Seriously.
How do you know anything?
Generally, the idea of how we know things is called 'epistemology.' However, I think that for the purposes of this diary, that word only loosely applies, because I'm not planning on talking about the deeper idea of just how it is that we conscious beings are able to claim knowledge. They wanked that one to death in "The Matrix."
The idea of this diary is to ask you your process for accumulating knowledge and forming opinion out of that knowledge.
Some subjects I know very well, because I am personally involved in them from a variety of perspectives. Education is probably the academic area in which I am most capable of carrying on a good conversation. After going to school for my whole life, I have been involved in some area of education for the past 18-20 years. I use this only as an example of how I know what I know about education, not to claim that I am all knowing about education.
Primary- experience
I have done the following in education: Worked in school age child care, worked with toddlers in child care, worked in extended day academic kindergarten, taught kindergarten in a public school, earned a Masters in Teaching for k-8, attended high school in Germany for one full semester, created curriculum for live science and planetarium shows, married a 15 year kindergarten teacher, have one child in public schools, and a second will begin next year, and entertained the previous superintendent of public instruction by having her eat a graham cracker with some liquid nitrogen in it. (Don't worry, it was completely safe, but I don't recommend you doing it if you don't know what you're doing.)
Secondary- others' experience
I could probably go on about those experiences. However, there is a second way that I know about education: I have read and read, I have asked other families and professionals about their experiences, I have researched and given presentations on child development for my coworkers...
Graduation- Conclusions
One thing I know for sure is that I have formed many different beliefs about education based on the above learning and experience. A second thing I know for sure is that some of the opinions and beliefs I came to hold as truths were later either proven to be false, or my opinion changed on the matter. There are plenty of areas in education where I start sentences off with, "I used to think it was true that..."
An example of this is the idea of what it means to be smart. I used to believe more in the idea that being smart was more about nature than nurture. Now I have swung that gate the other direction and believe more that being smart is about learning to apply oneself in an open and risk taking manner. Without risking being wrong, you will never push far enough to know if you're wrong. (I am being intentionally vague on what I mean by smart. )
Higher Ed- Application
In the example I gave about myself, I attempted to show that I know and I am able to take information about education and synthesize the information based on my own personal experiences. However, it's not only my own personal experiences that are the root of my knowledge. It is the fact that I have wide ranging experience in this area that allows me to better understand the secondary type of information that is helpful in developing policy suggestions. Additionally, the academic work and the secondary information I've compiled over the years is helpful in allowing me to determine what parts of my own experience are poor characterizations of the situation in education as a whole.
Isn't it really impossible to know?
A good example of this sort of situation is the "Sokal Affair." Essentially, Alan Sokal wrote a hoax of a science paper full with footnotes, quotes and the whole shebang. He wrote it for a postmodern publication called "Social Text." The general idea is that Postmodern philosophers seem to want to assert that science is not all that and a bag of donuts. So, they were suckered into accepting something that they thought was on the up and up, and by doing so they demonstrated exactly what Alan Sokal wanted them to, namely that they didn't know what the hell they were talking about when it came to science, and that their editorial standards appeared to be weak at best, and irresponsible to boot.
So while those particular postmodern thinkers wished that they were taken very seriously by scientists, they didn't actually appear to be able to understand that what Sokal had written was a big joke on them. Why? I would say that it's because they were eager to have someone of an appropriate authority who was on their side, they wanted to confirm their own biases, and they didn't even understand the processes of science they were attempting to critique.
A second instance from personal experience is in relation to a friend of mine from work. He works in a job that is at least connected to science education. I asked him if he knew how homeopathic medicine worked, and he said he didn't. I told him that it is a small amount of a natural remedy which then gets diluted in water by a factor of 100, and that it is done multiple times until there is essentially nothing but water remaining in the remedy. His response was basically to say that his girlfriend uses homeopathic remedies, and that she likes them. He went on to complain about the fact that we simply can't know for sure about anything.
Who is an expert?
One of the things we know about information is that there is simply too much of it to be able to develop a full and flexible understanding of all of the various parts of the world in which we live. It just can't happen. I had a college professor who made the case that up until one point in human history, it would be possible to read every single book ever written if you could get them all in the same room with you. That day is long gone. We know that. Political thinkers, advocates, dealers in ideological pornography, self help book writers, get rich quick scammers, and your kids all seem to know this.
As a result of this inability to know everything, we turn to experts. Currently, a huge amount of money is spent yearly to pump out expert sounding thinking and writing from hundreds, maybe thousands, of thinktanks throughout the country. We turn to them, to our editorial writers, sometimes to journalists, and often to each other for help in determining what our opinions should be.
The right was very aware of this weakness in our ability to make informed decisions, so they created many thinktanks, and they have pumped out loads and loads of crappy propagandistic bullshit over the past half of a century. Only in the past decade or so have progressives begun to really put money and effort into the thinktank model. (Or so it would appear from my perspective and from what I know.)
This sort of acceptance of someone else's opinion can often result in a fallacious argument called an appeal to authority. It can also result in seeking a confirmation of an already existing bias. I would make sure to differentiate something like asking a lawyer for an opinion on the law or asking a CPA an opinion on financials from parroting an opinion put out by a think tank.
How the hell do you know?
In many discussions I have, it is necessary that I ask many questions to determine my own level of understanding. I will also do this to determine the level of understanding of the other people in the discussion. I simply don't know enough about everything to be able to make the kinds of statements that I would stand behind later.
So how the hell do you know what you know about the things we discuss here on a daily basis, and how do you know you're not wrong?