EDU444 – Assignment #3-4 – Derek Carne 30506422 – 0419 837 087 des@netcall.com.

au

Dialectical operations: adult learning and cognition – a

phenomenological approach
Introduction
Lifelong learning appears in the literature of educational psychology as if it were
a recent discovery, the result of progress in cognition and learning research
(Gonczi 2004:23-29). It is odd that it emerges in a period when social and
education policy is increasingly determined by economic rationalist calculation.
Demand is attributed as much to the presence of a ‘market’ for adult learning
opportunities brought on by demographic and technological change (Whyte &
Crombie 1995:101-6), as to post-Fordist industry need for ‘flexible and
responsive’ ‘knowledge workers’ (Hill, 1998: 5-6).

There are traditions of lifelong learning in many cultures: indeed, the immense
diversity of languages, cultures and religions attests to the fecundity of the human
imagination for inventing projects of individual and social human attainment that
entail a trajectory of lifelong learning. The existence of societies in which social
status is based on knowledge and embodiment of these metaphysical projects,
rather than on the mere appurtenances of economic activity, arguably suggests
lifelong learning is a normal human aspiration.

Why then are ‘advanced’ Western societies, based on prodigious technology and
the penetrating gaze of social science, only now discovering that adults not only
can, but also often aspire to continue active learning throughout their lives? What
are the underlying beliefs, perceptions and assumptions that led to the truncated
view of human learning capability that characterised the Fordist industrial era
from which we have recently emerged? Given the fundamental contradiction
between the narrow economic rationalist conception of lifelong learning of policy
makers and the broad social and economic interests represented by participants in
the adult and community education sector, will these beliefs and assumptions
continue to detrimentally influence education policy and resource allocation?

My aim is to tease out some of the underlying beliefs and assumptions of Western
industrialised societies that shape beliefs and practices not only in relation to
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learning, but also to ideas about what it means to be human that motivate teaching
and learning. I will take a two-pronged approach. As learning theory takes as its
point of departure scientific studies that led to stage theories of cognitive
development, a critique of this theorising is a suitable point from which to analyse
Western cultural beliefs and to suggest alternative models of adult development,
cognition and learning. I will then outline from the anthropological literature
lifelong learning practices in a society that presents perhaps the greatest possible
contrast to the culture of Western industrialised societies. This, I hope, will
strengthen my argument for an educational philosophy freed from the materialist
paradigm of Western culture and a model of adult development that avoids the
presumed normative status of Western social and economic organisation.

History of evolutionary social thinking

Education theory is articulated within the evolutionary framework of modern
biological and social thought (Cross 1981:152-4, Squires 1993:90-1). The sharp
distinction today between vocational and liberal education, by focussing on the
instrumentalism of the one and social elitism of the other, reflects an ideological
contest over political control of education under an economic rationalist
hegemony, rather than a thoroughgoing analysis of learning theory and of the
appropriateness of the evolutionary metaphor to human development.

The idea of biological evolution existed from ancient times, and was only
formulated as a scientific theory in the 18th and 19th centuries by scientists such as
Lamarck and Darwin, who articulated plausible mechanisms by which
evolutionary change could occur (Wikipedia: Evolution). The epistemological
status of scientific accounts for biological evolution, although contested by
religion, is firmer than for evolutionary theories of social, cultural and personal
change (Wikipedia: Evolution, Socio-cultural evolution). Teleological ideas of
intrinsic and extrinsic purpose in biological evolution were ruled out by the
ineluctable mechanisms of natural selection, conceived of as “survival of the
fittest”. In social science, where teleological ideas have a stronger hold, evolution
has become synonymous with ‘development’, ‘growth’ and ‘progress’, assigning
unquestioned value to their correlates: control and change of nature, increase in
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size, and specific direction. Evolution, conflated with ideas of development and
progress, now embodies the idea of the unfolding, revealing and realisation of the
capabilities or possibilities of both social entities and individuals (Wikipedia:
Sociocultural Evolution).

Education in all cultures incorporates ideas of purpose, meaning and value. Much
learning, particularly that acquired early in life, is related to motor and mental
skill development for economic activity and social defence. It has a practical,
self-interested social survival objective. Culture is the activity or projects
communities and societies undertake once their living requirements and
necessities are met through economic production (Ortega y Gasset 1941a:106,
117), and is primarily an adult activity, through which social leadership and status
are attained (Geddes 1994:64)

Unlike most other cultures, in Western industrialised societies, economic

production has been made a cultural end in itself, and education has been
harnessed to the project of ever increasing economic production (Geddes 1994:98,
109, 1995:61-71). The prominence of material culture is so pronounced as to
constitute a “super-nature” – a total environment within which all basic
necessities are obtained without ever coming into contact with the natural
environment (Ortega y Gasset: 1941a:311). This technological super-nature is
objectified as the primary purpose and a self-evident cultural value under the
rubric of ‘the economy’. It is the visible evidence of the progress or advancement
of Western culture beyond any other, of having arrived at a superior state, of
having achieved “development”. The individual’s personal and civic purpose is to
maintain and promote the ongoing construction of this supra-natural environment,
to “make a contribution to the economy”.

