turned over their careers to
corporations. They turned over their children to the public
schools. They turned over their bodies to the miracles of
modern medicine. They turned over their religions to the
clergy. They turned over their retirements to the Social
Security System and released all of the rest of their
problems to their elected officials_in Washington, D.C.

Now after they have seen the kind of job that each of
these institutions has done, they are more than ready to
take everything back into their own hands, and Naisbitt
offers some poignant examples. In the area of personal
fitness, "At least 100 million Americans, almost half the
population, are now exercising in some way - up from only
about one-quarter of the population in 1960. That is a 100

. . . 20
percent increase 1n regular exerc1sers."

Concerning the
public schools, Naisbitt says, almost tongwe in cheek, if
you don't like the institution, help yourself and start your
own school. ”Several years ago, (John) Holt estimated there

were at least 10,000 families educating their children at

19

home. Ihi 1982 the figure was estimated at one million."21
Americans are taking back their careers also, and there
seems to be almost an entrepreneurial explosion. ”Dun &
Bradstreet estimates there were 533,500 incorporations
annually by 1980. By D & B's count, that represents a 63

n22

percent increase over 1975. As has been previously

stated, Americans are taking back responsibility from the
government through the ballot box and petition drives in
numerous states and communities, not to mention the growth
in church organizations, particularly those which emphasize
little difference between clergy and laity. In all of these
areas, Americans have decided to make greater efforts to
help themselves.

The seventh trend has considerable kinship with the
fifth, which was basically the shift from centralization to
decentralization. Of this seventh trend, Naisbitt notes,
”We are discovering that the framework of representative
democracy has become obsolete in an era of instantaneously

shared information."23

Therefore we are moving from repre-
sentative democracy to participatory democracy. More
specifically, there seems to be three areas where partici-
pitory democracy is particularly pronounced, and these are
in the areas of politics, the workplace, and the market-
place. For decades Americans let Congressmen do their
thinking, checked their rights and due process at the door

of their place of employment, and willingly allowed

America's corporations to use their life-savings without so

20
much as a minor proxy struggle. These situations are
changing.

Are Americans headed for a renaissance of the pure
democracy of ancient Athens? Who is to say NO! Naisbitt
offers some interesting insights in all of these previously
mentioned areas. As far as the political arena is
concerned, he has alluded to surprising voter turnouts for
local ballot referenda, sometimes reaching eighty and ninety
percent. Initiatives and referenda being the tools of
participatory democracy and easily accessible, "It is no
wonder, then, that the popularity of initiatives exploded
during the 1970's, when we ‘voted on 175 state-level
initiatives, twice as many as the 1960's .... yet there are
signs the initiative trend is just beginning."24

Workers are no longer passively reacting to capri-
ciousness in the workplace as evidenced by the fact that
courts in fourteen states including: California, New York,
Illinois, and Michigan, "have sided with fired employees
when their termination is 'abusive or against public

25 Smarter' corporations have (enlisted employee

policy'."
input rather than terminating it. "According to the
American Center for the Quality of Work Life, at least 200
American companies have quality circles. Honeywell, for

example, has 350 quality circles."26

Not to be outdone ,
American stockholders, who for the longest time merely
accepted corporate board policies, or voted by selling their

holdings,. have decided to participate in much greater

21
numbers. First, they have used their voting strength to
elect outsiders to the respective corporate boards.
According to the firm of Heidrick & Struggles, "By 1980,
87.6 percent of the major companies studied had a«majority

of outside directors."27

Second, stockholders have elected
independents to the corporate boards. According to the same
Heidrick & Struggles survey, " ...half the companies were
said to have a majority of independent outsiders on the
board. Independents not only are outside management, they
have neither family nor business relationships with the

corporation."28

In light of all of this participation one
ought to note Naisbitt's message to those in positions of
responsibility: "The new leader is a facilitator, not an
order giver."29

”We are giving up our dependence on hierarchical
structures in favor of informal networks."30 This is
Naisbitt's eighth trend and it is a dynamic one. From the
age of the ancient Egyptian Pharoahs to the modern corpora-
tion, busineses, governments and whole societies have been
organized in a pyramidal structure. That is, the infor-
mation has been generated from the top and disseminated down
the managerial ladder to the bottom. In much the same way
that Americans are assuming more responsibility for nearly
everything in their lives, they are demanding more in the
workplace and elsewhere. Those demands would be fairly

insubstantial were it not for the fact that the computer

supplies vast quantities of information that, in turn, puts

22
considerable power in the hands of subordinates. With many
people generating information rather than having it come
strictly from the top, the hierarchical pyramid is going the
way of the dinosaur. The cooperative sharing of information
(and power) that is left in place of the pyramid is called
networking, and it often extends across the boundaries of
both companies and governmental agencies. A simple phone
call puts any potential information sender or receiver in
touch with his counterpart. As a result of this capability,
supervisors everywhere have had to dust off their copies of
”Theory Y," and give more than lip-service to the more
humanistic styles of management that American theorists
exported to Japan in the 1960's.

Several insights concerning networks are (offered by
Naisbitt. In terms of understanding their significance, he
says,

Networks exist to foster self-help, to exchange

information, to change society, to improve

productivity and work life, and to share
resources. They are structured to transmit
information in a way that is quicker, more high
touch, and more31energy-efficient than any other
process we know.
Networking can be surprisingly efficient. "Experienced
networkers claim they can reach anyone in the world with
only six interactions. It has been my experience, however,
that I can reach anyone in the United States with only two -

"32 Networks can either

three at the very most - exchanges.
exist within a given company, as in the 200 plus companies

already using quality circles, or across all corporate,

23

agency, and even individual lines. They can either be
formally organized as in the Consumer Education Resource
Network, the National Network Inc., or the Chicago
Rehabilitation Network, or they can be fluid and open with
their members moving in and out at will and forming new
networks as the need arises. Naisbitt feels that the notion
of networking is not simply a passing fancy in that this
generation has been raised in the ways of networking.

Using networks, the baby boomers brought us the

woman's movement, the anti-war movement, and the

environmental movement. They don't know how to

organize any other way. This is the way they

organized and communicated as young adults. It is

irrational to think they will quietly blend into

the hierarchicafiBStructure once they reach the
executive suite.

The ninth trend is a surprise to very few. The heading
given by Naisbitt is "From North to South,“ and he describes
the trend simply as the fact, "more Americans are living in
the South and West, leaving behind the old industrial cities

of the North."34

Regardless of the specific reasons, though
the shifts to an emphasis on information processing, a
global economy, and decentralization play a part, the fact
remains that people are leaving the traditional job arenas
and are heading for the newly emerging job arenas. Their
mass migration has created an entirely new set of "ghost"
towns and their corresponding "boom" towns. Besides the
fact that the last decade has witnessed the loss of count-
less thousands of jobs in the Northeast and Midwest,
two-thirds of the over eighteen million newly created jobs

are in the South and West.35

24

For the purpose of truly understanding this trend,
Naisbitt offers five important points.

(1) The North-South shift is really a shift to the

West, the Southwest and Florida” (2) The North-

South shift is really two stories: one about the

North's decline and another about the Southwest

and west's boom. The two stories have no cause-

and-effect relationships. (3) The North-South

shift is stronger than first thought, and it is

irreversible in our lifetime. (4) The Sunbelt

explosion is really the story of three emerging

megastates: California, Florida -- both bellwether

states -- and Texas. It is also the story of the

ten cities of great opportunity, all in the South

and west. (5) Finally, the North-South shift is

presenting a crisis infrastructure, which will

eventually force both North and Sou§§. to

re-examine its economic goals and purposes.
One of the reasons for the lack of a cause-and-effect
relationship in the second point is that industrial jobs and
heavy industry in general are not only not moving to the
South, they are ceasing to exist. With regard to the fifth
point concerning infrastructure, one needs to understand
that the migration out of the cities of the North erodes the
tax base necessary to pay for schools, streets, sewers and
the like while at the same time causing the need for all of
these in the newly expanding cities of the Southwest.
Finally, in reference to the ten cities in point four, they
include: Albuquerque, Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake
City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Jose, Tampa, and Tucson.

The magnitude of the tenth and final trend is sur-
prisingly subtle, and Naisbitt characterizes this trend in
the following way. "From a narrow either/or society with a

limited range of personal choices, we are exploding into a

free-wheeling multiple-option society ...." or as he states

25
it more simply, "From Either/or to Multiple Option."37
Possibly gone forever are the days of making a choice among
two or maybe three options. Whether it is living arrange-
ments, where, when, and how the workday is handled, choices
of entertainment or how, when, and where leisure activities
are pursued, the options for nearly any American have
increased geometricalLy. In light of these phenomena, the
focus of the production of goods and services is now
primarily centered upon the individual. It has become the
individual's choice as to how he/she relates to his/her
personal living arrangements, his/her livelihood, and
his/her free time.
There are numerous portions of information offered by
Mr. Naisbitt as support for the present and evolving
multi-option society. A small sampling follows. In terms
of personal living arrangements he notes that,
Most of us raised or were raised in a typical
nuclear American family: Father was breadwinner,
mother took care of house and children, usually
two. But today, there is no such thing as a
typical family. And only a distinct minority (7
percent) of America's fiopulation fits the
traditional family profile.
As far as one's livelihood is concerned, whether male or
female, "... the employment world is a buffet of multiple
options: part-time, flex-time, working at home, working
partly at home and partly at the office, (and) job

39 As far as one's leisure time is concerned,

sharing."
”Cable television is analog for the multiple-option society.

Across the nation ABC, CBS, and NBC are being supplemented

26
by almost 5,000 cable systems ... Cable television will be

like the special-interest magazines: you will be able to

40

tune in Runner's World or Beehive Management.“ One only

 

has to count the number of health spas and running events to
realize what is taking place in the physical aspects of
leisure time. Naisbitt adds a note of summation when he
points out the fact that,

Ralph Tyler, the well-known U.S. educator, used to

say that you can tell you are being educated if

your options are increasing, and that the reverse

is happening if they are decreasing. Similarly, a

society can tell it is growing if the options for

its citizens are increasing. It is extraordinary

for a society as mature as the United States to be

growing - at least by this measure - so vigo-

rously. One has only to think about the Soviet

bloc countries in thesilterms to see how stagnant

they are by comparison.
Opposition to Megatrends

The above discussion presents the general parameters of
Naisbitt's work as represented in Megatrends. The litera-
ture published in response to Megatrends contains two
articles which can be classified as opposing or criticizing
Naisbitt's work. The first, written by Louis Goldman of
Wichita State University, argues against the first trend in
particular. He asserts that Naisbitt is a State Theorist in
that he views history as a series of stages. According to
Goldman, this puts Naisbitt in the league with Gibbon, who
wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and
Spengler, who wrote The Decline of the West. Goldman dis-

approves of characterizing the industrial society as being

in decline, in addition to disapproving of the dichotomous

 

 

I e.
.Fu

27
nature of Naisbitt's presentations of an industrial society
22g an information society. Goldman feels that Naisbitt has
characterized. the two societies as mutually exclusive.
Along with this objection, Goldman finds the cyclical notion
of birth-development-death as applied to these societies to
be simply erroneously conceived. In a slightly different
area of criticism, Goldman greatly dislikes the use of
jargon, the faulty proof-reading which left Spelling errors
and percentages that totaled more or less than 100 percent,
and unreasonable extrapolations, i.e. Holt estimated during
the 70's that 10,000 families were educating their children
at home, and by 1982, the figure was one million. Probably
the biggest problem that Goldman has with Naisbitt is that
he is in the same camp as several other authors which
Goldman describes as 'trendies." Goldman notes that
Naisbitt's views are "... shared by other contemporary
'trendies' such as Jean Jacques Servan-Schrieber in Egg

World Challengg, Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave, and a host
.42

 

of others.

The second article which takes issue with the Naisbitt
book is one written by Emily Yoffe for the September, 1983
issue of Harper's. Two of her more prominent complaints
follow. The first is that the Naisbitt Group misrepresents
their data base in that they claim to scan articles from
some 6,000 newspapers per month. Yoffe claims that accord-
ing to their system, they count an article each time it

appears in one of the papers, so the same article appearing

28
in ten newspapers is the same as the Naisbitt Group having
scanned those ten papers. The bottom line for Yoffe is that
the Naisbitt Group actually scans approximately 200 news-
papers. Her second complaint is with Naisbitt's assumption
that the dominant consideration for newspaper editors et.al.
is getting the paper out to the subscribers on time and
though there are certain choices as to which stories should
appear, the choices are limited by time constraints.
According to Yoffe, "This happens to be wrong. Yes, the
paper must be gotten out on time. Beyond that, anyone who
has worked on a newspaper (Naisbitt hasn't) knows that
putting out a newspaper is nOthing but choices."43 In
effect, then, Yoffe is saying that quantifying what appears
in various papers will probably not produce data which will

support a national trend.

Three Specially Selected Trends

For purposes of the present study, three trends from
among those identified by Naisbitt have been selected for
further emphasis, elaboration, and subsequent application.
Additional substantive support. for these three trends. is
provided by other futurist and/or educational authors. The
three specially selected trends include: the first, which
is, "the megashift from an industrial to an information
society,” the fourth, which deals with the notion that "we
are restructuring from a society run by short-term consid-
eratons and rewards in favor of dealing with things in much

longer-term time frames," and the sixth, which notes that,

29
"we are shifting from institutional help to more self-
reliance in all aspects of our lives." There are other
authors whose writings often parallel many of the ten
trends, including support for the three selected above.

When discussing "the megashift from an industrial to an
information society," it is helpful to view the meaning of
"information society" in the same sense that Naisbitt views
it. Reiterating his assertion that, "In 1956, for the first
time in American history, white-collar workers in technical,

managerial, and clerical positions outnumbered blue-collar

workers,"44, and "...in 1979, the number-one occupation in

45
I

the United States, numerically, became clerk...." one

begins to understand his meaning. In addition,

The second largest classification after clerk is
professional.... Professional workers are almost
all information workers--lawyers, teachers,
engineers, computer programmers, systems analysts,
doctors, architects, accountants, librarians,
newspaper reporters, social workers, nurses, and
clergy. Of course, everyone needs some kind of
knowledge to do a job. Industrial workers,
machinists, welders, jig makers, for example, are
very knowledgeable about the tasks they perform.
The difference is that for professional and
clerical workers, the creation, proce4sssing, and
distribution of information i§_the job.

There are few who are more glowing in their praise of
the work of John Naisbitt than Alvin Toffler. In Toffler's

book, The Third Wave, he often refers, sometimes indirectly,

 

to this phenomena that Naisbitt identifies as his first
trend. Though sometimes couched in the context of a broader

story, Toffler leaves little doubt about the notion of an

30
information society. Early on, he states that, "...informa-
tion has become perhaps the world's fastest growing and most

‘7 A little later in the book Toffler

important business.”
notes that, "Third Wave civilization will have at its dis-
posal more information, and more finely organized informa-
tion, about itself than could have been imagined even a
quarter-century ago."48 Both Toffler and Naisbitt seem to
share a common notion of the relative positions of infor-
mation and computers in the evolving near future. The
computer, though EH1 extremely important device, occupies a
somewhat subordinate position to the information that it is
capable of storing, processing, and recalling. At the same
time, one often finds "computer” used in the next "breath"
by both. In nearly that next "breath," Toffler, in speaking
of the use of the computer, states that, "It makes possible
a flood of new theories, ideas, ideologies, artistic
insights, technical advances, economic and political innova-
tions that were, in the most literal sense, unthinkable and

unimaginable before now."49 Thus he illuminates the role of

the computer in the information society.

In addition to those whose writings parallel Naisbitt's
notion of an information society, there are a number of
educator/authors who not only agree with the notion, but
assume it, and many of these assume the corresponding ideas
concerning the need for and uses of computers. Writing for

The American School Board Journal, Mike Hickey leaves little

31

doubt of his support. "Two of the megatrends have espe-
cially strong impact for educators. The first is our shift
from an industrial-based society to an information-based
society."50 He also assumes the value and applicability of
Naisbitt's data and refers to it in this way: ”Naisbitt also
estimates that by 1985 or so, computers will be involved in
75 percent of all jobs. This fact, he concludes, means
Americans soon will need to be trilingual--speaking English,
Spanish, and computer languages."51 The implication is not
only clear to Hickey but to the National School Board
Association which placed Megatrends on its ”required
reading" list. I

There are very few futurists in the field of education

of the stature of Arthur Lewis from the University of

Florida. Ihi an article for Educational Leadership, one of

 

his subheadings is entitled, "The information era." Note
the surprisingly direct parallels between Lewis' assertions
and those presented by Naisbitt in the following excerpt.

Entrance into the information era is profoundly
influencing our image of the future. Already it
is producing changes in human values, in trends in
thought, and in political and economic structures
in society. The information era differs from the
industrial era in several significant ways: (1)
The core of the industrial age is powered
machinery; the core of the information era is the
computer. (2) The industrial age replaced manual
work and magnified physical strength; the
information era enables us to replace mental work
and magnify mental capabilities. (3) Goods
produced in the industrial age are expended;
information, the product of the information era,
cannot be depleted. (4) Energy--oil, coal,
nuclear power--is the driving force in the
industrial age; eduqfifion is the driving force in
the information era.

32
Once again, Dr. Lewis assumes the validity of the "infor-
mation society" and further assumes several roles for
education within that society.

The second specially selected trend is Naisbitt's
fourth. He states it in the following way; "We are
restructuring from a society run by short-term
considerations and rewards in favor of dealing with things

in much longer-term time frames."53

In explaining this
trend, he notes the foundations of a major change in the
type of thinking and planning being done by America's
largest corporations. This change is not only towards more
long range planning, but even the reconceptualization of the
corporation itself. The insight provided by the famous
management consultant, Mary Parker Follett, is very closely
related to this trend. "The Law of the Situation” is the
term coined by Follett, and ”The Law of the Situation” asks

the question, 'What business are you really in?”54

Taking
this even one step further, Naisbitt offers the supplemen-
tary notion that, ”If you don't know what business you are
in, conceptualize what business it would be useful for you

."55 Thus one of the results of

to think you are in
long-term planning might be reconceptualization.

