in education because they direct people’s attention to the ends that they name, such as student as container, as consumer, as apprentice, as unmolded clay, as computer have marked perspectives on education. Klumpp and Lamm then trace such metaphors’ implications on the attitudes about and practices of education among students, teachers, and the public at large.
Chapters 8, 9 and 10 round out this volume’s humanistic critique by examining education in the bigger, social-democratic picture. In Chapter 8, Robert Wess explains that Burke’s studies of symbolic action and rhetoric offer a new conceptualization of what it means to be human, based on the idea that we are “symbol-using animals” or “bodies that learn language”—all of which stresses language and biology brought together to show humankind as intimately ecological beings. Wess argues, then, that ecological literacy—what it means to be human both biologically, as part of the ecosystem of the earth (ecological science), and linguistically, as distinctive in the way we inhabit the earth (verbal or symbolic action)—may prove to be the paradigm best suited to flesh out Burke’s vision about humanity fully, particularly as it bears on education. In Chapter 9, Bryan Crable summarizes the foundational assumptions and concepts of Burke’s dramatistic perspective of education, and offers suggestions about how this perspective might be used to provide an overall framework for reconceptualizing the aims and goals of American education. For Crable, a truly dramatistic curriculum would start with language in early childhood to form the basis of all educational efforts, rather than traditional emphases on math, writing, and science. Primary and secondary education, thereafter, features a complete developmental program for linguistic appreciation. Finally, in Chapter 10, David Williams observes abundant current concern with the condition of U.S. civic engagement and democratic culture. Accordingly, Williams frames Burke’s “linguistic approach” to education to contextualize that approach in the problems of and prospects for democratic culture and to discuss the implications of the Burkeian approach to education and democracy for the renewal of American democratic culture.
Humanistic Critique of Education: Teaching and Learning as Symbolic Action fills an important scholarly niche by bringing together excellent scholarship while extending Kenneth Burke’s ideas into a rarely touched area of inquiry, thus providing an opportunity to foster new research and application of his system in new and fruitful ways. Research findings based on ideas applied in situ from Humanistic Critique of Education would be the next important step to contributing knowledge through the scholarship on teaching and learning.
Notes
1. Bernie Brock and I wrote this introduction several months before his death, and I carried on our work for publication. This chapter is likely the last (or at least one of his last) projects, which he embraced with his usual enthusiasm and critical perspective. Through this brief chapter we wanted to apply some of his selected critical observations about America’s education system and bolster them with evidence from other sources—to help me frame this volume’s role in bridging scholarship about Kenneth Burke and education.
2. A related metaphor to these is “student as customer,” which many institutions use to define both their relationships with students and their institutional missions. The problem with this metaphor is that it, essentially, equates education with the mere purchasing of a product or service (cf. McMillan & Cheney, 1996; chapter 7 in this volume). Although education, strictly speaking, may be viewed as a service, it certainly is not like buying a product, such as a toaster. And if education is viewed as a service, it is unlike having a carpet cleaned, for example, where people who want it done may be those who cannot do it well, do not want to do it at all themselves, or find it easiest to pay someone to do it for them. Education, if viewed as a service, is unique from all others, at least because of the particular symbolic action inherent in educational settings among instructors, students, alumni, and administration.
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1 Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education*
Kenneth Burke
Basic Orientation
Beginning absolutely, we might define man as the typically language-using, or symbol-using, animal. And on the basis of such a definition, we could argue for a “linguistic approach to the problems of education.” Or we could settle for much less, merely pointing to the obviously great importance of the linguistic factor as regards both education in particular and human relations in general.
Language in Educational