The Aristotelian idea of entelechy, of an entity not yet being but actively working
to become itself, or achieve its potentiality or self-realisation (Wikipedia:
Entelechy), is truncated by materialist objectivism and the jural notion of the
private individual as a person. Anthropologists have observed that in many
cultures personhood is an idealised social archetype, which only few of its
members actually attain, typically through a social and moral career (La Fontaine
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1985:123-4), a notion somewhat preserved in the English idea of a ‘personage’.

In becoming a ‘person’ therefore, an individual comes to perform or invent a
generic, socially recognised and valorised role, and is assigned a socially
recognised identity that transcends their individuality. In contrast, Western
individuals consider themselves ‘persons’ throughout life, the style or force of
their distinct, individual ‘personality’ alone growing or changing (Cross
1981:164-8, Perlmutter & Hall 1989:287-8). Belief in the normative status of
Western social and economic organisation is based on the valorisation of the
emergence of the individual as a person since the Renaissance as the morally and
socially most advanced form of human development (Fromm 1942:19-88).

Classical social evolutionists, drawing on the work of scholars like Comte, Tylor,
Morgan and Spencer, attempted to formalise social thinking along scientific lines
by developing theories of social development best described as unilineal
evolution, which was later influenced by the biological theory of evolution.
Sociocultural evolutionists such as Condorcet developed analogies between
human society and the biological organism, introducing ideas such as variation,
natural selection, survival of the fittest and inheritance to account for the progress
of societies through fixed ‘stages’, from savagery to barbarism and finally
civilisation. These ideas developed at the time anthropology, the study of newly
colonised ‘exotic’ peoples, developed, and lent weight to the assumption by
Europeans that their civilisation represented the pinnacle of human achievement
(Wikipedia: Sociocultural evolution).

Early in the 20th century, cultural anthropologists including Boas, Mead and
others achieved a more sophisticated understanding of indigenous cultures.
Historical events such as World War I and the rise of fascism in Europe weakened
faith in the intrinsic superiority of western cultures, strengthening their rejection
of the sweeping generalisations of unilineal theories of sociocultural evolution.
They argued that Spencer, Tylor and Morgan’s theories were not only speculative,
but misrepresented the ethnographic data. Theories regarding “stages” of social
evolution were criticised as illusions, as was the distinction between “primitive”
and “civilised” or “modern” societies. Theories of progression that terminated
with a stage of civilisation identical to that of modern Europe or North America
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were not only ethnocentric, but also part of a prevailing Western myth that lacked
empirical basis. Critical theorists argued that notions of social evolution were
simply justifications for power by social, political and economic elites.
Importantly, they equated civilisation with material culture.

Stage theories of personal development

The conflation of evolutionary ideas from biology with social change readily
facilitated the transference of evolutionary ideas, including interpretation of
‘stages’ of development, to individuals. Caution has been expressed within social
constructivist educational theory about the validity of stage theories of personal,
social and cognitive development, particularly as they are applied to adults
(Squires 1993:96).

Stage and phase theories were developed largely on the basis of Piaget’s research
into cognitive development in children up to adolescence (Piaget 1972:2-6).
Although evidence for Piaget’s final stage of ‘formal operations’ was strongly
contested (Smolak 1993:91-94), many researchers carried out empirical studies to
extend Piaget’s schema to the whole of adult life. A plethora of multi-stage
models exist within the life-span developmental psychology school: Bühler’s five
phase biological and psychological model, Erikson’s eight-stage theory of
psychosocial development, Havinghurst’s six-stage developmental tasks model,
and Levinson’s fours stage ‘Seasons of Life’ model (Sugarman, 1986:76-97).
Similarly, Gould’s model focused on periods of crisis or transformation between
periods of stasis or consolidation (Perlmutter & Hall: 299-300). Schaie developed
a model on the basis of Piaget’s developmental stages under the rubric of
“knowledge aquisition” and posited a succession of subsequent stages of
“knowledge use” during the course of adult life (Smolak 1993:97-8).

