Education: The Difference Between Learning How to Think and What to Think

Professor of Law Butler Shaffer at the LewRockwell.com in the following excerpt, eloquently distinguishes between independent and conformist thinking [bold mine]

Education is an ongoing confrontation between those who want to help children learn how to think, and those who want to teach them what to think. While there are numerous variations on these themes, the contrast can most clearly be found in the distinctions between child-centered Montessori systems, and teacher- and test-centered schools. Government schools usually fall into the latter category. Homeschooling, religious schools, un-schooling, and other forms tend to emphasize either the "how" or the "what" in their efforts with children.

Those who focus on learning how to think have in mind helping children develop their own methods of questioning and analyzing the world around them; to control their own inquiries and opinions; to the end of helping children become independent, self-directed persons. The role of the teacher in such a setting is to provide new learning situations (e.g., open up new subjects of inquiry when the student is ready to do so) and to facilitate the processes of questioning so as to help the students get to deeper levels of understanding.

People who have developed the capacity for epistemological independence are not easy to control for purposes that do not serve their interests. Institutions – which have purposes of their own that transcend those of individuals – require a mass-minded population that has been conditioned to accept outer-imposed definitions of "reality." Any deviation from this systemic purpose – as would derive from students questioning how the arrangement would benefit them – would be fatal to all forms of institutionalism.

The established order has, from one culture and time period to another, insisted on educational systems that train young minds into what to think. "Truth" becomes a set of beliefs that conform to an institutional imperative, and it becomes the purpose of schools to inculcate such a mindset. Whereas "how to think" learning that finds its purpose and focus within the minds of self-directed, independent students, "what to think" education derives from outside the students’ experiences and analytical skills. As Ivan Illich so perceptively expressed it, "[s]chool is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is."

To this end, the established order has helped generate – with eager assistance from academia – a belief that all understanding is a quality requiring phalanxes of self-styled "experts" who, by virtue of their prescribed status, enjoy monopolies to offer opinions about their respective fields of study. Plato’s designation of "philosopher kings" has been sub-franchised into categories of "experts" to be found in "history," "physics," "psychology," "economics," "law," and seemingly endless sub-groupings that negate the role once respected for those who had received a "liberal arts" education.

Read the rest here.