116
‘bag’ there is an endless and unpredictable range of possible stimuli ‘energy impacts’ - that will from time to time impinge on the ‘bag’ ( 1987, p.54). No amount of knowledge can reduce our ignorance, and ignorance has little to do with our knowledge (1988a, p.200).
6.4.2 Life and education For Gattegno, education is virtually synonymous with true living, so that what he labels his ‘Science of Education’ is in effect a fully developed philosophy of life. The essence of education, like the essence of living, lies in meeting ‘the unknown’ in all its mystery and majesty - ‘To know is the aim of life…’ (1987, p.59) - even though no amount of knowing can ever reduce ignorance. Superficially, this sounds like an echo from Popper (1.2.2). As we have already seen, however, Gattegno is referring here not to factual or propositional knowledge, but to something more like awareness. The meaning of living thus becomes ‘meeting what comes’ (1978, p.60) [emphasis added], by which I think he means dealing with the successive challenges of what comes to one out of the inexhaustible reservoir of the unknown. The quality of one’s life depends on the quality of one’s responses to ‘what comes’. Hence Gattegno’s emphasis on affectivity (6.3.4) and will (6.3.6). Elsewhere, Gattegno defines ‘learning’ in almost the same words, as ‘meet[ing] the descending unknown’ (1985a, p.5); it is ‘equivalent to living, to [exchanging] our time (which is our wealth) for experience …’ (1985a, p. 10) [emphasis in original]. Just how this exchange is made constitutes a major issue in Gattegno’s theory of education. But it cannot be made at all if one is ‘being lived by one’s past’(1988a, p.viii). Learning, of whatever kind, takes place in a series of four phases. First, the self finds itself facing an ‘unknown’ - a new ‘impact’ from outside its ‘bag’. Phase one is made up of these contacts with the unknown (1985a, p.3ff.). Next, the self ‘hesitates and uses time to try to make sense of’ the new impact. Presumably during this time the self is consulting the information represented by the locked up configurations of energy that it has put together as the result of experience (6.3.1). Phase two lasts so long as the self is analyzing, questioning, trying. Eventually, the self recognizes either some of its attributes or some its own reactions to the unknown impact. This is the beginning of Phase three, which ends with mastery, when the new material is available for a new encounter with a new unknown. This introduces the Fourth phase, which closes the previous cycle and prepares for the next learning (ibid.).