Stage theories have been criticised for abstracting individuals from their social
and economic contexts, and being too individualistic (Squires:1993:96). A more
plausible model of adult cognitive development is Riegel’s fifth stage of
‘dialectical operations’, which describes the way adults typically reconcile
contradictory ideas and experiences. Riegel’s model is built on a critique of the
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underlying assumptions of the life-span developmental school – he points to a

disjunction between theory and practice, and to the questionable idea that human
development is a gradualist, evolutionary affair (Squires, 1993:93). Although
classified as a fifth or adult stage of cognitive development, ‘dialectical
operations’ do not necessarily require achievement of Piaget’s ‘formal operations’
(Squires 1993:93-4).

By stressing the importance of crises, Riegel distinguishes historical and

contextual influences on adult development from the idea of organic or
biologically programmed development. Characterised as phase or life task, rather
than stage theories, they nonetheless only partially free themselves from the
rigidities of stage theories, with which they are seamlessly interwoven. Fixed
sequences (Cross 1981:168-176) and decline or disengagement in old age
(Squires 1993:91) remain unquestioned assumptions. This inflexibility can be
attributed to a common evolutionary gradualist or continuity model of individual
and social development. It is reflected both in the loss by industrialised societies
of ritual, jural procedures for the admission of juveniles to adult status, and in the
dominant economic rationale that requires labour mobility, isolation of the
nuclear family and institutionalised warehousing of the elderly. In addition,
empirical studies of adult development have mostly been undertaken in Western
industrialised societies (Sugarman 1986:89-97, Tenant & Pogson 1995:67-97).
In Western culture then, the gradualist evolutionary model of human development
drawn from biology is paralleled by the jural recognition of the individual person
from conception or birth, but the lack of jural or socially decisive admission to
adulthood.

Separating evolution and development

To understand the limited metaphorical value of the idea of evolution to human
development, it is necessary to understand just what biological evolution entails.
In the first instance the mechanism of gradual genetic drift, lending selective or
survival advantage through chance genetic mutation, is not the only mechanism of
evolutionary change: there is a strong argument for rapid or quantum changes
leading to the emergence of new types of organisms (Wikipedia: Punctuated
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Equilibrium). Secondly, ‘survival of the fittest’ is often understood, particularly

by social scientists, in the ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ sense, rather than in
terms of the central mechanism of selection identified by Darwin and other
evolutionary biologists: sexual selection. Thus societies were seen to advance by
prevailing in war, usually by virtue of technological advantage. The less ‘fit’, if
they survive, do so by strategic or tactical ingenuity, and if not, their
disappearance is rationalised in terms of inherent or evolutionary inferiority.

Masculinist interpretations of evolution conveniently ignore the role of sexual

selection, particularly in human evolution. A fruitful avenue of research in
support of my contention that the Western preoccupation with the economic or
material means of existence is a deficient or retrograde basis for a social template
may be cross-cultural surveys eliciting female motives for mate selection: do
women, where they are able to exercise the choice, select mates, as most western
theorists believe, on the basis of their economic ability to provide security for the
procreative task, or on socially constructed assessments of the genetic, social-
collaborative attributes they may impart to their offspring? In other words, do
culturally constructed social templates or ideals of human character and behaviour
influence human evolutionary choice independently of economic exigencies?

So where does evolutionary programmed development end? In addition to

genetic and morphological similarities between organisms and the fossil record,
biological evolution is strongly evidenced by embryological development, in
which ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. The human embryo exhibits the
physiological characteristics of successive evolutionary stages (presence of gills, a
tail, &c) prior to mammalian maturity at term. Evolution-determined genetic or
organic programming therefore reaches its terminal point at physiological
maturity, whereupon social templates rather than biological/environmental factors
affect sexual selection. In mammals, birth is variously positioned, nearer or
further from the end of this natural process: amongst placentals in many species
newborns survive only because they can walk within minutes, and achieve
reproductive maturity early in their potential life-spans. As adaptive generalists
with effective social defence, human are able to undergo much longer biologically
programmed development ex utero, taking 1-2 years to walk, and generally
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achieving reproductive maturity at 12-15 years, until which point biologically

programmed development asymptotically concludes.

Piaget was fortuitously correct in refraining from formulating a ‘hard-wired’

cognitive developmental stage beyond adolescence. The dispute over his fourth
or ‘formal operations’ stage points to the elusive terminal point of biologically
programmed development, and to Piaget’s culturally determined valorisation of
Western hypothetical-deductive or scientific reasoning as the most advanced form
of human cognition (Smolak 1993:91).

