This article was downloaded by: [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria]

On: 05 May 2014, At: 14:55

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Ethics and Education

Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceae20

Paul Goodman redux: education as

apprenticed anarchism
a
M. Andrew Holowchak
a
Department of Philosophy , Rider University , Lawrenceville, NJ
08648, USA
Published online: 13 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: M. Andrew Holowchak (2010) Paul Goodman redux: education as apprenticed
anarchism, Ethics and Education, 5:3, 217-232, DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2010.519119

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2010.519119

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 Ethics and Education
Vol. 5, No. 3, November 2010, 217–232

Paul Goodman redux: education as apprenticed anarchism

M. Andrew Holowchak*

Department of Philosophy, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, USA

When talk of philosophy of pedagogy comes up today, it is common to hear

the names of Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey, or Paulo Freire, but
the name of Paul Goodman, who campaigned vigorously for pedagogical
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

reform much of his life, is seldom mentioned. In spite of neglect of his work,
Goodman had much to say on pedagogical practice that is rich, poignant,
and relevant today. In consequence, it is unfortunate that he is seldom read
and discussed today. This essay is an attempt to fill in the gap in the
scholarship. I begin by presenting an elaboration of Goodman’s key insights.
I then offer a critical analysis of those pedagogical insights.
Keywords: Goodman; unfinished situations; anarchy; spontaneity; pro-
gressive education; education as apprenticeship

[T]he academic problem at present is to unblock the intellect in the young, to prove that
it is possible for persons to display intellectual virtues without embarrassment or
punishment, and to use them in the community and the world without futility.
(Paul Goodman 1962)

Introduction
When talk of philosophy of pedagogy comes up today, it is common to hear the
names of Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey, or Paulo Freire, but the name of
Paul Goodman, who campaigned vigorously for pedagogical reform much of his life,
is seldom mentioned. The reasons are various. First, though Goodman had numerous
brilliant insights pertaining to pedagogy, he never spelled them out fully and
consistently in any of his works. Second, his writing style, in the manner of Kerouac,
was stream-of-consciousness. Third, his pedagogical views were openly Marxist at a
time in the United States when it was unwise to be Marxist about anything. Fourth,
his pedagogical thoughts were an uneasy admixture of radicalism and conservatism.
Fifth, he was an adherent of the psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich, whose radical
psychotherapeutic views focused on the potency of human orgasms. Sixth, he was
open about his ‘homosexual needs’ at a time when homosexuality was not openly
embraced. Finally, he candidly wrote and spoke of the need to include sex as a topic in
the educational curriculum – something that is still (remarkably) taboo today.
In spite of neglect of his work, Goodman had much to say on pedagogical
practice that is rich, poignant, and relevant today. In consequence, it is unfortunate

*Email: mholowchak@hotmail.com

ISSN 1744–9642 print/ISSN 1744–9650 online

ß 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2010.519119
http://www.informaworld.com
 218 M.A. Holowchak

that he is seldom read and discussed today. This essay is an attempt to fill in the gap
in the scholarship. I begin by presenting an elaboration of Goodman’s key insights.
I then offer a critical analysis of those pedagogical insights.

Capitalism and conformity

The United States is undergoing a political crisis, Goodman says at the end of his
introduction to Compulsory mis-education:
Though the forms of democracy are intact, the content is vanishing. . .. [T]here is a
proliferation of media communication and messages communicated. . . yet, partly
because of communications, there is brainwashing and conformity. . .. It is essential to
find alternative ways of educating.
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

The key difficulties are centralized industrialism and technological advance, which
function to estrange people and strip them of their individuality by brainwashing
them and making them idle, frivolous consumers (Goodman 1964, 61).
Centralized industrialism is not due to failure of liberal ideals, Goodman adds in
Growing up absurd. Liberalism has succeeded remarkably well in shaking off
governmental controls on enterprise, but it has failed in the aim of distributing
wealth evenly or fairly through free markets and honest informed choice.
The actual result is an economy dominated by monopolies, in which the earnest
individual entrepreneur or inventor, who could perform a public service, is actively
discouraged; and consumer demand is increasingly synthetic. (Goodman 1960, 221)
Those criticisms, written over 50 years ago, seem as fresh and poignant today as
they did then. James Kaminsky agrees, ‘A real education [for Goodman]. . . is a
cultural practice about how to be and thrive in a world that was, and perhaps
remains, all too ready to erase the individual as the point of social practice for the
benefit of the bottom line’ (Kaminsky 2006). If education is to be liberal in the
Jeffersonian sense, and Goodman is a Jeffersonian, it ought to promote individu-
ation and uphold individuals’ rights, while cultivating political engagement.
As was the case for Jefferson and Dewey, for Goodman education is in the service
of liberal ideals. The right aim of education is to ‘have a free society in mass
conditions. . . [and] make the high industrial system good for something, rather than
a machine running for its own sake’ (Goodman 1964, 41). Education must be
appreciated for its contribution to empowering individuals for self-disclosure and
community involvement in the service of vital human needs, not for the paper that is
given out to ‘successful’ students. It ought not to be – as it is increasingly becoming
today – a rite-of-passage in a service-oriented industry:
The problem for general education. . . is to learn to live in a high technology. The
emphasis ought to be on the moral virtues of science itself, both austere and liberating;
in its humane beauty; on the electivity and circumspect reasonableness of sciences like
ecology and psychosomatic medicine. These are very different values from the present
gearing of general education to the processing of PhDs. (Goodman 1962, 176, 1964, 11)
Goodman’s concern clearly is that the educational system is churning out
lumpish bromides in assembly-line fashion and handing each a diploma as a means
of ritualized certification (Goodman 1970, 70–1, 74).
 Ethics and Education 219

Two consequences of this dulling of humans are boredom and ineptitude.

