economy. As the material modes of economic production change, one might say, so too must
society’s superstructure in light of those historical shifts. Education reformer, Michael Fullan,
suggests“It is no exaggeration to say that the new pedagogies have the potential to support a
fundamental transformation in human evolution. The result is that action, reflection, learning and
living can now become one and the same.”^11 The emphasis is on novelty and change. Much less
attention, however, is paid to skills or competencies the earlier form of education may have
encouraged, and whether some of those are worth preserving, or whether the new form of education
places any of those prior goals–however they may be categorized–in jeopardy.
There seems to be little regard in the OECD report, for example, for the pursuit of wisdom or
learning for its own sake. Occasionally the twenty-first-century education model promises to foster
“deeper learning,”facilitated by deprioritizing the memorization of mere facts and by pulling away
from“passive reading.”^12 To that end, teaching strategies based on constructivist ideas usually
promote students’active engagement in learning and in the construction of knowledge. John
Dewey, the pioneer and first serious advocate of discovery-learning in public schools, asserts that
“The [ideal] teacher operates not as a magistrate set on high and marked by arbitrary authority.”^13
Modern reformers pick up where Dewey left off. Carao, Lenkeit, and Kyriakides conclude in 2012
that“Student-oriented instruction for example promotes activating and cooperative learning
environments through discussions between students and the teacher, as well as among students
themselves.”^14 The teacher’s role is therefore to support the processes that are necessary for the
student to construct knowledge.
By emphasizing the socio-constructivist idea of education, however, one devalues the role of
teacher as expert knower and changes the students’self-perception as learners. Classroom hier-
archies are flattened, which promotes greater equality between the students and teacher, a con-
sequence consistent with Dewey’s insistence that pedagogies promote egalitarian democratic
citizens. In fact, Dewey intended to bring about this egalitarianism by undermining what he felt was
an aristocratic elitism based on“book learning.”^15 “Sharing in actual pursuit, whether directly or
vicariously in play, is at least personal and vital:::. Formal instruction, on the contrary, easily
becomes remote and dead–abstract and bookish, to use the ordinary words of depreciation.”Steel
notes that a teacher competent in their discipline is regarded as outmoded these days. Ironically,
the refrain that we are living in the knowledge-based society renders the teacher’s knowledge
superfluous.^16 Teachers, we are told, must focus more on developing learning competencies than
on imparting knowledge. Thus the assumption that teaching methods are one thing and subject
expertise–that university centers for teaching and learning are merely helping departments convey
their content more effectively–begins to collapse under social constructivism’s assumptions
concerning truth, because the method now replaces the content.
Malcolmson, Myers, and O’Connell note the curious fact that this argument concerning the
flattening of classroom hierarchies affects professors in the humanities and social sciences more
than those in the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math):“it is interesting
that people never argue that it is unacceptably elitist for a professor of mathematics or engineering
to have a preeminent role in math or engineering class.”^17 The superior knowledge and technical
expertise of STEM instructors is not in doubt:“Obviously, the assumption is that Ph.D.s in arts
cannot make the same claim to expertise that Ph.D.s in mathematics can. In other words, the call for
a non-hierarchical arts classroom is based on the premises of value relativism.”
Former Dean of the Yale Law School, Anthony Kronman, points to further repercussions of the
constructivistassumptions for universitystudents: theylearn,eitherdirectlyorindirectly, thatnothing
has an independent“essence”or“nature,”and thusthere isnohuman natureper se. Who and whatwe
are is simply a product of social construction.“Constructivism,”Kronman notes,“further insists that
this activity of meaning-making receives its motive and direction from a desire to assert power and
control over someone or something (oneself, others, or the world).”And the purpose of education is
“to expose these motives.”Moreover,“it also asserts that there can be no criteria for ranking the
The Socratic Method and John Dewey 83