Uncertainty as to the terminal point of biologically programmed development can

be attributed social factors as well. Western industrialised or ‘advanced’ cultures
are distinguished from other societies by the almost complete disappearance of
formal rituals of initiation into or declaration of adult social status (Squires:
1993:87), procreation rights and responsibilities, and induction into socially
sanctioned projects of humanisation. Belief that biology is constitutive of
humanity produces a situation where achievement of adult status is considered a
natural rather than a social process and jural or declaratory rituals are no longer
felt to be necessary. Adulthood is conceded, or attained adventitiously, through
economic or reproductive activity. Prolongation of the physiological and
psychological transition to adulthood, or adolescence, and the lack of a regulative
and inductive institutional framework, is characteristic of Western industrial
societies (Zoller Booth, 2003, Adolescence), strengthening Western belief in the
gradualist human developmental model rooted in biological thinking.

In contrast, in societies that precipitately induct their young into adulthood,

initiation rituals often involve seclusion, of females in the home or under the
protection of a matrilocal residential group, and of males in martial training and
rituals of ordeal throughout the period of physiological maturation, whereupon
reproductive rights may still be constrained by social mechanisms such as
domestic tutelage and social assignment of labour power. Initiation usually marks
the commencement of a potential lifelong career of cultural knowledge
acquisition and status attainment.
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Phase theory: phenomenology vs. empiricism

Riegel’s contextual, historical approach not only frees cognitive changes after
maturation from evolutionary and biological determinism, it advocates a fluid
‘phase’ rather than a fixed ‘stage’ approach to interpreting cognitive change
through adult life (Squires, 1993:95). Life-phases refer to chronological periods
in the life span that are, within wide margins, age related, and which are
summarised by different cultures under similar formulae: Aristotle’s three stages,
Confucius’ six stages, and Shakespeare’s seven stages of life. Developmental
psychologists describe these phases in terms of characteristic life tasks. Unlike
the biologically hardwired early stages of development, life phases are, along with
other contextual models, adventitious or elective – they vary, in order and age,
from individual to individual and from culture to culture, may be influenced by
historical and economic circumstances, all of which, when considered in an adult
learning context, can influence cognitive development and adult learning
objectives (Wolf 1994:2).

Nonetheless, most developmental psychologists appear unable to break out of the

evolutionary, biological framework to apply the techniques of interpretation
appropriate to the historical, contingent and contextual nature of their subject.
They lament the failure of phase theories to “take account of the unique trajectory
of individual lives, and the deeper kinds of changes that take place.” (Squires,
1993:96) To explain these deeper changes, resort is almost always made to stage
theory, empirical evidence for which falters at Piaget’s disputed adolescent formal
operations. Erikson’s theory of personality development (1968), followed by
Loevinger (1976), Perry’s work on cognitive and ethical development (1970),
Kohlberg’s theories of moral development (1973), Peterson’s theories of career
development (1996), all share common biologically rooted ideas about the nature
of human existence. Squires believes it is their “failure to identify a path of
development which is … based on [a] coherent or consensual view of human
existence” which is their chief problem (Squires, 1993:96).

If the task is to find a coherent and consensual view of human existence, it must
encompass the broadest cultural range of human experience. This may not be as
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difficult as it at first appears. The observation that such a task was easier prior to
the emergence of modern, pluralistic and sceptical cultures because dominant
ideologies or religions (Christianity, Buddhism &c) held sway in large areas on
the world (Squires 1993:97), betrays little understanding of religious belief or
theological speculation. The psychosocial orientations of major religious
traditions are not as fundamentally irreconcilable as is commonly thought. The
altruistic self-sacrifice of the Bodhisattva, for instance, in giving up his or her
right to escape the cycle of death and rebirth to assist others on the path towards
enlightenment, indicates that the Buddhist ideology of detachment is not
antithetical to Western notions of commitment (Govinda 1960:232-4).

Mazirow analyses adult learning using Habermas’s theory of learning, which

differentiates three generic domains in which human interest generates
knowledge:
1. the area of ‘work’ which involves instrumental action to control or
manipulate the environment, exemplified by the empirical-analytical
sciences (e.g. physical sciences, technology);
2. the ‘practical’ area, involving interaction to clarify the conditions for
communication and intersubjectivity, exemplified by the historico-
interpretive science (e.g. history, theology, descriptive social sciences
including psychology); and
3. the ‘emancipatory’ area, involving an interest in self-knowledge and self-
reflection, exemplified by the critical social sciences (e.g. psychoanalysis,
the critique of ideology).