Besides the positive reactions of businesses supporting
the notion of the long-term over the short-term, some school
districts are acknowledging and perpetuating this same

trend. The Superintendent of Schools for the Princeton

Regional Schools in New Jersey, Paul Houston, has had a

33
community planning committee functioning for over a year and
a half. Under his leadership, the committee has read a
considerable amount of literature, has been involved in
several workshops, and has spent a day-long seminar with
three noted futurists. The report produced by the committee
provided several major recommendations. "One of the major
recommendations was for continuous long-range planning, with

yearly Progress reports to the public."56

The importance of
the "long-term” is explained further by Mr. Houston, when he
adds, "The challenge of today's educational leaders is to
struggle with the ineffable and to see that our actions give
chase to our thoughts, words, and best intentions. Our task
is to out-race the speeding hands of time. The future of
our children depends upon it."57

There are many who strongly encourage efforts such as
the one in Princeton, New Jersey, and Mike Hickey is a
superintendent in this same camp. After having given

considerable support to Naisbitt's first megatrend, Hickey

then adds:

A second megatrend important for educators is the
shift in society's perspective from short-term,
'quick fix' perspectives to long-term viewpoints.
Inherent in his shift is the realization that
short-term payoffs frequently are of relatively
little importance when compared to either
long-term costs or long-term potential.
Businesses and [public institutions alike, then,
must analyze carefully what it is thefigare doing
and how it fits into a long term plan.

He further alludes to Naisbitt's notion of "reconceptuali-
zation," and maintains that this has just as much applica-

bility for the public schools.

34

Most board members would say that our business is
the education of children enrolled in kindergarten
through the twelfth grade.... It has become
increasingly apparent that learning is a lifelong
process. If public schools choose to limit
themselves to the K-12 portion of that process,
then some other group will assume responsibility
for those younger than age five and those older
than age 18. If we are able to view ourselves as
being in the learning and training business, we
already have the skills and the technique to serve
us well in an entrepreneurial effort to expand the
concept of public education. But we have to end
our short-term thinking, or the shift will pgcur
without us, and the opportunity will be gone.

In an interview with Ron Brandt in Educational Leader-
ppip noted educational futurist Harold Shane echoes Hickey's
points, i.e. the notion of long-term education, and the
point that schools should be involved, or other agencies
will step into the void.

With the massive changes in production and the new
kinds of jobs opening up in the high-tech field,
there already are enormous demands on education
agencies for the retrofitting, retreading, and
re-educating of people; with learning experiences
which can continue right on through life into our
senior years. If our schools do not meet these
needs, some other kinds of agencies will--the kind
of agencies that already have taken over portions
of the instrpfitional monOpoly that schools enjoyed
in the 50's.

Dr. Shane noted television as an example of just such an
agency.

Some educators/authors not only assume Naisbitt's
fourth trend, but in substance practically insist on its
application in public education. One such educator is
William Esler who is the Chairman of the Educational

Foundations Department at the University of Central Florida.

35

There seems to be little doubt of the necessity of the
longer-term view to Dr. Esler's way of thinking.

The survival of public schooling as we now know it

may depend upon the ability of school leaders to

analyze carefully the needs of the coming genera-

tions of students, avoid quick-fix fads and

overreactions that have too frequently plagued

public educations1 and create viable programs for

the new society. .
Thus Dr. Esler and others not only support Naisbitt's notion
of the switch from short-term to long-term thinking, but
also support its application in public education.

The third and final specially selected trend is
Naisbitt's sixth, which he denotes by saying that, "We are
shifting from institutional help to more self-reliance in

"62 This trend includes elements

all aspects of our lives.
of both the fifth and the seventh trends. The "decentrali-
zation' of trend five and the notion of "greater participa-
tion in government" of trend seven can in many ways be seen
as part and parcel of the trend towards greater self-
reliance. Whether Americans take more interest in state and
local government by using the initiative and referendum
processes or demand that birth and death take place in
relatively private surroundings, there is little question
that Americans are taking more responsibility for the events
of their own lives. Naisbitt puts it this way:
For decades, institutions such as government, the
medical establishment, the corporation, and the
school system were America's buffers against
life's hard realities-~the needs for food,
housing, health care, education--as well as its
mysteries--birth, illness, death. Slowly we began
to wean ourselves off our collective institutional

dependencg3 learning to trust and rely only on
ourselves.

36
Thus, the aspect of traditional self-reliance again pervades
many of the events of our lives.

In his book, The Third wave, Alvin Toffler notes the
same kind of shift to a more self-reliant individual,
particularly as that individual relates to the new style of
worker required by many of America's leading firms.

What Third Wave employers increasingly need,

therefore, are men and women who accept responsi-

bility, who understand how their work dovetails
with that of others, who can handle ever larger
tasks, who adapt swiftly to changed circumstances,
andwho are64sensitively tuned into the people
around them.
Contrasting notions of work style may be seen in older
workers who are most satisfied with detailed work plans that
leave little room for individual deviations and differences,
while newer workers greatly desire such leeway. In
describing these newer workers, Toffler says, ”Such people
are complex, individualistic, proud of the ways in which
they differ from other people. They typify the de-massified

.65

work force needed by Third wave industry. In this WBY:

too, they are quietly demonstrating the return to greater
self-reliance.

One educational/futurist author, Diane Ravitch from
Columbia University, brings the notion of the trend towards
greater self-reliance home to the public schools. While
echoing Naisbitt's first trend, i.e. the shift to an
information society, she not only assumes the trend towards
greater self-reliance, but urges schools to nuture such

traits as will enhance self-reliance. She puts it this way:

37

Because of the growth of professional, semi-
professional, and technical. occupations. and the
decline of industrial and manufacturing jobs,
schools have an important mission to perform in
preparing youngsters to fill these new, more
intellectual careers. Job training will be of
less importance in the year 2000 because of the
rapid pace of technological change. Because most
work in the future will require people who can
think, plan, adapt to changing conditions, and
make decisions, we will look to the schools to
nurture in the young such traits as initiative,
advanced reasongpg skills, judgment, independence,
and discipline.

In a different vein than the one described by Ravitch,
but yet one that is closely related, Naisbitt brings another
area of education into the self-help discussion. In his
support for this sixth trend), he devotes a section to
parental involvement with school matters under the heading
”Self-Help Comes to the Schools." Relating that parents are
having less and less regard for educational ”experts," he
cites two examples, one from each coast, of parents inject-
ing themselves into the business of schools.

In New Jersey, a group sued the local school board

for 'effectively excluding' parents from the

educational goal-setting process, and parents in

Palo Alto, California, pushed for a role in

collective béfgaining between teachers and the

school board.

While discussing "Curriculum in the year 2000" in an
article for Phi Delta Kappan, Michael Apple of the
University of Wisconsin, not only sees examples that support
this sixth trend, but relates his own example, which is

quite within the same context as the two given previously by

Naisbitt. Noting the activism of several groups, Apple

38
gives his example with a slightly negative flavor. In the
recent past,

The activism of conservative and extremist groups
has increased measurably. This activism will
continue to grow, feeding on past successes that
result in increased funding. Mel and Norma Gabler
of Longview, Texas, are prime examples; they speak
for a larger movement that spends considerable
time denouncing textbooks that are 'unpatriotic,’
that reject 'absolute values' and 'free enter-
prise,‘ that emphasize too strongly the contri-
butions of minority groups, and so on. Armed with
the notion that God is on their side, they are
likely to scrutinize an ever-broader swath of
curricular content, intent on purging it of any
taint of 'un-Americanism' and 'secular humanism.‘
The increase in book banning and the evolution/-
creation controversy document the growing willing-
ness of such groups to enter into ggbates over
what should be taught in the schools.

Yet later in this same article, Apple softens his
negativism and becomes more optimistic. His impression is
that such groups, at least, are becoming more responsible
and self-reliant, and he injects this notion into his
discussion.

Even the scrutiny of the curriculum by conserva-
tive groups, to which I alluded earlier, should
not be seen as merely a threat. The fact that
parents--of whatever political persuasion-~take a
serious interest in their children's education
suggests possible ggenues for cooperation and
fruitful discussion.

In this way, and in many others, Apple, Ravitch and Toffler

support the thrust of John Naisbitt's sixth trend.*

*Note: The authors whose work has been cited as support for
many of the propositions advocated by Naisbitt,
represent a wide diversity of backgrounds and
phi1050phica1 positions. Yet their views of the
currently evolving society in some cases dovetail
remarkably with those offered by Naisbitt, possibly
giving even greater substance to his positions.

39

The "information society," the shift from "short-term
to long-term thinking,” and the trend towards "greater
self-help and self-reliance" certainly seem to be important
ones, not only in John Naisbitt's perceptions, but in those
of other prominent writers. Maybe it really should not come
as much of a surprise that so many of these other writers,
not only make supplemental contributions to the support for
the trend data, and often assume the validity of the stated
trend, but also have much to say of the relationship of the
proposed trends to the education of the coming generations
of America's young people. Hopefully these trends will
provide a good and useful backdrop for the discussion of the
Whiteheadian educational tenets which are presented a little

later in this study.

40

CHAPTER II FOOTNOTES

1John Naisbitt, Megatrends: Ten new directions trans-
forming our lives (New York, 1982), p. 1.

2Ibid, p. 19.
31bid, p. 1.
Ibid, pp. 41-49.
Ibid, p. 47.
Ibid, p. 61.
Ibid, p. 56.
Ibid, p. 72.

9Ibid, p. 76.

Ibid, p. 85.
Ibid, p. 86.
Ibid, p. 93.
Ibid, pp. 1-2.
Ibid, p. 97.
Ibid, p. 103.
17Ibid, p. 107.

laIbid, p. 98.

Ibid, p. 134.
Ibid, p. 144.
Ibid, p. 146.

41

23Ibid, p. 2.

241618, p. 164.

251618, p. 185.

251618, p. 182.

27Ibid, p. 180.

28Ibid, p. 180-181.

291618, p. 188.

3oIbid, p. 2.

31Ibid, pp. 192-193.

321bid, p. 194.

33Ibid, p. 199.

341618, p. 2.

BSIbid, pp. 208-209.

361bid, p. 210.

37Ibid, p. 2.

38Ibid, pp. 232-233.

39Ibid, p. 236.

4Oxbid. pp. 242-243.

411618, p. 247.

42Louis Goldman, "Megatrends: Megahype, Megabad,"
Educational Leadership, (September 1983), p. 56.

43Emily Yoffe, "John Naisbitt's Clip Joint," Harper's,
(September 1983), p. 19.

44Naisbitt, p. 12.

451618, p. 14.

461618, p. 15.

47
172.
48

Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York, 1980), p.

 

Ibid, p. 193.

42
49Ihid. pp. 193-194.

50Mike Hickey, ”Two Megatrends Will Alter Public
Schooling,” The American School Board Journal, (April 1983),
p. 7.

Sllbid, p. 7.

52Arthur Lewis, ”Education for the let Century,"
Educational Leadership, (September 1983), pp. 9-10.

53Naisbitt, p. 1.
54Ibid, p. 85.
55Ibid, p. 88.

56Paul Houston, "Planning for Learning in the World of
Tomorrow,” Educational Leadership, (September 1983), p. 47.

57

 

Ibid, p. 48.

58Hickey, p. 7.

59Ibid, pp. 7,49.

60Ron Brandt, "On Education and the Future: A Conversa-
tion With Harold Shane," Educational Leadership, (September
1984), p. 13.

61William Esler, ”The American School Dilemma: On the

Upside of the Third Wave," Clearing House, (October 1983),
pp. 54-550

62

 

Naisbitt, p. 2.

63Ibid, p. 131.

64Toffler, p. 401.

651618, p. 401.

66Diane Ravitch, "On Thinking About the Future," Phi
Delta Kappan, (January 1983), p. 320. '

67Naisbitt, p. 143.

68Michael Apple, ”Curriculum in the Year 2000: Tensions
and ‘Possibilities," Phi Delta. Kappan, (January' 1983), p.
322.

69

 

Ibid, p. 324.

CHAPTER III

Chapter three establishes the era of Whitehead and
treats four areas of British History. In order to provide a
base for the understanding of Alfred North Whitehead's
educational thought as expressed in the succeeding chapter,
some attention should be given to the historical context in
which his thoughts are being composed and expressed. This
chapter is not intended to be a historical narrative of all
of the activities occurring within and without the British
Empire in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In
addition, it is not intended to be an exhaustive discourse
on a particular aspect of British History, but rather a
reminder of some of the events that affected most of the
people in the United Kingdom at one time or another. This
chapter, then, is intended to be a refresher for the under-
standing of the major events and activities that provided
the context in which A. N. Whithead lived, worked, and
reasoned. ‘

The narrative that follows is primarily informed by
several notable British Historians. Foundational elements
are provided by H. A. Clement and textbook author John Ray.

Clement is probably more widely known for his three volumes

entitled The Story of Britain published over a fourteen year

43

44

span. The works of Arthur Marwick and A. J. P. Taylor
figure even more prominently. Marwick is becoming increa-
singly popular as a leading Professor of History in
England's Open University, and any discussion would be
remiss without including the works of the venerable A. J. P.
Taylor, who is now an Honorary Fellow in both Magdalen and
Oriel Colleges at Oxford. The chapter owes much to the
works of these men.

It is additionally worth noting to the reader that two
important themes are at work throughout the discussion of
the chapter. The first is that the "war to end all wars"
quite naturally becomes the focal point of the era under
consideration. The second is that somewhere just below the
national consciousness in Great Britain, there is the notion
that education will and possibly must play a more prominent
role in the evolution of British society.

The following paragraphs discuss four particular areas.
These areas include: Britain's role in the relationship to
the international community, some of the socio-political
developments in British society, the role and developments
of some areas of science and technology in Britain, and the
develOpments and roles of some areas of education in
Britain. These four areas are in most cases chronologically
limited to the years 1900 through 1925, though often the
foundations of the events precede 1900. When such founda-
tional events merit, attempts will be made to cite the

necessary earlier dates.

45
Great Britain in the International Community

As Britain entered the twentieth century, there was
little doubt that she was in many ways still ruler of the
seas. Her navy was the best in the world and possibly
overshadowed her sizeable and ambitious fleet of merchant
ships. The "island nation" had always been preoccupied with
seafaring matters since the days of Hawkins and Drake and no
less so at this time. Many of those nations who competed
with her for colonial territories during the nineteenth
century knew better than to engage her naval squadrons if
such an engagement could be avoided. At the same time, most
nations realized that Britain's international intentions
were motivated more by economics than by notions of world
conquest, and more by expanding trade than by military
adventures though conquest and military intervention often
resulted. The British were capitalists much more than
militarists and competed accordingly. Most other reasonably
civilized nations accepted and to some extent understood
Great Britain in this way. Most established European
nations had little to say to Britain, because they were
occupied with many of the same kinds of endeavors, and were
more or less imitators of the British Colonial system.

When British history textbook author, John Ray,
explains to school age youngsters, that the "sun never set
on the British Empire,"1 he is not only describing Britain's
role in the world community in the nineteenth and early

twentieth century, but he is also preparing those youngsters

46
to understand a set of attitudes that appear to have been
uniquely British. In addition, he is preparing to introduce
them to one of the most prevasive figures in British
History, Queen Victoria, who was the embodiment of these
attitudes.

If one thinks of stereotypical Victorian social graces,
Victorian fashions, or Victorian morals, then one might find
the Victorian attitude towards colonization and self-
government slightly inconsistent. Though the general notion
was that most colonies needed strict supervision, this
attitude mellowed almost as Victoria mellowed. While most
analogies break down somewhere, John Ray's maternal analogy
speaks to the point. "The British attitude to her empire
was largely expressed in terms of the family. Great Britain
was the mother nation. Some of her children had grown up
sufficiently to be allowed an amount of freedom.”2. Indeed
more than an ”amount” was given to Canada with the passage
of the British North America Act in 1867. Australia enjoyed
considerable self-government which culminated in the passage
of the Australian Commonwealth Act in 1900. Though New
Zealand could have joined with Australia in 1900, she held
out and was rewarded with Dominion status of her own in
1907. Self-government for South Africa proved more diffi-
cult because of the lack of internal unity, but the Union of

South Africa Act was nevertheless passed by Parliament in

1909. Many more colonies received these same kinds of

47
freedoms and enjoyed independence. The offspring of
Victoria's Britain were allowed to grow up.

While Britain's relationship with the international
community and her colonies matured in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, with Germany, it regressed.
Despite what several British leaders termed ”splendid
isolation,” Lord Salisbury being chief among them, Britain
drifted toward treaties and alliances that would finally put
her at odds with Germany. Initially the ascension of
William II as ruler of Germany seemed favorable for both
countries particularly because he was a grandson of Queen
Victoria, and she held a positive outlook towards Germany
for this reason. Even her successor Edward VII did his best
to improve relations, but William (known to Germans as
Wilhelm) was seemingly more interested in a bigger piece of
the world trade pie, a bigger, more aggressive navy, and
generally supporting those who were opposing Great Britain,
the Boers in South Africa being an example. Thus, the
unentangled British through some rather reluctantly con-
cluded agreements with France and Russia, became entangled.

Many times in her history Great Britain had gone to
war, often fighting prolonged skirmishes throughout the
world. Many of these left the average citizen for the most
part uninvolved and sometimes almost disinterested. Fight-
ing such a war was the responsibility of the government and
the professional soldier. World War I proved to be an

entirely different situation. 'UH: the outbreak of the war

 

48

the British public optimistically thought it would end in a
few months. No-one could have foreseen the immensity of the
sacrifice that would be made, not only by Britain, but by
all nations concerned, before peace once more returned to a
sick world."3

The nature of the sacrifice took many forms. Financial
concerns were met by raising existing taxes and imposing new
ones. This, coupled with increased emphasis on opening and
expanding personal savings accounts and purchasing govern-
ment bonds, helped finance the war from the average citi-
zen's pocketbook. Conscription was generally not a part of
British military history, but despite the fact that many
young men volunteered, the draft became necessary by 1916.
Many union workers saw their contracts, conditions, and
privileges reduced or compromised throughout the war, and at
the same time experienced a near tripling of the price of
consumer goods, which ultimately brought the imposition of
price-controls and rationing. Historian H. A. Clement makes
the point this way: "For the first time in history the
civilian population found itself-albeit in a very small
way-in the front line."4_ Such a statement becomes even more
poignant when one considers that the civilian pOpulation
also withstood attacks from both zeppelins and airplanes for
the first time in history.

All of this is to say nothing of the sacrifice of
lives. William Langer put the World War I casualty figures

for Great Britain at 947,000 killed and 2,122,000 wounded.S

49
Figures such as these sometimes have an impersonal ring, but
the nature of the sacrifice often included the entire
family. The A. N. Whitehead family was no exception, as all
of the Whitehead children were committed to the Allied
cause. Indeed Whitehead explained their roles in the
following way.

They all served in the First World War: Our eldest

son throughout its whole extent, in France, in

East Africa, and in England; our daughter in the

Foreign Office in England and Paris; our youngest

boy served in the Air Force: his plane was shot

down 6in France with fatal results, in March,

1918.