Boredom is the pain of doing nothing or doing something irrelevant. Ineptitude is a
matter of not knowing how to do something (Goodman 1960, 71–3). To avoid
such pitfalls, teachers themselves must not be popinjays, but strong, real people –
persons with robust, above-board character who have a genuine interest in students
and are fair, sympathetic, helpful, and enthusiastic (Goodman 1962, 178–9).
Instead of dulling human sensibility, education ought to be about freeing the vital
impulses for spontaneous and creative, yet meaningful, life experiences. In that sense,
it aims to break through the many molds of conformity, politically induced, that
essay to create unthinking parts of a restless capitalistic machine (Goodman
1964, 21). It is impossible to maintain the integrity of a free society when its highest
values – autonomy and authenticity – must conform and submit to political
authority, which is one-size-fits-all. Burton Weltman writes:
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

Most schools, hewing to mainstream theories of child development, required children to

conform to a norm rather than develop their individual and cultural differences, and to
adapt to their social environment no matter how oppressive. Operating with the false
assumption that all students had the resources and interests of white, middle-class
children, traditional schools were particularly repressive of working class and minority
students who would not or could not conform. (Weltman 2000, 185)

Being ‘swamped by presentness’

‘The argument of this book’, Goodman writes in Compulsory mis-education, ‘is that
every child must be educated to the fullest extent, brought up to be useful to society
and to fulfill his own best powers’. For the majority of the young, the proper
education is not a matter of penning up them in schools during adolescence and early
adulthood (Goodman 1964, 139–40). That functions mostly to get young people out
of the way. For fulfillment to occur, there is need of some amount of compulsory
miseducation – i.e., of breaking the bromidic molds of traditional education.
Pedagogical criticisms and insights such as the merits of compulsory miseduca-
tion were not only prompted by Goodman qua social critic, but also by Goodman
qua psychotherapist. As a practicing psychotherapist, his views on psychical health,
influenced significantly by Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich, were an essential part
of his pedagogical insights. His pedagogy, thus, was a natural consequence of his
notions of the human condition and pathological deviations from healthy human
functioning – i.e., neurosis.
Extrapolating from Dewey’s notion of striving to link one’s experiences together
coherently to add unity to one’s life within the social setting (Dewey 1980, 88),
Goodman’s focus was on closure – ‘finishing unfinished situations’ (Goodman 1960,
81; 1977, 165, 187). Since failure to finish sexual and social situations resulted in
neurosis, the key to healthy living and integrative interaction in a social milieu was to
work toward finishing them. Thus psychotherapy was, first, a matter of analytic
disclosure of unfinished situations and, then, a matter of closure – i.e., helping
patients finish those situations.
What is true of each individual for Goodman is true of the history of the collection
of individuals. History is filled with countless unfinished situations – e.g., crises in
science (e.g., the search for a cure for cancer) or problems in history (e.g., was
Alcibiades an Athenian patriot or a chameleon?) – to which masses of individuals
 220 M.A. Holowchak

strive to add closure (Goodman 1970, 206–7).1 Individuals without a sense of history
feel alienated, because they are ‘swamped by presentness’ and, consequently, do not
have a sense of being an integral part of something greater (Goodman 1970, 108).
Given that ‘finishing situations’ applies both to individuals and to collections of
individuals, it follows that good teaching is a matter of helping students finish
personal and social situations, through encouraging critical self-engagement and
critical engagement with social situations. Individuation, for Goodman, is not a
matter of freedom through mere fulfillment of desires. Freedom, instead, is a matter
of ‘responsible spontaneity.’
Yet, individuals are not automata, but free-choosing beings, and educational
institutions must acknowledge that in their curricula. Thus, one of the first
constraints on education is that it not be compulsory. ‘On the whole, the education
must be voluntary rather than compulsory, for no growth to freedom occurs except
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

by intrinsic motivation. Therefore, the educational opportunities must be various

and variously administered’ to allow for finishing situations through connecting with
real objects. To do that most effectively in a manner that accommodates each
person’s individuality, the system must allow for periodic quitting and re-admittance
(Goodman 1960, 12, 1964, 61).
Progress in education, filling personal and to a lesser extent historical situations,
requires non-conformity and that can only be had by keeping youth, in some measure,
away from prosaic, common experiences. The emphasis on a set curriculum with fixed
assignments and demanding but pointless tests for youth is overemphasized. The
emphasis ought to be on piquing curiosity and wonder (Goodman 1964, 150). In that
regard, history and poetry have the advantage over other disciplines in that they
constantly present to humans ‘many other possible human ways of being, which might
have other arrangements, communications, and patterns’ – i.e., they cultivate
imaginative thinking about the past and future (Goodman 1962, 164).

Anarchy in education
Anarchy, for Goodman, is the key to progressive education. It is a needed
companion to and a check of centralized industrialism and technological movement
in democracies. Here Goodman’s progressivism, in the service of public betterment,
is a twentieth-century extension of the thoughts of Jefferson. It is the function of
education to work toward possibilities of social structures for human development
and growth (Goodman 1960, 129).
‘I am a Jeffersonian’, Goodman writes, ‘because it seems to me that only a
libertarian, populist, and pluralist political structure can make citizens at all in the
modern world, but especially in countries like ours that have breathed the air of a
democratic tradition’ (Goodman 1970, 138).
Jefferson taught us, Goodman states, that the nature of man is not fixed, but
capable of significant improvement and that it is the nature of each successive
generation to advance on the knowledge of prior generations. For that, there can be
no ‘rules and policing’ for students and faculty. Instead, students ought to be
encouraged to be self-sufficient.
To encourage self-sufficiency in education, Jefferson instantiated an elective
system for courses. In addition, out went grading and attendance.2 Faculty members
 Ethics and Education 221

were chosen on account of their specialized qualifications in a particular discipline.