Importantly, it is noted, “each of these three areas has its own techniques of
interpretation, assessment and enquiry, and its own needs” (Mazirow, 1981:124).

I would not make such a firm distinction between the ‘practical’ and
‘emancipatory’ domains. The domain of work I would designate ‘practical’, and I
prefer to amalgamate the latter domains to emphasise the continuity between
social communicative and the individual reflective and representative activity.
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Mazirow argues that the ‘emancipatory’ domain is of particular interest to adult

educators, and is characterised by a dialectical process of “perspective
transformation”, or “becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of
psycho-cultural assumptions has come to constrain the way we see ourselves and
our relationships, reconstituting this structure to permit a more inclusive and
discriminating integration of experience and acting upon these new
understandings.” (Mazirow: 1981:125). Squires objects to the notions of
emancipatory knowledge and perspective transformation as “a blurring of the
conventional distinction between what one knows and what one is.” (Squires,
1993:107 fn3).

But this is precisely my point: this conventional distinction is a false one. It

assumes humanness as a given, as being constituted by the biological substrate,
upon which the prodigious capabilities which distinguish us from mere animals
are grafted. This could not be more wrong (Ortega y Gasset 1941a:137). Taking
the notion of the social construction of knowledge to its logical conclusion, both
identity and humanity too are pure invention, socially and individually
constructed, and the aim of education is to consciously and socially formulate and
justify models or templates of human character and behaviour and the moral
action required to fulfil their embodiment.

Dematerialising ‘human nature’

My argument, then, is that the application of ideas from biological evolution to
social and individual change, and to education, obscures the historical, intentional
and jural character of human status. What is human about human behaviour is that
they invent and construct what it is to be human, as individual and social actors.
Alternative metaphors and concepts of a social-phenomenological rather than a
biological character are necessary to wrest learning theory from culturally
determined materialist models, and appropriate techniques of interpretation,
assessment and enquiry applied to them. In such models, ‘human nature’ and
‘human instinct’, as popularly conceived, do not exist: they are not biological
attributes. Instinct is pre-human and humans are not natural creatures (Ortega y
Gasset 1941:88). Humanness is not a given, but, restating to the Aristotelian ideal,
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a task to be accomplished, a becoming, a cultural artefact and a product of human

imagination, in fundamental and necessary tension with, even contradiction to
nature. To use Ortega y Gasset’s phrase, “human life in its most human
dimension (is) a work of fiction” ... “man (sic!) (is) a sort of novelist of himself
who conceives the fanciful figure of a personage with its unreal occupations and
then, for the sake of converting it into reality, does all the things he does.”
(1941a:296-7)

The appropriate techniques of interpretation, assessment and enquiry, are

therefore phenomenological and existential, rather than biophysical and
psychological. A useful Western example of an adult development model, and the
appropriate techniques of interpretation and enquiry, is Ortega y Gasset’s ‘theory
of generations’ (1941:30-84). It proposes that at any point in time two
“generations” or “groups of coevals” are bound in struggle over the fundamental
convictions that shape and drive their world. Each new generation (“childhood”,
ages 0-15), learns through its collective experience of institutional education and
work how the world works (“youth”, ages 15-30), then launches into the world of
work and human affairs to bring about a reformed world they envision
(“initiation”, ages 30-45) with the objective of supplanting the generation in
power and whose convictions prevail (“dominance”, ages 45-60). Supplanted by
their successors, the senior generation (“old age”, ages 60 plus) have experience,
knowledge and wisdom, and seek to temper the hubris of their successors through
their avuncular role as mentors to the antepenultimate generation (Ortega,
1942:60).

Education, then, is the process by which societies initiate their members into the
meaning and the means to accomplish projects of becoming human within
prescribed cultural templates. Pedagogy, as preparation for the adulthood,
prescribes values representing endorsed social or cultural templates. Andragogy,
as guidance to aspirants, advocates specific choices amongst all possible modes of
thinking. As Squires points out, the distinction between child and adult learning
is the presumed status of the adult qua adult (Squires 1993:87,94-5): the adult has
a different jural status: he or she is an initiate who is already engaged in the social
project of defining and refining cultural templates. Progress in conforming to
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these social templates is a dialectical process of reconciling accumulated bodies

of knowledge and experience, of resolving contradictions between the rationalities
applicable to different realms of knowledge and experience, the physical/
technical, the social/behavioural and the religious/ethical.