Considering this kind of involvement and these kinds of
sacrifices, one should probably.not have been too surprised
at the initial British responses toward Germany and her
allies, when the peace talks finally commenced. Most blamed
Germany for the war, and most wanted something akin to
'revenge. Public outcries including slogans such as, ”'Hang
the Kaiser' and 'Squeeze Germany till the pips squeak' had
been common."7 Members of Parliament had their turn at this
same sentiment when "...over 200 M.P.s sent a telegram to
Lloyd George, (the British leader at the peace talks) expos-
tulating against his weakness towards Germany."8 Several
historians, however, including Clement, Taylor, and others
have praise for the work and the role played by Lloyd George
in the talks. They describe him as the moderate voice

between the highly idealistic President Wilson and the truly

revenge-minded Clemenceau of France.

50

The moderate stance taken by Lloyd George probably had
as much to do with Great Britain's seemingly quick re-
establishment of positive relations with almost everyone in
Europe (except Russia) as anything. The major threat from
Germany before the war was her challenge to British shipping
and British sea-power in general. By the end of the war the
Germans had scuttled their navy and thereby lost the ability
to protect their foreign possessions, which they had taken
from them during the course of the war anyway. Thus, the
British really had no territorial claims to make upon the
Germans, and by the time the final draft of the peace treaty
had been drawn, many Liberal and Labor voices were talking
about the notion of reconciliation. According to Taylor,
they ”...looked both back and forward: forward to the League
of Nations, but also back to the happy days of 1914, when
Germany was treated as an equal and friendly power."9

This second decade of the twentieth century saw not
only the beginning and end of the ”war to end all wars,” but
the end of Lord Salisbury's "splendid isolation.” Great
Britain could no longer remain isolated from the affairs on
the continent or even those of the rest of the world for
that matter. Going to war to protect Belgium's neutrality
to some may have seemed somewhat frivolous in retrospect,
but few would have said that Britain's entry into the
conflict was unnecessary. Besides the false notion of
isolation, many felt an additional consequence of the war.

The great optimism of the Victorian era had given way to a

 

A

5\

eaud

.Nlb
A\v

51
new‘more pessimistic view of international relationships,
especially in the sense that those relationships should not
be taken for granted, and also in the sense that Britain

should never again take her own preparedness for granted.

Socio-Political Developments

The same quarter century that brought greater interest
in colonies, a: sudden departure from continental isolation
and World War I, also brought ten years of conservative
leadership followed by ten of Liberal leadership and five of
compromise leadership during and just after the war years.
The decade of the Conservatives reflected pre-occupation
with external rather than internal affairs and provided some
moderate social reforms. The decade of the Liberals
provided considerable social and political reforms and the
emergence of a new party, known as the Parliamentary Labour
Party. The war years brought about a national coalition
government and a considerable amount of reflective intro—
spection on the part of a good many professionals and reform
leaders.

The year 1895 proved to be one of demise for the
Liberal Government. With a large increase in death duties
being enacted by parliament and some untimely remarks by
Liberal leaders, many found themselves at great odds with
their constituents. In the general election that followed,
Conservatives and Liberal Unionists became the overwhelming
majority. Lord Salisbury led the coalition over the next

seven years. During that time international and colonial

52

affairs dominated the leadership's attention, and domestic
affairs took a back seat. There were, however, a couple of
noteworthy measures. The Agricultural Rates Act of 1896 cut
farmers' taxes in half, and the Wbrkmen's Compensation Act
provided assistance for those injured on the job and support
for the subsequent lack of wage earning ability. In addi-
tion, the Local Government Act empowered suburban boroughs
to assist in the government of the nation's capital.

Socialist and Marxist groups made inroads with the
populace during this time, while their Liberal cousins were
out of power. Two groups gained in popularity. The
Fabians, who drew leadership from Sidney webb and his wife
Beatrice and from George Bernard Shaw, and newly established
union groups who represented less skilled workers, became
popular and progressively bolder as the century turned. It
was during this same time that the newly organized Labour
Representation Committee returned its first two Members of
Parliament.

In 1902 Lord Salisbury decided to step down from his
leadership position and handed the reins of government to
A. J. Balfour, who happened to be his nephew. Probably the
most outstanding legislation enacted during this time dealt
with education. Balfour's Education Act addressed three
inadequacies including: the disbanding of the outdated
school board system, the lack of financial support for
voluntary schools, and the lack of provisions for other than

elementary education. The Act was generally quite popular

53

but met with some opposition within Balfour's own Conser-
vative party as it was perceived to be a little ”too
progressive,” especially in light of the fact that it
provided some public funding for church schools. If this
was not enough, the Unionists led by Balfour's Secretary for
Colonial Affairs, Joseph Chamberlain, picked this time to
introduce and push for a new protective tariff, which
ultimately split the Conservative-Unionist coalition in two.
An attempt to patch the differences only made matters worse,
and in December of 1905 Balfour resigned. The Liberals
under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman assumed control and held
a general election the next month which solidified them in
the seat of power.

The Liberal party took control, particularly gleeful at
their good fortune. They, of course, had no way of knowing
that the next ten years were to be their only control of
Parliament in the next fifty. Speaking as a native Briton,
H. A. Clement notes, however, that the Liberal Party's
”...period of office ranks as one of the great reforming

eras in our history."10

This statement is particularly true
in light of both the breadth and depth of law established by
the leadership of the Liberals. Though the focal point of
much of the legislation had to do with the working man, the
party's successes also included land reform, strides in

education, various forms of national insurance, and reform

in the law-making process itself.

54

It is next to impossible and in some cases unnecessary
to list all of the legislative accomplishments achieved
under the leadership of the Liberals during the ten years
ending with the outbreak of World War I, but a brief look at
those enactments does provide some insight into both the
type of thinking and even some of the great debates of that
period. As in the previous decade, two men assumed the
position of Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
from 1905-08 and Herbert Asquith from 1908 through 1916
which includes the first two years of the coalition
government. Unlike the previous decade, Parliament was
occupied so far as reforms were concerned with domestic
rather than foreign policy decisions, and chief among those
who were to benefit was the working man. Several important
measures provided benefits to the average man and reform to
his world of work. Initially, the Workman's Compensation
Act of 1906 brought additional trades under the provisions
of the previously mentioned Salisbury Act of 1897. The
Trades Boards Act of 1909 created boards composed of equal
numbers of employers and employees, and empowered the boards
to fix wage-rates in certain industries. In that same year
the government created ”Labour Exchanges" which brought
unemployed workers into contact with those employers needing
workmen. The National Insurance Act of 1911 aided some
17,000,000 workers. The two-part act provided a form of
health insurance to approximately 15,000,000 workers, while

also providing a type of unemployment insurance to roughly

55
2,000,000 additional workers. Finally, in 1912, Parliament
enacted both the Shop Hours Act and the Miners' Minimum
Wages Act. The former allowed for a half-day's vacation for
shop assistants, and the latter took the unprecedented step
of regulating wages in one of the United Kingdom's most
important industries.

The House of Commons, Women, Children, and Ireland all
benefitted from the decade of the Liberals. In 1909 the
House of Lords overwhelmingly rejected the budget that had
been approved in the Commons. Such a bold move as this one
had not happened at any time in the preceding 250 years, and
following the election of 1910, the Commons with the help of
King George V, made certain that it would not happen again,
with what Clement has called, ”...one of the most important

constitutional laws in our history."11

The Parliamentary
Act of 1911 assured that the Lords could neither reject nor
amend any bill which had been certified as a money bill by
the Speaker of the House of Commons. Thus, the elected
body, the Commons, received greater law-making authority at
the expense of the Lords. Women, thanks to greater emphasis
on their educational needs during the last half of the
nineteenth century, were certified to be duly elected to
both borough and county councils. Children gained in
several areas. Free meals were provided to poor children
along with other types of medical help, and all of this at
their local schools. The Children Act of 1908 provided

regulations in) prevent cruelty, the employment of children

56

in dangerous trades, the sale to them of alcohol and
tobacco, and their universally being tried as adults in the
case of criminal actions. The Irish, after long, heated,
and sometimes violent debates, particularly over the problem
with Ulster, received the good news of the passage of the
Home Rule Bill of 1914. Unfortunately enforcement of the
act was not forthcoming, but most Irishmen were not about to
make an issue of it as the much more pressing problem of
Britain's entry into World War I had to take precedence.

The pace of social and political reform drew to a
standstill during and immediately after the war. A
coalition of Liberal, Labor, and Conservative Members~of
Parliament ruled Britain through 1922 and really had little
time or desire for social legislation. The most significant
political change was that David Lloyd George assumed the
coalition's leadership role, succeeding Herbert Asquith in
1916. The most significant social legislation was the 1920
addition to the Unemployment Insurance Act of 1911. The new
legislation extended benefits to an additional two million
workers. There was considerable talk of new employment
opportunities for veterans and "homes fit for heroes,” but
legislation was not forthcoming. Unemployment grew and
heroes went back to the same slums.

Politics and legislative matters were not foreign to
the Whiteheads. Both A. N. and Mrs. Whitehead were active
in politics. From an autobiographical sketch Whitehead

describes a sample of his involvement.

57

During our residence at Grantchester, I did a
considerable amount of political Speaking in
Grantchester and the country villages of the
district. The meetings were in the parish school-
rooms, during evening. IIt was exciting work, as
the whole village attended and expressed itself
vigourously. English villages have no use for
regular party agents. They require local
residents to address them. I always found that a
party agent was a nuisance. Rotten eggs and
oranges were effective party weapons, and I have
often been covered by them. But they were
indications of vigour, rather than of bad feeling.
Our worst experience was at a meeting in the
Guildhall at Cambridge, addressed by Keir Hardie
who was then the leading member of the new Labour
Party. My wife and I were on the platform,
sitting behind him, and there was a riotous
undergraduate audience. The result was that any
rotten oranges that missed Kgpr Hardie had a good
chance of hitting one of us.

There is also a good chance that A. N. Whitehead kept a
close eye on all of the socio-political develOpments of the

era under discussion in this chapter.

Scientific and Technological Advance

The discoveries and subsequent applications of scien-
tific insight stimulated by the war efforts fostered a
dramatic leap in technology both during and after the War.
With many of the necessary scientific principles having been
established in the two decades prior to World War I, tech-
nological application became a necessity of survival during
the War. Many industrial leaders and even some educational
leaders were not really aware of advances in the manufacture
and uses of chemicals, the potential of wireless telegraphy,
and the many advances in the internal combustion engine.
Arthur Marwick puts it this way, "...the potential of the

developments in applied science and technology, which in

58
fact have revolutionized human life throughout the world,

were scarcely appreciated in the Britain of 1941: ....”l3

Germany's march through Belgium brought an urgent interest,
and the necessary prod. Marwick states the point.

What a war will do, however, is to provide a

stimulus to the development and application of

existing ideas, that is to technology and to

applied science; a war will release purse-strings.
and encourage politicians to found institutions

for the practical applications of science: a war,

itself the great creator of necessity, gill foster

an atmosphere favourable to invention.1

Two major technological advances directly affected the
average Briton as a result of the war. First, wireless
telegraphy fairly leaped into the national consciousness as
a result of not only its wartime successes but also the
special significance that many leaders attached to it.

In stressing the importance and future possibili-
ties of wireless, the Observer, in January 1919,
pointed out that but for this means of communi-
cation Germany would have been completely cut off
from fge outside world in the latter stages of the
war.” Arthur Burrows, who would become a famous
broadcaster and indeed acquired his first experi-
ences monitoring enemy broadcasts during the war,
saw its peacetime usefulness. ”Burrows saw most
clearly the future uses of wireless, for broad-
casting of speech and music instead of merely for
telegraphic communication: in 1918 he forecast
'the concert reproduction in all private recigals
at the lesser rendezvous of the music world.‘

With advances in the development of the thermionic valve,
from wartime necessity, and a solid push from commercial
interests, Burrows' prediction soon became reality.

The other most obvious advance was the immense
improvements in the internal combustion engine. These

improvements impacted the average Briton first through his

59
new accessibility to a motor car, and eventually to his
opportunity to fly. Prior to World War I ownership of a
motorcar was primarily the province of the rich. With the
Army's great demand for vehicles and their subsequent mass
production, British industries had only to apply the same
techniques for the domestic markets. While Britain had some
132,000 registered vehicles in 1914 that figure became more
than 330,000 in 1919, and the following years found manufac-
turers producing smaller family type cars. John Ray notes
that, ”The first of the small cars was the Austin Seven of
1922. It could cruise easly at 40 m.p.h. and was able to

cover 50 miles on one gallon of petrol."17

Thus reasonably
fast personal transportation was soon available. The other
means of transportation, air travel, followed just as
quickly though not approaching the same numbers. British
wartime air advances were spectacular as explained by
Marwick.
The aeroplanes sent out with the B.E.F. (British
Expeditionary Force) in 1914 had a maximum speed
of 80 miles per hour, a rate of climb from ground
level of 300 or 400 feet per minute, and were
equipped with engines of 60 to 100 horse-power.
In 1918 the fastest machines could reach 140 miles
per hour and had a rate of climb from ground level
of 2,000 feet per minute.... The maximum flying
height8 had been raised from 5,000 to 25,000
feet.
These advances were soon brought to the commercial arena
with the creation of Britain's own Imperial Airways. The
company, created as an amalgamation of four smaller

companies in 1924, was almost immediately successful. ”In

60
the first year of operation more than 11,000 people used the

airline."19

As many of the principles of science were established
as the result of theoretical inquiry prior to WOrld War I,
so the same processes continued with even greater fervor
throughout the war, once again receiving considerable
support from government leadership. Committees of reputable
scientists were formed nOt only to bring about advances in
communication and transportation, but also in such areas as
agriculture, energy, (particularly the generation of elec-
tric power), and in the use and development of chemicals.
The initial'meeting of leading-scientists in the field of
chemistry resulted in a call typical of other groups. They
insisted upon, ”Government assistance for scientific
research for industrial purposes, the establishment of
closer relations between the manufacturers and scientific
workers and teachers, and the establishment of a National

"20 The Army

Chemical Advisory Committee for these purposes.
and Navy established committees of scientists for their own
parochial purposes. Surprisingly, though, according to
Marwick, "...the biggest scientific advance of the whole war
era, the artificial disintegration of the atom, had nothing
whatever to do with the demands of the war."21 Ernest
Rutherford's achievements in this area coupled with those of
Einstein and Planck would soon set the scientific and educa-

tional communities ablaze. Would the Dean of the Faculty of

Science at the University of London be most interested in

 

Aw.

’3

«\~

:~

61
all of these developments, especially if the Dean happened

to be A. N. Whitehead?

Educational Developments
The interest in educating Britain's young people had
been growing for some time. In the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, Parliament had opened the way for the
establishment of schools for girls. Many of these schools
had a larger curriculum, which in a number of cases caused
imitation in the boys' schools.
The new girls' schools, with their emphasis on the
'tone' of the school, the environment in which the
pupils worked, and the educational value of semi-
recreational activities as extras to the normal
curriculum, must indirectly have done much to
humanize the boys' schools, which, despite the
work of Dr. Arnold of Rugby and Edward Thring of
Uppingham, were still in manyzfases bound by
outworn traditions from the past.
Besides the partial inclusion of females and curriculum
changes, the Balfour government brought both governance and
funding changes. The old school boards were abolished and
the counties were given authority over educational matters.
Such county councils were also empowered to provide not only
technical and secondary schools, but also teacher training
institutions if they so desired. In addition voluntary
schools received badly needed tax revenues to continue their
work, and were encouraged to join all other schools in
establishing a uniform school leaving age.
‘While the Liberal government under Campbell-Bannerman

assisted many children through its enactment of laws pro-

viding for school-wide medical inspections and free meals

62
for poor children, no self-respecting Liberal or Conser-
vative would have backed the notion of "education for the
masses," at least not prior to the war. A. J. P. Taylor
aptly describes the educational setting.

The children of the masses went to free day
schools until the age of 14; the children of the
privileged went to expensive boarding schools
until 13. The dividing line here was as hard as
that between Hindu castes. No child ever crossed
it. At the secondary level, the division was
almost as complete. Nearly all the children of
the privileged proceeded to expensive private
schools--public schools as they were perversely
called. A minority of children from other classes
went to modern day schools, maintained from public
funds. The grammar schools straddled in between,
mainly and appropriately for the middle class, and
with a few poor boys as well. At the highest
level, the modern universities in large towns were
socially inferior to Oxford and Cambridge, which
remained in spirit, and largely in numbers,
preserves of the privileged classes. The two
systems of education catered for different classes
and provided education, diffeignt in quality and
content, for rulers and ruled.

The Great War, indirectly as well as directly, fostered
the beginnings of numerous changes in attitudes and perspec-
tives among both governmental and educational leaders. Many
had been encouraged by the large numbers of draftees who had
voluntarily taken educational training while in the Army.
Many, too, were coming to understand what Marwick has
described as the, ”new scientific orientation to British
society at the end of the war."24 H. A. L. Fisher incor-
porated many of the educational community's ideas in the
Education Bill which he proposed to Parliament in 1918 as

part of Britain's post-war reconstruction program. The

proposals were sweeping, and left little doubt as to where

63

he stood. "The intention was to have a comprehensive system
which would give all children and young persons the oppor-
tunity to enjoy the advantages of whatever form of education
was best suited to their particular capacities."25
Unfortunately many of the provisions of Fisher's bill could
not be funded due to the financial crisis of the immediate
post-war period, but interest in these kinds of proposals
and in this kind of dialogue continually occupied the
spotlight in educational circles throughout the following
decade.

This brief review of the first quarter of the twentieth
century is a sketch of some of the significant changes in
national directions and attitudes as experienced by most
Britons, and there is little doubt that many of those
changes were the result of the impact of the Great War. The
intense interest in acquiring colonies became the more
moderate interest in managing and defending those colonies.
The fervor for social reform became the necessity of finan-
cial responsibility; The gentlemanly notion of scientific
inquiry became the necessity of greater inquiry and its
subsequent application through technological advance. At
the same time, the associated role of education in all of
these matters moved from debates among educators and
educational leaders to the national scene, with many of the
great intellects of the day taking a prominent part in the
discussions. It is from these prior debates, discussions

and educational meetings that a great many of Alfred North

'3’

—-—‘-K‘VFC'LL-g.a

 

64

Whitehead's educational positions
thought and rationale emanate.

follows in the succeeding chapter.

and their accompanying

The discussion of these

I ”‘4‘ 1'7..E'&.Vc

17'-

 

65

CHAPTER III FOOTNOTES

1John Ray, A History of Britain 1900-1939, (New York,
1967), p. 7.

21bid, p. 7.
3H. A. Clement, British History 1865 - 1965, (London,

1966), p. 93.

