Michael Oakeshott on Learning and Teaching

     A lecture from Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) describes the relationship between a student and teacher and is of value to the modern student and teacher.  "Most of what I have to say about learning and teaching relates to the character of what is taught and learned." Oakeshott spoke in terms one would not likely hear today, that education is about considering more than merely redistributing data. Ultimately it is about cultivating the gift of discernment within the student. "Before any concrete skill or ability can appear, information must be partnered by judgment, 'knowing how' must be added to the 'knowing what' of information." Later Oakeshott says, "judgment, then is, that which, when united with information, generates knowledge or ability to do, to make, or to understand and explain. It is being able to think–not to think in no manner in particular, but to think with an appreciation of the considerations which belong to different modes of thought."
     Oakeshott challenges the long-held analogies of the relationship between the teacher and student as clay and wax or as students being a receptacle to fill.  "A learner is not a passive recipient of impressions, or one whose accomplishments spring from mere reactions to circumstances."  More than once Oakeshott uses the phrase, "the civilized inheritance of mankind" to describe what it is that is translated between teacher and student and that it is of the greatest lasting value.   It is this civilized inheritance that the teacher is to teach and the student to learn,  "Learning is the comprehensive activity in which we come to know ourselves in the world around us…being aware, to what may be called understanding and being able to explain."
     It is rare that those in the field of modern education speak about what it means to think, beyond the nebulous "critical thinking," but when they do stumble upon the notion of thinking, they rarely clarify what it means to think or what they mean by thinking. Oakeshott additionally gives us assistance as to what it means to learn to think, "learning to think is not merely learning how to judge, to interpret, and do use information; it is learning to recognize and enjoy the intellectual virtues."  When was the last time you heard someone in the field of education speak about intellectual virtues, let alone enjoying the intellectual virtues?
     One other item related to Oakeshott's notion of intellectual virtues is that he personally believes that virtues could not or should not be taught, but that virtues, including intellectual virtues, can be caught by the student as these are conveyed by the teacher.  This however would mean that the teacher is characterized by a life of intellectual virtues.  There are few schools where this is a priority.  Those are the schools where learning is occuring.