For over a month, now I have been wresting with ideas about education, training and ethics.  Last night, I received an email from a student asking me if we could have an extra class added into my course in applied epistemology so that everyone who is presenting could have more time for their presentations.  In thinking about it before I replied, I realized that my first response was “Great, let’s do it” immediately followed by “When?”.  Since I am also playing catch-up after a rather trying time, I was rather amused to note that “I don’t have time” never showed up.  What did get started, though, was a rather complex chain of reactions that ended up (in about 2 seconds) with a firm belief that this was the “right” thing to do.

As I said, I have been thinking about the rather complex interplay of education, training and ethics for some time now.  Part of this stems from having just recently presented a paper on the use of Ethnographic knowledge in military PME in the Greek, Roman and Byzantine “tradition”.  As part of that work, I went back to reread Xenophon’s Memorabilia, especially Book III.  In that work, there is a fascinating discussion between Socrates and Hipparch (lit. Commander of Cavalry).

Hipp. I suppose you mean that, besides his other qualifications a commandant of cavalry must have command of speech and argument?

Soc. Were you under the impression that the commandant was not to open his mouth? Did it never occur to you that all the noblest things which custom compels us to learn, and to which indeed we owe our knowledge of life, have all been learned by means of speech and reason; and if there be any other noble learning which a man may learn, it is this same reason whereby he learns it; and the best teachers are those who have the freest command of thought and language, and those that have the best knowledge of the most serious things are the most brilliant masters of disputation.

Now Socrates’ comments here, and in the preceeding sections of the same discussion, neatly capture the distinctions and connections between education, training and ethics; at least in this context.  Training, discussed earlier in the conversation, is about the communication of basic “knowledge-of-practice”; “knowledge” that has been tried, tested and proven itself as valuable in a particular context to achieve particular ends.

Education, on the other hand, is about the process of conceiving, trying, testing and communicating “knowledge”.  For Socrates, and this shows up in many of the witings about him, the end product of “education” is the ability to think, perceive, and communicate those perceptions such that the knowledge conveyed enhances the life (or success) of the perceiver at their chosen role.  Occassionally, Socrates contrasts this with “base motives” such as arrogance, envy, etc., which brings us to ethics.

The ethical thread running through much of the writings on Socrates, at least those by Xenophon (Plato is another story altogether), is that ethical behaviour is that which enhances the life of the individual and those they are bound to by assumed responsibilities.  It is a curiously dynamic and process oriented form of ethics with some analogs to the concept of karma.  In it, the goal of asking “the man who knows” is not to be trained but to be educated (a distinct difference from Plato’s fascistic fantasies of the Republic).

Now, in the same session that I gave this paper, we had a number of people talking about current training in ethnographic knowledge (”culture”) for the US military.  A chance remark, I think it was from Paula Eber-Holmes, appeared that was along the lines of “we had an hour to talk about culture, and they [military students] wanted more” stuck in my mind.  And, like any burr, it caused an irritation until I could bring it out in the open and examine it, something that had to wait until Drew’s recent comment / question on my Night Battles post.  In it, Drew notes that

But what do we do with a culture which embraces warfare without ascribing “evilness” to it?

I just finished reading Musashi’s “The Five Rings” and was struck by the fundamental “goodness” he and his culture ascribes to warriors, war and fighting.

Wouldn’t an anthropologist be required to condemn a culture in that case?

When I initially responded a couple of days ago, I gave a rather flip response, but he raised a fascinating question which, IMO, strikes at the core of Anthropological ethics: how can a discipline that claims cultural relativity as a core value come to despise patterns of action that are core values of some cultures?  Is the current mode of Anthropological ethics analagous to earlier, “Imperialist” modes placing an externalized, transcendent “Truth” over and above individual, day-to-day lived experience in much the same manner as the 19th century London Missionary Society?

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that some Anthropologists had adopted this mode of thought and action not only by moralizing about the interplay of Anthropology and the Military but, also, by changing their research.  Now, I am not talking about the neo-Boethian action of attempting to avoid the appropriation by the military or state of one’s work, something my frend Max Forte has called for (see here and here).  Max has taken a particular stand and is following it through in a logical and ethical form.  What I am talking about is a disturbing trend that, to my mind, was highlighted by a recent article (PDF) by Gerald Sider in Anthropology Now, where Sider advocates using a minimalist form of questioning; so minimalist that one must wnder if he believes that he has telepathy!  On page 44-45 of the article, Sider notes that

I want to suggest that the fundamental mistake that anthropologists who work for the military’s Human Terrain project is the same mistake almost all anthropologists make, and that is to ask the people that we study questions. This seemingly simple act opens our work to use by those who seek to dominate and control the people we study. There are other ways we can work, less open, but not impervious, to subsequent manipulation.

