Instructionism

Instructionism refers to all of the educational theories based on the idea of the teacher teaching, usually according to a predetermined schedule, rather than on students learning from their own experiences at their own pace. This includes any form of rote learning, and most forms of book learning in actual use, as well as drill and practice. Instructionism is often associated with the idea of education as a means for social control, as in the 8th century Prussian system of education, which has been the model for so many others since then.

As an example of non-Instructionist drill and practice, consider Chopin's Etudes (Studies) for piano, Opus 10 and Opus 25. These are technical exercises of the highest order, each presenting a different challenge, and also transcendent music. Chopin was mostly self-taught as a pianist, including the process of perfecting his technique through the writing, practicing, and performing of his own Etudes.

The scientific laboratory is a place for exploration and discovery, where the principal topic of investigation is human ignorance in whatever form it currently takes, using the sharpest tools and brightest lights that human ingenuity can bring to bear. The school laboratory is almost always a place for regimented repetition of "experiments" whose outcome is known in advance. Similarly, a research library is a different sort of place to explore human ignorance about other kinds of questions. Here we look for interpretations of what has previously been recorded, often by comparing differing source accounts, often by finding questions that we can attempt to answer by other means. The school library is more often a place for looking up the "right" answer. A textbook can be an account of the frontiers of knowledge and understanding, presenting conflicting theories and attempts to find evidence to distinguish among them, or it can be a compendium of socially approved "facts". Among them have been such deliberate historical lies as George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, or such perversions of truth as the incomprehensible definition of a variable as "a number that can change its value".

A great many apologists for various regimes have approved of the practice of lying in history and other school textbooks. Foremost among them historically is Plato, who put forth the theory of the Noble Lie in his handbook of authoritarian government, misnamed The Republic. Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago was the most prominent modern proponent of this theory in public in the West after World War II. (If you are going to do it, it probably makes sense not to tell everybody that that is the plan.) Plato also recommended heavy-duty censorship and rule by a self-perpetuating elite.