Yet, they were also expected to be generally educated to aid in the councils of fellow
faculty and to assist students in applying their knowledge to culture and life. Once
selected, they were completely autonomous. Thus, the standards Jefferson embraced
were those he embraced for participatory, open-ended republicanism: decentraliza-
tion and the multiplication of ‘responsible groups’ (Goodman 1962, 218–25).
To sustain the vitality of a republic and ensure progress, Jefferson, an ardent
supporter of the French Revolution, believed that periodic revolutions were needed.3
‘It was certainly the intention of Jefferson’, said Goodman, ‘to try to devise
institutions that would make permanent nonviolent revolution possible’ (Goodman
1970, 133).4
Goodman’s aims were those of Jefferson. He essayed to bring Jefferson’s political
insights into the classroom. For Goodman, anarchy in education was a matter of
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

encouraging students to feel uneasy with the present state of affairs through protest
and civil disobedience so that they would invariably change it for better. To that end,
it was the responsibility of the youth to generate profound revolutionary programs
to bring about a ‘new nature of man [and] a new whole society’. It was the
responsibility of teachers to help create unease in students. The current situation,
anything but uneasy, is the result of compromised revolutions or missed revolu-
tionary opportunities, whose burden has fallen hard on the young (Goodman 1962,
216–7, 1970, 136).
Goodman’s notion of ‘anarchy’ came about from Jefferson’s purchase of the
need of permanent revolutions to ensure progress and liberty. In the most general
sense, Goodman was not advocating anarchy in the sense of ‘complete lawlessness’
or ‘lacking any form of governing authority’ in educational settings. Just as Jefferson
advocated small, decentralized government so that politicians would have little
opportunity to intervene in and manage the affairs of citizens, Goodman was
advocating anarchy in the pedagogical sense that teachers ought not to pontificate,
to mold or to pattern students into socially conditioned casts. Instead, they ought to
guide each student along a path to self-discovery (Goodman 1970, 129). That would
allow for the sort of spontaneity in a student’s education that would bring about
individuation, creativity, and innovation.
That is precisely what Goodman was trying to accomplish in his
Jefferson-patterned community of scholars:
[The community of scholars] is anarchically self-regulating or at least self-governed;
animally and civilly unrestrained; yet itself an intramural city with an universal culture;
walled from the world; yet active in the world; living in a characteristically planned
neighborhood according to the principles of mutual aid; and with its members in
oath-bound fealty to one another as teachers and students. (Goodman 1962, 189)
Thus, the lack of regulative structure would ensure the openness, freedom, and
progress of real, thriving democratic institutions.

Spontaneity and connection

Goodman believed that spontaneity and connection were the warp and woof of a
sound education. Following Dewey,5 Goodman maintained humans were naturally
curious and, thus, much education occurs on its own – independent of the
 222 M.A. Holowchak

educational institutions. Goodman writes, ‘Dewey’s maxim is a good one: there is no

need to bother about curriculum, for whatever a child turns to is potentially
educative and, with good management, one thing leads to another’ (Goodman 1970,
104). A real-estate agent recently expressed a similar sentiment to me, ‘I’ve found
that if you do what you love, you’ll find some way to make a living at it’. Given the
spontaneity of much human learning, Goodman believed a proper education
ought to encourage spontaneity – i.e., spontaneity ought to be weaved into the
curriculum:6
[T]he school. . . could combine all the necessary elements: practical learning of science
and technology, democratic community, spontaneous feeling liberated by artistic
appreciation, freedom to fantasize and animal expression freed from the parson’s
morality and the schoolmaster’s ruler. . .. There would be spontaneous interest
(including animal impulse), harmonized by art-working; this spontaneity would be
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

controlled by the hard pragmatism of doing and making the doing actually work; and
thus the young democratic community would learn the modern world and also have the
will to change it. Progressive education was a theory of continual scientific experiment
and orderly nonviolent social revolution. (Goodman 1964, 42)
Such spontaneity is workable on condition that people ‘multiply the paths of
growing up’, instead of insisting on and narrowing the one path of going to school
(Goodman 1970, 87).
Spontaneity notwithstanding, Goodman believed, as did Dewey, that all humans
pined for some sort of continuity with human pastness. In Freedom and culture,
Dewey remarks that persons are drawn to and educated in sensationalism, which
functions to isolate them from their environment and history and to give them an
appetite for momentary thrills (Dewey and Bentley 1949, 127–9; Dewey 1989,
39–41). The upshot is that persons see disjointed episodes, fragments of events, not
events that are real experiences – i.e., relevant to and with an impact on their own
lives.7 Sensationalism leads to ‘ahistory’. Similarly, Goodman notes that his talks at
colleges are often peppered with references to the great persons of the past – Spinoza,
Beethoven, and Milton – in an effort to show that such persons really existed and
that they are still relevant. He adds that students generally regard him as wistful for
having a past (Goodman 1970, 116).
The key, thus, is to spark spontaneity, while helping students to establish
connections with not only the past but also the present and future. To establish
connections with the present and future, Goodman maintains that educative
activities must free human imagination to help students actively explore a situation
and to imagine it other than it is. Poetry is important here. He says, ‘A man who
cannot imagine away from the actual soon cannot move. . .. When the imagination is
free, even a constricted world affords scope and opportunity. But conversely, where
the imagination is bound to the actuality, the world is a prison without bars’
(Goodman 1977, 198).
Similarly Dewey writes, ‘Interests in reality are but attitudes toward possible
experiences; they are not achievements; their worth is in the leverage they afford, not
in the accomplishment they represent’ (Dewey 2009, 99–100). Education is about
possibilities.
Possibilities are more important than what already exists, and knowledge of the latter
counts only in its bearing on possibilities. The place of measurement of achievements as
a theory of education is very different in a static educational system from what it is in
 Ethics and Education 223

one which is dynamic, or in which the ongoing process of growing is the important
thing.8

