(20) Education--Secular & Religious Educators

Education—Secular and Religious Educators

The present work holds within it a cognitional theory, a theory of knowledge, and a pedagogical method for developing self-understanding, for moving through the process of verifying the theory towards self-knowledge, and for the occurrence of self-appropriation in you, the reader. As such, the work is extremely relevant to the various fields of educational theory, e.g., curriculum theory, design, development, etc., but also for giving practicing classroom educators at any grade level a good ground for that practice, Again:

Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding. (Lonergan, 1958, p. xxviii; 2000, p. 22)

Besides the educational theorist and the curriculum developer, then, my intended audience is the on-site teacher in a secular K-12 or college setting, or in an accredited religious academy that has within its core empirically-based and field-oriented studies. Such a work also dovetails with and can help illuminate the movements in education towards differentiated instruction, diversity, assessments, verity, and results in educational research.

Let us explore briefly the question of religion in secular schools, on the one hand, and critical method in religious schools, on the other:

First, recognizing the religious quest in all human beings and cultures implies neither an endorsement nor a rejection of any one religious tradition or its doctrines.

Second, our insistence on and embrace of critical method imply neither an endorsement nor a rejection of what many refer to as true religious meaning.

Third, again, my aim in writing the present work is to help you develop your reflective and self-reflective powers towards what we are referring to as your own self-appropriation. I also hope to help you develop your understanding of the relationship between common sense, empirically established theory, and philosophy; and as an educator, to help you develop your questions about the relationship of these to the religious quest that you find in all of your students and in all cultures that walk into your classroom.

Fourth, I provide a working theory of knowledge and specific pedagogical procedures to aid your and your students’ understanding and verification of your own cognitional structure and process, from which your reflection and self-reflection emerge. In this way, I hope to help you deepen your understanding of the transcendental method that works within you and, thus, to deepen the meaning of education for you and for your students.

Further, if cognitional structure and its procedures are at the heart of all learning, then a critical and personal self-appropriation of those procedures will constitute a kind of heart-to-mind, and back again, growth and conscious unification. It will provide a personal, but also a comprehensive and critical self-knowledge not only of self, but of knowledge as such—or what is basic to all education.

The implications of such knowledge--of self and of knowledge itself--cannot help but have a positive effect on both secular and religious studies, as well as on the common discourse that spontaneously flows from both. It will help religious educators understand the place of critical-scientific knowledge in religious studies, and it will help secular education understand the place and possible treatment of the religious question and various religious expressions in the secular classroom.

In the present work, then, I want to help you to understand yourself in a deeper fashion and, if you are a teacher, to help you help your students understand themselves more clearly, critically, and fully.

Also, many argue that the philosophical tradition is defunct, is fragmented, or that it has gone astray. The present work adds to a corpus of thought that seeks to self-correct our philosophical tradition and to perform and enhance the unifying function of philosophy. I suggest here and in other chapters that the philosophical tradition, in fact, flows directly into common living, and that both are presently ill with corruptive forces. If I am correct in my assessment, then teachers who have entered the self-corrective process in such a critical way will begin to educate students from a more philosophically attuned set of foundations. In the short run, this tuning process will benefit both you and your students by deepening and edifying the ongoing conversation you both are in. The project needs no more justification than this.

In the long run, however, teachers are a powerful force in culture and in history. As such, and through the self-attunement process, the whole project of human living stands the chance of being edified.

Speaking to religious and-or secular educators, a fully conscious, empirically based, and reflective self-knowledge would include, of course, a discovery and location of one’s own general questions about ultimate, or religious, concerns—again, I speak of the quest, and not yet of the answers to that quest. Such a discovery, indeed, may lead to a further exploration of your own religious faith, religious doctrines, theology, and the history of the religious movements and institutions you and others belong to or reject. In this way, rather than automatically endorsing the specific ethical, political or religious doctrine that you grew up in or reject, the truly open and critical teacher is drawn to become more aware of his or her own ethical, political, and religious questions, and to understand how your own answers to those questions might already underpin and inform your teaching and daily living. Avoiding thought about such underpinnings, however, does not mean that their real influence can also be avoided. Such self-inspection is a part of what we refer to here as foundational review.