It may be objected that this is to narrow the definition of education to mere

philosophy and to ignore the economic realities and necessities that drive
education policy. In Western industrialised societies individuals without
accumulated capital, who have only their labour power to sell, will almost always
apply economic rationalisations to their learning choices, even if these are not the
central motivational influences. Older adult learners who seek to learn new
technical and social skills do so in the context of a broader agenda the result of
their total life experience, generally conceived of within the framework of a
social, community or political commitment (Squires 1993:94-5).

Philosophical issues are crucial to education policy and practice. Taking as

analogies from scientific cosmology the notion of singularity and from religion
that of idolatry or fetishism, I argue that the humanising aim of education is to
inculcate a permanent readiness and capacity to dialectically engage with the
experience of contingency and uncertainty, deliberately avoiding the illusory,
indeed dangerous certainty of final, totalising structures and their social
objectification. The mandate for such avoidance is intrinsic to the teaching and
learning process.

Totalisation and singularity

A constructivist, phenomenological approach potentially divests the discourse of
cognitive development of erroneous and confusing assumptions, both in respect to
biology and to the sociology of knowledge. In regard to the latter, a theoretically
possible outcome of ‘dialectical operations’ is the choice to settle upon an
integration of contradictory ideas and experiences into a totalising ‘singularity’ or
unified theory within which all knowledge is subsumed.
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The strength of final syntheses, and the reason they are chosen, is extrinsic– they
potentially confer, through social and material objectification, enormous social
power. They also constitute a danger, implicit in the social objectification of the
singularity at their core, because their validity, based on a closed self-referential
system, is incontestable. As effective ideological systems they satisfy an induced
craving for certainty and security. Their weaknesses, inasmuch as they are closed
to disconfirming evidence, are firstly, that they mark the end of the dialectical
process that gave rise to them and upon which their relative validity depends, and
secondly the social interpretation of the complexity of human affairs, history, is
contested and defies encapsulation within all but imposed singular cognitive
models (Laing & Cooper 1964:11).

The dialectical process is itself relentless, to uses Sartre’s terminology, an endless

cycle of totalisation-detotalisation, or Hegel’s, the cancellation of each viewpoint
achieved by the next and higher viewpoint or synthesis (Laing & Cooper 1964:10-
11). The choice to end the dialectical process is a moral one because adults, unlike
children, are able to choose what they will believe from among the convictions
they invent or select from those made available to them. Isolated adults seized of
a single overwhelming but socially ineffectual idea, a “fixed false belief”, may be
declared insane or otherwise jurally relieved of adult responsibility. However
social contagion of singular convictions, racial, religious or political, have the
potential to draw reluctant participants into moral and active complicity with
those who seek power by the social objectification of singular convictions, of
racial superiority, manifest destiny or religious certainty. The mass psychology of
fascism has been interpreted at the individual level as a flight from the
responsibility of freedom to the certainty and security of mass participation in a
singular belief (Fromm 1943:117).

All conflict and competition, political, economic or religious, is the outworking of

subsistent singularities, held in check by social resistance. For example, economic
rationalism represents the singular conviction that human behaviour can be fully
explained, controlled and predicted by economic incentives, given systematic
expression in neoliberal economic theory. The social objectification of this idea
through the reorganisation of work practices and conditions, and the subjection of
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ever increasing areas of human activity and experience to commercial exploitation

and regulation is tolerated at population level even though its social consequences
are intensified economic marginalisation of socially and economically vulnerable
groups. As a global process, its international economic consequences are far
more severe, although largely invisible to Western populations whose status
seeking behaviour depends upon ever-increasing consumption of resources on a
global scale, and produce counter singularities both nationalist and religious
arrayed against ongoing post-colonial influence and intrusions by the West.

Marx characterised the Western capitalist subjection of every aspect of social life
to an economic rationality as “commodity fetishism” (Answers.com: Commodity
Fetishism) in an ironic critique of its purported scientific or rational character. His
intent was to draw attention to the transference of value from human and social
exchange to the material commodities exchanged, as both a calculated technique
of exploitation and as an irrational obsession with the material rather than the
human (Wikipedia: Commodity Fetishism). Originating in the study of West
African religion, the term is also used as a synonym for idolatry, or the
transference of worship from the deity to an object purported to represent the
deity (Wikipedia: Idolatry).