4Ibid, p. 95.

5William L. Langer, An Encyclopedia of Wbrld History,
(Boston, 1972). p. 976.

6A. N. Whitehead, Essays in Science and Philosophy,
(New York, 1968), p. 11.

7Clement, p. 102.

8A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914 - 194;, (New
York, 1965), p. 135.

 

91bid, p. 136.

10Clement, p. 58.

11Clement, p. 14.

12A. N. Whitehead, Essays in Science and Philosophy,
(New york, 1968) p. 14.

13

 

Arthur Marwick, The Deluge, (London, 1965), p. 228.

141616, p. 227.

15Ibid, p. 234.

16Arthur Marwick, The Delug_e_, (London, 1965), p. 235,
from A. Briggs, The Birth of Broadcasting, 1962, p. 38.

17John Ray, A History of Britain 1900 - 1939, (New York,
1967), p. 132.

18Arthur Marwick, The Deluge, (London, 1965). PP.
233-234, from Report of British Association, 1919, pp. 15,
258.

 

 

 

 

66
19Ray, p. 138.

20Arthur Marwick, The Deluge, (London,
from P.P., 1916, VIII, Cd.8336, p. 8.

21Marwick, p. 236.

22Clement, p. 70.

23Taylor, p. 171.

24Marwick, p. 236.

25Arthur Marwick, The Deluge, (London,

 

1965):

1965).
from Repgrt of War Cabinet for 1918, Cmd. 325, p.

p.

p.
295 ff.

229,

245,

CHAPTER IV

Similar to the treatment of John Naisbitt in chapter
two, the following chapter discusses primary tenents of
Alfred North Whitehead's educational thought, as well as

discusses Whitehead's background.

Biographical Notes

Born February 15, 1861, at Ramsgate on the Isle of
Thanet, Kent, England, Whitehead grew up amid some particu-
larly unique surroundings. He often attributed much of his
interest in learning to the fact that his early life was
punctuated by the vivid examples of ”living history” found
in his corner of England. Within ten to fifteen miles or
less of the Whitehead home in east Kent, stands Canterbury
Cathedral, where Becket fell in 1170; the tomb of Edward,
the Black Prince; the remains of the great walls of Rich-
borough Castle, built by the Romans; and within a mile, the
Abbey Church of Minster where Augustine preached his first
sermon.

In addition to these stimulating surroundings, young
Whitehead enjoyed the stimulation of unique personalities,
most notably those of his father, his grandfather, and
Archbishop Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Alfred's

grandfather, Thomas Whitehead, whom he calls a "remarkable

68

man," served as the Headmaster of the private school in
Ramsgate for thirty-seven years, after attaining that
position at the young age of twenty-one. Alfred's father,
Alfred senior, was grandfather's successor and served ably
for fifteen years before being ordained a clergyman in the
Anglican Church. His interest in education continued. He
made daily visits to the three parochial schools under his
jurisdiction, often with young Alfred accompanying him.
Throughout his youth, Alfred's grandfather lived with the
family. One can imagine the engaging dinner talk discus-
sions to which the young Whitehead was privy.

Most of Alfred's early schooling took place at home.
"As he was considered a frail boy, he was privately educated
by his father until he was 14, when he was sent to Sher-
borne, then one of the best although not one of the most

prestigious of England's public schools."1

Once again he
found himself surrounded by ”living history” as Sherborn's
tradition was one of distinction. "It dates from St.
Aldhelm, and claims Alfred the Great as a pupil. The school
acquired the monastery buildings, and its grounds are
bounded by one of the most magnificent Abbeys in existence,

”2 Whitehead and others

with tombs of Saxon princes.
believed that his private study was the Abbot's room, and
noted that, ”...we worked under the sound of the Abbey
bells, brought from the Field of The Cloth of Gold by Henry

VIII."3

69
Academically, for Whitehead, as well as for many
youngsters of his time, Latin began at age ten and Greek at
age twelve. These studies continued throughout his teen
years. Prior to attending Sherborne, "...pages of rules of
Latin grammar could be repeated, all in Latin, and exempli-

W4 While at Sherborne, "...he received

fied by quotations.
the usual predominantly classical education but was excused
from some of the Latin to devote more time, under a first-

rate master, to mathematics."5

This is not to say that
other areas of study were excluded. 'Of course such studies
included history--namely, Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides,

Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus."6

' At the same time Whitehead
distinguished himself in areas other than mathematics and
humanities.

.A good football player, he became both captain of

the games and head of the school (that is, the

chief of the prefects, boys who had complete

charge of discipline outside the classroom). In
dedication to duty and in exercise of authority by
persuasion Whitehead early became an example of

the public school Englishmen at his best."

Upon completion of his schooling at Sherborne,
Whitehead made the transition to Cambridge. According to
him, "My university life at Trinity College, Cambridge,
commenced in the autumn of 1880; and, so far as residence is
concerned, continued without interruption until the summer
of 1910. But my membership of the College, first as
'scholar' and then as 'fellow' continues unbroken. I cannot

exaggerate my obligation to the University of Cambridge, and

in particular to Trinity College, for social and intellec-

70

tual training.”8 On the intellectual side, Whitehead's
training was entirely in mathematics for honors, noting that
the mathematics lecture hall was the only one in which he
took any courses. On the social side, Whitehead received
his education in a manner that might well have been unique
to Cambridge scholars of the nineteenth century. Whithead
explains it in the following way:

...the lectures were only one side of the educa-
tion. The mission portions were supplied by
incessant conversation, with our friends, under-
graduates, or members of the staff. This started
with dinner at about six or seven, and went on
till about ten o'clock in the evening, stopping
sometimes earlier and sometimes later.... We
discussed everything--politics, religion, phil-
osophy, literature--with a bias toward literature.
This experience led to a large amount of miscel-
laneous reading. For example, by the time I had
gained my fellowship in 1885 I nearly knew by
heart parts of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason....
That was the way by which Cambridge educated her
sons. It was a replica of the Platonic method.
The 'Apostles' who met on Saturdays in each
others' rooms, from 10, p.m. to any time next
morning, were the concentration of this
experience.... These we discussed with Maitland,
the historian, Verrall, Henry Jackson, Sidgwick
and casual judges, or scientists, or members of
Parliament who had come up to Cambridge for the
weekend. It was a wonderful influence.

Thus the Cambridge experience at that particular time was
not only an education, but a whole way of life.

Having become a "fellow" and thereafter a "lecturer,"
Whitehead commenced work (”1 his first book entitled g

Treatist on Universal Algebra which was published in 1898.

 

In 1903 he was elected to the Royal Society. AS his con-
tinued work began to mesh with that of his former pupil,

Bertrand Russell, the two decided to collaborate, and

71
produced the famous Principia Mathematica (1910-1913).
Shortly after completing this work, he took a position at
the University of London and completed a very widely admired
book entitled An Introduction to Mathematics (1911). At
that point Whitehead dedicated himself to a slightly differ-
ent career direction.

At the University of London he became a professor in
the Imperial College of Science and Technology and shortly
afterward was named the Dean of that college. His atten-
tion, however, became clearly focused on education and
providing greater opportunities for the masses. During the
fourteen years in London, he served and administered
numerous educational committees, championed the cause of
greater educational access for everyone, and most important
of all, delivered the discourses which when collected

together became the book entitled The Aims of Education and

 

Other Essays (1929). This book essentially comprised the
major portion of Whitehead's writings on education.

At this point in his career, his preeminence as a
philosopher of science brought him even greater attention,
particularly in the administrative circles at Harvard
University, where at the age of 63, he accepted a position
in the Philosophy Department. He served Harvard, as always,
with distinction and retired at the end of the '36-'37
school year. As Professor Emeritus he remained active in
both writing and the affairs of the university community

until his death at the age of 86 in 1947.

72

In Great Britain and particularly England, Whitehead is
still held in great esteem both as an educator and educa-‘
tional thinker. There is little doubt that his educational,
family, and life experiences prepared him for the signifi-
cant contributions that he made to education while at the
University of London. Certainly his administrative efforts
in the borough of London were noteworthy, but the educa-
tional perspectives and the poignant insights provided by
the several discourses delivered during this particularly
tense and yet educationally electric time in Great Britain
have almost universal relevance. Many British educators
would agree that some of Britain's greatest educational
leaps were the result of the endeavors of educational
leaders during the two World Wars. The Whitehead philo-
sophical contribution made during the post-World War I era
was and is viewed as monumental.

There are several reasons why both Whtehead and his
insights into education are held in esteem. One can point
to the fact that the tenets of his educational thought
easily cross the lines of particular disciplines or parti-
cular areas of content, that is, they are monumental in part
because they are fundamental. In addition, his general
educational tenets are not contrary to any of his other
writings whether in the field of science or mathematics.
His educational insights are consistent with his philo-
SOphical writings and beliefs, and unlike others, his

positions do not alter throughout his life, i.e., early John

73
Dewey or late John Dewey etc. Many appreciate the fact that
.A. N. Whitehead's educational tenets are especially unique
because they have a quality of unchanging timelessness.

The noted Whitehead scholar, Victor Lowe, points to the
fact that Whitehead's educational insights are not only
consistent and essentially changeless but are also a part of
his world view. Lowe states the compatibility of Whitehead's
views in the following discussion.

It would be incredible if his long experience as

an educator and his reflections on education were

not at work as a fourth source of his world view.

The reader of his metaphysics is struck by its

harmony with Whitehead's views on education.

(Since he had already published his main ideas

about education, it would be an anachronism to

suppose that the philosophy of organism was their
basis. His views on education represent convic-
tions that were aroused by his varied experiences

with educational practice in England and can stand

on their own feet. In his metaphysical books

there are a few brief discussions of education but

no references to his educational essays; nor did

reprinting of the essays lfiad him to insert refer-
ences to his metaphysics.

Therefore the tenets of Whitehead's educational thought
are accepted for this study as enduringly viable and valu-
able. The tenets that have been extracted for use thoughout
the remainder of this work are the result of several months
of study, which were carried out at the University of Aber-
deen, Scotland, and at the University of London. Professors
John Darling and Derrick Shanks supervised much of the time
spent in research at these British universities. Professor
Darling is a well known educational philosopher and editor

of the widely read Scottish Educational Review. Professor

 

Shanks is particularly well known as a leading educational

74
theorist. bhufll of the time was apprOpriately used in
reading and writing for both professors and participating in
especially valuable tutorials, particularLy with Professor
Darling. Hopefully the tenets that follow will favorably

reflect upon their efforts as well.

Whiteheadian Educational Tenets

A complete explication of Whitehead's general educa-
tional tenets might well occupy a lifetime. Any compilation
would necessarily include at least the following six essen-
tial tenets. (1) The teaching of "inert" ideas is deplor-
able, and, conversely, what is taught must be useful. (2)
Education must avoid a disconnection of curriculum. (3) The
essence of education can be understood as a rhythm consis-
ting of three cycles; Romance, Precision, Generalization.
(4) The curriculum of a formal education should have three
main branches; a liberal education branch, a science educa-
tion branch, and a technological education branch. (5) For-
mal education should strive to give students the kind of
curriculum experiences that would ultimately allow their
work to transcend their job. (6) The students retain the
responsibility for their own education.

The discussions of these six tenets which follow are
intended to bring attention and some understanding to each
tenet in its simplist form. Hopefully occasional examples
will help facilitate understanding and personal meaning.

Attempts will be made to avoid esoteric digressions which

75
might ultimately lead to the inert ideas and the discon-
nections that Whitehead so greatly deplored.

In his attack on what he calls ”inert ideas," Whitehead
is implacabLe. From one's study of chemistry, the concept
of ”inert ideas” may form an immediate word picture. Like
inert substances, inert ideas are ideas that cannot be
combined with any other ideas, and to attempt such combina-
tions leaves both student and teacher with something akin to
a beaker of oil and water. The student's response to an
inert idea is "so what!” Whitehead, indeed, says that "so
what" is the correct response. Such propositions seldom
lead anywhere and are quickly forgotten.

By way of further example, Whitehead states that inert
ideas are ”...ideas that are merely received into the mind
without being utilzed, or tested, or thrown into fresh

combinations."11

One perhaps ought to be careful of reading
too much into a Whitehead quotation, but one can have con-
siderable confidence in asserting that at least one category
of inert ideas are those facts and figures which teachers
foist upon students to be memorized out of hand. Whitehead
would quickly point the finger of guilt at science and math
teachers. Social studies and literature teachers should not
be allowed to escape either. Indeed memorizing historical
and literary periods for the sake of exercise disguised as
educational ends smacks of inertness. Four decades after

Whitehead, Benjamin Bloom, et. a1. put memorization at the

bottom of their educational taxonomy.

76
Whitehead states: "Every intellectual revolution which
has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passion-
ate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas with pathetic
ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some
educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas

of its own fashioning."12

With this salvo, Whitehead
disposes of those who after disposing of antiquated inert
ideas would leap into the vacuum with new ”in-things” which
so readily become converted again into inert ideas them-
selves.

The orientation of Whitehead's style is commitment to
culture. He returns in) what is fundamental, i.e. the
question of what is the goal. For Whitehead and many
others, the goal is stated in the following way.

What we should aim at producing is men_who possess

both culture and expert knowledge in some Special

direction. Then expert knowledge will give

them the ground to start from, and their culture

will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high

as art. We have to remember that the valuabl§_

intellectual development is self-development....

In addition Whitehead offers two important landmarks in
planning the curriculum that will enable the.attainment of
the goal. He prescribes them in this way. "We enunciate
two educational commandments, 'Do not teach too many
subjects,‘ and again, 'What you teach, teach thoroughly.”l4
In expanding upon those commandments he says, "Let the main
ideas which are introduced into a child's education be few

and important, and let them be thrown into every combination

possible. The child Should make them his own, and should

77

understand their application here and now in the circum-
stances of his actual life."15

In the afore-mentioned quote, Whitehead alludes to an
idea that might well find its place as a third commandment.
In facilitating the child's learning, a great deal of
emphasis should be placed on the inunediacy of the learning
moment, the here and now. The old saying that today is the
tomorrow that we thought about yesterday is something like
the point, but Whitehead's eloquence brings the idea to
greater clarity.

I would only remark that the understanding which

we want is an understanding of an insistent

present. The only use of the knowledge of the

past is to equip us for the present. No more

deadly harm can be done to young minds than by

depreciation of the present. The present contains

all that there is. It is holyléjround; for it is

the past, and it is the future.
Such statements should not be taken out of their context or
misconstrued in such a way as to imply that Whitehead was
somehow not conscious that education is preparation for the
future. What he is asserting is that a teaching/learning
moment has poignancy, and it should not be lost, particu-
larly by finding new methods of wasting away the hour.

A second tenet in this same general area as presented
in the Aims of Education is that education must avoid a
disconnection of curriculum.

There is only one subject-matter for education,

and that is life in all its manifestations.

Instead of this Simple unity, we offer children -

Algebra, from which nothing follows; Science, from

which nothing follows; History, from which nothing

follows; a couple of languages, never mastered;
and lastly, most dreary of all, literature,

78

represented by plays of Shakespeare, with philo-

logical notes and short analysis of plot and

character; in substance to be committed to
memory.

One wonders if, since Whitehead penned these words in
1916, anything has really changed. More courses are now
offered, each seemingly more specialized than the one that
precedes it. Sometimes connection is not taught even within
the subject area. Do biology teachers really help their
student make connections with chemistry, or do history
teachers lead students to inquire into the connections with
geography? Whitehead criticized his own scientist collea—
gues for being so specialized that they could not relate
their own research to other fields, let alone to a greater
understanding of the context in which their own scientific
investigation was undertaken.

In many instances the educational community has failed
to heed Whitehead's advice, and may even have perpetuated
and expanded the disconnections. Now realizing that bodies
of content have grown to such an extent that only with
specialization can one hope to cover the literature in a
given field, one can appreciate the access allowed by
libraries and micro chips etc. Libraries and micro-chips,
however, provide only the access, and Whitehead's greater
good is found in "utilization," because utility is the
connection between mere facts or the knowledge of content--
and life. Thus Whitehead puts the emphasis where it

belongs, i.e., on acquiring the art of utilization. He

79
states his definition simply. "Education is the acquisition
of the art of the utilization of knowledge."18

Once again, if the subject matter for education is
life, then the next step from disconnection within the
general subject area in a given field is disconnection
between fields and ultimately disconnection in the entire
school curriculum. Whitehead attributes much of this type
of disconnection to outside interference, especially from
external examinations and the influence of "state"
departments of education. Whitehead strongly urges the
direction that follows.

I suggest that no system of external tests which

aims primarily at examining individual scholars

can result in anything but educational waste....

Each school should grant its own leaving certifi-

cates, based on its own curriculum. The standards

of these schools should be sampled and corrected.

But the first requisite for educational reform is

the school as a unit, its approved curriculum

based on its own needs, and evolved by its own

staff. If we fail to secure that, we simply fall

from one formalism into anotherigfrom one dung-

hill of inert ideas into another.

A third and especially important tenet is that the
essence of education can be understood as a rhythm consist-
ing of three cycles: romance, precision, and generalization.
Much time need not be spent explicating Whitehead's proposi-
tions as his own words do it best. ”The principle is merely
this--that different subjects and modes of study should be
undertaken by pupils at fitting times when they have reached
the proper stage of mental development. You will agree with

20

me that this is a truism, never doubted and known to all."

One should take note of the fact that what he is proposing

80
is nothing like a lock stop concept of "readiness.” He
continues, ”It is not true that the easier subjects should
precede the harder. On the contrary, some of the hardest
must come first because nature so dictates, and because they

"21

are essential to life. Whitehead's words serve as a

reminder of what is sometimes forgotten. This is the fact
that infants acquire language and communication skills by
associating sounds with meanings, and usually without the
aid of a classroom. In addition, one of their first tasks
in the classroom is to associate those sounds with shapes,
which when the students learn to read essentially increases
their communication capacity by a quantum leap. Whitehead
states the heart of his point this way. ”All I ask is that
with this example staring us in the face we should cease
talking nonsense about postponing the harder subjects."22
The stage of romance and its accompanying explanation
could almost be considered the foundational thought leading
to an understanding that educationists would call "affect."
Educational psychologists might talk about the ”affective
domain” in this same sense. Whitehead's discussion is
enlightening in this area.
The stage of romance is the stage of first appre—
hension. The subject matter has the vividness of
novelty; it holds within itself unexplored con-
nexions with possibilities half-disclosed by
glimpses and half concealed by the wealth of
material. In this stage knowledge is not domi-
nated by systematic procedure.... Romantic
emotion is essentially the excitement consequent
on the transition from the bare fact to the first
realizations of the import of their unexplored
relationships... Education must essentially be

setting in order of a ferment already stirring in
_the mind: you cannot educate mind in vacuo.

