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Education and The Quest for Wholeness

by Martin Smith

Representing wholeness: Persephone is abducted but her return will symbolize rebirth

Florian Biermanns recent article (with Saba Devdariani) [1] on Examination Reform
steers round the troubling issue of whether achieving the correct responses in
multiple-choice type tests really amounts to receiving an education. For even if
admission to university should turn on the same parameters a planned reform
which their article discusses it remains extremely unsure as to whether a school
system geared solely to achieving the survival and promotion of those most fitted to
pass through this narrow defile is in fact delivering an education in the widest
sense. Graduating students of my acquaintance want to go on to university because
it looks good, because their friends are doing so, and because it is expected of
them. But it would seem that few, indeed, in such a system and this includes
teachers as well as students can have even the remotest ideas of the pleasures of
true learning.
The Purpose of Education
Michael McGee (2010) [2] makes an important distinction between instruction and
education: instruction leaves a person better trained and better informed but
otherwise unaltered. To stand on the threshold of an education, by contrast, is to
stand poised between the possibility of an achieved formation and temper of mind,
which widens perspectives and matures the power of judgment. And as these
words Latin roots show, instruction is putting something in; while education is
leading something out. And ancient Hebrew wisdom claimed (although the phrase
has been attributed to Plutarch, Yeats and Rabelais) that a child is a lamp to be lit,
not a vessel to be filled. [3]
The Soviet Experience
Anton Semonovych Makarenko (1888-1939) might be taken as exemplifying the
intellectual legacy in the educational field to which Georgia and other ex-USSR

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states have been subjected. Makarenko was particularly influential; between 1925
and 1935, writing The Pedagogical Poem, in which methods of training wild
children were discussed. The great American educationist John Dewey (1859-1952)
was in 1927, ecstatic about these reformed Russian children: I have never seen
anywhere in the world such a large proportion of intelligent, happy, and intelligently
occupied children, he wrote; noting that they were diligently occupied, in
gardening, beekeeping, repairing buildings, growing flowersand making simple
tools But seven years later, Dewey would lament the excessive centralization
and growth of bureaucratic routine which he encountered; although he did pay
tribute to one value the fruits of which we see still today: that of the autonomy of
regions and local traditions.[4]
Bolnisi Evidence
By 2013, despite Mikhail Saakashvilis attempts at the wholesale reform, not only of
Georgias examination system but the schooling process per se, all that was left in
place was this excessively centralized bureaucratic routine. There were no craft
skills being taught, something which is especially important for the boys. (Only
within the last year has an obsession with rugby to some extent filled this human
and psychological void.) The main idea of every lesson seemed to be to teach some
quite narrow textbook material in a predictable way; when assisting another teacher
I often felt that we were working off two quite different scripts. Yes on Deweys
local, cultural level, from time to time there were impressive feats of memory in
school performances an acquaintance with the verses of Pshavela, for example;
but the drumming out of piano duet versions of uninspiring traditional tunes in the
Bolnisis Music School (and at a speed guaranteed to prevent the pupil from being
able to formulate a musical thought before being required to strike the note) only
underlined that, across the broadest canvas, nothing was being done which spoke of
making space for and indeed prioritizing the development of the imaginative and
personal life of the individual child.
And despite impressive attitudes from one Tbilisi school, specializing in science,
which I had the pleasure to visit (the Tbilisi I. Vekua Physics-Mathematical School,
No 42) I cannot really say that two years acquaintance with a cross-section of some
charming but in general somewhat unmotivated Tbilisi children, has shown me
that things are much different in the capital. [5]
In fact, things may be worse than this. As well as being eighty years behind, in
comparison to what Dewey found in Russia in the Thirties, the Georgian education
system is for understandable historical reasons 180 degrees west of the stance
of Europe, as regards the personality of the individual child.
That is to say, Georgia has no insight into the western stance which is informed by a
deep knowledge of psychology, and especially depth psychology: the work of Freud
and Jung (with its roots in Paul-Eugen Bleuler, Jean-Martin Charcot, and Galvani: a

