The Indirect Approach in Development and Human Affairs: An Intellectual History
Keywords:
Indirect Approach, Direct Methods, Approach to Development, Two Pedagogies, Human and Biological Learning Mechanisms, Intellectual History of Indirect ApproachAbstract
In all human affairs, it seems there is a juxtaposition between a rather obvious direct method and a more subtle indirect method. Our purpose is first to develop an understanding of the indirect method from a variety of modern viewpoints, and then to develop an intellectual history of indirect approaches from Socrates to modern thinkers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Mohandas Gandhi, and Douglas McGregor. One of the themes is that constructivist and active learning pedagogies constitute an indirect approach wherein the teacher does not directly transmit knowledge to the learner through training and instruction. These pedagogies translated into social and economic development viewed as learning-writ-large form the basis for an alternative more indirect approach to fostering development.
References
1. See Ross 1973 and Stiglitz 1974 for early work. For surveys and applications, see Pratt and Zeckhauser 1991, Eatwell et al. 1989, or the text Campbell 1995. For earlier critical analysis of agency theory, see Perrow 1972, Hirsh et al. 1987, Pfeffer 1994, and the references contained in Eisenhardt 1989.
2. In the legal relationship, the agent takes on a legal role to act in the interests of the principal, but economists now use the terminology in a broader context where the agent is not necessarily under any legal obligation to act in the interests of the principal.
3. See Ross 1973 and Stiglitz 1974 for early work. For surveys and applications, see Pratt and Zeckhauser 1991, Eatwell et al. 1989, or the text Campbell 1995. For earlier critical analysis of agency theory, see Perrow 1972, Hirsh et al. 1987, Pfeffer 1994, and the references contained in Eisenhardt 1989.
4. In the legal relationship, the agent takes on a legal role to act in the interests of the principal, but economists now use the terminology in a broader context where the agent is not necessarily under any legal obligation to act in the interests of the principal.
5. See Deci and Ryan 1985, Elster 1983, Lane 1991, Candy 1991, Kohn 1993, and Deming 1994.
6. See, for example, Ruskin 1985 (1862). Lutz 1999 gives an integrated treatment of Sismondi, Carlyle, and Ruskin.
7. See Titmuss 1970, Arrow 1972, Scitovsky 1976, Hirsch 1976, Sen 1982, Schelling 1984, Akerlof 1984, Hirschman 1992, Kreps 1997, and Prendergast 1999.
8. A classic example where economics has ignored crucial questions of motives for behaviors is the economic treatment of "cooperation" and "trust" based on repeated prisoner's dilemma games (Axelrod (1984) is the locus classicus). When a prisoner's dilemma game is repeated, the credible threat of being punished by the other party's defecting tomorrow may elicit cooperative behavior today. But this sort of cooperative behavior is quite different from cooperation and trust motivated by some fellow-feeling for the other parties or some identification with the broader group which includes the other parties. Institutional design based on threat-induced "cooperation" would be rather different from design based on fellow-feeling or identification where the penalties attached to non-cooperation were not eliminated but played a secondary role as motivational backstops.
9. McGregor 1946, reprinted in 1966, 152.
10. Peter Drucker (1954) developed essentially the same "Theory Y" ideas in his "Management by Objectives (MBO)" (also called "management by objectives and self-control") approach as opposed to "management by control" (as noted in McGregor 1966, 15-16 and in Drucker 1973). But the MBO theory was so popularized (indeed, vulgarized) by Drucker and others apparently in order to reach a mass market that it is commonly interpreted to mean "management by results" in a manner quite along the lines of Theory X and agency theory. Hence we will rely more on McGregor's treatment of these ideas.
11. When the helper facilitates the doer finding a solution and refrains from "teaching" or otherwise imposing a solution, then the helper is perhaps engaging in "action by non-action" (wu-wei) of Taoist thought (see below).
12. In the same spirit, George Bernard Shaw quipped "if you teach a man anything he will never learn it" (1961, 11) and, as noted above, Ortega y Gasset suggested: "He who wants to teach a truth should place us in the position to discover it ourselves." (1961, 67).
13. "The successful psychotherapist is the one whose patients all believe they cured themselves—they internalized the therapy and it thereby became truly an integral part of them. Consultants suffer much the same dilemma of the psychotherapist–the problem of internalization. If they wish the client to use the right solution with full and lasting commitment then they must let him believe it is his solution." (Handy 1993, 145) This echoes the notion of the Taoist ruler who governs in such a way that when the task is accomplished, the people will say "We have done it ourselves." (see Chapter 17 of Lao-Tzu's Te-Tao Ching)
14. This too was ancient Eastern wisdom. "When you know a thing, to recognize that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it. That is knowledge." (Confucius, Analects, Book II, 17) "To know you don't know is best. Not to know you don't know is a flaw." (Lao-Tzu, Te-Tao Ching, Chapter 71)
15. Clearly Socrates used considerable knowledge to ask the appropriate questions, so one might quip that it takes a lot of knowledge to be as 'ignorant' as Socrates. However, in the questions of human affairs, there is little reason then or now for this 'ignorance' or intellectual humility to be just ironic. A common perversion is the pseudo-Socratic method employed by someone who has already decided upon the answer and is only trying to ask leading questions to bring the listeners to the same conclusion. As always, the difference is between the helper controlling ('helping') the doers or enabling the doers to better help themselves.
16. The theme that practicality was the road to engaging the interest and initiative of the students played a major role more recently in John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy of education. Interpreters of Dewey's pedagogy often think that his purpose was to urge "practical training" rather than to simply use practical problems as the source of student engagement so that the student's faculties of critical reason and social sympathy would be improved through active use.
17. This tendency to subvert indirect in favor of direct methods is greatly aggravated by two more modern developments: teachers becoming employees of educational establishments who are held "responsible" for their students' progress (see McClintock 1982) and "evaluation" techniques geared to outward performance.
18. For instance, the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth writing in the late 1600's noted that "knowledge was not to be poured into the soul like liquor, but rather to be invited and gently drawn forth from it; nor the mind so much to be filled therewith from without, like a vessel, as to be kindled and awakened." (1996, 78) Cudworth also saw clearly the active nature of learning: "knowledge is an inward and active energy of the mind itself, and the displaying of its own innate vigour from within, whereby it doth conquer, master, and command its objects... ." (73)
19. This can't-push-on-a-string asymmetry was reflected in our previous discussion of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation can override and crowd out intrinsic motivation to control behavior, but removing the former will not automatically supply the latter. One cannot extrinsically bring about intrinsically-motivated action just as opening a faucet cannot itself supply water pressure. The oft-repeated ("war-horse") metaphor for this insight is: "[W)hile we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink" (Dewey 1916, 26).
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