Abstract
In 1949, Hank Williams recorded the song “My Bucket's Got a Hole in It”. What can the philosophy of education, ethics and policy learn from this more than 80-year-old song, and this famous country singer’s performance, asking ‘Why does my bucket have holes in it?’ That is the concern that perhaps should be raised for our understanding and performance of ethics and philosophy in the design of policies. Paradoxically, there is an idea that thinkers, as governors of their epistemology, hold it as a precious possession, and need to resist and escape managerialism and instrumentalism, to clearly identify the harm and evil they can cause. However, the same thinkers, at the same time, feel they need to become more focused on thinking and managing their life and performance. Do thinkers become, or need to become, “ethical chameleons”, in order to survive, and to achieve that balance?
Policy and philosophy are intricately connected. What is the place of ethics, then? What is policy? What is philosophy of education? There is a constant struggle between re-defined and re-thought scholarships of these concepts through ever-new streams of thinking. Philosophy in Greek means “love of wisdom”. Philosophy of education is very broad, with unclear boundaries, and it is often contested in terms of what counts as philosophy of education and what does not. As a branch of philosophy, it focuses on a subject: education. It asks important questions about learning, curriculum, knowledge, children, teachers and institutions. In addition, it influences policy. It asks important questions: What is learning? What is curriculum? What is knowledge? What is childhood? Who is a teacher, learner, child, leader? These concerns are metaphysical – about the nature of being, reality, existence – and epistemological – about the nature of knowledge, how we come to know something and, perhaps for the purpose of policy, some of the most important concerns are axiological – ethical, about what values should be elevated, followed, lived by (Peters and Tesar, 2016).
Philosophy of education is important as it elevates concerns and attempts to answer these questions, from various perspectives. However, importantly, it asks foundational questions, which we need to think about in education, before we move to particular solutions, strategies and outcomes. Philosophy makes us think differently and leads to praxis that forms an informed, thoughtful person who thinks about what he/she does and why. Philosophy of education also often underpins everything that scholars do. It is an essential component of every life course and action, particularly because it asks those difficult, foundational questions that do not have expected, right or wrong answers. Thinking philosophically also means that one utilises philosophy as a method – in teaching and research, and in supervision with students (Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2015).
Ethics has a long history of leading a long struggle in the educational sector. The notions of qualified teachers, holistic curriculum, children’s rights and children governing their place/space are concerns that require a philosophical lens to ask questions that unmask the conditions under which they operate. Particularly when working and researching the field of education, such as the lives of young children, philosophy of education helps us to engage and live with the complexities of the sector, teaching, children and childhood. Philosophy does not allow us to settle with convenient and easy, superficially comfortable solutions, but it supports teachers to work with uncertainty. Philosophical lenses and frameworks of various natures allow us to push research further and to come up with alternative explanations and questions, ideas and thoughts. Philosophy connects theory and practice. In addition, it elevates the notion of ethics.
Philosophy of education in policy and ethics thinking asks different, foundational types of questions. The strength (and the critique at the same time) is that it complicates and disrupts “business as usual” and leads to further questions, rather than to quick solutions, outcomes and simplified answers. Research that utilises combinations of classical, modern and new experimental branches of philosophy, and that produces and underpins the most cutting-edge policy documents and research, and searches for the core, opening up to the foundational questions in the current fast-lane, consumer-driven, society, governed by contested policies, is perhaps more important than ever. Philosophy of education allows us to think about experiences, ideas, knowledge and ethics. The most promising fact for philosophy perhaps is that many scholars, when analysing policy, are reading and utilising philosophy despite not necessarily calling themselves philosophers. In addition, as with every discipline, philosophy of education requires devoted study of the history of the field and a vigilant understanding of the contemporary conditions.
