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Lecture at the conference: " Homeschooling – mainstream tomorrow " at
University of Oslo 19. - 20. January 2014:
NEW REALITY: KNOWLEDGE-RENEWAL AND HOME
EDUCATION*
Christian W. Beck
We find growth in “industrial knowledge” and emergence of new "tertiary knowledge." I
think tertiary knowledge will dominate in the future and give a new pedagogic. I will use this
speech to make clear what I mean by the terms industrial - and tertiary knowledge, and what
this has to do with home education.
1) Industrialized knowledge
We can distinguish between two fundamental types of knowledge:
Primary knowledge is our own lifeexperience, a result of what we have seen, felt, observated,
understood and done, practical knowledge. It is often automatic, implicit and unconscious.
Such knowledge is mobilized when we need it, and give the ground for our "first person"actions.
Secondary knowledge are given us us from outside, explicit, theoretically, is often based on
research, established at a later date than primary, more socially conditioned and more
reflecive. Often acquired through education and in school and provides the basis for our " 2.
person" acts from theories, methods, often used on humans as a “things”, in "3. person",
applied to teaching, advertising, public campaigns, media and lobbying, and more.
Knowledge development has been from primary to secondary knowledge. "Research shows"
and "scientific-based knowledge" are mantras of our time. Secondary knowledge has become
hegemonic. Secondary knowledge domination has provided a growing industrial-knowledge
as an important force in society:
a) Building on research, secondary knowledge and theory.
b) Formulated as methods, competencies and skills.
c) Providing methodological applications where knowledge broken down into "details ", ex
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the behaviorial-program PALS in Norwegian schools, with their 29 ban rules of behavior for
6-year-olds kids in school.
d) Transferred, in school, methodically top-bottom.
e) Controlled by testing.
f) Are institutional and largely bureaucratic.
Parallel to pollution, climate crisis etc as results of excessive industrial production, we can see
a knowledge crisis as a result of excessive industrialized knowledge:
a) Learning of knowledge in school (secondary knowledge ) has stagnated. Students do not
learn more with more school-time. The school has reached a saturation point. United States
and Norway have two of the highest GNP per capita in OECD, but only medium pisa-testresults.
b ) Child care- and school-students are stressed and out-tired of too much institutionalization,
too much secondary knowledge and meaningless methodological detail control. Adults are
burned out at an early age.
c) We see the new modern “institutional” man. Self-confident, efficient and obedient within
the institution, but insecure and vulnerable outside. Independence and creativity are
threatened.
d) Greater knowledge differences between social classes, big drop-out rates in secondary and
higher education. Boys escape from educational institutions.
e) Many students are “screaming” for practical knowledge acquired outside the school at
work.
f) Insufficient primary knowledge has become a new knowledge deficiency.
2) From solid to fluid knowledge
We can distinguish between four types of knowledge in contemporary society by degree of
social construction and by how knowledge is horizontal or vertical (figure 1):
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Figure 1
Degree of social construction
high
low
(3) fluid K (2)
(4) solid K (1)
Hor Vert
Knowledge
1 ) Solid vertical knowledge. A growing body of research-based knowledge. With large
computers and statistics, large volumes of data processed and one can create sophisticated
models with predictions for large systems-development in society and nature development,
(climate models). Such knowledge is basically solid, has through new media becomes known
for a lot more people than before and have enhanced universal scientific validity. Such
knowledge is based on data obtained from a substance, a "place" and is scientific valid. When
solid knowledge are transmitted through media, it becomes more accesible, but also more
fluid, and and there is an uncertainty about its credibility. Data-materials, primary sources,
and the results are presented fluid, secondary and mediated. We can not check such
knowledge by our own experience or check research-knowledge directly. Direct access to data
and analysis is seldom available and verifiable.
2 ) Fluid vertical knowledge. In a broad sense, the new media journalism. Secondary
knowledge in fluid form, in which place-foundation and scientific validity initially may be
questionable. We get information about what is happening in the world, including new
research results, through a throng of reporters and news agencies, online. Information will be
presented and debated by experts worldwide. Such knowledge requires communication over
distance in vertical social practices, online. Knowledge can be based on real people, events
and credible research, but we can not be absolutely sure of the extent to which knowledge is
virtual/manipulated constructions made through the media. Such knowledge is another
growing form of social constructivism and get universal propagation through media, without
knowing whether sufficient requirements for testability and source criticism is addressed.
3 ) New horizontal knowledge. We are talking about the use of ex Facebook, Twitter etc. It
provides new forms of both " intimate” but virituel communities, networks and more
political/social communities, all of which are mediated. You don’t meet others face to face
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but virtual. New horizontal knowledge has also gained great political importance, ex use of
social media in Obama's election campaign, the Arab Spring and other political action. Social
media can provide horizontal spread of local knowledge. Through flow in social media
between different places, local horizontal knowledge can be spread and supplemented.
Source-criticism and correction of such knowledge may be possible. Knowledge can thus be
generalized horizontally and from below. The quality of knowledge may be that it flows
between places, where different actors have an interest in that knowledge is correct. We may
here have a combination of solid primary knowledge and fluid secondary knowledge.