That the avoidance of singularity is intrinsic to the learning process can be

inferred from curriculum theory. Tripp (1994) draws attention to the meta-
curricular approach to learning theory: a specific fact in any domain of knowledge
can be shown to be an example of a factual statement at a higher level of
generalisation. For instance, in a curriculum in which the topics Aborigines and
Pioneers are studied, it can be shown that the different shelters they built have in
common the fact that “the kinds of dwellings people build are related to their
culture and environment”. This fact is a species of a higher-level factual
generalisation, namely: “people are related to their environment”, which includes
lower order facts from other domains of knowledge such as technology, health,
diet, clothing, agriculture and so on. Going to a higher, meta-curricular level, the
preceding is an example of the fact that “everything exists in an environment”.
The pedagogical objective is to enable learners to see the relationship between
disparate facts through these higher-level generalisations of which they are
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members. Facts at a high level of generality are easy to teach and to learn, and
almost always find common agreement across social and ideological boundaries
(Tripp 1994). Only at the highest level of generalisation, the level of singularity,
in this instance “in the material universe, nothing exists independently of
everything else”, does factuality come into dispute and fundamental disagreement
emerge (Tripp 1994).

The process of incorporating knowledge of discrete facts in broader generalised

factual statements that bridge knowledge domains is the process of dialectical
operations. Its product is knowledge in the form of philosophical generalisations,
to which all derivative knowledge is constantly in the process of integration and
harmonisation. It is a forever-unfinished process, unless the ultimate step of
embracing a singularity is taken, in which case all new knowledge is ruled invalid
or deformed by the rational requirements of the central singular obsession. While
disagreement at the highest level of generalisation is generally thought to separate
different religions from one another, and from those to espouse no religion, it
should not be assumed that singularity is a universal characteristic of religion as
distinct from secular or scientific thought, or of any one religion. It is arguably
true in the case in most species of religious fundamentalism, but much theological
speculation addresses ethical issues arising from singularity in faith and practice,
and scientific thought, inasmuch as it proceeds by the method of doubt, is
inherently dialectical.

The appropriate techniques of interpretation, assessment and enquiry applicable to

human or adult development, considered as social and cultural inventions or
metaphysical projects, are therefore philosophical, not biological.

Lifelong learning in the primordial present – an example

Drawing upon the work of Myers (1986), Strehlow (1947), Tonkinson (1978)
and others, Geddes outlines the lifelong learning trajectory of Australian
Aboriginal Pintupi speaking men living in the arid region of northwestern
Australia. Like most anthropologists who have worked with cultures considered
exotic by Western urbanised societies, and witnessed the impact of Western social
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and economic influences upon them, Geddes believes what is common to all
human communities are reintegrative mechanisms to attain and maintain status
and fundamental organisational forms. Any activity, internal or external, which
threatens the status of people or challenges present forms of social organisation
triggers social activity aimed at reasserting statuses and restoring or reinforcing
organisational forms (Geddes 1994:64). The social templates of any society are
the means by which statuses and organisational forms are reasserted. To
understand social templates it is necessary to grasp the essential or cosmological
understandings that underpin them, and the values, beliefs and experiences that
influence the trajectories of members in their efforts to give expression to their
social templates.

Western social templates are economically oriented, focus directly upon the
production and consumption of goods and services, and are based in individual
competitive opposition. Individuals gain status and respect through the
competitive accumulation and consumption of goods and services Geddes
1994:64-5, 98-100). In contrast, for the Pintupi and most other Aboriginal
communities, status is obtained through increasing knowledge of the metaphysical
basis of community life (Geddes 1994:65).

For the Pintupi, unlike Westerners, there is no clear line of distinction between the
material and non-material realms – between mundane human beings and the
ancestral supernatural beings that provide models for present social interaction,
and empowerment to those who seek to emulate them (Geddes 1994:66). The
presence of and empowerment by ancestral beings points to a different perception
of time to the serial, elapsed mundane time by which Westerners regulate their
economic lives. Primordial or sacred time, in which supernatural, part-human,
part-animal ancestral beings tracked across the country and created places and
peoples, inheres in the present. If a woman crosses the path of a creator being,
she is likely to conceive. Children are born into the world as spirit beings clothed
in human form, who will relive their lives in the present – their task is to become
the spirit beings whose alter egos they are. Each generation is a replication of the
primordial period. By gaining knowledge of the ancestral beings, their
wanderings and interrelationships, people learn how they should organise their
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lives. They must not only learn the stories to gain insight into the primordial
period, they must conscientiously perform the rituals that enable contact between
themselves and the primordial beings their task it is to become, to gain the
knowledge necessary to become themselves (Geddes 1994:66-67)

The old demonstrate maturity and the right to respect through the extensiveness of
their knowledge and by diligently guarding the knowledge entrusted to them. The
young demonstrate their trustworthiness and reliability through the seriousness
with which they seek the goodwill of the old who might pass on knowledge and
the means to prestige and status (Geddes 1994:68).