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tradition which takes in the discovery of Parkinsons Disease, Tourettes syndrome,
autism, schizophrenia, introversion, psychosis and depression concepts which are
still but little accepted into the mainstream of Georgian popular medical
knowledge).[6]
The Psychological Dimension of Thought
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) might be considered as the spiritual grandfather of all
that is best about a liberated, questing, egalitarian, and culturally sensitive Europe.
His thought is ground-breaking on every level; but particularly valuable is his great
ability to see holistically. Thus, he could diagnose the state in terms of the human
person; a semi-animate personality, from whom everything is expected[and] a
dangerous mechanism which, could swallow up [peoples] religious impulses and
take the place of god Jung goes on: Brass bands, flags, banners, paradesare no
different in principle to church processionscannonades to scare off demons.[7]
Conversely, he saw Hitler as the double of a real person: as if Hitler the man
might be hiding inside, like an appendix, and deliberately concealed in order not to
disturb the mechanism.[for]there is no-one there. One is reminded of Elias
Canetti (author of Crowds and Power) speaking of interrogation: For the
questioner, there is a feeling of enhanced power. He enjoys this; and consequently
asks more and more questions; every answer he receives is an act of submission
The most blatant tyranny is the one which asks the most blatant questions
Personal freedom consists largely in having a defence against questions.[8]
Against such horrors, Jung strove for a psychological state which he named
individuation a state only a little removed from the ancient Greek ideal of
knowing oneself to which Eric Livny has drawn attention in another ISET article.
[9] Individuation is a state of physical and mental well-being, within which can be
found fulfillment, harmony, order, maturity and responsibility.[10]
Georgia Today
Sadly, the findings of Freud and Jung and the whole field of intellectual enquiry to
which they relate, as well as its spirit would seem to be alien to contemporary
Georgian intellectual life. On the other hand, it could be argued that Georgias
largely intact pastoral tradition on one level makes such values irrelevant: many
people already are, through their rural work and traditions, already in a state of
harmony and balance. This, indeed, is a future capital resource of Georgia whose
importance can scarcely be exaggerated.[11]
Nonetheless, in a recent BBC broadcast which was in general rather unsympathetic
towards her homeland, Natalia Antelava (now residing in England, but with Georgian
and Abkhazian roots) produced evidence of a somewhat narrow and in her view,
belligerent culture of religious education in schools; although, on the other hand,
one can see that without the Markarenkian or Jungian models to fall back on, it is

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only natural for Georgians to look towards their beloved Orthodox Church,
implanted on this soil for 1700 years, and maybe reaching back even to the Apostle
Andrew himself.[12]
But it is also fairly obvious that lurking within the Orthodox religious philosophy
unmediated by any contacts and cross-fertilizations with other Christian faiths,
unlike the West will be a view of man (and woman!) profoundly at odds with the
enlightenment which a new generation of young Georgians seeks. This group is
dynamic, intelligent, informed, demanding, creative; and yet essentially secular (as
well as being spectacularly on frequent occasions both female and beautiful) It
seems to represent the very taste of modern Georgia, a piquant tkemali in the
delicious gastronomic mix. It is likely to seek, for itself and for its children, ideas and
dimensions, vectors of intellectual approach and angles of attack, which the present
education system even with a philosopher and former Education Minister as
President still seems, alas, ill-fitted to deliver.[13]

Martin Smith who lives in Bolnisi, has studied art history, conservation, cooking and computing.

NOTES:
[1] The Financial, 25 May 2015, p2
[2] Michael McGee, A Universitys Soul is Its Freedom of Ideas, The Guardian, 18 October
2012
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/18/university-soul-freedom-ofideas
[3] eg at http://www.thechessdad.com/2009/11/a-child-is-not-a-vessel-to-be-filled-but-alamp-to-be-lit-hebrew-proverb/

[4] Nicola Siciliani de Cumis: Dewey, Makarenko and the Pedagogical Poem:
Between Analogies and Differences
http://www.cultureducazione.it/filosofia/pedagogicalpoem.htm
(John Dewey is not related to Melvil Dewey (1851-1831) who invented the Dewey
(decimal) book classification system, used worldwide.)
[5] See, for example https://www.scribd.com/doc/195008635/Language-Into-Flow-ATbilisi-Experiment. On Bolnisi, see https://www.scribd.com/doc/173092120/TheOlive-Branch-of-Healing
[6] see Wikipedia articles on these thinkers and scientists. Cf ,however, Dmitri
Uznadze (1886-1950), a notable Georgian trail-blazer, both a psychologist and an
educational thinker; who gave his name to the Marjanishvili-area street where, until
recently, the Georgian Ministry of Education and Sciences teaching project (TLG )
was located.
[7] as previous

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[8] Wikipedia
[9] http://www.iset.ge/blog/?p=4973 . Here we also read: [The] Georgians are a very

talented people, as witnessed by their outstanding scholarly achievements in Soviet

times. Georgian physicists, mathematicians, microbiologists, and medical surgeons
were recognized leaders of the Soviet elite. Today, however, Georgias scholarly
achievements are extremely modest, and demonstrate no signs of improvement.
Moreover, combined with unrealistic expectations about their own abilities and
presidential aspirations on the part of many Georgian males, poor education
translates into very high unemployment rates, and a poor work ethic.
[10] Wikipedia, Jung.
[11] cf, for example http://naturenet.net/people/volunteers.html. In the UK voluntary work in
the countryside is an accepted way of assisting the unemployed, and those who may be
suffering from any kind of physical or social ailment. Likewise, the Leeds, UK-based
volunteering organization, i-2-i places young people in teaching, conservation and wildlife
venues worldwide, and has been in existence for over 20 years. http://www.i-to-i.com/ The
intact farming traditions in Georgia and indeed Russia are an amazing resource for such
organizations
[12] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02q9ql2; also http://www.bbc.com/news/worldeurope-32595514; Wikipedia articles on Georgia, and Andrew the Apostle
[13] My thanks to Florian Biermann, Tom Gati, Dr Merab Lomia and Maia Giorgadze who have
commented on this article to my great enlightenment.