A Three-Fold Strand Is Not Easily Broken:

Knowledge, Intelligence and Liberating Education

by

Yvonne Carlson

9/19/2016
 Abstract

In this paper I will develop my definition of knowledge, the purpose of education and examine

how intelligence is an attribute of culture. I will synthesize some key points from the first three

chapters of Education, Information, and Transformation authored by Jeffrey Kane, C.A. Bowers,

and Dale T. Snauwaert. I will show how I will apply theory to my practice to provide a

curriculum and instruction that equips students to be critical and creative thinkers.

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 Children are people born with faculties to reason, emote and choose. The quandary all

people are born into is that of their existence and morals. Existence demands answers to Who

am I?, and morals demands the answers to How should I then live? (Schaeffer, 1990).

Societies have used schools as a formal means to engage new generations in knowing the

answers to these questions. Environments and languages operating in the particular culture of an

individual also informally provide answers to these questions. As a general education instructor, I

need to engage students in mastering the cultures coding systems for communication and

inquiry so that they have the foundation to access and mindfully process the answers cultures of

the present and the past have given for these human dilemmas.

Human knowledge can be likened to a three strand cord. Similar to the three branches of

government, each way of knowing produces its best fruit in a system of checks and balances. We

respond to what exists with thoughts, feelings and actions. In one strand, we process sensory

input to develop our empirical or representational knowledge base. A second strand involves our

experiences with sense information in which we respond to with our feelings ranging from

extreme delight to shock and horror and then process as interpretative knowledge. To process

knowledge in this realm, we consider dense, multilevel, personal and social value hierarchies that

establish a qualitative or moral knowledge of good and bad. A third strand consist of subjective

knowledge about the world, which is developed by engaging what exists in I-You situations.

These encounters of whole persons connecting to other whole persons is where we can consider

the multiple views of others as subjects without losing our own view in the process (Snauwaert,

1999). An I-You encounter is both active and passive, including giving and receiving outside of

compelling forces to assimilate or conform. Here is the heart for active unconditional love, where

people feel safe to share their view and hear the view of others without fear of loss.

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 Through the beauty of synthesis, the knowledge strands unite to constitute a complexity

of the whole of what is learned through the head, heart and hands (thoughts, feelings and actions)

concerning existence and morals. While each person possesses a unique three strand cord, each

persons cord has some common elements and variations of thicknesses. When a person or a

community culture develops these strands with balance, they will form for themselves a healthy

organic knowledge base open to growth that will then support harmonious mindful living with

others and with the world. Extremes, however are born out of imbalance. For example, pure

empirical knowledge locks the modern person into a very restricted kind of knowing (p.66), a

knowledge that excludes among other things, the qualitative, participatory, and subjective

dimensions of life (Feige, 1999, p. 93). Our present technological society cannot afford to lose

those dimensions of life. The interpretive strand critically thinks through the hierarchy of values

to qualify gains between the spectrums of those that oppress and those that liberate. While the

critical paradigm calls for radical, creative, passionate action; do as you would be done by

(Lewis, 1947). A balanced three strand cord works to insure empirical knowledge does not rule at

the expense of quality and action, that the I-You subjective knowledge does not rule at the

expense of order and quality, and that the interpretive knowledge does not rule at the expense of

order and action. Thus, while studying the It (what exists) it (regenerate science) would not lose

what Martin Buber calls the Thou-situation (Lewis, 1947, p. 88) and while speaking of the parts

you will remember the whole.

What happens to society when knowledge is reduced to empirical knowing? Leonardo de

Vinci foresaw that if man begins with autonomous rationality, the path will take him to pure

mathematics, all of that which can be measured, and to this end, man will find himself alone in a

world of particles with no universals (Schaeffer, 1968). This leaves man with a world that cannot

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transcend the mechanical. Jeffery Kane (1999) notes that since the coming of the information age

an awry assumption about human thinking has crept in making thinking synonymous with

information processing. This seems to be a trend that strikes eerily close to Leonardos

description. Under the hypnosis of this assumption, teaching has been reduced to using

technology to access information, analyzing it and then digitizing it for presentation. In such a

classroom, the students have no personal engagement with the facts and figures that may

represent people and places but are cut down to bare mechanics in slaughter house fashion. To

avoid this intellectual holocaust, when I apply this paradigm to equip students with core skills, I

will provide context by weaving in the personal narrative of mans connection to the content and

how it personally relates to the students in their here and now and in their future to come.