4) Everyday-life knowledge. Horizontal knowledge embedded in people and places. This is
primary knowledge, everyday commonsense-knowledge based on authentic face-to- face
contact and the primary experiences. In such knowledge quality is checked in the social
processes and through our own primary experience. When everyday life thinned, such
primary knowledge is weakend. But such knowledge is increasingly necessary for a) daily life
skills and creation of meaning and culture, and b) such knowledge provides assumptions,
reality check and corrective to the increasingly fluid secondary knowledge. Industrial
knowledge is largely vertical and fluid. We see a change from solid to fluid knowledge.
3. From abstractions to new possibilities
With fluid knowledge abstraction as flow of words, pictures, models, theories and
interpretations become the important cultural principle. Let me give an ex from my own field,
educational research:
Abstraction of reality. The objectives of surveys are more universal, the nation or the global
level, based on a limited range of universial variables. Large samples directly or by mergering
of smaller studies in the meta-research is preferable to have more lasting results. There are
success in getting better statistical control within the selected analytical models and its
variables. However, the same data is also linked to many other local variables that the analysis
does not control for. The myriad of other variables are operative in the local contexts in which
they were derived in different ways. The result is often that the results are valid only for a
constructed abstract reality that does not exist. As an ex a project with data from two very
different countries like Norway and Uzbekistan will give results for a hybrid “Nor-ekistan”
and not for the concrete realities Norway and Usbekistan. The endpoint of such knowledge
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will be that all socio-cultural framework for human actions statistically "controlled" away,
every action ends up with biological (genetic) explanations or as religious determinism. This
is a new type of super-positivism.
New global educational research produce mega data volumes, attached in global institutions
such as the OECD. Other scientists and ordinary people do not get access to the same data and
can not check on what presented is true. Lots of report tell us that early education in childcare is good for learning when you are 15. But both data and conclusions in such reports often
are rubbish.
One gets a growing suspicion on politicized research, when reading such reports. The political
purposes of such report may be several :
1 ) They should lead us to believe that the Norwegian school 's all good, everything is
progressing and child-care and schools.
2 ) They will strengthen the faith of research and secondary knowledge excellence.
3) They may be causing us to trust politicians and experts, although we cannot verify if it's
true what they say.
But New Online technology also give new knowledge-possibilities:
Primary knowledge by flow through new media be confirmed, changed and be recognizable
and applicable in several places. Primary knowledge is then horizontally generalized.
Secondary knowledge, through new media actualized and anchored in many places may avoid
excessive generalization away from reality into pure abstractions.
To produce new concrete solid knowledge from educational research, one have to restart the
use of surveys, observation and interview as it was originally intended, the examination of
concrete reality, local places, ex schools and communities, and what specific individuals
actually believe and do.
We thus get more coherence between the primary practical knowledge and theoretical
secondary knowledge. This is what I call: Tertiary knowledge.
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4) Tertiary knowledge
Tertiary knowledge can tie scientific method, individual experience and local experience
together. The unifying thread is here trust between researchers, informants and users of
knowledge. Examples of tertiary knowledge can be individually designed medical treatment.
In genetic research, for example when it comes to cancer, it is seen that the analysis of large
gene data set related to person-specific treatment. Other examples: To identify the key factors
that make some schools succeed in getting better. Dissemination of knowledge about a
successful (or unsuccessful) projects on the care of drug addicts in a local community,
modified and adapted to other local communities, by the communities themselves. Both cardrivers and professionals sum up experiences in “informal” manuals, placed in social media
and are also used of professional garages.
Three historical-periodes of knowledge are here of interest:
Figure 3 The three knowledge periods
The traditional
Face to face, local
Personal experience
Solid, local, primary
The industrial
Institutional
The open
Online,
specific
Autorihies
and personal,
institutions
refleksive,
communicat
ive
Solid, researchSolid-Fluid,
based secondary
tertiary
In traditional knowledge, development, use and learning of knowledge was integrated,
interwoven in the daily chores. In industrialized knowledge the division is at maximum:
a) Development = research.
b ) Use = Theory and methods in work (in formal institutions)
c ) Learning = School
Industrial knowledge has low credibility, with morale-deficite and popular-deficite as an
import part of its explanation. New tertiary knowledge is both horizontal and vertical, and can
come from individuals, small groups or large research institutions. One can not predict and
plan where the next crucial knowledge contribution is coming from. But new knowledge-
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processes requires open communication of knowledge which everyone can join. Hierarchy
and bureaucracy can close and harm the development of knowledge. New open tertiary
knowledge contradicts a closed and vertical school based on industrialized knowledge. The
industrial knowledge-processes must be de-institutionalized. Here home education comes into
play. Homeschooling is de-institutionalized education.
Home educators are entrepeneurs for tertiary knowledge and its educational-processes in
several ways:
1 ) They can more freely acquire new knowledge and create new knowledge.
2 ) Their de-institutionalized pedagogy can easy be linked to real life.
3) HE-ers can affect schools to become more open, horizontal, popular, practical and flexible
and thus more suitable for the future.
School and authorities should cooperate with home educators, not conteract them. Home
educators remind authorities and schools that persons are the learners not the institutions.
School-personal and home educators can learn of each other, important for the renewal of
both knowledge and education.
* Main points in the speech are from the book : Christian W. Beck (2013): Kunnskapens
fornyelse (Renewal of knowledge). In: Beck, C. W. og Hoëm, A. Kunnskap og Virkelighet
(Knowledge and Reality) Oslo: Didakta Norsk Forlag. p 9-91.