Creative Empowerment and Liberal Education: Rights and Advocacies
Speech delivered by Siegfried Herzog at the first Philippine Open Education Forum, Pasay City, 23 April 2008

When talking about education, we need to realize that this is not a technical issue, but one that is shaped by our political and religious preferences. Socialists, conservatives and liberals have different views of what education is and what it should achieve, and the same goes for Catholics, Muslims and atheists.

In the name of intellectual honesty, I would like to make my preferences explicit. I will look at the issue from the perspective of Liberalism, the political philosophy that has decisively shaped our modern institutions. Liberalism believes in a society that is made up of free individuals who bind themselves by a social contract to be ruled on the basis of laws. It delegates power to the government only for a time. Government is legitimized by a formal election process in which all citizens are given an equal vote. Its economy is based on the market mechanism, where people can freely engage in economic activities of their choice and resources are allocated on the basis of supply and demand —- subject to reasonable constraints. It places individual liberty at the center of its value system. It affirms equality, but this means equality of access and equality before the law, not equality of outcomes.

Individual liberty means being allowed to make choices. Society will work better the more these choices are rational. The market mechanism works on the assumption that people are, by and large, able to make rational choices. So does democracy. Crucially, this implies that we have to accept that some people sometimes make bad choices, harming themselves. The alternative, namely having the state baby-sit the whole population, has much worse side effects. The state is not a neutral nanny, but a political organization controlled by a political coalition. It will tend to act in the political interest of that coalition. Why should we let it make decisions that we could make on our own?

Education therefore has some clear objectives in a liberal context. It has to enable people to make rational choices because that ability is what society is based on. From this will flow a distinct set of tasks for a liberal education system. Note that authoritarian societies do not think this should be stressed.

Second, there is the objective to empower people. Education has been, and is today even more, the most effective instrument of social mobility. Education thus has to enable all citizens to tap their full human potential, to be able to earn a living, provide for their family and realize their dreams. Liberalism believes in equal access and opportunity, and education is the best instrument to mitigate the inequality of one’s birth, the disadvantage people from poor or dysfunctional families have. This implies specific tasks for a liberal education system. Again, we note that societies that value inherited status will tend to neglect this aspect.

Third, there is the utilitarian objective of providing skills needed by the economy. Most people realize that the product of education is human capital, and that human capital is an important ingredient in economic development. This is what almost all societies can agree on.

Therefore we look at distinct sets of things that education has to deliver: First and foremost are the basic skills: numeracy, literacy, basic knowledge about physical and social sciences and foreign languages. This is the basic toolbox, so to speak, and it is indispensable for all three objectives outlined above. As these skills are formed in the first years of schooling, special emphasis should be laid there. The reality, sadly, is very often quite different.

Second, education has to develop the ability to find, judge and process information. This is often called learning to learn. This is much more important than in ages past because the stock of human knowledge is not just rising, it’s exploding. It’s devaluing a lot of old knowledge in the process. People need to be able to keep up with the flow of information in their field, and the requirements can change drastically. My cousins went to nine years basic schooling and vocational training to become skilled mechanics. When they did that the skills needed to be a mechanic had not changed all that much in the preceding 50 years. However in their professional lives, it did. They had to learn the use of computers. These came with manuals in English, which they hadn’t really studied in school. They also had to travel the globe for their companies and train people from Malaysia and China. This rapid expansion of new knowledge will accelerate, and we have to prepare people for this. Again, this is needed for all three objectives, but not always provided in the education system.

Third, education should enable us to acquire a critical mindset. With all kinds of information at our fingertips, we need to be able to assess it critically, to separate substantive analysis and facts from propaganda, lies and tall tales. This skill is exceedingly important both in our professional and in our political lives. A banker needs it to assess and weigh credit risks; a businessman to assess investment opportunities; a policeman to assess a crime scene and the suspects and a soldier to assess a battlefield situation. Everyone needs it to plan his personal finances wisely. Voters need it to make wise choices at the ballot booth and to decide if they should support various causes. The pope reminds us that this mindset is also needed to develop our spirituality. However, many governments and many societies are uncomfortable with this.

Governments don’t like citizens that question their actions and get involved in politics. Societies that stress obedience and respect don’t like young people questioning their elders. Here we have a genuine conflict of interests. Liberalism thinks a critical mindset is indispensable and accepts that this often tends to undermine social stability to some extent. We might understand this at the rational level; see that the only thing that is constant is change. Yet, as human beings, we crave stability because our DNA, our emotional operating system, was formed in an age where noticeable technological and social change did not happen over the span of one lifetime.

Fourth, education should develop values and sensibilities. The human condition is not remade by the information age. As I mentioned, our DNA program comes from the Stone Age; hence, insights into human nature do not lose value. Our artistic and aesthetic sensibilities also change much more slowly, which is why art and literature from ages long past can still move us and teach us something valuable. Human beings need a sense of the wider human culture, and education should develop that sensibility. The big temptation is to impose a specific set of values and an appreciation of only one’s own culture. This is a grave danger. In the age of nationalism, nation after nation, Germany included, has misused education to do nation-building. They try to imprint government-approved version of a nation’s culture and history on young minds by suppressing native languages, inconvenient historical facts and minority cultures in the schools. Liberalism, by contrast, would demand that these values and sensibilities stay wedded to the critical mindset and the constant learning process, avoiding false certainties and instead stressing the ability to appreciate.