This somewhat curious statement is followed by a story where he relates his move away from research and into activism and, through a somewhat involved personal history, his current predicament and his proposed “solution” (page 46):

Without an open struggle to join I am once again confronted with what it means to be an anthropologist….

Clearly part of the answer lies in what I write and how I write it. At this point I am planning to write two related books: one for an academic and professional audience, where the detailed analytical and theoretical points are elaborated in lengthy endnotes. The second, which will have the identical theme, written from the outset in clear language, will omit the endnotes, and instead and in some detail suggest relevant further reading for those who want to pursue particular points or issues. This second book I will be seeking to get published by a local Canadian publisher, in a low-cost edition. But how I publish what I write is, in many ways, the easy part. The more complex point is how I learn what I know, or think I know, to write about.

He is, of course, quite correct: epistemology does lie at the root of his endeavour to conduct Anthropology without asking questions.  He goes on (page 47) to note that

In the books that I am presently writing I discuss the how of my sub-arctic research in some detail. This seems appropriate in that context, because it explains the specifics of what I do and do not know. It seems inappropriate in this context, for my task here is not to tell people how to work or to suggest that they copy what I do, but to get them to worry about a problem that anthropology I think needs to address openly, particularly now.

And, later still, to note that

Here I just want to make two suggestions, one of which will take us back to the issue of asking questions.

The first suggestion is that what I know, in part (because we can only know a part of what we study), comes from an intensive engagement with a history of the people and the issues….

The second suggestion is to never ask any direct questions beyond ordinary daily life questions, such as “I’m going to town to pick up groceries. Do you want a lift?” Or “Do you think it will storm, or blow over?” Sometimes, when I know people better, I ask more serious daily life questions, such as “Is the doctor in town any good?”

What is one to make of such penetrating “solutions”?  I suppose that we will have to buy his book to get the details “where the detailed analytical and theoretical points are elaborated in lengthy endnotes”.  Not that I plan on doing so; if I want to read theology, I will reread Aquinus, Maimonides and al-Ghazali rather than going through turgid neo-Marxist prose.

What bothers me most of all about this is what I perceive to be an ethical inconsistency.  I know for a fact that Max is someone who believes in education in the Socratic sense - there is no ethical inconsistency in his position, even though we at times (okay, frequently) disagree on specifics.  I do, however, find Siders’ position to be consistent more with training than education; again in the Socratic sense.  We must purchase his book in order to access his “knowledge”, a position consonant with current academic practice, but this book is based on not asking any questions except those such as “I’m going to town to pick up groceries. Do you want a lift?”.

This leaves me with an impression that he is acting like any other puveyor of “occult” (hidden) knowledge - pay me $X and you will receive wisdom.  This is “training” all right; training in creating a dependency whereby “knowledge” consumers must pay an “expert” to receive hidden knowledge - a stance that, I would suggest, goes far beyond what are reasonable safeguards on having one’s knowledge appropriated by the state or the military.  It further serves to dehumanize the people who actualy make up the “state” and the “military” by constructing them as “savage Others” who are incapable of being educated.  One might expect such an attitude from a 19th century Belgian mine manager in the Congo, but to find it wandering around in the 21st century halls of “higher learning” is inexcusible.

Professional Anthropology in North America was, in many ways, created by and through well grounded field research and its application was publicly debated, often fiercely so.  As Socrates noted

the best teachers are those who have the freest command of thought and language, and those that have the best knowledge of the most serious things are the most brilliant masters of disputation.

That is a position that, I believe, Boas would approve of.  Boas argued for cultural relativism, a position that states that no culture is inherently “better” than another.  It is this inherency that has been dropped from some of the current understandings; a loss that leads inevitably to the question Drew asked “Wouldn’t an anthropologist be required to condemn a culture in that case?”.  This loss has, in my opinion, also led to the position whereby an ethical form of deductive theory has replaced Boas’ original views (and Socrates’!).  The syllogism I see slowly emerging is one that goes something like this:

No culture is better than any other
All humans know this
Therefore, if you do not know this, you are not human.