‘Progressive’ education
Goodman was also a Jeffersonian in that for him education was essentially
progressive. For Goodman, the role of education is to prepare students for their
public roles through critically molding educational experiences to experiences of
contemporary culture in a manner that paves the way for a new culture. The key to
participatory citizenship is the educational curriculum of progressivism, which
focuses on learning by doing, self-governance, individuation, free expression of
impulses, diversity, taking youth seriously, the neighborhood, and the wider society.
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

Of progressive education, Goodman writes, ‘Progressive education is best defined as

a reaction to schooling that has become cramping (sic); its purpose is to liberate what
has been distorted or repressed in children growing up’ and to ‘multiply the paths of
growing up’ (Goodman 1970, 81, 87).
To counter the common criticism that a progressive curriculum is overweak,
Goodman champions a universal curriculum, based on what is universal in human
experience: ‘There is only one curriculum, no matter what the method of education:
what is basic and universal in human experience and practice, the underlying
structure of culture. . .. It is the same basic curriculum; the differences are in method,
and they concern how to teach the curriculum and make it second nature to the
students, unblocking rather than encumbering and bringing out the best’ to allow for
social revolutions (Goodman 1960, 82–3, 226).
Social revolution is possible only in free societies and Goodman’s notion of
freedom is Jeffersonian: ‘the continuing revolution of new demands and ideas as they
emerge from the depths, called forth by and transforming the reality, including the
institutions. A free society is one that is peacefully permeable by this revolution’ –
i.e., where it is possible to participate in non-violent social revolutions, without the
system collapsing (Goodman 1970, 133; 1977, 51–2).

Education as apprenticeship
Overall, Goodman maintained that effective education was apprenticeship and
apprenticeship was a matter of aiding students to perceive and navigate through
meaningful life experiences, not through perfunctory and vapid lecture sessions.
Effective education is limited by improper teaching of philosophy, literature, and
history, which constantly recognize humans for what they appear to be, instead of
recognizing them for what they might be (Goodman 1962, 252).
Following John Rice, Goodman says that teaching is a secondary profession, for
a good teacher is a good teacher only if he is a better ‘something else’ and it is the
effective communication of this something else that makes him a good teacher
(Goodman 1962, 250). That, of course, is the message of The community of scholars
and the message has its roots in Jeffersonian pedagogical insights, which are
inescapably practical. It also attends on Aristotle’s statement in Metaphysics that the
best teachers are those with experience and knowledge, for experience without
knowledge (empeiria) is mere knack for acting correctly on particulars without
 224 M.A. Holowchak

understanding, while knowledge without experience (techne or episteme) is knowing

the cause without being able to apply it to particular instances (981a13-b9).
Goodman – through his poetry, literature, and even his critical books –
considered himself foremost a literary artist. Consistent with that depiction, the true
test of education is meaningful performance, not fixed and gormless testing, and
meaningful performance comes only through apprenticeship. Weltman writes:
[Goodman] argued that teachers should present subjects or artistic and vocational
disciplines, whose skills students should try to emulate. Consistent with his reading of
Dewey, Goodman advocated high educational standards for both students and teachers
but urged that people’s skills be measured by meaningful performance, by their ability
to do something real, not by arbitrary and meaningless tests and test scores. (Weltman
2000, 190)
For Goodman, right teaching is a sort of therapy, where students can express
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

themselves openly – e.g., express hostility, hidden desires, and even guilt. Right
teaching is a matter of getting at the embers behind the ashes. ‘[Teaching as a form of
therapy is] the lively response of normal students to a teacher who knows something
and who pays attention to them as human beings’ (Goodman 1962, 284). For
‘therapy’ to occur correctly, it is necessary that educators not only teach what is
beneficial to students, they must also be easily accessible to their students. That
cannot occur with a set curriculum.
Overall, progressive education is essentially a political movement. Fueled by the
energy of youth protest, it aims ‘to liberate what has been distorted or repressed in
children growing up’ and this liberation is essentially part of a revolutionary political
movement to be carried out by disenchanted youth.
Progressive education is always a political movement, for the exclusion of a human
power or style of life is the effect of a social injustice, and progressive education emerges
when the social problem is breaking out. To say this more positively, an old regime, with
its method of schooling, is not adequate to new conditions; new energy and new
character are needed in order to cope. What the progressive educator thinks of as the
‘nature’ of the child, which he is trying to conserve and nourish, is what he intuits will
work best in the world. The form that progressive education takes in each year is
prophetic of the next social revolution. (Goodman 1970, 81)
Goodman’s notion of progressive, apprenticed education leads to a queer and
fateful paradox that makes educators both heroes and tragic persons. Paradoxically,
for Goodman, success as an educator means, first, that students will become fit
enough to rise above and rebel against their teachers and, second, that teachers, if
they are to fulfill their roles as liberators, will give them the tools to do so. In sum,
the most effective education occurs, both when students realize that they no longer
need their teachers, because their teachers are themselves obstacles on the path to
progress, and when teachers work toward disclosure of that realization (Goodman
1964, 86).
The enemy of apprenticed education, Goodman prophetically saw, was the
growth and advance of administration at institutions:
In effect, it is the genius of strong administration to weaken the community [of scholars]
by keeping the teachers out of contact with the students, the teachers out of contact with
one another and with the world, and the students imprisoned in their adolescent
subculture and otherwise obediently conformist. Our theory has been that the university
is the personal relations among veterans and students in a stadium generale, as a climax
 Ethics and Education 225

of growing up and commencing. Modern administration isolates the individuals, the

groups, and the studies and, by standardizing and coordinating them, reconstructs a
social machine. (Goodman 1962, 227)