What role can open education play in this context? Open education is a growing worldwide movement to develop free educational content and tools to be used by everyone. It promises to revolutionize education by providing teachers and students with more information and learning instruments. By doing that, education will also partly migrate from the fixed classroom concept into cyberspace. It can be of special importance to poor countries where governments do not have the resources to produce teaching materials for state schools in sufficient quality and quantity. It would also potentially enable or strengthen new forms of schooling like home-schooling.

Before we look at this in light of the liberal education objectives, let me just say a few words of caution. How human beings learn is a complex process and is probably different to some degree with each individual. But for most people, a teacher has been, and will probably remain, a vital figure. Human beings are social animals, and we usually like to learn by observing and questioning. The human interaction-model of student-teacher is so widespread across cultures and time that it is reasonable to assume that it cannot be fully replaced by technology. At the university level, the cluster of great minds that enables interaction and networking between intellectual peers arose in the middle ages and has survived to the present for a good reason. E-mailing and videoconferencing will enable larger networks, but they probably cannot replace personal interaction. When we discuss open education, we have to see it in this context. It is not a magical cure for all problems in the education system, and the quality of teachers will remain a critical variable.

Compared to that, the technical problems seem less crucial. The way the Internet and connectivity have spread, it is reasonable to assume that the digital divide will be overcome rather quickly in terms of physical facilities.

What, then, is the real advantage of open education? If we look at the four products that we want from a liberal education system, it certainly can help in the acquisition of basic skills. It gives teachers and students vastly more access to information than was previously available. It makes the job of the teacher easier by helping him better structure his lessons, provide more examples and employ novel teaching methods. Students can learn more autonomously, explore the subject on their own – IF they like, a big if – and they can be taught to do research early on. So on one level, it lowers costs and expands opportunities to achieve the objectives of the education system.

It is also a great tool in learning to learn. Open education demonstrates to the teacher that there is a need for him to provide further learning, and there are other ways to do the job. Students learn to search for and process information — accessing open education resources is already part of that process. It also teaches students that the lesson in the classroom is not the last word on any given subject. There are many different unexplored aspects out there, and new knowledge is constantly added.

It also helps to develop a critical mindset. Students get sensitized early on that not only is there a lot of information out there, it is often contradictory. They have to assess the credibility of their sources. They have to make a judgement on what to trust, and they realize that facts are less hard than we would like to believe.

Open education can also help in developing values and sensibilities. Not only does it give a better access to important philosophical, spiritual and literary texts as well as pictures of artworks and loads of music data, it also enables students to access information on how others feel and have felt about these issues. Students can compare reactions to ideas and to art over time and across cultures.

In order to achieve these objectives with the help of open education, the quality of the teacher remains important. He should direct students where to find information, how to search for more and not to forget to look at opposing points of view. He should also teach the students how to assess the credibility of sources, how to cross-check information and how to arrive at a reasoned judgement. The teacher will also be needed to keep the students to their tasks, as the Internet offers countless diversions that tend to be very attractive.

When we look at lifelong learning, open education is also important to adults that need or want to learn more about a given subject. They do not really need a teacher to show them the way if they acquired the learning skills and a critical judgement in their school days. They can benefit from open education for their professional work and for making more informed choices, from investments to voting to spiritual growth. They can also interact with people from around the globe who share a similar passion, even if it is for a computer game, experiencing a wider humanity in the process.

If we look at the wider political context, open education has great advantages from the liberal point of view. It breaks the monopoly of information that governments often exercise on teaching content. It thus makes nationalistic projects all the more difficult to pursue in schools. It will give students access to information which they need to question things happening around them, and will thus enable them to become more active and more critical citizens. Crucially, open education is part and parcel of the right to information, which is becoming more and more crucial as a fundamental right in a free society.

As in all human endeavours, there are dangers. Open education might widen disparities if access is not equally spread; some people worry that open education will undermine value formation and foster an anything-goes mentality. It might empower the intellectually curious and leave the more practical-minded behind.

These are real concerns, but liberals tend to accept them as a legitimate price to pay. Nothing in human progress is ever unequivocally good; we always pay some price. But much of what can be said against open education will be said against the Internet as such. Students will access it, one way or another. It is far better to let them access it first with the help of a teacher who teaches them how to make optimal use of it. Not everyone will use that opportunity, or use it wisely. That’s the price we pay for freedom. But on balance, the positive effects of greater empowerment far outweigh the risks. Remember, knowledge is power. Whenever access to knowledge is restricted, there is an issue of power behind it –- a ruling elite will control knowledge in order to maintain power. If we truly believe that power should be vested in people, not in elites, anything that increases access to knowledge and deepening of knowledge is welcome. Open education is thus not just a nifty tool to enhance skills. It is a way to build a freer society.