The way we use words has a direct impact on what happens and how things unfold. According to the philosophical school of linguistic pragmatism, pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), our worldview—as well as our ability to conceive of and bring about new worlds—depends fundamentally on how we use language to talk about the things we wish to understand and transform.

In this first post for the Bett Blog, I’ll offer some thoughts on how we typically talk about various aspects of education. I consider this important precisely because, in my view, the way we use words in this field has served to discourage transformation and the creation of alternative futures for education, diminishing the value of learning as a creative process and of the school as a setting for building communities. 

But since we’re talking about learning, education, and school, what could have such deleterious effects on matters and events in this field? Below, I provide illustrative examples of metaphors that are still common in the educational debate, even though contemporary research in the learning sciences, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy has already completely redefined their meanings. 

● “Transmitting knowledge”: put this way, it seems as though knowledge behaves like radio waves, capable of transmitting energy through electromagnetic radiation. But what we convey in the classroom is not simply deposited in students, the way a sound signal from a radio travels through space until it reaches a receiver. Knowledge, on the contrary, is the subject of dialogue among people, who gradually make it their own in order to use it in specific contexts of action, such as problem-solving. 

● “Processing information”: Sometimes we talk about information as if it were food, just as in the equally questionable expression “content consumption”—metaphors that somehow place us in the Cartesian position of machines, mechanical organisms capable of processing perceptual data, for example, in the same way that computers process electrical impulses or living organisms process food. Information, on the other hand, is exchanged between individuals, just as content is explored within the context of an educational experience. 

● “Teaching classes”: In addition to being redundant—since, in a sense, the idea of “teaching” already implies classes—this metaphor makes it seem as though a class is necessarily structured around one-way lectures: a teacher delivering content, like a priest conducting religious ceremonies. But classes do not need to be “taught,” since today we have an immense variety of active methodologies that allow us to describe the classroom space in other terms: flipped, hybrid, dialogic, etc.

● “Retaining learning”: Here, learning reappears in the metaphor of a substance that can be retained—possibly in our minds—just as our bodies can suffer from fluid retention. In conjunction with the previous statement, the proper retention of learning should follow effective instruction. It is better to think of learning as a complex process that encompasses cognitive, affective, and social dimensions—and, therefore, as an experience. 

These are powerful metaphors that have long shaped our understanding of educational processes and that can lead to serious inaction regarding the school’s mission and its transformation in order to address contemporary challenges in learning. Thus, by way of counterexamples, I offer below a few phrases through which we can discuss the above processes in other terms:

● Knowledge: “Today in class, we were able to explore the concept of a Turing machine and gain a better understanding of some aspects of how it works.”

● Information: “The students shared a variety of interesting facts with one another about how oxygen plays a role in the rusting of metals.” 

● Classes: “Today’s class was an interactive presentation, with active student participation, on the 1964 military regime in Brazil.”

● Learning: “The students were able, in their own words, to demonstrate meaningful learning about the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.”

There are many strategies and countless steps involved in innovating in education, but we can start in several simple ways, including by changing what and how we talk about education and learning. This will help us better understand the direction—and, above all, the meaning—of the change.
 

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*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bett Brasil.