Pursuing Relevance: where is the problem?

By Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

These extracts are taken from the fourth Chapter of the book “Teaching as a subversiveactivity” by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. While the book itself highlights theurgent need for educational institutions to help their students focus on learning to learn,the chapter on Pursuing Relevance tries to substantiate the conclusion, "the enthusiasmthat community leaders display for an educational innovation is in inverse proportion toits significance to the learning process."

Here is a playlet where a group of the young resident surgeons at Blear General Hospitalalong with a senior doctor, Dr Gillupsie begin their weekly analysis of the variousoperations they have performed in the preceding four days.GILLUPSIE: Well, Jim, what have you been up to this week?KILDEAR: Only one operation. I removed the gall bladder of the patient in Room 421.GILLUPSIE : What was his trouble?KILDEAR: Trouble? No trouble. I believe it's just inherently good to remove gallbladders.GILLUPSIE: Inherently good?KILDEAR: I mean good in itself. I'm talking about removing gall bladders qua removinggall bladders.GILLUPSIE: Oh; you mean removing gall bladders per se.KILDEAR: Precisely, Chief. Removing his gall bladder had intrinsic merit. It was, as wesay, good for its own sake.GILLUPSIE: Splendid, Jim. If there's one thing I won't tolerate at Blear, it's a surgeonwho is merely practical. What's in store next week?KILDEAR: Two frontal lobotomies.GILLUPSIE: Frontal lobotomies qua frontal lobotomies, I hope?KILDEAR: What else?GILLUPSIE: How about you, young Dr Fuddy? What have you done this week?

FUDDY: Busy. Performed four pilonidal-cyst excisions.GILLUPSIE: Didn't know we had that many cases.FUDDY: We didn't, but you know how fond I am of pilonidal-cyst excisions. That wasmy major in medical school, you know.GILLUPSIE: Of course. I'd forgotten. As I remember it now, the prospect of doingpilonidal-cyst excisions brought you into medicine, didn't it?FUDDY: That's right, Chief. I was always interested in that. Frankly, I never cared muchfor appendectomies.GILLUPSIE: Appendectomies?FUDDY : Well, that seemed to be the trouble with the patient in 397GILLUPSIE: But you stayed with the old pilonidal-cyst excision, eh?FUDDY: Right, Chief.GILLUPSIE: Good work, Fuddy. I know just how you feel. When I was a young man, Iwas keenly fond of hysterectomies.FUDDY (giggling): Little tough on the men, eh. Chief?GILLUPSIE: Well, yes (snickering). But you'd be surprised at how much a resourcefulsurgeon can do. (Then, solemnly) Well, Carstairs, how have things been going?CARSTAIRS: I'm afraid I've had some bad luck, Dr Gillupsie. No operations this week,but three of my patients died.GILLUPSIE: Well, we'll have to do something about this, won't we? What did they dieof?CARSTAIRS: I'm not sure, Dr Gillupsie, but I did give each one of them plenty of penicillin.GILLUPSIE: Ah! The traditional 'good for its own sake' approach, eh, Carstairs?CARSTAIRS: Well, not exactly. Chief. I just thought that penicillin would help them getbetter.GILLUPSIE: What were you treating them for?

CARSTAIRS: Well, each one was awful sick. Chief, and I know that penicillin helps sick people get better.GILLUPSIE: It certainly does, Carstairs. I think you acted wisely.CARSTAIRS: And the deaths. Chief?GILLUPSIE: Bad patients, son, bad patients. There's nothing a good doctor can do aboutbad patients. And there's nothing a good medicine can do for bad patients, either.CARSTAIRS: But still, I have a nagging feeling that perhaps they didn't need penicillin,that they might have needed something else.GILLUPSIE: Nonsense! Penicillin never fails to work on good patients. We all knowthat. I wouldn't worry too much about it, Carstairs.Perhaps the playlet needs no further elaboration and the points to be made can be madeexplicit now. First, if the conversation between Dr Gillupsie and his young surgeonscould have been continued, it would have included a half dozen other 'reasons' forinflicting upon children the kinds of irrelevant curricula that comprise most of conventional schooling. For example, one doctor could still be practising 'bleeding' hispatients because he had not yet discovered that such practices do no good. Another doctorcould have insisted that he has 'cured' his patients in spite of the fact that they have alldied. ('Oh, I taught them that, but they didn't learn it.") Still another doctor might havedefended some practice by reasoning that, although his operation didn't do much for thepatient now, in later life the patient might have need for exactly this operation, and if hedid, voila!, it will already have been done.Secondly, there are thousands of teachers who believe that there are certain subjects thatare 'inherently good', that are 'good in themselves', that are 'good for their own sake'.When you ask 'Good for whom?' or 'Good for what purpose?' you will be dismissed asbeing 'merely practical' and told that what they are talking about is literature qualiterature, grammar qua grammar, and mathematics per se. Such people are commonlycalled 'humanists'.Thirdly, the 'trouble' with all these 'reasons' is that they leave out the (patient) learner,which is really another way of saying that they leave out reality. With full awareness of the limitations of the patient-learner metaphor, they assert that it is insane for a teacher to'teach' something unless his students require it for some identifiable and importantpurpose, which is to say, for some purpose that is related to the life of the learner. Thesurvival of the learner's skill and interest in learning is at stake. “In plain truth, whatpasses for a curriculum in today's schools is little else but a strategy of distraction. It islargely designed to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in anyrealistic sense; which is to say, it does not allow inquiry into most of the critical problemsthat comprise the content of the world outside the school.