81
A very important point, here, is that the stage of romance
is not something to be merely tolerated while on the way to
bigger and better endeavors. It is a full one-third of
Whitehead's educational pie. To merely gloss over the stage
of romance or to merely bow in deference is to warp the
whole process of education and deny students their first
chance at creativity and imagination. Whitehead says it
succinctly. ”In our conception of education we tend to
confine it (education) to the second stage of the cycle;
namely, to the stage of precision. But we cannot so limit
our task without misconceiving the whole problem.”24
ILf the stage of romance is the stage of affect, then
the stage of precision is the stage of cognition. If the
stage of romance is the stage of suspecting, then the stage
of precision is the stage of knowing. In Whitehead's words:
It (the stage of precision) proceeds by forcing on
the student's acceptance a given way of analyzing
the facts bit by bit. New facts are added, but
they are facts which fit into the analysis.... I
repeat that in this stage we do not merely remain
within the circle of facts elicited within the
romantic epoch. The facts of romance have dis-
closed the ideas with possibilities of wide
significance, and in the stage of precise progress
we acquire other facts in a systematic order,
which thereby form both a disclosure and an
analysifisof the general subject—matter of the
romance.
In the stage of precision the facts take formal shape, and
become not only known, but if at all possible, second nature
to the student.

The final stage is the stage of generalization. It is

a syntheses. ”It is a return to romanticism with added

82
advantage of classified ideas and relevant technique. It is
the fruition which has been the goal of the precise train-

ing. It is the final success."26

It is here Simply stated,
but it is by no means simplistic. It is the launching pad
back into both the world and the world of ideas. It ends a
cycle and spawns several others. It has begotten facts held
together by discipline. Inert ideas are not to be found in
the rhythm of education. They have nothing to do with it.
Indeed the mere acquisition of facts has nothing to do with
it. Whitehead says it even more bluntly.

Your learning is useless to you till you have lost

your text-books, burnt your lecture notes, and

forgotten the minutiae which you learnt by heart

for the examination. What, in the way of detail,

you continually require will stick in your memory

as obvious facts like the sun and moon; and what

you casually ffquire can be looked up in any work
of reference.

This, then, is the consummation of the stage of generaliza-
tion, and the point of departure for new and greater
romance.

Bringing considerable personal experience to the area
of curriculum, Whitehead asserts, in what is here a fourth
tenet, that the curriculum of a formal education should have
three main branches. The branches included are represented
by the liberal education branch, the science education
branch, and the technical education branch. He defines
liberal education as: ”...An education for thought and for
aesthetic appreciation. It proceeds by imparting a know-
ledge of the masterpieces of thought, of imaginative

"28

literature, and of art. He associates this type of

83
education with Plato, but is quick to point out that it is
only representative of a style as opposed to an actual brain
child of the great Greek philosopher.

The second branch, that of science education, Whitehead
defines in the following way. ”A science education is pri-
marily a training in the art of observing natural phenomena,
and in the knowledge and deduction of laws concerning the

”29

sequence of such phenomena. He does not give a particu-

lar person as a founder especially with reference to style,
nor does he offer an example of one associated with science
education curricula. He does note that science education,
like literary education, is a vast field, especially if such
areas as philoSOphy of science and mathematical logic are
included.

In the third branch, called technical education,
Whitehead offers a somewhat more utilitarian definition. "A
technical education is in the main a training in the art of
utilizing knowledge for the manufacture of material pro-
ducts. Such training emphasizes manual skill, and the
coordinated action of hand and eye, and judgment in control

of the process of construction."30

Given the normal style
of British schooling during the time of Whitehead's discus-
sion of this topic (i.e., an either or proposition - either
one received a "literary" education or one received a

”technical” education), his following statement probably

raised eyebrows. "An evil side of the Platonic culture has

84

been its total neglect of technical education as an ingredi-
ent in the complete development of ideal human beings."31

This statement summarily embodies the whole Whitehead
viewpoint, because it not only assumes the necessity of a
marriage between literary education and technical education
but inherent within it is the notion that science education
could well be a link between the two. He makes his point in
this way. "The peculiar merit of a scientific education
should be, that it bases thought upon first hand observa-
tion; and the corresponding merit of a technical education
is, that it follows our deep natural instinct to translate
thought into manual skill, and manual activity into
thought."32

There are numerous individuals who fit the Whitehead
ideal, but it would be a little too presumptuous to say that
he had them in mind. The formal education of each would not
necessarily have reflected the triple branched Whitehead
curriculum. Such men as Galileo, DaVinci, or Thomas
Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin appear to fit Whitehead's
"ideal." All of them were literary to some extent (some
more than others). All were scientists. And by Whitehead's
definition, all translated their science into forms of
manual skills by way of invention. Thus, Whitehead's
curriculum proposition, his rationale, and examples of his
"ideal” product can readily be seen and understood.

A fifth tenet is that formal education should strive to

give the student the kind of curricular experiences that

85
would ultimately allow his work to transcend his job. The
essential point is one that stems from the Bernard Shaw
phrase, ”It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play

is life."33

The meaning for Whitehead, here, is not clothed
in some literary euphemism. It is simply that a student
should be encouraged to realize that whatever his job or
task, in most cases it will have a greater significance when
it is seen as it relates to other areas and/or other people.
Whitehead's example is that of Benedictine monks. "The
early Benedictine monks rejoiced in their labours because
they conceived themselves as thereby' made fellow-workers
with Christ."34 In other words they saw their labors in a
broader context and therefore had a unique perspective on
their work.

Probably no educator was more conscious of this think-
ing than Whitehead, and he consistently took a broader
perspective in his own field of expertise, mathematics. For
him mathematics as generally taught to school children was
recondite, but it needed not be so. There were always
broader applications to be understood.

For the purposes of education, mathematics con-

sists of the relations of number, the relations of

quantity, and the relations of space.... Our
courses of instruction should be planned to illus-
trate simply a succession of ideas of obvious
importance. All pretty divagations should be
rigorously excluded. The goal to be aimed at is
that the pupil Should acquire familiarity with
abstract thought, should realize how it applies to

particular concrete circumstances, and should know
how to apply general methods to its logical inves-
tigation. With this educational ideal nothing can
be worse than the aimless accretions of theorems
in our textbooks, which acquire their position

86
merely because the children can be made to learn

them 33nd examiners can set neat questions on
them.

At some point during the continued acquisition of the under-
standing of the relations of number, quantity and space,
Whitehead would have the scope broadened to include some
investigation into the history of mathematics to be used
”...as an exposition of the general current of thought which
occasioned the subjects to be objects of interest at the

36 He elaborates further

time of their first elaboration."
and presses the scope of mathematics to include its perspec-
tive as, "...the chief instrument for discipline in logical

method."37

Thus it interconnects with science, philosophy
and other areas.

In seeing this reasoning and these examples from
Whitehead's own area of mathematics, one Should realize that
Whitehead's point has to do with more than mathematics or
any other area of the curriculum, and that it has to do with
more than learning vignettes. The ultimate aim is still
that the work must transcend the job, both in schooling as
well as in the world of work, and one should be prepared to
understand those connections and be affected by them.
Whitehead's point comes back to that same example of the
Benedictine monks.

Stripped of its theological trappings, the essen-

tial idea remains, that work should be transfused

with intellectual and moral vision and thereby

turned into a joy, triumphing over its weariness

and its pain. Each of us will re-state this

abstract formulation in a more concrete shape in

accordance with his private outlook. State it how
you like, so long as you do not lose the main

87

point in your details. However you phrase it, it
remains the sole real hope of toiling humanity;
and it is in the hands of technical teachers, and
of those who control their spheres of activity, so
to mould the nation that daily it may pas§8to its
labours in the spirit of the monks of old.

'The sixth and final tenet for this discussion is
Whitehead's fundamental notion that the student retains the
responsibility for his own education. In his opening para-
graph in the essay entitled, ”The Aims of Education," he

simply states: ”We have to remember that the valuable intel-

39

lectual development. is self-development....' This was

Whitehead's position.

On a different occasion, he discussed the point and
gave a bit of reasoning and an analogy or two. In an add-
ress to a number of English schoolboys, Whitehead explains a
bit of the process and meaning of education.

Thus we are talking of the way in which all your
faculties and capacities should be encouraged to
expand and unfold themselves. Consider how nature
generally sets to work to educate the living
organisms which teem on this earth. You cannot
begin to understand nature's method unless you
grasp the fact that the essential spring of all
growth is within you. All that you can get from
without is some food, material or spiritual, with
which to build your own organism, and some stimu-
lus to spur you to activity. What is really
essential in your deve10pment you must do for
yourselves. The regular method of nature is a
happy process of genial encouragement. There can
be very little satisgactory growth with the exclu-
sion of this method.

A bit later in the same discussion he reiterates the
point.

But, at the end of it all, you who are the pupils

must bring your own enjoyment to your tasks....

Remember what I said a minute ago, that in reality
you educate yourselves. No one else can do it for

88

you. Ybu are not pieces of clay which clever

teachers are modeling into educated men. It is

your own effort which alone essentially counts.

So, finally you have got to provide your own

enjoyment by interesting yourselves in things

which are worth doing and worth thinking about.

Your workinglives will either be a drudgiry or a

pleasure according to the way you take it.

These, then, are the six tenets extrapolated here for
the purposes of both the representation of Whitehead's
general educational thought and for further analysis in
light of Naisbitt's evolving future. Ideally, if they were
available, this would be an appropriate time to introduce
the works of other authors who have offered support for
these tenets. Unfortunately, such support is not forth-
coming, primarily because no author can be found who has
attempted to render a similar collection of tenets which
approximate the ones offered in the preceding paragraphs.
However, Whitehead's work has of course received the
attention of many commentators. The following authors

present ideas which appear to relate in one way or another

to the above discussion.

Commentary on Whitehead's Educational Thought

Such authors as Dunkel, Rusk and others allude to why a
comprehensive collection may not have been developed yet.
Dunkel says,

The Aims of Education comprises occasional lec-
tures delivered over a period of more than fifteen
years. Although each lecture or group of chapters
constitutes a unit, obviously this mode of com-
position makes each volume something less than a
coherent whole. Unfortunately this task has been
performed primarily for those interested in
Whitehead's metaphysics or his philosophy of

89

science. Although those parts of his system which

are relevant to education must overlap these in

many respects, still the difference in interest

prescribes a rather different type of treatmgnt
than has thus far been avallable to educators.
Even in Dunkel's effort, the necessary treatment is still
not necessarily the one which might best benefit the
majority of educators.

As has been previously stated, the treatment which
might more nearly benefit educators is one which undertakes
to understand Whitehead as he delivers his thoughts directly
to educators, in the form of the lectures which comprise Egg
Aims of Education -- not the treatment which presupposes
that educators must understand his metaphysics in order to
comprehend his educational thought, which is the position
that nearly every commentator has assumed so far. Whitehead
was never one to talk down to his audiences. Thus he
obviously never felt the need to inform them of the approp-
riate metaphysical positions necessary for the understanding
of his educational thought. He and his audiences were edu-
cators. That was their common ground, and that was suffici-
ent. The circumstances in the world, as presented in the
preceding chapter, were grave enough. No esoteric digres-
sions were needed or wanted. What was wanted was straight
talk and common sense, and when Whitehead took the podium,
that is just what he intended the audience should receive.

It ought to be enough to note that in the decades following

his educational lectures, he saw fit to stand by every

90
previously stated word. He changed neither a jot nor a
tittle.

Though nearly every commentator presumes the necessity
of an understanding of Whitehead's metaphysical literature,
it is somewhat reassuring to know that they often recognize
and comment upon many of the same thoughts and ideas that
have been used in this study and quoted above to sustain the
six tenets of the previous section. It is also reassuring
to note that nearly every commentator sees harmony and
congruity between Whitehead's metaphysical and educational
thinking. The following section will very briefly note some
of the thoughts and ideas that are held in common with these
commentators as they pertain to the six tenets.

Many commentators hail the importance of Whitehead's
attack on inert ideas, which is the point of the first
tenet. Axtelle, Holmes, Johnson, Rusk, Stone, Wagner, and
Ward all allude to this important part of Whitehead's
thinking. Almost all are in agreement with the importance
of what Rusk describes as "Whiteheads diatribe against

'"43 The disconnection of the curriculum, the

'inert ideas.
second tenet, is in a sense loosely related to the first,
but only Ward and Axtelle offer comments which relate to it.

The third and fourth tenets are alike only in the fact
that they deal in threes. The third tenet, which addresses
Whitehead's Rhythm of Education, receives discussion from a

host of authors including: Extelle, Holmes, Johnson, Rusk

and Ward. Dunkel calls the notion of the three stages which

91
Whitehead terms, romance, precision, and generalization,
”...the second most fundamental concept in giving structure

to Whitehead's education thought....'44

The fourth tenet,
also a triad, proposes the concept that the curriculum
includes the liberal, scientific, and technical branches.
Axtelle, Johnson, Holmes, and Rusk allude to this proposi-
tion. Holmes, for instance, claims that, ”Whitehead is
absolutely right in asserting that 'the antithesis between a
technical and a liberal education is fallacious...."‘45

The support for tenets five and six is at first not as
obvious as for the preceding tenets. The fifth which is
essentially that one's work should transcend one's job, is
obliquely supported by Axtelle, Belth, Holmes, Rusk and to
some extent Dunkel, but the usual Whitehead quote to which
these authors allude is the one which Whitehead calls the
”insistent present,” rather than the seemingly more obvious
discussion of the Benedictine monks. The sixth and final
tenet is basically supported by Dunkel and Malik. Dunkel,
Rusk and others point up the fact that the student's res-
ponsibility was so obvious to Whitehead and others that the
whole point deserved little elaboration. Obviously, too,
times change, as Naisbitt has pointed out. These tenets,
then, serve as much of the basis for the discussion in the

following chapter which discusses their systematic applica-

tion.

92

CHAPTER IV FOOTNOTES

1Victor Lowe, ”Whitehead, Alfred North," Encyclopedia

 

of Education, 1971, pg. 550.

2Paul Arthur Schilppo The Philosophy of Alfred North
Whitehead, The Library' of LIVing Philos0phers (Evanston,
1941), p. 5.

31bid, p. 5.

4Ibid, p. 5.

5Victor Lowe, ”Whitehead, Alfred North," Encyclopedia

 

of Education, 1971, p. 550.

6Paul Arthur Schilpp: The Philgsophy of Alfred North
Whitehead, The Library of Living Philosophers (Evanston,
1941), p. 5.

7Victor Lowe, "Whitehead, Alfred North," Encyclopedia

 

of Education, 1971, pg. 550.
8Paul Arthur Schilpp,’ The philosophy of Alfred North
Whitehead, The Library' of Living Philosophers (Evanston,
1941), p. 6.
91bid, pp. 7-8.

loVictor Lowe, ”Whitehead, Alfred North," Encyclopedia

 

of Education, 1971, pg. 554.

1J‘Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education (New
York, 1968), p. l.

121616, p. 2.

131616, p. 1.

141616, p. 2.

lslbid, p. 2.

16Ibid, pp. 2-3.

17Ibid, pp. 6-7.

93

131616, p. 4.

191616, p. 13.

201616, p. 20.

lebid, p. 21.

221616, p. 16.

23Ibid. pp. 17-18.

241616, p. 18.

25Ibid, pp. 19-20.

251616, p. 19.

27Ibid, p. 26.

281bid, p. 46.

29Ibid, p. 49.

301616. pp. 49-50.

311bid, p. 50.

32Ibid, p. 51.

33Ibid, pp. 43-44.

341616, p. 44.

3slbid. pp. 79-80.

361bid, p. 84.

371616, p. 84.

381bid, p. 44.

391bid, p. 1.

40Alfred North Whitehead, Essays in Science and

 

Bhilosophy, (New York, 1968), p. 17I.

411616, p. 173.

42Harold B. Dunkel, Whitehead on Education (Ohio State,

43Robert R. Rusk, The Doctrines of the Great Educators,
(New York, 1969), p. 342.

94

44Harold B. Dunkel, Whitehead on Education, (Ohio State,
1965) , p. 107.

45Paul Arthur Schilpp: The Philosglhy of Alfred North
Whitehead, The Library of Living Philosophers (Evanston,
1941), p. 638.

 

CHAPTER V

Chapter five is a systematic application of Whitehead's
tenets as they resonate with the three specially selected
Naisbitt trends.

In preparation for this upcoming chapter a brief review
of both Whitehead's educational tenets and the three
selected megatrends is appropriate. The extrapolated tenets
from A. N. Whitehead's general educational thought are: 1)
The teaching of inert ideas is deplorable and conversely,
what is taught must be useful; 2) Education must avoid a
disconnection of curriculum; 3) The essence of education can
be understood as a rhythm consisting of the cycles of
romance, precision, and generalization; 4) The curriculum of
a formal education should include the branches of liberal
education, science education, and technological education;
5) Formal education should strive to give the student the
kind of curriculum experiences that would ultimately allow
his work to transcend his job; 6) The student retains the
reSponsibility for his own education.

These tenets may be viewed in light of the three
selected Naisbitt megatrends, which include 1) The megashift
from an industrial to an information society; 2) That we are
restructuring from a society run by short-term considera-

tions and rewards in favor of dealing with things in much

95

96
longer-term timeframes, which includes the whole notion of
reconceptualization; 3) That we are shifting from institu-
tional help to more self-reliance in all aspects of our
lives. These three trends represent Naisbitt's first,
fourth and Sixth trends respectively.

Now that the Naisbitt trends have been presented, the
historical context of Whitehead's era has been reviewed, and
a number of his tenets have been presented, the focus of
chapter five is on discussing potential applications. The
chapter focuses on three major areas. The second portion of
this chapter includes the discussion of those areas where
John Naisbitt and A. N. Whitehead seem to be making the same
or at least quite similar points with special reference to
the selected trends and the body of tenets. The third and
final area includes a somewhat broader look at Whiteheadian
perspectives as they might find application in more specific
areas of schooling and educational endeavors. Emphasis will
be placed upon commentary from educator/author, John Goodlad
for the third area of concern.

As just mentioned the final area of application repre-
sents the educational and schooling perspectives offered by
those mentioned in chapter one of this paper, including A
Nation at Risk, the Boyer study for the Carnegie Institute,
and the expansive study by John Goodlad. Goodlad's work
appears likely to be influential, not only as represented by
his book entitled A Place Called School, but also by his

many other articles and books as well as his published

97
lectures. For its extensive nature and lack of obvious
political leaning, Goodlad's work as represented in A Place
Called School is the study of choice for the final section

of appl icat ions .

