Deconstructing Constructivism

Of the things that I have learned from this program, one is that educational thought has its own fads and phases. Generally, a phase-shift is merely a shift in emphasis, such as from vocabulary to content literacy. At least one approach, however, has obtained a more enduring quality - that of social constructivism. Now this way of thinking has found its way into a number of different studies besides education, and it seems to hardly be foreign to modern culture's way of thinking about the world. Indeed, it has entered the common vocabulary of anyone who has at least attained a high school degree. Many today seem particularly fond of labeling something a "social construct" that they would just as well have done away with (e.g. gender roles, various norms, morals, and values). In this program (and in much educational writing), saying that knowledge is socially constructed is rather in vogue, though I could hardly claim that we as perspective teachers already want to do away with knowledge. I have found, however, that in spite of the confidence that I encounter in those who use and apply the philosophy, many who invoke it actually only further confuse what is meant by "social constructs" rather than clarify it. The philosophy, on the whole, is indeed rather confusing.

Generally, I have found the process of social constructing one wrapped in great mystery. Somehow, in someway, in the misty past, perhaps even back to the dawn of man, some idea or perception was created. It is rather significant that this idea can be placed in the passive voice ("was created"), because therein lies a great key to a great mystery. The statement cries out for an answer: "By whom or what?" The slipperiness and vagueness of language is utilized to the fullest in answering: "By society and its collective efforts; by human interaction." One gets the image of an Athenian assembly coming together in the great marbled hall, each gray-bearded member clamoring to define reality in his own way, and then, out of the chaos of noise comes a silence, not of collective confusion, but of "collective understanding" - reality thus defined! Or perhaps we should place it earlier in history, especially if we were encountering an age-old idea such as gender roles, and replace gray-bearded, finger-waving Athenians with brown-bearded, club-waving cavemen. In either case, and no matter how old we might want to make it, an idea is somehow born out of the chaos of interaction.

It is really very important to recognize that if ideas are purely constructs, then at least the primitive ones must have arisen out of chaotic interaction, much as life arises for the evolutionist out of the primordial soup. At some point, there were no ideas upon which to build others, no first perceptions even to deconstruct. Man had to encounter something before ideas existed, even if it was nothing more than a sort of evolutionary rise from purely material and un-reflected interactions. In any case, the constructivist must admit to circularity, and the most honest do, and shrug their shoulders.

Nonetheless, the air of mystery surrounding the great construction of ideas is one that really does great injury to the scientific nature of this way of thinking (and by "scientific," I don't necessarily mean the natural sciences, but I mean it more generally, as in an organized, consistent, and systematic study). Perhaps I am merely too obsessed with origins, and knowing things in their origins. Perhaps I am overlooking the fact that ideas are constantly evolving in the constructivist's world, and that it is silly to try to trace an idea back to its beginning, if only because the idea (or perception, or norm, or whatever) would be unrecognizable if we went too far back. It is a problem of history then, to try to make a science out of constructivism - which is probably not even desirable or necessary to the constructivist. Indeed, history itself is a social construct.

I fear that I could go on and on, and yet, I would always come back to the same main point: that I cannot avoid talking in some way about an "objective" (outside the mind) reality. Constructivists, if they really adhere to their philosophy, could probably slip their way out of any argument, if only because they do not appeal to argument in the logical sense. Any person who gladly admits to circularity, and then proceeds to continue to hold to the circle, is seemingly beyond convincing - they have already been convinced in one sense (logically), but that sense does not apply to their world, which is beyond definite description (other than that it is socially constructed).

Another point of note: it is particularly important that "social constructs" are ultimately non-material things. Whether perceptions, ideas, norms, moralities, values, or learning, social constructs present an extremely spiritualized (immaterial) worldview. It is really a radical extension of that 19th century philosophy we call "idealism" (there I go with origins again). For instance, people today are fond of saying that gender is socially constructed. Where people of a couple of centuries ago might have thought of gender as a biological thing, the constructivist of today has made it a purely spiritual thing, something that can be endlessly changed and controlled according to individual preference. The point here is that once the world is entirely spiritualized, and people are removed from direct contact with things outside of themselves, being caught up in the socially constructed reality created by collective understanding and human interaction (we might say, spiritual interaction), knowledge is something purely manipulatable and relative to the manipulator (it is clear to see how easily one can go from social constructivism to individual constructivism).

A problem with constructivism, relative to education, is that there is no such thing as a "moderate" constructivist. One can't both hold that there is an objective reality and that reality is socially or individually constructed, unless, of course, the principle of non-contradiction does not apply (as it may not for the most honest constructivists). We can perhaps change something that is really there, or even manipulate it, but we cannot construct or deconstruct it. We cannot change a reality existing apart from our perception in its very structure, if there really is such a reality (see "More Philosophy," 9-8-08, for more on reality and perception). Certainly even the realist can admit that there are individual and/or social perceptions and misunderstandings, worldviews and points of view. But "perception" only constitutes a re-ordering of an objective reality in the mind, not in reality itself (we don't change bull-dozers into buzzards by our perception, but Don Quixote changed windmills into dragons in his mind).

Anyhow, this post is already far too long, and if you have made it this far, I commend you for reading far past where you should have stopped and done something productive. Here is a point to consider: if constructivism is to be our educational approach, then we are all fooling ourselves with textbooks and tests, unless, of course, students are somehow outside of the interaction and collective understanding of society. If students are in society, then they are already not only being formed by it but also forming new ideas and perceptions about its reality. Why do students need to be "initiated" into the collective knowledge of society if their entire world is socially determined? This is where social constructivists might make the small jump to individual constructivism and say that students need to become cognizant of their own perceptions and of the perceptions of others. This awareness, then, is the business of school. Perhaps they should rather be allowed to construct their own reality and world outside of our subjective influence, lest we become too overbearing and forceful in our pedagogy. Social constructivism is either an extremely egalitarian thing or else an extremely oligarchical one - either everyone has an equal share in the collective understanding or this understanding is imposed from the top down by the enlightened elites. Either way, knowledge becomes a rather arbitrary thing, either constantly being changed by the general will or constantly imposed by the general consensus of a few.

Perhaps I could say it all like this: Constructivists are fond of having things constructed when they are easily changed or discarded. But once things appear to have a much more serious purpose, then they become as rigidly real as a bolder falling on one's head. The airplane will never be a construct because no one wants to fly in a malleable craft. It is not that spiritual things are necessarily more flimsy or vague than material things, but rather that they are beyond our physical senses, and thus convenient to manipulate without sensible materialists crying foul over a distorted reality.