Anti-Didactic Education: Stop Telling People What to Do!

“And if I don’t ever say what must be done, it isn’t because I believe that there’s nothing to be done; on the
contrary, it is because I think that there are a thousand things to do, to invent, to forge, on the part of those
who, recognizing the relations of power in which they’re implicated, have decided to resist or escape them.”
(Foucault 1991; Ball 2013, p. 16)

I wonder if there may be more wisdom in calls for anti-didactic education if we understand
them as problematizing the act of telling students what they should do (how things should
fit together) rather than as problematizing the act of telling students what is wrong with what
is already happening (how things do fit together). Our role as educators is to, like Foucault,
help students to ‘recognize the relations of power in which they’re implicated’ so that they
can decide ‘to resist or escape them’. Our role as educators is to problematize the
dominant, domineering myths by which the general public has been taught through
socialization to narrate their existence. Our role as educators is to problematize the
commonsensical, banally invisible assumptions concerning Worldview (cosmology,
ontology, teleology), order (social order, the order of human nature, the order of human-
nature relations, etc.), epistemology, virtue, etc. that are embedded in the dominant,
domineering myths of Colonial Modernist and more generally Paternalist society. Our role
is to problematize the banal invisibility of the dogmatic assumption that human nature is
evil and the subsequent assumption that communally acceptable social order is dependent
upon hierarchical domination by the legal system, upon punishment and fear of
punishment. Our role is to problematize the myth that domination is a necessary
constituent of human social order that has been used for millennia to legitimate
domination of the general public by the Archons of society. Our role is destructive. We
ought to be as the wildfire that clears the underbrush and allows the seeds of the Jack Pine
to be released from their cone.

“Hall, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explains that wildfire is an integral part of the
boreal ecosystem. Indeed, the high northern latitude forests would be quite different were it not for frequent
fires (Hall 1999).
‘Fire is the mechanism by which the forest is continually regenerated,’ states Hall. Fires consume
dead, decaying vegetation accumulating on the forest floor, thereby clearing the way for new growth. Some
species, such as the jack pine, even rely on fire to spread their seeds. The jack pine produces "seratonous"
(resin-filled) cones that are very durable. The cones remain dormant until a fire occurs and melts the resin.
Then the cones pop open and the seeds fall or blow out.” (Herring 1999)

The seeds are the latent potential of the virtue, reason, intuition, wisdom, love, etc.
contained within all beings. They are the seeds of the goodly order of human nature that is
to be unlocked through ‘conscious evolution’, which is to say through direction of will
towards development of inner qualities like virtue, reason, intuition, wisdom, love, etc.
(Ouspensky 1951).

“As regards ordinary modern views on the origin of man and his previous evolution I must say at once that

they cannot be accepted. ….We must deny any possibility of future Mechanical Evolution of man; that is,
evolution happening by itself according to laws of heredity and selection, and without man's conscious efforts
[toward] and understanding of his possible evolution.” (Ouspensky 1951, p. 6)

“Our fundamental idea shall be that man as we know him is not a completed being; that nature develops him
only up to a certain point and then leaves him, either to develop further, by his own efforts and devices, or to
live and die such as he was born, or to degenerate and lose capacity for development.
Evolution of man in this case will mean the development of certain inner qualities and features
which usually remain undeveloped, and cannot develop by themselves.” (Ouspensky 1951, pp. 7-8)

The seeds are the latent potential of the inner qualities that are to be developed through
conscious evolution and the cone is the body that contains them until they are unlocked by
the fire. These two aspects fit the natural metaphor.
The resin that traps the seeds in the cone, however, does not fit the natural
metaphor. The natural resin is formed by the dimensionally limited nature of our sensory
existence in passing time and physical space, by the illusions of discrete, biological, linear-
1
temporal existence, by Maya. The resin formed through socialization into the Colonial
Modernist Worldview is artificial and fire resistant—this is to say that the Colonial
Modernist Worldview dogmatically (to the point of castigating those who transgress this
boundary to the sphere of madness) reduces reality to the manifest world passing time and
physical space by which the resin is formed and thus negates the potential for ideas, stories
and experiences of existence beyond our fourth dimensional world of the sort discussed by
Nicole (1998) to burn away the resin of our fourth dimensional existence to unlock the
latent potential of inner qualities like virtue, reason, intuition, wisdom, love, etc. Our work,
then, is not only to help spark the fire that burns away the resin with ideas, stories and
experiences of reality beyond the fourth dimension but also to first wash away the artificial
resin of Colonial Modernity (i.e. the Colonial Modernist Worldview) that prevents the fire
of alchemical ideas and experiences from unlocking the seeds of virtue, reason, intuition,
wisdom, love, etc. that rest in the hearts, minds and souls of our students.

