Lest culture be reified as an entity independent of people who share canon-
ical cultural experiences, folk beliefs and cultural values are like currencies:
they are as valid as people are still carrying them around. Individuals and cul-
ture are mutually constitutive of each other (Rogoff, 2003). However, more
than just sharing, one can conceive of generative characteristics of inter-
subjective processes whereby beliefs and values are taking shape, migrating,
propagating, amplifying, and transforming in an intersubjective space of a
community of people (Brown & Campione, 1994), very much in the same way
McClelland (1961) conceptualized the socialization of achievement motiva-
tion in youth development.
On the positive side, such generative characteristics of social communica-
tion indicates an intellectually stimulating environment. There can also be a
tension, however, between individuals and cultural establishments along the
process. For example, the essential tension that presumably leads to scientific
revolution (T. Kuhn, 1977), and even the very notion of paradigm, can only
exist in the intersubjective world of a scientific community. Thus, an act of
creativity does not just occur in a solitary mind, but is inherent in generative
social interaction and intersubjectivity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992; Runco,
1994; Sternberg, 2003). On the negative side, social structures and dynamics
can also hamper instead of facilitate intellectual functioning and develop-
ment, as in the case of groupthink in a conformity-inducing environment
(Janis, 1972) and or mind control in extremely inhibitory social conditions
such as a cult (Zimbardo, 2002). Under such conditions, intellectual func-
tioning degenerates, individually and collectively.
The Nature and Nurture of Habits of Mind
Dewey (1933) remarked that “the real problem of intellectual education is the
transformation of more or less casual curiosity and sporadic suggestions into
attitudes of alert, cautious, and thorough inquiry” (p. 181). Dewey clearly did
not underestimate the difficulty of the task. It is not unusual that people get
entrenched in my-side biases (Perkins & Ritchhart, chap. 13) or rely on
heuristics rather than more principled ways of thinking (Kahneman, 2003;
Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Indeed, less than optimal intellectual function-
ing can even be attributed to natural habits of mind, a biological constraint.
In everyday life, humans are cognitive misers, spending just enough energy to
get the job done (see Kanfer, 1987, for a discussion of an effort–utility func-
tion for motivation). People can often get by with sloppy thinking, but some-
times a slight slip in thinking can cause disasters of the global magnitude
(e.g., the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident; see Byrne, 1997 for details). Accord-
ing to Dewey (1933), education as a process of enculturation is to develop
mindfulness and a caring for thinking or thoughtfulness. Bereiter (1995)
found teaching for understanding often insufficient for the productive use of
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