Individuals gain a unique identity; initially a name and characteristics associated

with the place from which the spirit being came that entered their body at
conception. Through life, as they travel and experience events and places, they
acquire other names and characteristics from other places and groups with whom
they have contact, and the stories associated with those places. As they gain more
detailed knowledge about the stories associated with the places they visit and their
links to their own conception sites, they gain insight into how to become
themselves, how their own life story makes sense in terms of the primordial
present. Each individual is a separate, autonomous being, with his or her own
distinctive ‘story’, but they are integrated with all others who share the same
identity through the same ancestral beings and their wanderings and activities.
The primordial period not only ties people to each other, but also to the
environment, which is linked to the primordial beings through the tracks they
followed and the sites at which significant activities took place. Each person’s
identity is mapped in space, as are their relationships with all other persons and
the environment (Geddes 1994:72).

Geddes makes no mention of perhaps the most significant event in the distinctive
story or experience of individuals: male initiation. For this I recall my own
observations and personal informants over 10 years amongst the Arrernte of
Central Australia. The only qualifying remark I make is that the equivalent
female rite of passage is the ordeal of childbirth, and that attention to distinctively
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male cultural practices does not imply either the inferiority or absence of female
status or cultus.

Individuals are launched on their learning career at puberty. With the consent of
their mothers, pubescent boys are seized by senior men in charge of ceremonial
activity for the area with which they are associated, for the initiation season.
Snatched out of the world of women and children, they are inducted by the ordeal
of circumcision into the world responsible men and oriented to the social template
of proper behaviour and self-realisation under the tutelage of the senior man
responsible for them. Initiation is experienced as death and rebirth, the end of
childhood and awakening to the task of adult life. The jural declaration of
adulthood is made socially effective through the welcome ceremony at the end of
the initial period of seclusion, in which boys are returned to their mothers and
families as man, entitled to respect, amid dancing and celebration. Induction into
the society of their seniors lasts for several seasons, during which traditional
sanctions regulate adult responsibilities, such as marriage and reproductive rights.
Young men are encouraged to defer marriage or to marry out and to travel widely
and gain friendship and acceptance in distant places, and gain knowledge from
those places that will enrich their understanding of the Dreaming of their own
area and enhance their status.

As individuals mature and gain authority and prestige from their knowledge of the
Dreaming stories and rituals, they acquire interpretive discretion to elaborate,
modify and add to the stories they hold. In this respect Aboriginal traditions, like
those of all societies, are not forever fixed and unchanging, but subject to
inventive elaboration (Hobsbawm 1983:1-14). The most senior exponents rule
on the legitimacy of changes, whether they are refinements of or contradictions to
the complex web of knowledge that guides social behaviour (Geddes 1994:69-
71).

Having placed themselves in tutelage to senior knowledge holders over a wide

range of places and gained a ‘global’ insight into their own Dreaming places,
older men tend to return to their home country which gives them their identity and
become the authoritative exponents for it. Those elders who hold the deepest
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knowledge and understanding of places along the ancestral track have become,
indeed are the Dreaming.

The Dreaming provides Aboriginal people with an all-encompassing social

template, through which people gain knowledge of themselves, of their
environment and their social relationships, and achieve respect and status. The
aim of life is through learning, social participation and co-operation with their
neighbours, forming alliances and bonds of affinity, to become the eponymous
ancestral being that they are.

Conclusion
Learning theory and human development are conceived within a biological
evolutionary framework that allows the rationale and purpose of education to be
confined to relations of economic production, namely the social and intellectual
construction of labour, rather than of citizens. Taken to its logical conclusion,
objectivist or materialist conceptions of human status lead to the articulation of
education as the production of discrete quanta of knowledge and performance
input and output in the production relations of a global economic system. Liberal
education philosophy preserves the notion of a humanising cultural project
(Whyte & Crombie 1995:94) but lacks a “coherent or consensual view of human
existence” (Squires 1993:96) necessary to persuasively contest a dominant
economic rationality.

A radical departure is required that adopts a phenomenological and culturally

relativist approach, and a consistent rejection of materialist ideas of human
existence, to redress this imbalance and the socially detrimental objectification of
the central economic rationalist idea of human nature and purpose. A dialectical
understanding of the historical ascendancy of Western capitalism and the
phenomenon of economic and cultural globalisation has not altered the fact that
modern “freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed
of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence
afforded by the old feudal arrangements.” Not only has “the history of their
expropriation been written in the annals of mankind in letters of fire and blood”
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(Marx, 1867, vol 1, pt 8 ch. 26 in Geddes 1997:197), but also that of the rest of
the globe is still being so written.

(6,643 words)
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