Ethics in policy, and the philosophy of education, are linked to ideas that in society we may consider as notions of fairness, equity or social justice. These ideas were not paramount in the mind of many policymakers, who often use normalising and boundary-making measurements about what the ethics of particular policies are. They created these tendencies to construct policies that have become the new normality of everyday existence and that have created standards that govern our behaviour. Becoming ethical implicates our response to such policy. As ethics permeates our everyday existence, we need to critically and honestly examine the sanctity of our becomings as human subjects. The singularity of a view of ethics without philosophy, in policy or in academia, can be very dangerous. What does it mean for ethics, when policy elevates the self as a yardstick of measurement, particularly if most of the measurements arise through a western lens? Perhaps ethics can be considered to be liberating, in relation to the world around us, positioning us towards more of a collective approach that takes into account multiple positionings and produces a new ontology of the self, taking into consideration subjects and objects alike.
What philosophy has taught us is that there is no singular definition of ethics, but that ethics is connected always to particular philosophical and theoretical thinking, within which particular discourse is both evaluated and shaped. Ethics is surely linked to morals and rights, that, most of the time, are linked to something that must be considered as correct, proper, just, right and, often, fair. The concern is right, fair and just – for whom? Who is speaking? Who is shaping this ethical discourse? Who has the power to produce these ethical narratives that often become groundings for policies and for rewards and punishments? Ewing (1953) argued that “ethics is concerned with two main, kinds of questions, first, with deciding the general principle on which ethical terms, i.e.: good, bad, duty, etc., are to be applied to anything, and secondly with deciding precisely what these terms mean” (p. 9).
Traditionally in philosophy, the practice of ethics is considered to be a teleological exercise, and to be concerned with the gentle balance between conducting good and harm through our intensions or actions. In other words, it can consider the best outcomes for the self without the worries about the other (hedonism and egoism), or outcomes that are fair, good and desirable for the potentially largest group of people (utilitarianism). In other words, its focus is on the consequences of our decisions. On the other hand, deontological constructs of ethics focus on what is the standard for someone’s actions and what it means to be right and fair, in actions and intentions, that are independent of consequences and focused rather on a belief of what is good or what is harm, or evil for that matter. Eudaemonist theories of ethics, furthermore, elevate the notion of virtues and a man as a subject that holds and cultivates, particular virtues that guide ethics. Foucault (1983) perhaps allows us to be more focused on these notions if we read his quote from the perspective of ethics, and focus on the idea of “danger”: My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic-activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger. (pp. 231–232)
Coming back to the bucket with holes in it, what if, perhaps, these ethical holes are invisible to ourselves? Perhaps we would not recognise these “ethical holes” unless we pick up the bucket and examine it, or unless we pour something into it. Each of our own buckets have many holes in it, but their multiplicity and density differs, and creates an elusive effect of thoughtful, creative and strategic thinking and acting, performing the becoming of “ethical chameleons”. Perhaps we need to remove the negative connotation from the word “strategic”. There is a need to hear and learn from stories of resistance, from other people and disciplines; from other thinkers; from teachers and from children. We need to elevate these points of resistance that may look “childish”, and to pursue something that happens just like in the kindergarten: where, just behind the corner, children play outside the gaze of the teacher with the broken bucket with holes, filling it with wet sand. Perhaps there is no right way of doing ethics in policy, other than “just doing it”. In a certain way, Hank Williams was asking this question in his song: “Why does my bucket have a hole in it?” and he learnt to manage, to be creative, to strategise with/alongside the hole, rather than fixing it. He created and learnt to sing and perform a song about it – a very successful song.
Sometimes being strategic means painting the bucket, regardless of whether that fixes the holes… and ethical holes do look different, on a freshly painted bucket. Sometimes we need to paint it black, walk on the wild side with empirical research and have sympathy for positivism and normative psychology. So when we have a bucket with ethical holes, we may need to be careful and strategic with it. One way to read “ethics and philosophy as a way of life” is as a “strategic way of life”. Being “strategic” and being “philosophical” and being “honest” can have similarities, without succumbing to the accusation of becoming unethical subjects. As it stands at the moment, the ethical holes in our policies, in our bucket, are becoming more and more visible. Perhaps the oppressive and deterministic, in a certain sense technocratic, nature of the holes in our bucket could become an important way of dealing with the current concerns of policies: through being strategic yet honest; creative yet pragmatic; and focused yet inclusive and compromising. Ethical chameleons. Perhaps we need to look past our traditional allies and seek relationships that will allow us to live with the bucket, and with the ethical holes in it.
In Auckland, July 2016.