Have you ever had a discussion that went like this after a while: “That’s not freedom, freedom is where you are free to do whatever you want.” “No, freedom is when someone is not coercing you,” and so on. This could apply to any number of things: “That’s not music! This is music!” “That’s not democracy; this is democracy!” “That’s not carbonara; this is carbonara!”

Thanks for reading Fallible Pianist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

When this happens in an argument, you have just entered the world of meaningless discussion about words. The view that you can say something substantial about the world by searching for “the essence” of what words mean is called essentialism. Here is an example from the philosopher Derrida, where he asks, “What is pure forgiveness?” He argues that true forgiveness is impossible, yet people do something to admit their mistake, say the word “forgive,” and the relationship grows as a consequence. So, regardless of Derrida’s refutation of the concept, people manage to forgive one another. The problem is that words can’t have perfectly determined meanings; their meaning is conventional. So, what’s going on here, and what is the relevance of schooling? Let’s first look a little closer at essentialism.

Essentialism vs. Nominalism: From Left to Right vs. Right to Left

This is largely how the philosopher of science Karl Popper lays it out in “The Open Society and Its Enemies.”

Let’s look at this statement:

“A puppy is a young dog.”

An essentialist would read the meaning of that statement from left to right: the meaning of the word “puppy” is “a young dog.” This is the essential meaning of the word. A contrasting view called nominalism would determine the meaning from right to left: “We need a name for young dogs; how about ‘puppy’?” “Puppy” is thus a shorthand for “young dog.” No knowledge is gained by introducing the word “puppy,” and no knowledge is lost if we change it back into “young dog.” The question of the true meaning of the word “puppy” is thus uninteresting. What matters is if we can agree that we are speaking about the same thing, namely a young dog.

Popper claims that students who are new to a particular science with a lot of technical words might be led into becoming essentialists because the definitions are often learned from left to right.

“What is an electron? A subatomic particle with a negative electric charge.”

“What is a proton? A proton is a subatomic particle found in the nucleus of an atom.”

In this way, there might be a tendency to forget that the name “electron” is just made up; it could have been any word. There is a way of teaching where this tendency for essentialism is lessened. You can first describe the thing and then put a name on it, much like how I first described a phenomenon in debates and then explained what it is.

I don’t think this tendency is a serious problem for education in most cases, except where there is coercion involved.

If you are doing the same kind of learning, memorizing technical terms from left to right, in the context of coercive schooling, then it is problematic. The coercive nature confers psychological pressure, which leads people into getting hang-ups around the meaning of words. Because if they get them wrong, there will be consequences. These could be quite severe: things like homework, detentions, or bad grades. Bad grades are worse consequences than people assume because, for children, they come with a subtext: “Because of your bad grade here, you have hurt your prospects in the future, so you’d better fix this.”

The pupils will have to commit the words to memory to avoid these kinds of consequences. And this is done in a cargo-cult fashion. They don’t memorize the words because they want to understand how the words are used in a theory they think is important or useful to learn. Instead, they are memorized to avoid further bad consequences from their teachers.

Consequences of Essentialism

The problem with essentialism is that it makes it seem important to inquire about the true meaning of words. Questions like:

“What is a state?” or “What is democracy?” instead of,

“What do we demand from the state?” or “What are some important criteria for judging political institutions?”

People who have hang-ups around the meaning of words will damage their ability to understand the world. Since I have gone through compulsory schooling, I am not claiming I am immune to this.

Popper made a plea against essentialism in his autobiography “Unended Quest,” which starts autobiographical for a chapter and then turns into hardcore logic. The book is great.

“Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise.” Unended Quest. p 19

Conclusion

The cargo-cult nature of school emphasizes the memorization of jargon, with the added psychological pressure from fear of consequences causing people to have hang-ups around the meaning of words. Essentialism predates compulsory schooling, so it is not schools that started it. However, I do think they inadvertently preserve it.

Thanks for reading Fallible Pianist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.