THE ISLAND OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE SEA OF IGNOR ANCE...BOTH NEED FOXY THINKING
Classroom teaching is perhaps the most complex,
our known, and that of all our unknowns grows too. We can either
challenging, demanding, subtle, nuanced, and frightening
look internally, scavenging the island, sitting beneath a familiar
activity our species has ever invented.
palm tree, or we can look out from the shore and wonder at the
Former US Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld, once famously stated “there are known knowns. These are the things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns.” Trying to venture into the world of the ‘unknown unknowns’ is like trying to find a black cat in a pitch black room – a job made much harder if no cat actually even exists. Perhaps for this reason, we are all more comfortable, and more certain, in putting energy into the things we know and ignore the unknown, fearing change might lead us there. Depending upon your viewpoint, it is either the security of the known which prevents us from changing or it is the fear of the unknown. But in a world of increasing complexity and diverging opportunity, remaining simply in the ‘known’ is no more a certain recipe for improvement – and as the known increases so too does the unknown. Imagine all human knowledge is an island. As the collective
vast body that lies before us. Either way suggests a type of thinking – one nimble and adept, one certain and stubborn, one suited to the innovative and complex world of today, one possibly suited to an increasingly bygone age. In the 1950s essayist Isaiah Berlin wrote The Hedgehog and the Fox, a work loosely based upon a parable by the ancient Greek poet Archilochus. In it, Berlin divided the world into two types of thinkers – Hedgehogs equipped with specialised knowledge and Foxes that are more multidisciplinary. Hedgehogs are confident in their world view, which is often ideological, and are difficult to shift, they seek order and certainty in thinking; Foxes are adaptable, they are tolerant of complexity, they are often self-critical and empirical. In reality, we all tend to move between the two, but leaders of education must be on the shoreline where ‘foxy thinking’ is required. In his book The Wisdom of Practice (Jossey-Bass, 2004)Professor Lee Shulman writes:
knowledge of humanity, the known, exponentially increases, so
Classroom teaching…is perhaps the most complex, most
too does the island in size. Imagine now that the island sits in an
challenging, and most demanding, subtle, nuanced, and
ocean of ‘unknown’, a sea of ignorance, then as the island of
frightening activity that our species has ever invented…The only
knowledge grows so too does its shoreline with the ocean of
time a physician could possibly encounter a situation of
unknowns. Consequently, as we learn more, we also learn that
comparable complexity would be in the emergency room of a
there is so much more we do not know and the shoreline between
hospital during or after a natural disaster.
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