Critical appraisal of Goodman’s views

As I mention at the beginning of this article, Goodman is much to blame for
scholarly neglect of his pedagogical works. Among the numerous criticisms, two are
especially troublesome: that he never put forth a consistent and coherent philosophy
of pedagogy and that his manner of writing tends to stream-of-consciousness. Thus,
scholars who wish to grapple with Goodman’s pedagogical writings must, as it were,
not only separate wheat from chaff, but also argue for the legitimacy of such a
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

separation.

Key insights
Many of his insights on pedagogical reform are rich and relevant and have force
independently of any model. They ought not to be overlooked.
First, there is Goodman’s notion of education as enlightened spontaneity. What
Goodman means by ‘spontaneous’ is not ‘arbitrary’, but instead ‘due to natural
inclination or impulse’. Experience shows humans have certain inclinations and
impulses in common – i.e., sexual, nutritive, intellectual, etc. – and each person has
idiosyncratic inclinations and impulses – e.g., while one might have a strong desire
for fame, another might greatly incline to seek love. Spontaneity in education allows
students to get in touch with both general and idiosyncratic inclinations and
impulses.
Education can be spontaneous only if students and educators are freed of
constraints and educators, as experienced doers, are suitable exemplars. Thus,
education is not just learning, but also and especially doing – i.e., learning by doing.
Apprenticeship is a sound ideal.
Second, Goodman insists on the voluntariness of education. Students have to
want to learn; true learning – learning that sticks to one’s ribs, as it were – cannot be
compulsory. For learning to be voluntary and not compulsory, students need to be
allowed suitable opportunities to quit being educated as well as suitable opportu-
nities to begin again the experience quitted.
For voluntariness to take root, teaching must be personalized. As is the case with
trying on a set of clothes, there is no one-size-fits-all model, as educational
institutions are coming to realize. And so, given a need for clothes, the fit must be
right and there ought to be some opportunity for choosing among alternatives. In
education, choice among alternatives allows for self-discovery, self-expression, and,
ultimately, the exchange and debate of inconsistent ideas. The exchange and debate
of inconsistent ideas, as Mill eloquently notes in On liberty (Mill 1982, 76), allows
most fully for human vitality and progress.
Third, pedagogical techniques aim at pedagogical innovation through freeing
imagination to see the actual as it might otherwise be. This insight is perhaps more
important today than it was when Goodman articulated it. With the near
exponential rate of technological advance, people today increasingly feel a sense of
 226 M.A. Holowchak

alienation or unimportance. It is as if the immense iron horse of technological

advance will continue to press forward irrespective of them. Here Goodman’s key
insight concerns cultivation of imagination in the service of practice and progress –
i.e., multiplying, not narrowing, paths of growing up for the sake of progressive
human flourishing.
Educators today, out of respect for the ideals of different cultures, are perhaps
soured on the notion of ‘progressivism’ in education and, in consequence,
theoretically wedded to a sort of relativism. Nonetheless, it seems difficult to deny
the advances of science – i.e., to deny that science has not only roundly refuted earlier
misconceptions of how things work (e.g., Aristotelian physics and Galenic humoral
medicine), but also that it has given us a correct understanding, or nearly so, of how
things work (e.g., evolutionary biology and genetic mapping). So, Goodman’s
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

progressivism is not untoward, so long as one grasps that he is committed to progress

in the service of vital human needs, not in the service of radical consumerism. Thus,
freeing imagination to explore possibilities of experiences in the service of progress
(i.e., human flourishing) is a sensible educative ideal.
Fourth, there is Goodman’s notion of education as apprenticeship. Skill and
expertize are established by apprenticeship with a fully capable teacher in the role of
a life craftsperson. That is a reasonable claim, so long as one does not take Goodman
to be saying that all education has to be apprenticeship, for certain disciplines
(e.g., chemistry and archeology) lend themselves to apprenticeship more readily than
others (e.g., logic, math, and languages). Still, one can easily imagine critical thinking
or German being taught in an apprenticed manner, as is sometimes done today.
A philosopher could teach critical thinking by introducing a student to real-life
experiences in which thinking skills are taxed and then reinforced, say, an argument
type or fallacy. A language instructor could teach German by taking a small group of
students to Germany and introducing them seriatim to scenarios in which they will
have to demonstrate certain linguistic skills. Still, Goodman is making a Jeffersonian
point: the most significant tasks of education are those that enable persons to
manage their daily affairs, realize possibilities of experience, and make them
responsible citizens.
Fifth, to enable persons to realize possibilities of experience – something required
for progress – there must be emphasis on disciplines such as history and poetry.
History is important for Goodman, since it enables students to see their relationship
to past events. All persons are connected to pastness, but there cannot be a sense of
connection to pastness without knowledge of that pastness. Poetry is important for
Goodman, since it enables students to see the possibilities of numerous futures. The
best sort of future is where situations are as finished as they can be – i.e., there are
few gaps in history and all persons have avenues for fulfilling themselves as fully as
possible. Overall, to see the future as it might be, one must know pastness. To see the
future as it might be and to know pastness is to be fully connected to events and as
fulfilled as one can be.
Sixth, there is Goodman’s claim that administration at academic institutions is
the enemy of apprenticed education. One can, without exaggeration, state the
problem more generally: administration at academic institutions is the enemy of
education. Academic institutions increasingly are getting top-heavy. They hire more
administrators – most of whom have little or no experience in the classroom – whose
 Ethics and Education 227