.A Preparatory Word on Methodology

Some educational writers/researchers have sometimes
appeared reluctant to borrow methodologies from other dis-
ciplines. They seem particularly reluctant to stray away
from the safety of studying populations from which one can
produce ”real numbers,” ”percentages,” and ”hard statistical
data.” Such methodologies may make for tight studies, but
they sometimes lead to sterile, even inert conclusions.

.At the same time geologists determine the composition
of our earth from past centuries from the study of current
rock formations, and archaeologists reconstruct whole
societies from artifacts. Very few individuals question
such extrapolations. Literary scholars base much of their
research upon work of an analytical type, and certain
methodologies that deal with forms of criticism are con-
sidered quite valuable.

In the opinion of the researcher educationists really
ought not be hesitant in borrowing methodology from other
disciplines when in search of understanding and insight.
Education in general and educators in particular ought to be
entitled to the use of these methods, because the conse-
quences of their work merit such use. By borrowing

analytical methodology. educator/researchers have the

98

opportunity to combine bodies of information, hopefully
creating new perceptions, and more importantly, making use
of the insights offered by great educators from other eras.

Professor John Darling of the University of Aberdeen,
Scotland questions collecting the works of great scholars of
former times if such works only collect dust on library
shelves. Considering the available methodology, the
contributions of Whitehead and Naisbitt, and the possibility
of garnering insight from combining the two, the following
discussion may offer unique, and hopefully helpful per-
spectives for illuminating some of our most pressing

educational problems.

Chapter Five Rationale

The third chapter of this work, which dealt with the
historical context of Whitehead's educational writings,
proves an even greater value to the use of his tenets. Had
Whitehead formulated and espoused his educational thoughts
during some other period of history, those thoughts might
have yet proved to be of great value. The greater signifi-
cance, however, is that the historical context in which
Whitehead spoke and wrote bears some important similarities
to that context which John Naisbitt and the rest of us are
currently experiencing. Ihi other words, were the contexts
of Whitehead's day and our day radically dissimilar, he
might still have had something important to say. The facts

seem to indicate, however, that not only are the contexts

99
not radically dissimilar, but instead Show some important
likenesses.

Whether facing the aftermath of post World War I Great
Britain or the onset of the information society, monumental
uncertainties abound. Certainly the question of whether our
race can survive to enjoy a future matches the question of
how a terrible world war could have been fought especially
by countries who were seemingly making such great strides in
solving their disputes in an orderly and civilized manner.
Though our own society faces the ever present threat of
nuclear holocaust, one must confront the fact that the
Treaty of versailles failed dismally to put to rest all of
the post war distrust that abounded, not only for the
British commoners, but also for French, German, and Russian
working people. The thought of poison gas accompanying the
English mist was an erie one to be sure. Then as now,
though, thoughts of what might be give way to thoughts of
the insistent present, and very often the realities of the
economically insistent present.

As a: matter of brief review from chapters two and
three, one should remember that in A. N. Whitehead's world,
technological applications from the Great War were revolu-
tionizing many spheres, particularly in the areas of
transportation, communication, and the swiftly growing
chemical industries. Such radically rapid develOpments in
those areas may actually have been more sudden and more

profound than the onset of John Naisbitt's ”information

100

society,” though one really has no adequate way of measuring
the two. The purposes of this discussion fortunately do not
require such a measurement primarily because Whitehead's
insight is not competing with Naisbitt's offerings, but
rather hopefully illuminating a path into Mr. Naisbitt's
semi-predictable future. Maybe not surprisingly, Whitehead
and Naisbitt are educational allies when judging on the
basis of the few comments that Mr. Naisbitt does make
concerning education in general while discussing his ten
trends.

As a matter of style and even perspective both
Whitehead and Naisbitt share some common ground. Each
leaves little doubt that educating people, particularly
young people, is or should be one of society's tOp priori-
ties. Both tend to discuss education in such a way so as to
appeal to ”common sense” rather than attempting to be lofty
and esoteric; Naisbitt because that is the way he approaches
problems, and Whitehead because most of his writings reflect
his many public speeches given to groups of educators and
students alike, tough audiences to be sure. Both, too seem
to be opposed to mere rote-learning and much more interested
in producing learners who have acquired the art of utilizing
their knowledge in Whitehead's terms. Finally, both intend
that the overriding purpose of education is to produce
life-long learners who are truly functional and productive

in any possible societal setting.

101
Whitehead's Tenets in Light of Naisbitt's Trends

Having noted these important common grounds, the actual
discussion of Whitehead's tenets as seen in light of the
three specially selected trends is :hi order. In the
following paragraphs each tenet is discussed as it is seen
meshing with each of the three Specially selected trends.
In some cases a specific mesh can be seen, but in many cases
only a general point can be stated. There are, as one might
expect, certain areas that have little or no relevance, and
this being the case, a statement to that effect can and will
be made. Once again, the perspective is the reckoning of
Whitehead's thought in reference to Naisbitt's evolving
future, i.e., the application of ProfesSor Whitehead's
thought and educational positions to the circumstances as
Naisbitt describes them.

Whitehead's first tenet, that the teaching of inert
ideas is deplorable and conversely, that what is taught must
be useful, is one the truth of which almost everyone can
readily acknowledge. Yet as recognition of the information
society becomes greater, the actual practice of the tenet
and its meaning as a guidepost for educators seemingly
wanes. What is wanted is a greater ability to use the
information to generate understanding. If, however, the
student has been trained to merely recite ideas rather than
”makes them his own," as Whitehead would say, understanding
is lacking and so is the necessary progress. The progress

being discussed, here, is.run: just the student's but also

102
collectively that of the working populace. There is a
greater need for practice at combining and utilizing ideas
rather than reciting ideas.

The response by many educators to the perception or
actuality of the greater educational needs of a student
preparing for life in the information society has been a
call for greater testing in content areas, a greater
emphasis on fundamentals, and longer hours in school, among
other notions. In their proper perspective, these may well~
be valuable suggestions, but Whitehead's words are a
valuable caution for those who would quickly rush to those
notions as the supposedly newest and best solutions. "Every
intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into
greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas.
Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it
has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity
afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning."1 What is
wanted and needed is a perspective that leads to insight,
not a rehash of inert ideas, else the demands of the
information society will continually go unmet.

This same theme resonates with the fourth trend, i.e.,
the shift from a short term to a long term frame of refer-
ence. In order to avoid ”binding humanity afresh,"
educators ought to borrow the same kind of reasoning that
more of America's businesses are using. That is, looking at
the long term consequences of today's actions and rethinking

those actions if necessary. 'ho assuredly avoid hasty

103
reactions that lead to the unacceptable results of more dead
ends and more inert ideas, a commitment to thinking in terms
of longer time frames is especially important.

The actuality of the sixth trend, that which states
that Americans are taking back much of the responsibility
for their own lives, ought to lead educators to some very
fertile ground. Alert educators can and will be able to use
this trend in such a way so as to foster the kind of think-
ing, reasoning and feeling which Whitehead characterizes as
the reverse of passively receiving inert ideas into the
mind. Ever the proponent of utilizing ideas, Whitehead
offers the following description.

By utilizing an idea, I mean relating it to that

stream, compounded of sense perceptions, feelings,

hopes, desires, and of mental activities adjusting
thought to thought, which forms our life. I can
imagine a set of beings which might fortify their
souls by passively reviewing disconnected ideas.

Humanity is not built that way -- except perhaps
some editors of newspapers.

There are some who might even recognize a good number of
otherwise intellectually talented ‘public school (graduates
who unhappily spent their school years “passively reviewing
disconnected ideas.” Again, the truth of this sixth trend
appears to be fertile ground.

The second Whiteheadian tenet, that education must
avoid a disconnection of curriculum follows from the first
tenet.

There is only one subject-matter for education,

and that is life in all its manifestations.

Instead of this simple unity, we offer children --

Algebra, from which nothing follows; Science, from
which nothing follows; History, frOm which nothing

104

follows; a couple of languages, never mastered;

and lastly, most dreary of all, literature,

represented by plays of Shakespeare, with

philological notes and short analysis of plot ang
character ln substance to be commltted to memory.
For the purposes of the information society, the preceding
quotation might be amended to read, ”keyboards, monitors,
and floppy disks, from which nothing follows.”

Reckoned in terms of Naisbitt's information society,
Whitehead's tenet, which was appreciated by many but
operationalized by less than a handful, is not only valid
but necessary. It is necessary particularly in the sense
that electronically collecting, recording, combining and
storing more data still does not bring about a greater
ability in the art of its utilization. Better methods of
collection, recording, combination and storage still require
the application of understanding, "life in all its manifes-
tation,” to ascribe meaning. Information must be inten-
tionally connected, not only between curricula and subjects,
but also within the subjects and by both the instructor and
learner.

As applied to Naisbitt's fourth trend, a connection of
the curriculum in the Whiteheadian sense is almost anti-
thetical to rendering everything in the short term. That
is, connecting principles subject to subject and idea to
idea almost precipitates the long term view. It fosters
thinking over time rather than just to the end of the unit

or worse yet, thinking in terms of "what will suffice for

the test.” There is little wonder that the state and

105
national pre-occupation with tests and testing has not led
us to the promised land, but that is a story for the next
chapter. Connecting the curriculum cannot help but lead to
the long view as described by Mr. Naisbitt.

With regard to Naisbitt's sixth trend, as it has been
previously described in its generic use for the purposes of
this discussion, one might really be at a loss to find a
comment by Whitehead that would not resonate perfectly with
it. Indeed the discussion of what is here Whitehead's sixth
tenet in light of Naisbitt's sixth trend is in a sense
ironic, as will be seen later in this chapter. Educators
ought to be pleased at the prospect of allowing students the
responsibility as well as the opportunity to conceive, test,
and connect subject matter across the curriculum.

The noted educationist, Harold Dunkel, has called what
is here labelled Whitehead's third tenet, "...the second
most fundamental concept in giving structure to Whitehead's

education thought...."4

In light of the many educational
needs of the information society and the seemingly warring
factions of the educational community, Whitehead's
discussion of the three stages of learning is an especially
valuable perspective. It is not that discussion of the
affective and cognitive domains are not important or that
behaviorism and humanism are not important, but that in many
instances, the discussion of these topics is perspective-

less. Education for everyone in the evolving information

society or any other cannot afford to be without an

106
understanding of the whole process or proper perspective,
just as it cannot afford the luxury of inertness or discon-
nection. In the light of Naisbitt's most fundamental trend,
Whitehead's "rhythm of education," which consists of the
interacting stages of "romance," "precision,“ and "generali-
zation,” is essential.

If one acquires a simple understanding of the "rhythm
of education" then one might also note that Whitehead's
rhythm not only meshes with a shift to long term thinking
(Naisbitt's fourth trend) but in a sense demands it. It
demands long term thinking because romance, precision and
generalization are cycles intertwined to form a whole
continuous process. Whitehead's following quote accents
this idea, and amazingly presupposes Naisbitt's point.

Education should consist in a continual repetition

«of such cycles; (romance, precision, generaliza-

tion). Each lesson in its minor way should form

an eddy cycle issuing in its own subordinate

process. Longer periods should issue in definite

attainments, whigp then form the starting-grounds

for fresh cycles.

Though parts of the process provide closure, the process
requires a commitment to the long term, which according to
Naisbitt, many in the business community and other communi-
ties seem increasingly quite willing to do.

This third tenet meshes with the sixth trend only in
the sense that the stages of romance and generalization
inherently assume that the learners have taken responsi-

bility, at least in some measure, for their own learning.

The famous premise that "there is no freedom,” attributed to

107

B. F. Skinner, would have been as foreign to Whitehead as if
it had come from another planet. Americans have once again
proven the fallaciousness of such a notion and in record
numbers, according ix) Naisbitt. "Several years ago, Holt
(John) estimated there were at least 10,000 families
educating their children at home. In 1982 the figure was
estimated at one million."6 Americans are increasingly
finding ways of taking back the freedoms and responsibili-
ties that Whitehead would have assumed they possessed in the
first place.

The curriculum of a formal education has three
branches. Whitehead's fourth tenet cites the liberal,
scientific, and technical branches as those which should be
considered. He has defined each branch and those defini-
tions were included in the previous chapter, but they bear
repeating for the purposes here. A liberal education is,
"...An education for thought and for aesthetic appreciation.
It proceeds by imparting the masterpieces of thought, of
imaginative literature, and of art."7 "A science education
is primarily a training in the art of observing natural
phenomena, in the knowledge and deduction of laws concerning
the sequence of such phenomena."8 ”A technical education is
in the main a training in the art of utilizing knowledge for

the manufacture of material products."9

Whitehead goes on
in his discourse to show the common root of these three
branches, but their harmonization with the information

society is now the point.

108

There is no clearly direct connection between
Whitehead's tenet and Naisbitt's first trend, as such, but
Whitehead's insight is intended to. cover all of the
possibilities. From the most aesthetic interest in the
liberal branch to the most practical in the technical
branch, the Whitehead Spectrum includes all. The essential
subject matter is "life and all its manifestations." If one
argues that the information society is predicated upon the
computer, and Whitehead has said nothing of the computer,
then the point has been missed. If one has been prepared
according to the Whitehead curriculum, then one is prepared
for the information society or for any other society,
because the computer has its place in life. As typewriters,
slide rules, and calculators have come on the scene, they
have found inclusion in the schooling of young people, and
the computer should offer no great obstacle in the like
manner.

‘The fourth tenet meshes with the fourth trend indir-
ectly in two ways. There is a mesh first in the sense that
the essence of the liberal branch is and must be seen as the
development of a number of appreciations, and appreciation
is generally something that happens over time. In fact time

generally impacts appreciation in a directly proportional
lflelationship. Unfortunately and unhappily, instructors have
demanded appreciation in something less than a term. Exten-
ss'ive testing and memorization have invariably proved barely

Sufficient in the short term and grossly inadequate in the

 

109

long term. Seemingly nothing has changed since Whitehead's
time. (See his quote above on pages 103-104 concerning the
typical British school treatment of the plays of Shakespeare
or the memorization of the Kings of England.) The second
indirect mesh is Whitehead's inherent insistence on recon-
ceptualization which is Naisbitt's theme in his fourth trend
and the reason that he includes the Mary Parker Follett
quote. Much more of the reconceptualization discussion is
included later in this chapter and in chapter six as it has
a special place in the sections that deal with general
recommendations.

The fourth tenet applies in reference to the sixth
trend in a way that should impel educators in all branches
of the curriculum to encourage greater freedom and respon-
sibility in their learners. In a way, educators may have a
greater opportunity to encourage the joy of learning in all
areas of the curriculum without the considerable pressure to
constantly be testing everything. There may yet be a chance
for educators and learners to teach and learn just for the
great adventure of it.

A formal education should strive to give students the
kiqul of curricular experiences that would ultimately allow

tJleir work to transcend their job. Whitehead's meaning in
t-his fifth tenet is simply that students should be
erlcouraged to realize that whatever their job or task, in
“‘Qst cases it will have a greater significance when it is

$3Gaen as it relates to other areas and/or other people. The

 

110

converse of this fifth tenet has come to be known in educa-
tion circles as ”busy work,” which sounds not unlike the
beginning of a renewed discussion of inert ideas. This
tenet, then, is particularly applicable in the information
society. With the greater abstractions brought about by
greater amounts of information, both real and ”artificial,"
persons handling that information will necessarily need to
see a greater good or greater purpose in their work else a
new type of boredom beyond ”assembly line boredom” is a very
real possibility.

Interestingly enough, in the same sense in which
Whitehead sees that a person's work needs to be related to
others, Naisbitt echoes the sentiment exactly. In the
discussion of his first trend, Naisbitt devotes a section to
what he calls, "The Human Side of Technology.” In this
section, he discusses what many have called the ”electronic
cottage." This simply means that the workers have a
computer terminal in their home, and have no need to go to
the office as they can accomplish their work in their own
den. ‘Naisbitt's comments on this set-up are interesting.
"My own sense of it is that not very many of us will be
Willing to work at home. People want to be with people;

”10 He continues the

People want to go to the office.
discussion of this idea by devoting his second chapter to
it. Whitehead's point is applicable again. People want

ery much to see a greater good than their individual job

 

 

lll
even if they see this greater good in their socialization
and interactions with their fellow workers.

The fifth tenet has little or no direct applicability
with the major premise of the fourth trend, that of the
shift from short term to long term thinking. There may,
however, be some room for application with the second part
of that trend which deals with reconceptualization. In the
sense that in many instances most people have not always
sought the "big picture” in either their school work or
their jobs. Maybe meshing these two ideas will lead to a
little greater satisfaction in both areas.

The sixth trend, too, poses difficulty for a direct
application with this fifth tenet. In fact, the converse of
the sixth trend, letting others have the responsibility for
the conduct and meanings of our lives, might be somewhat
advantageous in this sense, if in fact those "others'
provide the necessary understandings for the broader views
that make the work transcend the job. At the same time,
should educators follow the principle of Whitehead's tenet
and encourage their learners to explore for themselves the
broader significance and relationships inherent in their
work, then those additional obstacles to the fulfillment of
Naisbitt's trend may disappear. Most importantly, those
Same learners would then have formed a positive style and
set of work habits which they could repeat and continually

apply for themselves throughout the remainder of their

lives.

 

112

The student retains the responsibility for his/her own
education. This is a truism known and believed by Whitehead
and never really questioned by him. It is here considered
the sixth and final tenet, and he expresses it pointedly
where he says, ”We have to remember that the valuable
intellectual development is self-development...."11 Again
he reiterates, "...Remember what I said a minute ago, that
in reality you educate yourselves. No one elSe can do it
for you. You are not pieces of clay which clever teachers

are modeling into educated men. It is your effort alone

12 In addition to the respon-

which essentially counts."
sibility inherent in undertaking the acquisition of an
education, Whitehead is also discussing a perspective or an
ultimate approach to education. It is the development of
this approach in Whitehead's perspective which would prepare
students for meeting any eventuality with confidence. Their
own self development would empower them in any situation,
and it is this point of this sixth tenet which resonates so
well with Naisbitt's first trend. Being educated under the
principle of this tenet reduces many of a person's barriers
Which would inhibit his ability to shift from an industrial
Society to an information society to an intergalactic
Esociety to a telekinetic society or any other society. All
<>f this because Whitehead's learners ultimately take hold of

tLhe reins of their own education and can confidently prepare

tzhemselves for change.