If we remain under the oppression of quantifying our existence in naturalistic terms, our

ability to learn from the deeper streams of understanding will be cut off (Kane, 1999). I liberate

children when I teach them as whole persons versus treating them as intellectual capital to be

processed into societal drones. As a liberating educator, I will design a kaleidoscope of

experiences with the worlds many lenses within the creative environment of the I-You situation.

In this way, children can contemplate meaning, identity, purpose, and responsibility in the whole

of life using the resources available in the culture (Kane, 1999).

As I employ the Interpretative/Symbolic Paradigm, I need to heed that cultural norms

guide how people intervene with nature and live with each other, whether in harmony or

disharmony. As a constructivist, I may be tempted to view cultural norms as oppressive and

elevate the individual and their own power to create knowledge and personal judgements or

values (Bowers, 1999). Likewise, I need to understand that the harnessing of natures genetic

coding system has undercut the apparent authority of shared customs and values. Bowers (1999)

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argues that intelligence needs to be seen as cultural and ecological in nature because even the

scientist is effected by the cultural schemata in his own thinking. Both the students and I need to

recognize that while depending on a cultures mythopoetic narratives, certain forms of

intelligences will be privileged over others. Bower proposes that people need to assess their

societys forms of expressions in terms of moral criteria that look carefully at what it is to be a

just and sustainable community in relation to each other and the surrounding ecosystem. He

further cautions the educators to consider that when intelligence is reduced to the construction

of knowledge, the manipulating of data, the electoral firing of neurons (p. 31), then human

beings are stripped from their access to evaluating deep cultural schemata that are too often the

unrecognized basis of thought which contributes to the degradation of community life (Bowers,

1999, p. 31). Students depend on this assessment process for developing conscious awareness of

assumptions which is necessary for gaining ownership of ones thoughts and values. Therefore, I

need to nurture conscious awareness.

To develop and support cultural forms of intelligence, I need to consider that intelligence

is not so much something possessed individually but culturally by the people group. Cultural

intelligence is evidenced in the connection between how knowledge and morals are encoded and

reproduced through the metaphorical language that normalize how children experience

themselves and the world with in the context of relationships that are mainly culturally defined

and linguistically reproduced (Bowers, 1999, pp. 32-33). To develop curriculum and instruction

that honors cultural intelligence (embodied, tacit and intentional), I will engage students in an

educational journey that traverses the course of history and people groups through their

narratives to understand the basis of cultures, and how they interconnect with the environment

for food security, safety and wellbeing. I will also include local cultural norms, and local history

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along with local elders as resources to help students understand their cultural origins, and how it

shapes their understanding of the world and managing group moral codes. When the students and

I approach intelligence as an attribute of culture, it will help us understand the methods the

people groups, we are studying, employ to communicate morals and meaning for life. This praxis

is important for developing respect and value of human people groups and appreciate how they

answer the questions of existence and morals.

Even my professional learning community has its own cultural intelligence that needs to

be nurtured and lead to promote balance between the paradigms. As a leader, I will build

personal and positive connections within the membership. I will seed the environment with

positive affirmations of each members unique skills and ideas, and fertilize it with support that

welcomes creativity and innovation and water all ideas no matter how absurd or bizarre they may

be. I will focus collaborative groups to tackle the core issues before debating the particulars in

the flex zone (What is cultural intelligence?, 1989). Consensus will come through including the

strengths of the paradigms with balance.

In conclusion, to be an effective educator, I will prepare students to investigate and

understand the human struggle in the dilemmas of existence and morals through examining

assumptions that shape our thinking, feelings and actions. All forms of knowledge will be

honored with balance as I design curriculum and instruction that utilizes all the paradigm

strengths. Finally, I will be mindful of the myth that thinking is equal to information processing

by incorporating a cultural view of intelligence and utilizing the resources in culture to examine

embedded societal assumptions in order to help students develop conscious awareness. This form

of education will liberate children to become the owner and creator of their dreams for both

themselves and societys mutual wellbeing.

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 References

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