“…To sabotage the myth is to strike a blow at the numerous hierarchies that rely upon its constant repetition.”
(Wright 2006, p. 15)

“There are basic assumptions about western systems of government, economics, class structure, education
and spirituality that will continue to stifle authentic and widespread efforts to teach college students to become
virtuous and active participants in the process of creating healthier communities.” (Jacobs 2001)

Our job as educators is to purify the cone by washing away the artificial resin formed by the
Colonial Modernist Worldview and to provide the spark (ideas, stories and experiences)
for the fire that will burn away the natural resin formed by our existence in fourth

1
Ouspensky’s (1997, pp. 85-92) ‘flat world’ metaphor helps to elucidate the nature of the natural resin that forms through the
dimensionally limited nature of human existence and protects our seeds until the environment is prepared by fiery destruction for them
to take root in the earth.
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dimensional reality. Our job is of the order of water (purification) and fire (destruction).
Our job is not, however, to tell students how things should fit together. We should tell
students how things fit together; we should tell students if things fit together in an
unvirtuous manner; but we should not tell students how things fit together. Our goal,
through recourse to purifying water and destructive fire, should be to help students to enter
the path of conscious evolution (i.e. to direct their will towards development of inner
qualities like virtue, reason, intuition, wisdom, love, etc.) so that they can come to their own
determinations about how things should fit together.
Imagine that you are developing the ability to walk through the forest on game
trails. You cannot know ‘what to do’ before the game trail leads you to the next clearing as
game trails follow the crooked paths of natural genius. “Improvement makes straight roads,
but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.” (Blake 1906, p. 19)
Instead, you must develop the inner qualities (contemplative observation, intuition,
wisdom, etc.) that allow you to find the next part of the trail. Not only does this metaphor
serve as a model for education, which ought to develop the capacity of students to find the
way rather than teaching students what the way is, it also serves to problematize the tired
phrase that typifies the farcical, pseudo-revolutionary nature of Modern ‘progressivism’
3
(progress towards what?!?!?)—‘what’s your solution then’. If you don't want capitalism, then
what is your solution? If you don't want liberal democracy, then what is your solution? If
you don't want the legal system, then what is your solution? What hubris to think that we
could possibly know the proper replacement for capitalist liberal democracy and its
dogmatically draconian legal system without first knowing the contexts that rise from their
destruction. Surely we can an indeed must develop ideals that will guide us in making
‘practical’ decisions about what should come next when we are actually faced with the
demise of capitalist liberal democracy—for “Idealism and matter of fact are… not sundered,
but inseparable, as our daily steps are guided by ideals of direction” (Geddes, 1915, p. vii)—
but these ideals cannot guide our steps until we are actually walking on the terrain formed
by the destruction of capitalist liberal democracy and its legal system.

“Imagine a photograph representing a face. If you make this image go from positive to a negative, in a way all
the dots of the picture are going to be modified. That is to say, that all the points that were white will become
black and that all the points that were black will become white. None of the points, none of the elements
therefore remain identical. And yet you can recognize the face. And yet the face remains the same even
though it has gone from positive to negative, and you can say it is the same; you recognize it because the
relations between all these different elements have remained the same. Relations between the points have
stayed the same, or the relations of contrast and of opposition between white and black have remained the
same, even though each… dot that was white has become black and each point that was black has become
white. Deep down, in a very broad sense of what structuralism is, we can say that structuralism is the method

2
The association of water with emotion and fire with spirit are useful in this context. The purifying water must be emotive, virtuous,
oriented toward evoking an emotive response to the deprived relations that exist among humans and between humans and ‘the other’
constructed by the Paternalist and Colonial Modernist Worldviews. Burning the natural resin of our 4th dimensionally limited existence
away relates to providing ideas, stories, myths, experiences, etc. that cultivate intimacy with the ‘invisible self’ (Nicoll 1998).
3
Modern Progressivism (right and left…) is Pseudo-Revolutionary in its constant attempts to conceptualize ‘progressive practices’ without
sufficient (often without any…) work towards the revolution of worldview upon which meaningful revolution of practice is dependent.
(Barnesmoore 2017) See, for example, Bernard Sanders (a New Deal Capitalist masquerading as a Socialist under the absurd pretense
that Socialism is in anyway revolutionary in relation to the Colonial Modernist Worldview) and ‘the Aleppo Guy’ Gary Johnson (a
Neoliberal Capitalist)…

