Learning and Communication

Classical Approaches to Learning

In ancient Greece, a method of teaching and learning was formalized, which is now known as the Socratic method. Named after Socrates, this method was transmitted to us in the dialogues of Plato. Focused mainly on a dialectical approach to communication, the teacher would pose questions to the student to determine whether the student agreed with a given proposition. The teacher would then use a series of such questions and answers to guide the student toward an answer that might not have been initially foreseen. In one of the Platonic dialogues most relevant to communication theory (the Gorgias), Plato questioned the Sophists (rhetoricians of ancient Greece) on their ability to teach speech without any knowledge of the subject matter being taught. In the dialogue, they are forced to agree with a series of propositions that shows that they cannot in fact do what they claim to be able to. Thus, the pattern of communication involved in this form of learning is dialogic (there is a two-way interchange between teacher and student), but the teacher controls the questions. Socratic method is still used in education today; for instance, it is often used in law school. The approach is dialectical in that it uses arguments and counterarguments.

However, other Greek schools incorporated different theories of communication in their educational approaches. The Sophists were more relativist, seeing humans as the measure of all things in opposition to Plato's point of view that dialectic could be used to uncover the underlying structure of reality. Although Plato was opposed to rhetoric, Aristotle thought that different forms of persuasion were useful. His division of rhetoric into three argument-types (logos, i.e., reason; pathos, i.e., emotion; and ethos, i.e., character) reflected recognition that humans do communicate [Page 597]in different ways and that education, learning, and persuasion could not be reduced to a single preferred method.

Universities were established in Europe beginning in the 11th century and flourished from the later Middle Ages onward. Instruction was given in grammar, logic, and rhetoric, reflecting the importance of various types of communication that were transmitted from Classical times. Most often the curriculum was based on classical texts, usually interpreted through the lens of the theology of the Roman Catholic Church. Learning in this environment was based on the book. Indeed, especially from the invention of the printing press onward, the importance of the book and the text in learning grew enormously. Thus, even today, an implicit theory of communication in almost all forms of modern learning is that the important information is contained within a book, usually written by an authoritative source. The job of the teacher is to provide commentary on the book and to guide the student in his or her understanding of it. The job of the student is to demonstrate mastery. At education's highest level, the job of the student is to demonstrate the ability to produce knowledge through the writing of a dissertation or thesis. The enshrinement of the book as the primary means of storing and transmitting led to the development of a canon, which is the body of textual knowledge that a student would be expected to master in a particular discipline. This had the effect of reifying certain types of knowledge. But book production also led to the development of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, which in turn led to the production of new forms of knowledge that would eventually challenge the church as the establishment for education. Thus, the book—as a communication technology—proved to be a two-edged sword, at first in establishing a curriculum that was slow to change, but then in facilitating an enormous expansion of knowledge that could overturn previously held theories and dogma.

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