Education: Taming the Animal Within

This post is about the following, perhaps radical, conjecture: that, without education, human beings would essentially be animals of some type. Education, for the purpose of this post, is not just degrees, but any kind of systematic training. My views on this - and I have no qualifications in biology, behavioral science, psychology, etc. - are based solely on my experience as an educator. This is in fact, a vast topic, but I thought I should make a beginning at some point in time. So here we are.

Perhaps it is best to begin by identifying what I mean by `animal'. Human beings - if you believe the theory of evolution - are partly (largely!) animalistic in their behavior. For sure, they display many characteristics that are found in the animal kingdom. These similarities relate to biology, social structure, cognition, emotions, mating, tool-usage, learning, communicating, cooperation, empathy, etc., alongside basic drives for survival, such as seeking food, community, and safety.

The biggest differentiators between human beings and animals are related to intellectual capability (e.g. advanced cognitive capacity for abstract thought, complex language, and symbolic reasoning). I will simplify this: I will say animals operate largely on instinct (though many of them can reason after a fashion), while human beings use more reason (though still leaning a lot on instinct).

The animal inside a human being is a powerful yet willful beast. To this beast we owe our passions, appetites, likes and dislikes, our visceral responses. Unfortunately, this beast is a good servant but a bad master. What do I mean by that? I consider the beast to be a servant if the intellect dominates it. In this case, the animal within can be our beast of burden, supplying qualities of persistence, hard work, discipline, bravery, optimism, empathy, resilience, cooperation, ambition, elbow grease, etc. to any endeavor that our intellect chooses.

In this case, we may be said to be living by intellectualizing. That does not mean we become emotionless; it only means the intellect allows our basic emotions and desires (which I consider the expression of the animal) limited freedom. It tells us when it is not appropriate to be disruptive, or to engage in a fight, or to steal (there may be situations in which the intellect decides one or more of these behaviors are entirely appropriate; say for the second behavior - in a boxing ring or MMA cage).

If, however, the animal within us dominates our intellect, then we live by instinctualizing. The animal is ruled by its appetites and it responds to its internal desires and the external world accordingly. To my mind this is a source of much of the disruption on this planet. An untamed animal turns to undesirable behavior such as sloth, dishonesty, malingering, greed, violence, paranoia, personal justice, etc (all this can be seen in the animal kingdom). Therefore, it is necessary to tame this animal. For which I consider education a good tool.

Let us consider a simple example before we get too far with the big ideas.

When I teach my freshman mechanics class, I introduce Newton's force law and then set up a simple problem where the answer can be found by its straightforward application. However, a significant number of students, when the problem is posed to them, try to guess the answer without any reference to Newton's law at all. The fact that it was presented just before the problem, and might have a role to play in its solution, is not something they consider at all. So I first have to make them aware that it is Newton's law that will take them to the answer. Then I work out the solution.

What is happening here is that the animal is in control, because the intellect is not yet well developed (it takes the human brain typically until the early thirties to fully develop; I know in my own case it took much longer). The intellect, faced with Newton's law, feels the high taxation of abstract reasoning and cannot accommodate it (at least fully) because it is not adequately trained (hasn't developed the right muscles yet). The animal, faced with the problem, instinctualizes. That is, it short circuits to a solution based on instinct (developed through evolution). Pointing students to the connection between Newton's law and the problem's solution trains the intellect and tames the animal (preventing it from giving an instinctive answer next time it is faced with the same or a similar question).

But the animal within a human being can be dominant even if their intellect is phenomenally well developed. In this case the animal highjacks the intellect and uses it as a potent weapon. The animal decides what it wants, and then asks the intellect to cook up all kinds of reasons justifying the behavior. And because the intellect is so powerful in this instance, the animal can be all the more devious.

I will end with a common problems educators face. If a student displays undesirable behavior, the first recourse is to explain to them why they are out of order. This is an appeal to the intellect. If the intellect is dominant over the animal, and the student is convinced of the sense of the argument, they will change, or at least try to change, their behavior. But if the animal is dominant, even if their intellect comprehends the argument, their behavior will not change, since the animal does not follow the conclusions of the intellect. At that point disciplinary action of some sort may have to be taken (e.g. suspension, a failing grade, etc). This represents force (i.e. the logic of power) and is something that the animal understands better than the power of logic (which is better suited for the intellect). But obviously the second (disciplinary) situation is not a desirable one.

Taming the animal inside students - and really inside everybody, including ourselves - is therefore one of the main aims, and benefits, of education. Conversely, if people behave like animals, even if they have very advanced degrees, their education may be said to be ineffective or incomplete.

Afterword: Doesn't morality have a role to play in all of this? And morality, we know, does not come solely from the intellect. That may be a good subject for another post.