job is to tell teachers what must happen in the classroom and to tell students what
their educational experience ought to be like. Some administrators are even efficiency
experts: they think of clever ways of cutting down tenure-track positions by bringing
in adjuncts or introducing overworked professors, without reduction of their
teaching load, to auditoriums that seat in excess of 200 students. Little thought, of
course, is ever given to reduction of administrative positions, many of which are
useless. That is, of course, because administrators are themselves the efficiency
experts. Sadly missing is the understanding that real learning, as Goodman said,
occurs between students and teachers free to follow the lead of students.
Goodman here again follows Jefferson, where university-level education was
elective and did not follow a set curriculum.9 Jefferson writes:
[T]here is one [practice] from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

copied. . . by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding
the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive
application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular
vocations to which they are destined. We shall. . . allow them uncontrolled choice in the
lectures they shall choose to attend, and requiring elementary qualification only, and
sufficient age. (Jefferson 1984)10
Seventh, there is Goodman’s notion that education is like therapy. If we take the
analogy seriously, then students strive to learn because of some deficiency. To make
sense of that, one must assume that learning is a sort of filling or completing. That is
why Goodman thinks psychotherapy and education are matters of finishing
situations, for an uneducated or undereducated person it is in an unfinished
situation.
The situation was the same in Greco-Roman antiquity with regards to
philosophy (i.e., education of the soul) and medicine:
Medicine and philosophy were known as ‘sister sciences’ in Greco-Roman antiquity
insofar as medicine was the science of the physical body and philosophy was the science
of the soul. . . . [T]he goals of each were strikingly similar: While medicine aimed at
restoring or maintaining physical harmony of the material elements in bodies,
philosophy aimed at restoring or maintaining harmony within souls. Thus, it is not
surprising that ancient philosophers. . . were fond of comparing the two. (Holowchak
2008, 208)
In short, students studied philosophy because they deemed themselves psychically
defective or unfilled. They were, as it were, ill.
Finally, there are Goodman’s charges that government is in control of enterprise
(education included) and that it has failed to distribute wealth evenly or fairly
through free markets and honest informed choice. The consequence, he says, is ‘an
economy dominated by monopolies’, which militate against entrepreneurs and
inventors. That results in synthetic consumer demand. The criticisms here are more
poignant today. We live in an age of monopolies. A recent study indicates that 40%
of the property of the United States is owned by 1% of the population, while 16% is
owned by 80% of the population. From 1977 to 1999, the average income of the
wealthiest 20% of families increased by 43%, while the average income of the
poorest families was lower than in 1977 (Randall 2009). The one mistake in
Goodman’s reasoning is that it is more likely that enterprise, with special-interest
lobbying, is in control of government (and education) than it is that government is in
control of enterprise. Mutatis mutandis, if equitable distribution of resources is a
 228 M.A. Holowchak

desideratum of a just political system and a just political system is needed for a
healthy educational system, laissez-faire capitalism seems to work contrary to
those ends.

Key defects
Of the many objections to Goodman’s pedagogical views, I focus on three that have
not been given due attention in the scant literature: progress, anarchy, and finishing
situations.
First, there is Goodman’s notion of ‘progress’. He avers that he is a disciple of
Jefferson, but his notion of progress is not Jeffersonian.
Jefferson was an adherent of Enlightenment thinking and, thus, he made
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

purchase of a linear – perhaps asymptotically so – conception of progress toward

some ideal and reachable state of knowledge. He was through and throughout a
scientist who had a methodical, experimental approach to each project he
undertook.11 Education for Jefferson might have focused on what is practical, but,
because of Jefferson’s scientific bent, it was essentially truth-seeking.
Goodman, in contrast, is expressly an artist. He had no such linear ideal of
progress. Progress for him was a matter of finishing situations as completely as
possible and finishing situations was a matter of connecting persons to their pastness
– i.e., filling gaps in history – and giving them direction toward numerous possible,
meaningful futures – i.e., finishing personal situations. The way of ensuring progress
was to put in place an educative ideal that allowed each generation its own
nonviolent revolution. Education for Goodman is not truth-seeking, but instead is a
matter of personal fulfillment, which has idiosyncratic and social elements.
Unlike Jefferson, Goodman was indifferent to knowledge of an objective world,
awaiting discovery of its laws. ‘[B]y taking thought’, writes Goodman in
Rousseau-like manner, ‘one cannot know anything about the Golden Age. It is
taking thought itself that restricts us to the conditions of misery. The Golden Age
is known only to the happy, and the happy do not devote themselves – how could
they? – to the discussion of objective questions’ (Goodman 1977, 28). Education, for
Goodman, is essentially artistry and answers to what is visceral; it is not essentially
scientific and truth-seeking. He writes:
[T]he truth has nothing to do with our needs. . .. [The objective world] is a convenient
formulation, for by coming aware of every detail of this objective world. . . we can
circumvent the awakening in us of any concern. We are not afraid, we are not at a loss,
we do not mourn, but we say, ‘It is (only) this.’ For there is an objective world, and what
has that got to do with me? (Goodman 1977, 25)
Overall, the chief difficulty is not so much Goodman’s focus on art, which is
meritorious. It is instead his focus on art to the neglect of science. Neglecting science,
Goodman disregards the numerous advances in science through discovery, which
argue for some sense of truth-disclosure in science. Even Freud, who agreed that
humans were mostly visceral – i.e., ego is nothing in comparison with id – and whom
Goodman read thoroughly, often acknowledged the possibility of a future, guided by
advances in science (especially psychoanalysis) and under the ‘soft dictatorship’ of
reason.12
 Ethics and Education 229

