The Educated Mind
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| Author | Kieran Egan |
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Publication date
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1997 |
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The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding is a 1997 book on educational theory by Kieran Egan.
Egan argues that much of educational theorizing pivots around three basic ideas of what the aim of education should be:
Egan argues in Chapter One that "these three ideas are mutually incompatible, and this is the primary cause of our long-continuing educational crisis"; the present educational program in much of the West attempts to integrate all three of these incompatible ideas, resulting in a failure to effectively achieve any of the three.
Egan's proposed solution to the education problem which he identifies is to show how knowledge and understanding develop in the mind as we pick up sets of cognitive tools in our negotiations with those around us and with the natural world itself. This individual process, he argues, mirrors, as a result of logical and psychological pressures, a related process in human cultural development. Thus, he describes his theory as a "cultural recapitulation" theory, taking care to differentiate it from the conceptions of recapitulation common in the late 19th century and early 20th century. According to Egan, individuals can pick up sets of cognitive tools that will coalesce into five distinctive kinds of understanding:
"Drawing from an extensive study of cultural history and evolutionary history and the field of cognitive psychology and anthropology, Egan gives a detailed account of how these various forms of understanding have been created and distinguished in our cultural history".
Each stage includes a set of "cognitive tools", as Egan calls them, that enrich our understanding of reality. Egan suggests that recapitulating these stages is an alternative to the contradictions between the Platonic, Rousseauian and socialising goals of education.
Egan resists the suggestion that religious understanding could be a further last stage, arguing instead that religious explanations are examples of ironic understanding preserving a richly developed somatic understanding.
Egan's main influence comes from the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. The idea of applying theory of recapitulation to education came from 19th century philosopher Herbert Spencer, although Egan uses it in a very different way. Egan also uses educational ideas from William Wordsworth and expresses regret that Wordworth's ideas, because they were expressed in poetry, are rarely considered today.
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