113

In a very real sense this sixth tenet meshes beauti-
fully with Naisbitt's fourth trend. The trend reflects the
Shift from short term to long term thinking. Whitehead's
tenet lg long term thinking, something to which our society
is finally aspiring. The tenet is long term thinking,
because it presupposes the day when the student must educate
or re-educate himself. It is long term thinking, because it
presupposes that time when the "teacher won't be there” for
the student, and it is long term, because it presupposes
that this same view must be fostered within the student
while educating that student during his/her own "insistent

present.”
If ever a tenet resonated with a trend, it is the
resonation of Whitehead's sixth tenet and Naisbitt's sixth
trend. Whitehead has stated that learners must essentially
be responsible for their own learning. In view of Naisbitt's
sixth trend, someone might suspect that Americans have been
reading Whitehead and following his advice. The thought, of
course, is far-fetched, but probably not as far-fetched as
the suspicion that America's educators have been reading
Whitehead. One quick look at the schools would substantiate
the farfetchedness of that notion. The application of the
Sixth tenet in light of the sixth trend lies somewhere in
t:he converse of the preceeding lines. Americans are becom-
i~ng more willing to assume many of the responsibilities that
Eire inherently their own. Whitehead would simply encourage

Eéducators to move forward under such an assumption. Indeed

 

114
the first five tenets are inseparable from this sixth one,
and in the end, depend upon it.

When looking back at these Six tenets that have been
extrapolated from Whitehead's educational writings, one
should not be surprised that there exists a type of internal
unity among them. Thread-like though it is at times, there
is nonetheless a ”connexion” between avoiding inert ideas or
a disconnected curriculum; and understanding that there is a
type of natural ”rhythm” to learning, and that both liberal
arts and technical training are a part; along with under-
standing that thene is a necessary mental approach to work
and that the learner is ultimately responsible for it and
any other accompanying insight that he can discover. One
should not be surprised by this unity, because Whitehead
modeled the kind of complete thinking that he advocated. It
is for this reason that a distinctly different approach to
schooling emerges, when a more general application of his
tenets is seen in the selected areas that follow. These
applied areas include: an approach to school-wide curricula;
an approach to content within a curriculum; an approach to
instruction; and an approach to research in the afore-

Imentioned areas.

Four Areas of General Application
If there is a traditional approach to school wide
Qurricula, it is well represented in John Goodlad's very

irndustrious work entitled A Place Called School. This work

 

beceived special attention as representative of a highly

‘

 

115
popular approach at the outset of this chapter. As a first
step, he notes the need for educational goals and accompany-
ing goal statements. "The time has come, past come, for the
50 states to articulate as basic policy a commitment to a
broad array of educational goals in the four areas that have
emerged in this country over more than three hundred

13 Goodlad attributes the foundation of this state-

years."
ment to Ralph Tyler's proposition, of some forty years
earlier, that school administrators and teachers ought to
have available to them a set of about a dozen goals which
would give guidance to school program development. With
seemingly unusual reasoning, (if a few goals are good, then
a lot is tremendous), Goodlad offers sixty-two goal state-
ments. That's one goal for every three school days with two
goals left over, and a discussion of behavioral objectives
has not even been initiated. A good discussion of recon-
ceptualization is in order, but that is reserved for chapter
six.

An example of the converse of the Goodlad, et.al.,
approach can be seen in what Madison, Hamilton, and the rest
of our country's founding fathers did give to our fledgling
‘COuntry in the broad-brush form of our Constitution. That
53ame contrast is also what A. N. Whitehead has given to the
seducational community, which might closely approximate
ijler's statement, or rather, Tyler's statement might
Iresemble Whitehead's approach. In any event one should be

reminded that Whitehead's homeland doesn't even possess a

116
constitution, yet is one of the world's finest examples of
freedom and democracy. The question remains, is excessive
detail what is wanted?

Whitehead's approach is not delineated in school wide
goal statements, though they are not unimportant. His
approach directs the impetus of education away from the
institution and towards the client. What we should aim at
producing is men who possess both culture and expert
knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge
will give them the ground to start from, and their culture
will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art."14
Hear again his approach to school curricula. "There is only
one subject—matter for education, and that (is Life in all
its manifestations."15 In this same sense and more specifi-

cally he states,

We enunciate two educational commandments, 'do not
teach too many subjects,‘ and again, 'what you
teach, teach thoroughly..... The result of teach-
ing small parts of a large number of subjects is
the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not
illumined with any spark of vitality. Let the
main ideas which are introduced into a child's
education be few and important, and 11e6t them be
thrown into every combination possible.

Once again in the same essay, Whitehead alludes to this
goal:

You may not divide the seamless coat of learning.
What education has to impart is an intimate sense
for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas,
and for the structure of ideas, together with a
particular body of knowledge which has peculiar
regerence to the life of the being possessing
it.

117
It appears that the majority of responses by the "clients"
in Goodlad's survey lean towards an educational goal or an
educational approach which is as simple and straight forward
as this one, that is, until they are ”prompted” and "forced”

to choose more.

When the discussion Shifts to the actual content of the
school curriculum, not surprisingly, Goodlad is distressed
with his findings.

Two major deficiencies stand out in all aspects of
the curricula we studied, from state and district
guides to the most important learnings perceived
by students. The first is a failure to differen-
tiate and see the relationships between facts and
the more important concepts which facts help us to
understand. The second, closely related to the
first, is a general failure to view subjects and
subject matter as turf on which to experience the
struggles and satisfactions of personal develop-
ment.

One should not wonder at such a phenomenon, in light of the
goal statements and undoubtedly the accompanying "behav-
ioral" objectives. Might not these shortcomings be
expected.

Such a phenomenon is not new and was not new to
Whitehead. He consistently railed against educators who
were preoccupied with ”pumping" the child's head with mere
facts or "scraps of information" as Whitehead put it.

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness
to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of informa-
tion have nothing to do with it.... In training a
child to activity of thought, above all things we
must beware of what I call 'inert ideas'--that is
to say, ideas that are merely received into the
mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown
into fresh combinations.... In the history of
education, the most striking phenomenon is that
schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive

118

with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding genera-

tion exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The

reason is, that they are overladen with inert
ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only
useless: it is, above all things, harmful--

'Corruptio optimi, pessima.‘ Except at rare

intervals of intellectual ferment, education in

the pafit has been radically infected with inert

ideas.

Had the educational researchers under Goodlad, et. al.,
remembered in these earlier years more of Whitehead than the
brief quote in the back of their study it is seemingly
plausible that A Place Called School might well have become
quite a different book.

The Whitehead approach to the subject's curriculum is
not unlike his approach to setting the school curriculum.
Teach a few ideas thoroughly. This provides unity and a
greater possibility for "generalization." At the same time,
the corollary to teaching a few ideas thoroughly is to
encourage the student towards Special study.

The appreciation of the structure of ideas is that

side of a cultured mind which can only grow under

the influence of a special study. I mean that eye

for the whole chess-board, for the bearing of one

set of ideas on another. Nothing but a Special

study can give any appreciation for the exact

formulation of general ideas, for their relations

when formulatedQOfor their service in the compre-

hension of life.

The combination of teaching a few ideas thoroughly and
encouraging the students toward special study is essentially
the Whitehead approach toward the individual subject. This
in turn leads to the cultivation of that sense for style to

which Goodlad makes reference.

119

When one applies Whiteheadian tenets to the area of
instruction, current. educational. psychology' which. centers
around behavioral psychology, in many instances stands
directly in the way. Whitehead attempted and succeeded at
manipulating curricula, factual content, ideas, and a host
of areas, but only under the strictest circumstances did he
attempt to manipulate learners. This is fairly congruous
with the six tenets that have been presented, and seemingly
quite incongruous with the educational portraits which
emerge from the data of A Place Called School.

Now before the war breaks out again between behavior-
ists, humanists and cognitive developmentalists, all should
be reminded of the fact that well over a half century ago,
Whitehead offered the marriage of all three. This marriage
has already appeared earlier as the third of the six tenets,
i.e., that the essence of education can be understood as a
rhythm consisting of three cycles: Romance, Precision, and
Generalization. Humanists might find many of their own
precepts embodied in the affectively' oriented approaches
inherent in the stage of Romance. The same would be true
for behaviorists in the stage of Precision, and in a sort of
generic sense, cognitive developmentalists in the state of
Generalization. The implication for application to instruc-
tion is that all three stages must be understood by the
instructor, and hopefully in a small sense understood by the
learner, so that the most can be made of whichever cycle is

in progress at any time. The mindfulness of this rhythm

120
embodies in a large part the application of the Whitehead
approach to instruction. Everything the teacher does, then,
emanates from this understanding.

At this point, some applications in the area of
research perspectives emerge. If education is a cyclic
process then isolation and study of those cycles might prove
valuable for both instruction, and the training necessary to
deliver that instruction. (Though Whitehead on occasion
uses the word instruction, seemingly for him it does not
carry the overtones of a drill sergeant as it does in some
educational quarters today). Might it not be better to
begin to free ourselves from the "people as higher level
animals" mentality that surrounds both research and
practice. ”Life as the subject matter of education" creates
some interesting curriculum possibilities. Further, there
are certainly possibilities for research perspectives that
assume that the student is responsible for his/her own
learning. These then, are just a few possible perspectives
for areas of research application. The discussion of these
perspectives is expanded with the inclusion of an illustra-

tion in chapter six.

121

CHAPTER V FOOTNOTES

1A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education (New York,
1968), p. 2.

2

 

Ibid, p. 3.

31bid, pp. 6-7.

4Harold B. Dunkel, Whitehead on Education, (Ohio State,
1965), p. 107.

SA. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education, (New York,
1968), p. 19.
6

'John Naisbitt, Megatrends: ten new directions
transforming our lives (New York, 1982), p. 144.

7A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education, (New York,
1968), p. 46.

8

 

 

 

Ibid, p. 49.

91bid, pp. 49-50.

10John Naisbitt, MigatrendSJ ten new directions trans-
forming our lives (New York, 1982), p. 36.

11A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education, (New York,
1968), p. l.

12A. N. Whitehead, Essays in Science and PhilOSOphy,
(New York, 1968), p. 173.

13John I. Goodlad, A Place Called School, (New York,
1984), p. 50.

14A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education, (New York,
1968), p. 1.

 

 

 

lsIbidl pp. 6-7.
161616, p. 2.
17

Ibid. pp. 11-12.

122

18John I. Goodlad, A Place Called School, (New York,
1984), p. 237.

19A. N. Whitehead, The Aim of Education, (New York,
1968)] pp. 1-20

20

 

 

Ibid, p. 12.

CHAPTER VI

The final chapter of this work is a presentation of
implications and/or recommendations drawn from the applica-
tion of Whitehead's tenets to the selected Naisbitt trends.

Four areas of discussion are included. The first area

deals with the notion of reconceptualization both as it was
presented by JOhn Naisbitt and as it was implied by Alfred
North Whitehead, and as they might relate it towards our
approach to people in general. The second area is somewhat
like the .first with the exception that the emphasis is on
reconceptualizing our approach to working with people. The
third area presents implications and recommendations which
reflect the previously discussed approaches. Finally the
fourth section carries a brief discussion regarding the
second part of the major problem as stated in the opening
chapter, that being the need for methodology which allows
for study of this kind. This section concludes with a brief

illustration.

Implications for Personal Interactions

As a preface to the discussion of our general approach
towards interacting with our fellow human beings, it might
prove beneficial to shed some light once again on Naisbitt's

fourth trend. That fourth trend reflects the awakening of

123

124

many leaders in the business world who are putting aside
their natural urge to react to the moment (the short term),
and thinking and reasoning from a much longer perspective,
much as the Japanese have recently adopted as a regular
practice. The twin corollary of this shift is what Mary
Parker Follett termed "the law of the situation." The law
of the situation is an important concept because, ”The Law
of the Situation asks the question 'What business are you
really in?”1 Naisbitt then adds the supplemental idea
which is reconceptualization. "When the business environ-
ment changes, a company or organization must reconceptualize
its purpose in light of the changing world."2

Just to digress for a moment, educators have seemingly
either (a) never reconceptualized or (b) reconceptualized
often but just as often failed to discern the true situa-
tion. This is partly why Whitehead and his approach
represent such a valuable path. When he conceptualized his
approach, he took into account the fact that educators might
never know the specifics of learners' present or future
situations. Thus what was needed was an approach that would
serve learners in any circumstance even if the learners
themselves could not know their present or future situa-
tions. The emphasis under Whitehead's approach was and is
on the methods, means and processes of education. The
outcomes and ends are secondary and will take care of
themselves. The "end" for Whitehead was an adaptable,

method-rich learner, who could process his/her way through

125
nearly any of life's situations to achieve cultural appre-
ciations as well as general understandings, larger ques-
tions, and challenges to further inquiry.

Returning to Follett's principle of the law of the
situation, educators should find that the nature of our
world is such that the law of the situation is that specific
learner needs will most likely change and continually change
throughout the learner's lifetime. Thus the law of the
situation for education is change. This sounds like an
impossible situation for education in America, but the
positive aspect is that educators can always predict that
there will be change and not always be right, but never be
wrong. That is, if learners have been prepared for adapting
to change, and do not experience or need to adapt to change,
their ability to learn will have still met their need for
their situation.

The second highly positive aspect for education in
America in this regard is our response to Naisbitt's
reconceptualization corollary to Follett's law. Unlike
business which often must concern itself with continually
reconceptualizing in order to provide the needed product,
education may now need to reconceptualize only once. When
education becomes primarily focused on nwmhod and process,
there may not be a need to continually reconceptualize as
business must.

Probably the most real and dynamic of all of Naisbitt's

trends is the shift to an information society. It is a

126

highly supported trend by both experts and authors across
numerous disciplines. It has shaken the foundations of both
business and education. It has left educational leaders
groping for a response, and it has encouraged administrative
leaders to fill their classrooms with computers and soft-
ware. Whether such a response is appropriate, no one seems
to be really sure. Their lack of assurance, of course, is
part of the reason for this paper. This trend, however, has
provided something very special for educators. It has
provided an opportunity. Educators need only view it as
such. It has provided the opportunity for a pause in
"business as usual." It has universally given educators a
reason (or excuse) to buy time from the public, just as
Whitehead had the same opportunity in his World War I
circumstances. If educators will bend their efforts toward
reconceptualizing the underpinnings of educational thought
in this country and state it as such, perhaps the public
will cooperate.

If chapter five has demonstrated anything, it has
demonstrated the hand-in-glove mesh. of ‘Whitehead's sixth
tenet, which states that the student retains the responsie
bility for his/her own learning, and Naisbitt's somewhat
generic sixth trend which states that Americans are switch-
ing from institutional reliance to much more self-reliance
and responsibility. This is a good example of an'area of
great opportunity. Educators ought to take the "high road"

and wholeheartedly back such a shift to greater individual

127
reliance. Backing such a shift might be a really good way
of shifting our own perspective from state codes, school
buildings, and classrooms to clients, i.e., individual
learners, where it more properly belongs. Is not such a
perspective already an often unrealized given in both gifted
and exceptional education programs? Such a shift ought to
afford educators the opportunity to build and support all
people as learners, especially the 80 percent who are not

supposedly specially gifted or exceptional.

Implications for Interactions With Fellow Educators
Supporting such a shift ought to present another great
opportunity, and that is the opportunity to take the "high
road” as it relates to fellow educators. It is amazing and
not a little disturbing how often teachers encounter so-
called educational leaders who view all levels of school
personnel as the older counterparts of the supposedly
unreliable and irresponsible students of yesteryear. To no
one's surprise, school personnel are capable of accommodat-
ing that errant viewpoint. Thus state education departments
need elaborate "accountability” measures and a punitive
system, rather than‘using those same resources to facilitate
growth and support services. Brophy and Good's excellent
discussion of the Pygmalion Effect probably has more
implications and applications for school personnel than one
might initially expect.3 Educators have a great opportunity
to start believing and acting like the people who are put
into schools are capable, much as A. N. Whitehead did over a

half century ago.

128

Implications for a More Productive
Educational Perspective

Educators have another great Opportunity, and that is
the opportunity to diSpel what seems at this time to be a
rather unproductive viewpoint. This viewpoint is a tenet of
a number of determinists and/or reductionists, and the
viewpoint is that there is no freedom.* That premise does
not work, however, for a number of Americans. Their will to
educate their youngsters in some rather non-traditional
ways, as Naisbitt has shown, might well serve as the proof.

In a recent newspaper article, B. F. Skinner bemoans
what he sees as the great problems of Western Society. At
the top of his list, he includes such problems as the use of
too much punishment, too much boredom, and the lack of joy
in the living of life. He attributes the problem to "tyran—

"4 He does not attribute

nical governments and religions.
any of the problem to a system of learning that is pre-
occupied with "right' answers, and instantaneously rewarding
those right answers. What is inherently taught in such a
system? Skinner continues: ”What is needed is to give
satisfaction back to people. It's the difference," he says,

"between a craftsman who makes a complete chair and a person

on an assembly line who makes only the legs. The

* Though the researcher is aware of some of the subtle
differences in the following terms, for the specific
purposes of this discussion, the terms determinism,
behaviorism, and reductionism are interchangeable and used
collectively as an example of an educational, and to some
extent, philosophical perspective. Notable educational
researchers associated with these terms include such men
as Thorndyke, Watson, Pavlov, Taylor, and Skinner.

129

craftsman's work," Skinner says, ”is constantly reinforced
by the process of seeing the chair take form, and finally of
producing the finished chair. But the assembly-line worker
sees only chair leg after chair leg - never the completed
product."5 One might question whether a reductionist
viewpoint such as Skinner's serves to solve the problem or
does the behaviorally modified, programmed' learner see
anything different? Might not the behaviorally modified
learner see algebra - from which nothing follows; biology -
from which nothing follows; or history - from which nothing
follows? From a slightly different approach would the
behaviorally modified chair-maker know enough to start
making something else when the chair market is saturated, or
does he/she continue to receive that ”instant gratification"
of crafting a whole chair even though people are demanding
tables. At the same time there is a sense in which
Skinner's reductionist ideas may be quite valuable, as will
be seen shortly.

There is another seemingly unproductive assumption at
work in the reductionist/determinist perspective. It is
manifested in the notion that manipulating human beings is
something like training animals. Education is something
that is done to students rather than with them or for them.
Such a: belief precludes any self-initiatives or reasonings
or self-evaluations. The pupil is only a receiver not an
emitter; a responder rather than an expressor of perception.