Second, and attending on the first point, Goodman’s ‘anarchy’, drawn from
Jefferson, is not Jeffersonian.
Jefferson championed periodic and violent revolutions, at least early in his life,
with the express aim of ensuring scientific progress (i.e., disclosure of scientific
truths) and, especially, preventing political corruption through despotic abuse
of political power. Jefferson’s revolutions were bloody battles for a political
experiment – government, in some measure, by the people. The people, he believed,
had a right to take arms and revolt against politicians, among whose aims were not
protecting the rights of the citizenry. An educated citizenry would enable the people
to keep tabs on politicians, to remove despots, and to participate in some measure in
political affairs.13
Goodman’s ‘anarchy’ largely serves as a check on unbridled capitalistic greed
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

and uncritical technological advance. Its underlying neo-Marxian aim, thus, is

political – i.e., a fair and just distribution of resources in the service of finishing
unfinished situations. In this manner, Goodman’s ‘anarchy’ is really a fleshing out
of Jeffersonian liberalism for late twentieth-century American culture and that
is progressive only insofar as it concerns itself with vital, visceral human problems –
problems of individuals. Following Jefferson, revolutions need to be generational, as
the problems of each generation are different from those of the prior generation. The
paths for these nonviolent revolutions, paradoxically, were paved by the generation
whose ideals would be usurped. The enemies of progress were compromised
revolutions. Anarchy, it is worth repeating, does not aim at truth. Because of its
dependence on Goodman’s notion of ‘progress’, ‘anarchy’ too seems overweak.
Third, there is the difficulty of precisely what Goodman means by finishing
unfinished situations. For Goodman, the question is not the philosophical question,
‘What is the meaning of life?’, but instead the psychological question, ‘Under what
conditions do men ask themselves the question, ‘‘What is the meaning of life?’’’
Answer the second question and the first question becomes otiose.
The conditions under which people wax philosophical are unfinished personal
and historical situations. Intelligence functions in the service of human happiness by
completing, for instance, unfinished social and sexual situations and by allowing for
imaginative activity, when problems seem insoluble. Thus, Goodman’s utopian aim
is to make global human conditions, through revolutions fueled by new ideas, such
that there is no longer a need to ask philosophical questions (Goodman 1977, 186–7).
Overall, Goodman’s utopia of finished situations seems too impulse-driven. He
speaks little of the worth of science and the joy of learning for its own sake – what
Aristotle in Nicomachean ethics deemed the pinnacle of human happiness (X.7).
Human intellect seems to be exclusively in the service of human passions. One
wonders whether Goodman’s depiction of the human condition is unduly visceral.

Goodmanian propaganda?
A final issue, Goodman’s political intentions, deserves its own section.
It is often acknowledged that much of what passes as political philosophy is
merely wish-based propaganda. Since education for Goodman functions to check the
illegitimate authority of laissez-faire capitalism and tether technological advances to
 230 M.A. Holowchak

vital human needs, he too might be faulted for being something of a propagandist –
i.e., essaying to advance a political agenda.
The criticism is unavailing. Goodman’s views are philosophical, not propagan-
dist. He persuades through reasons, not rhetorical flam. Building on the works of
Reich, Freud, Marx, Dewey, and, especially for this undertaking, Jefferson,
Goodman’s aim is to finish unfinished historical situations – to give humans a
greater sense of continuity with pastness and allow for the possibility of a
satisfactory future. In that regard, Goodman, like Jefferson, is an utopianist. His
pedagogical insights aim at a future world where persons are connected with
themselves, with those before them, and with those yet-to-come.
As for Jefferson, so too for Goodman education aims at full and equal
opportunity for personal fulfillment and social/political engagement. For Jefferson,
every person ought to be educated according to his needs and wants, and those needs
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

and wants must be taken in the context of a thriving republic – i.e., all must be
encouraged to participate politically at some level to ensure governmental health and
stability.
Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward republic, or of some of the
higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at
an election one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State
who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart
be torn out of his body, sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a
Bonaparte.14
As for Jefferson, so too for Goodman education aims to establish skill, expertize,
and integrity as the basis for political authority, not money or force. Jefferson’s
republicanism entails that government is best when those that are good and wise
govern with an eye toward securing peoples’ rights. To engender good government,
there is need of education in the business of establishing a ‘natural aristoi’ (Jefferson
1984, 365).15
Overall, Goodman’s pedagogical insights are not propagandist, but normative,
and it is difficult to fault a critic for having a vision of and insights toward a better
tomorrow.

