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METAPHORS |
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METAPHORS |
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Contents TEACHER
THINKING EDUCATION
MYTHS
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Printer-friendly version (PDF) “Education is the kindling of a flame, “My
classroom is a zoo!” In
literature classes, many of us were taught that a metaphor is a linguistic device
used to add interest to speech or writing. Karl comes into the teacher’s lounge
shaking his head. “My classroom is a zoo today!” If what we learned in
literature is correct, Karl is simply using a figure of speech— making his
description of his classroom more interesting or unique. Other teachers recognize
that Karl’s classroom is probably noisy and unsettled. The “animals” may be
on a rampage and difficult to control. But is this just a “figure of
speech”—a linguistic device? Or do such statements spring from something much
deeper—from Karl’s conceptual system? Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson2 provide convincing evidence that metaphors may actually be people’s primary mode of mental operation. They argue that because the mind is “embodied”—that is, it experiences the world through the body in which it resides—people can't help but conceptualize the world in terms of bodily perceptions. Our concepts of up-down, in-out, front-back, light-dark, and warm-cold are all related to orientations and perceptions acquired through our bodily senses. The “teacher talk” sentences at the beginning of this section
contain several such metaphors. A top student represents a vertical orientation, whereas falling
behind suggests a horizontal orientation. Lakoff
and Johnson suggest that the metaphors through which people conceptualize abstract
concepts influence the way in which they understand them. In Metaphors We Live By, they provide several commonly used metaphors for the
concept ideas. Here are some familiar
expressions people use when describing ideas
as food, plants, and commodities.
Ideas Are Food What
he said left a bad taste in my mouth. These are nothing but half-baked
ideas, and warmed-over
theories. I can’t digest all of
these new ideas. I just can’t swallow
that claim. That argument smells fishy.
Now there’s an idea you can really sink
your teeth into. That’s food for
thought. We don’t need to spoon-feed
our students. He devoured the book. This
is the meaty part of the paper. Ideas Are Plants His ideas have finally come to fruition. That idea died
on the vine. That’s a budding theory.
It will take years for that idea to come to
full flower. He views chemistry as an offshoot
of physics. Mathematics has many branches.
The seeds of his great ideas were planted
in his youth. She has a fertile imagination.
He has a barren mind. Ideas Are Commodities It’s important how you package
your ideas. He won’t buy that. That
idea just won’t sell. There is always
a market for good ideas. That’s a worthless
idea. He’s been a source of valuable
ideas. I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel
for that idea. Good ideas are currency
in the intellectual marketplace.3 Rather
than having to describe a number of particular events that occurred in his
classroom, Karl got his point across by saying that it was a zoo. Because people
are familiar with zoos, they “get the picture.” That picture would have been
quite different had Karl said, “My classroom is a beehive.” The important
thing is that, under the influence of the zoo metaphor, Karl perceives student activity as negative—uncontrolled. If he employs the beehive
metaphor, he might perceive that same behavior as productive—busy as bees. Thus, Karl’s unconscious metaphor directs his
perceptions—and his resultant behavior. Discussing the
influence of metaphors on behavior, Lakoff and Johnson state, “Metaphors may create realities for us, especially
social realities. A metaphor may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions
will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the
metaphor to make experience coherent. In this sense metaphors can be
self-fulfilling prophecies.”4 Metaphors
contain within them beliefs about
knowledge and the expected role of the student. John Locke described the mind at
birth as a tabula rasa—an empty slate
on which all knowledge must be “written” by others. Similar descriptions of
teaching reflect the belief that students’ minds are empty vessels. “If I’m
teaching facts and the things that the ITSB (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) teaches,
then I can open her up and pour it in—just open their little heads and pour it
in.”5 Unfortunately,
many educators persist in perceiving students as receptacles for information
despite extensive research demonstrating that knowledge is internally-generated.
The quote at the beginning of the article suggests that, even without that
research, Socrates believed education was about “drawing out” what was already
within, rather than “stuffing in” as much “knowledge” as possible. In
fact, the word education comes from educere—meaning
“to draw out.” Common
Metaphors in Education
A
Lesson Is a Journey—Knowledge Is A Landscape
The
word cover appears frequently in teacher
talk. “I covered “I just went ahead...” Concepts and principles are objects Many
teachers unconsciously perceive the concepts and principles they teach—the bits
of human thought considered “essential knowledge”—as objects. Concepts and principles are objects. “Did you teach grammar?” “Yes, I
taught it last year.” The knowledge
objects have become “objective”—apart from the human thought processes and
minds that conceived them. In
the learning is a journey metaphor, knowledge
objects reside at various locations on the knowledge landscape. Teachers must move students quickly across this
landscape, urging them to “pick up” the concepts until they have covered
it all and arrived at their final destination—Testland.