Such an assumption really implies more. Inherent within

130

this perspective, either intentionally understood or other-
wise, is the notion that learners are not responsible, and
maybe can never be considered responsible. Of course
someone has to be responsible, so the most likely candidate
is the teacher, but if teachers organize, they can get the
responsibility shifted to the principal, and if all school
personnel organize, they can get the responsibility shifted
to state and national governments. Governments, however,
know how to be responsible about nearly everything. Govern-
ments can really take charge. They can pass laws requiring
all kinds of mandatory testing not only for students but for
teachers as well. They can add more time to the school day
or more days to the school year or threaten to cut off the
funds. They can even promise to keep all test scores
confidential.

John Goodlad provides. a further example of this point.

...just a few years ago, any serious discussion of

how to improve schools as the social systems they

are was aborted frequently by the explanation that

'everything depends on the teacher.‘ The conven-

tional wisdom today in many quart s is that

'everything depends on the principal.’
What seemingly unproductive assumptions these are, espe-
cially when compared to Whitehead's contrary point of over
seventy years ago. "...In reality you (students) educate
yourselves. No one else can do it for you. You are not
pieces of clay which clever teachers are modeling into
educated men. It is your effort alone which essentially

7

counts." What is more, Whitehead's assumption was not

liberal idealism. It was the rational, logical approach of

131

the day. The fact that anyone could even presume the
responsibility for the processes of another person's mind
was incredible, and maybe even a little eerie. Whitehead's
sensible approach needs a larger claque in these times. .

Digressing slightly further with the thought that human
beings are something more than animals, what one believes
about human beings really makes all of the difference in how
one approaches their education. unfortunately many of the
philosophical foundations that undergird fundamental
thinking within the various disciplines come from both
philosophies and philosophers whom we generally ignore as
being so obtuse that they do not rate a second thought.
Unfortunate, too, is the fact that at the crux of their
pronouncements is a hopeless view of humanity. Discussing
such a view at this point is beyond the scope of this paper.
As a point of reference, though, the great and long time
Cambridge University lecturer, Francis Schaeffer, has spoken
eloquently to that predominant view in his books, Back to

8 9

Freedom and Dignity and He Is There and He Is Not Silent.

 

Schaeffer not only roundly refutes the "doom and gloom"
view, but logically and rationally replaces it with just the
opposite one.

Returning to the commentary regarding reductionists
and/or behaviorists, what is wrong is not necessarily their
methods or the lack of success of their methods, but the
context in which they are used. A better context will be

discussed momentarily. In the mid to late 1950's, there

132

inere some notable educators in America who attempted to put
reductionism/determinism or more specifically behaviorism in
.a much more meaningful perspective. The youthful ASCD
devoted their third research institute to the discussion of
that perspective. Among the contributors were Arthur Combs
and Robert Bills. Whether their writings were ignored or
their discussions evolved into something eventually unrecog-
nizable, their views remain insightful. It should be
helpful to follow the ensuring discussion both as it relates
to behavior specifically and reconceptualization in general,
and as it will ultimately relate to Whitehead.

If human beings are like animals, then human problems
ought to be successfully resolved by simply manipulating the
forces that are exerted upon them. Like many of our experi-
ences from the farm (Comb's experience too), cattle can be
successfully driven from the pasture to the barn simply by
closing and opening the appropriate gates, or manipulating
the forces that are exerted upon them.

The 'fencing in' technique works fine with cattle
and sheep. Unfortunately, it often breaks down in
working with people because people, being smarter
than cattle or sheep, are always finding gates
which we forgot to lock or climbliong over the
fences we have so carefully erected.

In order to use the 'fencing in" method correctly it is
presumed that someone or a few people know where all of the

people should go.

The concept of leadership which grows out of this
conception of the nature of behavior, moreover,
calls for a leader who is a kind of superman
skilled in the manipulation of forces to get
people to behave in the ways desired by the

133

knowing few. Stated in this way, such a view of
dealing with people seems highly distasteful to
those of us who are deeply concerned with demo-
cratic practices. Nevertheless, this is the
method of dealing with people to be found most
commonly everywhere in our society. In spite of
ourselves, whenever we find ourselves saying, 'How
can I make him behave? How can I get him to--' or
'I told him what to do!‘ wfilare illustrating this
point of view about people.

In the continuation of Combs' discussion note the
context in which behaviorism/reductionism fits.

Now the difficulty with this idea is not that it

is wrong. The problem, rather, is that it is

partly right. It is partly true that people do

behave in terms of the forces which are exerted
upon them. The idea is not wrong, it is artl
right! Unfortunately, partly right ideas give
partly right answers and partly right answers, in
return, encourage us in the vain hope that if we
could but try a little harder, put forth a little
more effort, or find a little better anglelzwe
would be able to solve the problem completely.

Those in the behaviorist camp certainly seem to be partly

right! There is one more aspect to be considered, however,

before proceding to Whitehead and the needed context.

The necessary aspect is that of perception. Robert
Bills provides insight into the meaning of perception as it
applies to learning. His definition is compatible with that
of Combs and others. Simply stated Bills discusses "...per-
ception in the sense of how a person 'sees' or perceives
things and how his perceptions affect his learning.... The
primary assumption of the perceptionist is that behavior is

a function of perception."13

Much of what is learned by the
learner is tied to his/her personal perception of the infor-
mation or whether he/she is affected by the information.

Combs follows the principle closely when he notes that, "Any

134
piece of information will have its effect upon behavior in

the degree to which an individual discovers its personal

meaning."14

If one has understood Whitehead, such premises as those
just stated are not necessarily new. Looking at the sixth
tenet, that of student responsibility, Whitehead would see
no need of manipulating students to get them to learn,
because it is already their responsibility. At the same
time, tenet five, that of providing the opportunity to
discover a broader meaning for the information that a
teacher must dispense, provides a needed check upon the
teacher's role. These two tenets undergird all of the
others, but the real heart of this discussion, and its
attending implications proceed from the third tenet. When
the third tenet is understood, all of the pieces of the.
learning puzzle fit remarkably well. When learners are
affected positively by an idea (the stage of romance), they
perceive its importance and willingly submits to whatever
behavior modification necessarily helps them acquire the
needed content (the stage of precision). In this context,
then, the reductionist system has great usefulness. It is
highly efficient. Learners are not interested in "jumping
any fences." They are interested in acquiring the much
needed content. At that point, they can proceed to make
connections. The ideas are not inert, because the learners
can use them, combine them, find whatever unity there is

among them, and make both new "generalizations” and begin a

135
new cycle of romance, and this rhythm is applicable across
curricula whether liberal, scientific or technical. This
makes for a considerably more optimistic and useful approach
to educating human beings.

One still might wonder what Whitehead has to do with
Combs, Bills, and others who look at learning from this more
perceptual viewpoint. Some may even think that Whitehead
was just lucky or made lucky guesses about the nature of all
of these things, but Whitehead was a practitioner. He grew
up with practitioners, he reflected upon his own practice,
and he spoke to, with, and for practitioners from this
viewpoint. All the while, he was considered an outstanding
researcher and theorist. Combs aptly discusses this process
which was most likely Whitehead's process.

...practice often precedes our theoretical understand-

ing of the problem. However, when we eventually arrive

at new theoretical understandings, we have acquired a

yardstick in terms of which we can measure old pig-

ctices and can push forward to even newer practices.
Whitehead's practices have everything to do with education
today, and have very little to do with luck. Thus, Whitehead
has already assumed much of the perceptual theory nearly a
half century ahead of Combs, Bills and the rest.

Bearing in mind this whole discussion, it becomes
especially valuable to interject Whitehead's views with
regard to individual schools and various systems of external
examination, an idea with which the entire nation is

currently preoccupied. To say that Whitehead had little use

for external examinations as directed by "state" departments

136
of education is putting his view mildly. He attributed much
of the inertness in education to a preoccupation with
external testing programs. These programs were unsuitable
primarily because they ignored those qualities that are
special to each school, classroom, and teacher.

It is for this reason that the uniform external
examination is so deadly. We do not denounce it
because we are cranks, and like denouncing
established things. We are not so childish.
Also, of course, such examinations have their use
in testing slackness. Our reason of dislike is
very definite and very practical. It kills the
best part of culture. When you analyze in the
light of experience the central task of education,
you find that its successful accomplishment
depends on a delicate adjustment of many variable
factors. The reason is that we are dealing with
human minds, and not with dead matter. The evoca-
tion of curiosity, of judgment, of the power of
mastering a complicated tangle of circumstances,
the use of theory in giving foresight in special
cases--all these powers are not to be imparted by
a set ruleGembodied in one schedule of examination
subjects.

Such a perSpective does not eliminate examinations, but
those examinations originate from a different source, and
for Whitehead that source is the school itself.

Each school should grant its own leaving certifi-
cates, based on its own curriculum. The standards
of these schools should be sampled and corrected.
But the first requisite for educational reform is
the school as a unit, with its approved curriculum
based on its own needs, and evolved by its own
staff. If we fail to secure that, we simply fall
from one formalism to anothqg, from one dung-hill
of inert ideas into another.

Whitehead reiterates the point again:

When I say that the school is the educational
unit, I mean exactly what I say, no larger unit,
no smaller unit. Each school must have the claim
to be considered in relation to its special
circumstances. The classifying of schools for
some purposes is necessary. But no absolutely

137

rigid curriculum, not modified by its own staff,
should be permissable. Exactly the same prin-
ciples apply, with proper modificaifaions, to
universities and to technical colleges.
In addition, Whitehead is quite clear regarding who it is
that examines the learners:
And I may say in passing that no educational
system is possible unless every question directly
asked of a pupil at any examination is either
framed or modified by the actual teacher of that
pupil in that subject. The external assessor may
report on the curriculum or on the performance of

the pupils, but never should be allowed to ask the

pupil a question which has not been strictly

supervised by the actual teacher, or at least
inspired by a long conference with him. There are

a few exceptions to this rule, but they are excep-

tions, and mfg easily be allowed for under the

general rule.
In higher education many talk as though their students are
capable of handling a system like the one just described.
Maybe it is about time they got the chance.

Hopefully the discussion to this point has clearly
implied and even recommended what is not wanted in our
conceptions of education. The mechanistic and manipulative
approaches that we have taken for granted have often led us
away from what is needed and wanted. The misapplications
and impossibility of application of much of the quantitative
research in education have probably too often left school
personnel ineffective and frustrated, and have left many of
our students in the position of learning in spite of us
rather than because of us. Unfortunately, we cannot quickly
point to worthwhile alternatives for teacher preparation, or

supervision or a proven alternative approach to research.

Larry Lezotte, of Michigan State University, has been known

138
to remark to his students that, "Education is very mushy

science but especially disciplined art.”

Implications for Methodology

Art is not a foreign work to all leading educators,
particularly to a leader such as Elliot Eisner. If there is
a spokesman for a different approach, it is certainly Dr.
Eisner. In an article appearing in Educational Leadership,
Eisner details the history of the misconceived role of
behavior modification in American education, and the
misapplication of Francis Taylor's scientific management,
both perpetuated by the use of research methods from the
sciences, and all designed to produce a prescriptive science
of educational practice. Such an endeavor, according to
Eisner, is hopeless.

Eisner, instead, places hope in what he calls the art
of teaching. What he means by the art of teaching is
grounded in four basic points.

First it means that no science of teaching exists,
or can exist, that will be so prescriptive as to
make teaching routine.... Second, because the
classroom, when not hog-tied or mechanically
regimented, is a dynamic enterprise, teachers must
be able to read the dynamic structures of signifi-
cation that occur in such settings. Such reading
requires attention to pattern and expressive
nuance created by the students and the teacher's
own activities. Third, appreciation is not
enough. The teacher must be able to call on or
invent a set of moves that create an educationally
productive tempo within a class.... Fourth, it
means that we acknowledge that artistry in teach-
ing represents the apotheosis of educational
performance and rather than try to diminish or
replace it with rule-governed prescriptions, we
ought to offer it a seat of honor. Artistry in
teaching is always likely to be rare but it is

139

even rarer when one works in an educational
climate that is so concerned about academic
achievement that it often stifles intellectual
risk-tak'btag on the part of both students and
teachers.
Eisner's whole perspective is promising, and the type of
research that attends it is reflected in the second part of
the problem addressed by this dissertation.

If action does in fact speak louder than words, then
hopefully this paper reflects the positive side of that
axiom. In a major way, the style of this paper is traceable
to Eisner's research perspectives which call for more
artistic approaches to educational research which, in turn,
complement his other more artistic approaches to educational
matters. His research perspectives have been discussed in

various publications, but probably no more succinctly than

in an article that appeared in the April, 1981 Educational

 

Researcher. The article, entitled, "On the Differences
Between Scientific and Artistic Approaches to Qualitative
Research” is valuable for our purposes, here, because
several of Eisner's propositions are attempted and hopefully
reflected in the method and style of this present work. In
the article Eisner outlined ten areas of contrast, and while
space does not allow for a full discussion, some of his more
pertinent points follow.

Under the heading ”criteria for appraisal" Eisner notes
that,

Scientific approaches to research ask whether or

not the conclusions are supported by the evidence,

and further, whether the methods that were used to
collect the evidence did not bias the conclusions.

140

In other words, scientific research is always
concerned with questions of validity.... Validity
in the arts is the product of persuasiveness of a
personal vision; its utility is determined by the
extent to which it informs. There is no test of
statistical significance, no measure of construct
validity in artistically rendered research. What
one seeks is illumination and penetration. The
proof of the pudding is the way in which it shapes
ourzfonception of the world or some aspect of
1t.

In the scientific approach to qualitative research, one
is interested in working from the particular to the general,
and one has interest in the particulars only as they
represent general tendencies.

The artistically oriented researcher is interested
in making the particular vivid so that its quali-
ties can be experienced and because he believes
that the particular has a contribution to make to
the comprehension of what is general. The ability
to generalize from particulars is one of the ways
whereby humans cope with the world. I know of no
one who forms the generalizations that guide his
or her actions through a ffchnically rigorous
process of random selection.

A very important difference between scientific and.
artistic approaches is the matter of form. Ideally in
scientific research form is rigorously prescribed and
followed to the letter. The personality of the researcher
is not to be found in the work as it might negatively impact

content.

What artistic approaches seek is to exploit the
power of form to inform.... In artistic
approaches the particular words chosen, the
location of specific ideas within a report, the
tone and tempo of the writing, the sense of voice
which it possesses have no literal equivalent.
The potential of form is not regarded as a liabil-
ity but as an essential vehicle constituting a
signifisgnt part of the content of the communi-
cation.

141
These are only three examples from Eisner's discussion but
hopefully they establish the point.

Though some may not normally think of A. N. Whitehead
and Elliot Eisner as bedfellows in their approaches to
education and learning situations, there seems to be some
very strong agreement. One might find the areas of: the
value of discussion, the choice of language, the sense of
style (as Whitehead speaks of it), and the autonomy of
classrooms and schools as points of agreement to name a few.

Along these same lines, there are some who might be
inquisitive as to a curriculum example or illustration of an
application of a Whitehead tenet. The tenet of choice could
easily be that of education as a rhythm consisting of the
cycles of romance, precision and generalization. The
researcher believes that there may be and possibly should be
a host of applications of this tenet, each with its own
style. A possible illustration in the field of history
might proceed to encourage the young learner to investigate
some of the history of his/her own family. The learner
could discuss the family background with parents, grand-
parents, great grandparents and others. The learner might
ultimately find this quite stimulating (romance). Other
eddies within the cycle might include what father or great-
grandfather did during wartime or the Great Depression and
branching into a number of directions from there.

The stage of precision might include both sampling and

acquiring skill at using both primary and secondary sources

142

and gaining understanding of how to collect and report data.
All the while, topics for gaining precision could find their
origin in those uncovered in the earlier stage of romance
(which might still form an eddy within the stage of
precision). Commonality' among learners' experiences and
understanding universally accepted means of reporting
findings would have a strong place in the stage of
precision.

The stage of generalization, then, is the stage of new
romance, along with individual study and reporting, but with
the skills of precision acquired in that previous stage.
The learner might initiate a study of the W.P.A. stemming
from the fact that grandfather received employment in that
way during the Depression. Such a study could stem from
first romance and include the elements of the stage of
precision, and find ultimate fruition in the stage of
generalization.

To summarize, this paper has covered a considerable
amount of territory. Naisbitt's ten trends have been
discussed, and a representative group of three have been
selected and supported by at least three other educator/
futurist authors. The three trends are still quite viable
as of this writing. They have provided a current and
evolving context with which to reckon educational under-
takings. Various significant opportunities have been
presented and discussed. Whitehead's general educational

thought has been presented and six tenets extrapolated.

143
Systematic applications of the tenets have been completed in
the context of the trends, and trial understandings from
contemporary thought have been examined. Supported impli-
cations have been discussed and additional contemporary
support for the use of Whitehead's thought has been
established. A differing method and style of presentation
has been tried and found to be useful. It is hoped that
others can use all or parts of the content, methodology and
style presented hereby using other authors, scholars and/or
futurists or the same ones for that matter. In addition, it
is hoped that others will be encouraged to develop and
attempt other styles of research and be heartened by the

efforts of this work, if not the results.

144

CHAPTER VI FOOTNOTES

1John Naisbitt, Megatrends: Ten new directions
transforming our lives (New York, 1982), p. 85.

21bid, p. 85.

3Jere Brophy and Thomas Good, Looking in Classrooms

4Sally Squires, "Disciple of Enjoyment," Detroit News,
December 28, 1985, p. 6A.

5

 

Ibid, p. GA.

6John Goodlad, A Place Called School (New York, 1984),
p. XVI.

7A.N. Whitehead, Essays in Science and Philosophy: (New
York, 1968), p. 173.

8Francis Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity,
(Downers Grove, 1972).

9Francis Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent,
(Wheaton, 1972).

10Arthur W. Combs, ”Personality Theory and Its Implica-
tions for Curriculum Development,” in Learning More About
Learning, ASCD Washington, D.C., 1959) p. 6.

 

lllbid, pp. 6-7.
lzlbid, p. 7.
13

Robert E. Bills, ”Believing and Behaving: Perception

and Learning," in Learning More About Learning, ASCD
(Washington D.C., 1959 , p. 55.

14Arthur W. Combs, ”Personality Theory and Its Implica-
tions for Curriculum Development," in Learning More About
Learning, ASCD Washington, D.C., 1959), p. 10.

lsIbid, p. 7.

145

16A.N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education, (New York,
1968), p. 5.

17Ibid, p. 13.

lerid, p. 14.
19Ibid, p. 5.
20Elliot Eisner, "The Art and Craft of Teaching,"

Educational Leadership, (January, 1983), p. 9.

lebid, p. 11.

22Elliot Eisner, 'On The Differences Between Scientific
and Artistic Approaches to Qualitative Research,” Educa-
tional Researcher, 10, No. 4 (1981), p. 6.

23Ibid, p. 7.

24Ibid, p. 8.

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