Notes
1. Goodman saw his own work as an attempt to add closure to Jefferson’s and Dewey’s
pedagogical insights as well as to the thoughts of Marx and Freud.
2. [T]he academic exercises in our colleges are neither play nor earnest, but a third
somewhat. The rules are not intrinsic to the subject, but are an imposed schedule of
courses, grades, prerequisites, and departments that satisfy – at least symbolically – a
social need for degrees, licenses, and skills. The examination is neither play nor a trial of
strength and proof of adulthood, but one more detail of the format. Thus, neither the
students nor the teachers become personally involved, as if they were somewhere. . ..
Unfortunately. . . the social pressures, of conforming, competing, and fear of failing, are
real, they cause anxiety; so that the academic priceless, which could at least be a refined
way to waste 4–7 years in an economy of youth unemployment, is not even painless’.
He later adds, ‘Grading destroys the use of testing, which is a good method of teaching if
one corrects the test but does not grade it’ (Goodman 1962, 255–6).
3. For example, see Jefferson’s letters to Samuel Smith (13 November 1787), James Madison
(30 January 1787), and John Adams (4 September 1823).
 Ethics and Education 231

4. Jefferson, however, was not averse to a little bloodshed to advance the causes of liberty
and human progress.
5. Outside of Jefferson and Dewey, Goodman’s own form of progressive liberalism was
influenced also by the ancient Greeks, Marx, Freud, and Reich – each of whose ideas, he
maintained, were logically incomplete. The Greeks gave people comedy and tragedy and
the moral of tragedy is that individuals, driven destructively by their appetite, ultimately
fall prey to the actions of anarchists. From Marx, Goodman inherited the notion that
capitalism exploited labor by alienating workers and causing an unequal distribution of
goods. From Freud and Reich, he developed his view of unfinished situations. It would be
up to succeeding generations to discover the ‘anarchic’ implications of those masters and
work to finish them.
6. Dewey also maintained that educative guidance must not be forced. ‘Guidance is not
external imposition. It is freeing the life-process for its own most adequate fulfillment’
(Dewey 2009, 101).
7. Dewey says, ‘All waste [in education] is due to isolation. Organization is nothing but
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

getting things into connection with one another, so that they work easily, flexibly, and
fully. Therefore in speaking of this question of waste in education, I desire to call your
attention to the isolation of the various parts of the school system, to the lack of unity in
the aims of education, to the lack of coherence in its studies and methods’ (Dewey 1980,
71).
8. See Dewey (2009, 119). For more on Goodman’s debt to Dewey, see Weltman (2000, 9).
9. Jefferson refused to have a president at the University of Virginia and even tried
unsuccessfully to abolish the presidency at William and Mary.
10. Letter to George Tichnor, 16 July 1823.
11. In a letter to Rush (16 January 1811), Jefferson mentions that Bacon, Locke, and Newton
were his three heroes. I have much to say on Jefferson’s scientific bent in a forthcoming
book – The ‘great experiment’.
12. See Holowchak (2010a, 2010b).
13. Some critics in today’s literature argue that Jefferson’s early commitment to periodic
revolutions was aimed at nascent capitalism. See Roelofs (1976), Fisher (1962),
Hofstadter (1955, 1993), Eisinger (1947), and Appleby (1984). The view is, I believe,
mistaken. His motivation was fear of political despotism.
14. Letter to Joseph C. Cabell, 2 February 1816.
15. Letter to Adams, 28 October 1813. See also ‘Bill for the General Diffusion of Knowledge’.

References

Appleby, J. 1984. Capitalism and a new social order. New York: New York University Press.
Dewey, J. 1980. The school and society. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. 1989. Freedom and culture. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Dewey, J. 2009. The child and the curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J., and A. Bentley. 1949. Knowing and the known. Boston: Beacon Press.
Eisinger, C. 1947. The influence of natural rights and physiocratic doctrines on American
Agrarian thought during the revolutionary period. Agricultural History 21: 12–23.
Fisher, M. 1962. An answer to Jefferson on manufactures. The South Atlantic Quarterly 61,
no. 3: 1962.
Goodman, P. 1960. Growing up absurd. New York: Vintage Books.
Goodman, P. 1962. The community of scholars. New York: Random House.
Goodman, P. 1964. Compulsory mis-education. New York: Vintage Books.
Goodman, P. 1970. The new reformation. New York: Vintage Books.
Goodman, P. 1977. Nature heals. New York: Free Life Editions.
Hofstadter, R. 1955. The age of reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
 232 M.A. Holowchak

Hofstadter, R. 1993. Parrington and the Jeffersonian tradition. In The American

enlightenment, ed. F. Shuffelton, 337–52. New York: Rochester.
Holowchak, M.A. 2008. The stoics: A guide for the perplexed. London:
Continuum International Publishing Group.
Holowchak, M.A. 2010a. Technology and Freudian discontent: Freud’s ‘muffled meliorism’
and the problem of human annihilation. Sophia 49, no. 1: 95–111.
Holowchak, M.A. 2010b. The ‘soft dictatorship’ of reason: Freud on science, religion, and
Utopia. Philo 13, no. 1.
Jefferson, T. 1984. Jefferson: Writings. New York: The Library of America.
Kaminsky, J.S. 2006. Paul Goodman, 30 years later: ‘growing up absurd’; ‘mis-education, and
the community of scholars’; and ‘the new reformation’ – a retrospective. Teachers College
Record 108, no. 7: 1339–61.
Mill, J.S. 1982. On liberty. New York: Penguin Classics.
Randall, V.R. 2009. Widening gap between rich and poor. http://academic.udayton.edu/race/
Downloaded by [UGR-BTCA Gral Universitaria] at 14:55 05 May 2014

06hrights/georegions/northamerica/china03.htm (accessed April 11, 2009).

Roelofs, H.M. 1976. Ideology and myth in American politics. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Weltman, B. 2000. Revisiting Paul Goodman: Anarcho-Syndicalism as the American way of
life. Educational Theory 50, no. 2: 179–99.