Emily asked:

I have been looking at the implications of various philosophical approaches for an understanding of
the nature of education.

When thinking about an existential approach to education it seems to me that the emphasis must be
on individual and personal understanding in learning, and education as a means to finding personal
meaning and understanding. If this is the case, then I am finding it difficult to reconcile this idea with
the possibility of the curriculum ever being prescribed in any way and not simply stemming from the
individual interests of the learner. I guess my question therefore is what kinds of learning would follow
from an existential perspective for education?

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It seems to me that there are all sorts of problems lurking in the conclusions you are tempted to draw
concerning the implications of "existential approach" for education. It is very difficult to know quite
where to begin and quite how to understand your ideas about this.

In the first place, whether or not one takes an existentialist view of things, it is, in a sense, trivially true
that education emphasises "individual and personal understanding in learning" because it is trivially
individual persons that understand and/ or learn anything (or not, as the case may be). So I feel that
you you must have something more significant in mind here, perhaps hinted at when you talk about
education as a means to finding "personal meaning and understanding". But this is even more
problematic. I have a feeling that meanings are generally fairly public sorts of things and I would have
hoped that existentialism did not entail some sort of solipsistic conception of meaning/ understanding
and if it does then I would take that as a prima facie case for rejecting existentialism in the first place
even before considering whether it has anything useful to say about education.

The point is that I think you need to spell out in more detail what you take to be the significance of
"personal" meaning and understanding. Why the epithet "personal"? What are you really setting it up
in opposition to? "Public" meaning and understanding? If so, why? and what is wrong, from the
allegedly existentialist point of view, with public meaning and understanding? or "interpersonal"
meaning and understanding? or whatever else you have in mind?

But perhaps the nub of my concerns about what you say is that you seem to feel that the alleged
existentialist notions of "finding personal meaning and understanding" (whatever this amounts to) are
totally incompatible with a student's ever being challenged to confront and come to grips with
something that does not happen to "stem from his individual interests". We need to explain a bit more
fully why these are incompatible.

Presumably you take the student himself as the final arbiter of his own "personal interests"? So be it.
That is, no doubt, a truism. And in that case "his individual interests" means "what he happens to find
interesting at some particular time". Is he also the only judge of what "stems" from his personal
interests? Even if that is the case it still needs to be considered whether the purpose of a state funded
education system is to provide cash handouts to enable individuals to go seeking their "personal
meanings and understandings".

The thought or possibility that I am asking you to consider here is a rather difficult one — but it
amounts to this: Consider whether there might just be some things in life that are SO important that,
for precisely that reason, they should not be set up as "objectives" of the education system at all! And
I am beginning to think that your notion of "personal meaning and understanding" might be just such
a thing!

Anyway, whether or not "personal meaning and understanding" is a sensible and meaningful
objective for an education system to have, you still have at least two major problems:

(1) You have to argue more fully why it should be that ANY element (even partial) of prescription in a
curriculum MUST inevitably preclude achieving "personal meaning and understanding" or MUST, at
best, lead to learning and understanding that is somehow not "personal" or wrong or bad in some way
... and you will need to spell out exactly what that is, and why it is so.

[I suspect that lurking here are some partially digested existentialist notions of "authenticity" and
"freedom". These will have to be spelt out properly. Also in this context it might be worth giving some
consideration to the accusation that existentialism had managed to replace the hard notion of truth
with the soft notion of authenticity.]

(2) Conversely you will need to explain why only engaging with what I personally find interesting, or
deem to stem from what I personally find interesting, should lead to my finding ANY "personal
meaning and understanding" at all let alone be the ONLY way to such an achievement.

My thought here is that, on the contrary, if this "finding personal meaning and understanding" is to be
worth a fig then it needs to be built upon a person's ability to respond to whatever the world might
throw at him. After all, if I am not mistaken, existentialists have had an awful lot to say about
"facticity", human "thrown-ness" into a world one did not create, and "authentic engagement" with the
world and others, and such like. The notion that I am only being authentic if I follow only my own
"personal interests" (even if, and it is a very big if, these can be distinguished from navel-gazing, or
other forms of self-indulgence) seems to me run counter to all these existentialist notions.

Sartre (and others) have had a lot to say about "viscosity" and "boredom" and such like
(manifestations of the facticity of existence in the world) ... but I did not think that they conceived of
simply pursuing one's "individual interests" as an "authentic" way of coming to terms with these and
achieving "personal meaning and understanding"! — though I stand open to correction on this point
— but if I am wrong then I think it behoves someone else to explain to me the difference between
existentialism and hedonism.

So then, quite contrary to your interpretation, it might be the case that real authentic personal
meaning and under- standing might ONLY be achieved or achievable via those encounters with the
world and others where one HAS TO to face up to challenges precisely NOT of one's own making or
choosing! And so an existentialist view of things might in fact demand that the education system
present students with challenges over and above their own personal individual interests. That is to
say, an existentialist philosophy might demand some measure at least, of prescription in the
curriculum!

Now another approach I think it is important that you consider is this: try not to do all you thinking
about your problem just at the level of vast and woolly generalisations about "individual interest",
"personal meaning and understanding", etc. You can go round in circles for ever and ever doing that,
redefining things, re-interpreting them this way and that to serve whatever purpose you want ... rather
come down to earth & take a specific example of some minimal but real measure of prescription in
some curriculum (and not just a "straw man" case!) and try to prove, if you can, in specific detail why
it must, in itself and as such, inevitably fail to lead to ANY "individual learning" or finding of "personal
meaning and understanding", — however you understand or define these. I think this might be rather
difficult.

Robert de Villiers