The Pursuit of Wisdom and Happiness in Education: Historical Sources and Contemplative Practices

16. A Proposal for “Metaxic” Education, or an Education of the In-Between

277 16 A Proposal for “Metaxic” Education, or an Education of the In‑Between On the Cultivation of “Human Wisdom” In my experiences as a high school teacher, I have found that the most wonderful and meaningful part of education is unfortunately not the focus of what we do as teachers. As a typical English teacher, I mostly focus on helping my students to learn how to write and to read and to think critically about their studies. I work very hard, as do most teachers, to help my students “do well” (eu prattein) in school. As teachers, we concentrate mostly on using assessment in the form of marks to goad students toward preconceived “learning objectives” and government‑mandated “outcomes”; when we assess students, we are told by the architects and overseers of the curriculum that the only thing that we are allowed to consider is how much each student “knows”—i.e., what level of mastery of the course materials each pupil is able to display. We therefore emphasize the demonstration of correct answers rather than thinking about the extent to which we do not know, or about how the “correct answers” might be problematic, or encouraging students to investigate and to question in order to realize the extent to which they (and we too as teach‑ ers) are ignorant about things. In short, in school we focus on demonstrating our measurable knowledge of things, our proficiencies with manipulating, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating things—we command our students to demonstrate “masterful” knowledge of the disciplines in which they are immersed; we demand that they find the correct answers; but our institutional efforts do not take us very far at all in the direction of knowing ourselves, for knowing ourselves not only entails knowing what we know, but also knowing the extent of our own ignorance. In ancient times, when sojourners after the deepest knowing approached the “bellybutton” (omphalos) of the world—that is, its very center and life source—the Pythian Apollo commanded them at the doorpost and gateway to “know thyself!” (gnothi seauton). When Socrates was made aware by one such sojourner, his friend Chaerephon, of the oracle at Delphi’s pronouncement that “no one was wiser” than he, Socrates was perplexed; he knew that he was not wise, “either much or little.” 278 The Pursuit of Wisdom and Happiness in Education Indeed, he knew—as did Pythagoras before him—that “only the god is wise”; but then he did not suppose that the god would lie either. And so in order to try to understand the god’s “riddle,” Socrates began his famous (or rather, infamous) dialogic explorations; he questioned those in his city about what they knew and what they claimed to know, hoping to find somebody who was wiser than he and thereby to refute the divination. However, through his questioning, Socrates found that all those with whom he spoke supposed themselves to be wise (in the sense of knowing the highest and the most important things) but were, in fact, not wise at all; rather, they only believed themselves to be so. They did not truly know themselves, being unaware of the extent of their own ignorance. Having exposed their ineptitude in a rather public way, Socrates became hated by many power‑ ful men in Athens; they felt humiliated and insulted by his questions, and they supposed that he was not only insulting them, but also teaching the youth to be disrespectful toward them as well; titillated by the contest of words in such displays and eager to play these games themselves, the youth within earshot of Socrates no longer simply bowed to the presumed authority and wisdom of their elders, but rather became questioners themselves. Unlike Socrates, however, they did so not necessarily for the purposes of seeking out the truth, but rather for the joy of contest (agon): for the love of tearing down and destroying the customs and tradi‑ tions that were held sacrosanct by their community. And certainly students even to this day still enjoy teaching their teachers and authority figures to “suck eggs”! In his defense speech, Socrates claims that he never was anyone’s teacher. The purview of teachers, in this regard, seems to be to pass on knowledge to their pupils, to instruct them in the acquisition of a particular sort of knowing—in the principles and practices of mathematics, physics, woodworking, and literary com‑ position, for example. However, Socrates disavows ever having instructed anyone in anything...