of analysis that consists of drawing constant relations from the elements that in themselves, in their own
character, in their substance, can change…. Structuralists are people for whom what counts in essence are
systems of relations and thus not at all the lived individual experience of people…. What I do belongs at heart
like structuralism to this great questioning of the sovereignty of the subject. Deep down what is the experience
of drugs if not this: to erase limits, to reject divisions, to put away all prohibitions [(in short, to escape the
conditioning of form associated with manifestation in passing time and physical space, to experience the
Dionysian…)], and then to ask oneself the question, what has become of knowledge? Do we then know
something altogether other? Can we still know what we knew before the experience of drugs? Is this
knowledge of before drugs still valid or is it a new kind of knowledge? This is a real problem and I think that
in this measure the experience of drugs isn’t marginal in our society, it’s not a sort of little deviance that does
not count. It seems to me that it is at the very heart of the problems that the society in which we live—that is to
say, in the capitalist society—is confronted with…. From the moment that [humanity is liberated from the
Colonial Modernist Worldview], what kind of knowledge will be possible? (Foucault 1971, 7:46-11:06)

It seems that Foucault is ribbing those whose constant refrain is ‘what is your solution’, and who
then disregard all solutions that cannot be conceived within the existing modernist system of
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thought as ‘unpragmatic’, ‘impractical’, ‘unrealistic’, etc.… We must first know what sort of
knowledge will be possible outside of capitalism (in the actual context of our escape) before we can
begin to think about the potential systems of social organization that we could establish within that
context… We must, in short, understand the epistemological context formed by our liberation from
capitalist liberal democracy—which is to say the new Worldview and associated epistemological
potentials that fill the void created by our liberation from the Colonial Modernist Worldview of
capitalist liberal democracy—before we can begin to think about the tangible systems, practices, etc.
that we will be able to conceptualize therein. We cannot know what to do, and so we should not tell
students what to do, but as educators we can surely help to liberate our students from the Colonial
Modernist Worldview (washing away the artificial resin) and help them onto the path of conscious
evolution by providing them with alchemical ideas, stories and experiences (burning away the
natural resin) so that, when the time comes and they are faced with the actual contexts that rise
from the inevitable demise of capitalist liberal democracy, the seeds of their inner qualities (virtue,
reason, intuition, wisdom, love, etc.) will have taken root, grown, blossomed and born fruit. We
cannot tell students what to do, but we can help them grow from seed to fruit so that when the time
comes they know what to do.

“…plan for difficulty when it is still easy, do the great while it is still small.
The most difficult things in the world must be done while they are easy; the greatest things in the world must
be done when they are small….” (Lao Zi 1999)

We will not know what we need to do until the time comes, but if we focus on cultivating
our inner qualities and on helping our students onto the path of conscious evolution

4
“One writer in educational studies who has tried to take Foucault’s archeological method seriously, by outlining a policy archeology, that
is by viewing policy as discourse (Ball, 1993), is Scheurich (1994). In this he seeks to disturb ‘the tranquility’ with which ‘social problems’
are accepted as ‘natural occurrences’ and suggests that policy archeology would address ‘the historical a priori’ (Mahon, 1992, p. 60), that
is ‘the constitutive grid of conditions, assumptions, forces which make the emergence of a social problem’ (Scheurich, 1994, p. 300).
This ‘grid of social regularities’ constitutes ‘what becomes socially visible as a social problem and what becomes socially visible as a range
of credible policy solutions’ (p. 301)—the possible and the impossible (what actors do not think about)…
This architecture is a frame or field within which divergent discourses, new and old, confront one another, in which some are
marginalized or subjugated and others are appropriated to define the ‘domains of validity, normativity and actuality’ (Foucault, 1974, p.
68).” (Ball 2013, p. 44)

wherein they may cultivate their own we will be able to know what we need to do when the
time comes.

Luke R. Barnesmoore
UBC Urban Studies Lab
Department of Geography
University of British Columbia
luke.barnesmoore@geog.ubc.ca

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Barnes and Christophers 2017, “May you live in interesting times,” unpublished
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Barnesmoore 2017, “Conscious Evolution, Social Development and Environmental

Justice”, Environment and Social Psychology 2(1).

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Foucault 1971, “Foucault-The Lost Interview”, Paris,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzoOhhh4aJg

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https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/

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King 1959, Address at the Fourth Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change at
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http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0Gurdjieff/Psychology_Mans_Possiblle_Evolution.pdf

Ouspensky 1997, A New Model of the Universe, Courier Corporation.


Scheurich, J. J. (1994). Policy archaeology: a new policy studies methodology. Journal of
Education Policy, 9 (4), 297–316.

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