Here, teachers make sure that students possess
the concepts acquired during the journey. Then
it’s time to move on to the next goal—to begin coverage
of the next bit of territory on the map of human thought. In this interpretation,
one might think of the journey as the
teacher driving a busload full of students at full speed along a predefined road
to reach the destination before nightfall—the test. The lesson is a journey metaphor can have other interpretations. If a teacher believes
that learning requires students to interact with their environment, the trip
becomes a journey of discovery instead
of a flat-out race across the landscape
of a discipline. In this interpretation of the metaphor, the teacher and students
travel more or less together, along a somewhat defined route, making frequent
stops along the way as students notice something of interest that they wish to
explore. There are occasional interesting side trips to unexpected places. At
times, groups pursue different paths and, after returning to the main road, report
to the class about what they have found. Many
teachers unconsciously resist this interpretation because of the pressures of
testing and school-defined curricula. (By the way, the word curriculum
is also a metaphor—in Latin the word means “a race”!) Teachers feel that
they’ve been hired to get the kids ready for the test and they can’t take
the time for leisurely exploration. This brings us to yet another
metaphor—one shared not only by teachers, but by the Western mind in general. Time
Is a Resource
Time is a resource is a metaphor that drives much of what teachers do (and don’t
do) in teaching. Generally, that resource
is money. Time is something that people
can spend or waste,
wisely invest in productive activities or squander in questionable pursuits. Thus, time becomes the cost
of discovery—all this exploration on the part of the students. Unfortunately,
time is not a resource that teachers own.
The traditional content of a given course or school year allots
specific amounts of time to accomplish certain tasks. Time is, after all, a scarce
resource. Teachers must budget that
time, spending only within the limits of what they have been allotted.
Wasting time on material that isn’t part of the assigned curriculum means
that they will run out before they have
covered all the material. Heaven forbid that time runs
out before the test and the class hasn’t covered
everything! In
Western culture, time is a resource is
so much a part of our shared metaphor that it rarely occurs to us there might be
other ways to think about our lives. People in other cultures don’t necessarily
think of time as a resource. According
to Lakoff and Johnson, “Cultures in which time is not conceptualized and
institutionalized as a resource remind us that time in itself is not inherently
resourcelike. There are people in the world who live their lives without even the
idea of budgeting time or worrying if they are wasting it. The existence of such
cultures reveals how our own culture has reified a metaphor in cultural
institutions, thereby making it possible for metaphorical expressions to be
true.”7
In Western cultures, people no longer recognize time is a resource as a metaphor. They just assume that it is true and act accordingly. More
information on common educational metaphors and the role they play in teaching can
be found in Teaching In Mind: How Teacher
Thinking Shapes Education. Metaphors and Roles One
of the most important aspects of a metaphor is the roles it creates for self and
others. If I am a shepherd, my students must be sheep. If I am a gardener, my
students are plants. What unconscious expectations do these metaphors create in
the mind of the teacher? Must the sheep be docile, feeding complacently in the
pasture chosen by the teacher? Is the gardener tending a field of corn, where
every plant receives the same care—or a botanical garden, where the gardener
fosters the unique development of each species? Metaphors
that focus on what the teacher does
rather than what the students learn cast
students as passive receivers. They
inhibit teacher behaviors that might encourage students to take an active role in
their learning. Sadly, teachers will often condemn students for laziness or apathy
when, in fact, they give the students no opportunity to assume responsibility for
their learning. Examining the roles inherent in a teacher’s metaphor can provide
remarkable insights on these problems. If reforms are to succeed, teachers must actively explore these critical components of their thinking. The unconscious cognitive processes of both theorists and teachers must be brought into consciousness if there is any hope of creating a meaningful change in education. References 1
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors
We Live By. 2
Ibid, pp 56-60. See also Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought.
3 Ibid. Metaphors... pp 46-47 (Return to article) 4 Ibid. Metaphors...page 146 (Return to article) 5
Noble, A. J. & Smith, M. L. (1994). Old and New Beliefs about
Measurement-Driven Reform: “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the
Same.” 6 Munby, H. (1986). Metaphor in the Thinking of Teachers: An Exploratory Study. The Journal of Curriculum Studies, Vol. 18, 197–209. (Return to article) 7 Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh…, 165. (Return to article)
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