With regard to your own religious background if you have been raised in a secular environment, such influence is commonly remote from, but also underpins and informs, all of your topical thought. This is so even if you ignore it or conclude that there is no such thing as religious meaning; even if some reject the dialogue or say No to their own religious questions; and even if you have developed a hard-line religious position such as atheism or even nihilism.[6]

Atheism and nihilism are still answers to the same religious quest.

Regardless of your view of such matters, then, you as a teacher in any institution are called to self-reflect and to be clear about your own ethical, social, political, and religious assumptions, identities, and questions. However, the answers to such questions are not, by any means, prescribed by the philosophical project of self-knowledge that the present work entails. In this way, the present project will not and cannot reveal specific answers to such questions in a once-and-for-all way; and it would be naïve for you to accept such answers from any work or person out-of-hand. In the present work I am merely locating the ultimate (or religious) intention, or quest-to-question, as part of the general structure of the human mind. Though I hope you find answers, or at least recognize the mystery at the core of human beings and our history, our answers to that question, or your students’ answers, or your church’s answers, are not my concern or the concern of the present work.

Thus, your discoveries and analysis in the present work will include a critical regard for the general quest-to-questions of ultimate concern that all human beings ask, albeit in a myriad of ways, and as manifest in a myriad of expressions in every culture. Religious doctrine is one thing, then, and the religious quest is quite another; though all religious doctrine springs from the human reach into mystery and the quest for ultimate meaning. Further, we will use specified theories to guide us through our discovery and verification process. In this way, the theories perform the initial function of a philosophical doctrine. An employment of doctrine, however, is a means to the end that is your comprehensive learning.

Further, the doctrine is not an ideology that cannot be questioned. Rather, the doctrine is empirically based. Like meta-narratives, it can and should always be questioned for critique and-or for further understanding and development of theory. Also, though I address some implications of our discoveries in our final chapters, the present work is not identified with any one historical, intellectual, ethical, political or religious doctrine. Though I have my own questions and positions on these matters, I do not take ideological positions or hold to any singular conceptual expression in this work. Neither does the empirical work depend on any views I might hold on these matters.

Thus, a critical empirical approach that analyzes and recognizes the basic fundaments and concerns of all human beings will include an acknowledgement of the given intention and thrust underlying every intellectual, ethical, social, political, and religious doctrine and ideology. However, such an approach would not identify with any one doctrine and ideology. If it did so, it would locate that identity with the normative quality of, first, openness.

And so, the discovery and acknowledgement of a defined set of questions will include those underpinning all sorts of ethical and religious knowledge positions and their doctrines including, for instance, criminal, fascist, atheist, nihilist or those that are in any way anti-religious. However objectionably these might be to you, all are manifestations of that same prior quest for the truth of such concerns, all manifest within a definable set of developing horizons, and all are surrounded by our penchant for denial, and for derailments of such quests.

In this way, again, I claim here no such positions are either false-true or bad-good. However, from the point of view of a general knowledge of cognitional structure, even an un-ethical and-or anti-religious position infers on the holder a prior intention-quest-question regarding the good-bad complex of concerns (morality-ethics), and our ultimate concerns (religion). With our critical efforts here, on this we can stand firm.

Thus, a philosophical inquiry will go to the heart of the matter—the quest and the more articulate question. Included in our inquiry will be an exploration of the factual denials and derailments of such quests.

Again, in the present work I write for a secular audience, and-or for a religious audience who understands the basic tenets of secular pluralism. Here secular means to make distinct and is not necessarily opposed to religion, religious institutions, or religious schooling. Thus, secular means this work is at least distinct from, critical of, and removed from the over-control of any political ideology or religious doctrine--save a basic hope and faith in the human spirit and our intelligence that we will, in time, find answers to our questions.

In this way, the present work is thoroughly critical and amenable to providing the verifiable foundations of a broader education in the sciences and in the humanities in secular as well as in religious institutions.