A Pragmatist

When reading Chapter 1 of our text for my new class Introduction: Philosophy of Adult Education, the first thing that caught my eye was the education school of thought or system of pragmatism.

Just the other day I was complimented by my wife when she told me I was too practical. She might have meant it as a slight, but being overly practical to me is more of a compliment and is similar to pragmatism. I like having things proven in clear and clean terms. I like the practical application of the techniques that I use. 

But of the theories expressed in the chapter, the two that made the most sense to me were Progressive Adult Education with the focus on the “relationship between education and society” (Elias & Merriam, 2005, p. 12), and Behaviorist Adult Education with its focus on “behavior modification, learning through reinforcement, and management by objectives” (Elias & Merriam, 2005, p. 13). 

The first is similar in many respects to pragmatism, but the second is interesting to me because of the work I was able to do in behavior-based safety with my old organization. Following a fatality of one of our workers, our leadership decided a drastic change in our safety focus was needed. That change came by way of a behavior-based safety system. 

Instead of a focus on numbers, and metrics, we changed to a system that changed the way our workers naturally behaved. It is intriguing now, 10 years later, to look back on the rollout of that system and see behaviorist adult philosophies woven throughout the content.  

Reference:

Elias, J. L., & Merriam, S. B. (2005). Philosophical foundations of adult education. Malabar, FL.