Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

The always interesting Dr. Orac recently wrote a post addressing some reports that suggest that some British schoolteachers have been shirking Holocaust education for fear of “offending” Muslim students (read: families) who hold anti-semitic beliefs. As usual, Orac has some excellent commentary. He also touches briefly on the personal memory of a powerful but potentially “offensive” history lesson. I left a comment on the post where I say in part, “What good is education if it doesn’t confront your expectations of the world?”

As someone on the verge of going into academic research as a career, this got me thinking about the difference between education and research. On the surface the two seem very similar, and surely the two are tightly related. In both cases people are trying to learn new things, or increase a body of knowledge. I’ve always viewed research and education as two sides of the same coin, but it occurs to me that research, in the practical sense, rarely challenges one’s expectations.

Indeed, the point of most research papers is to confirm a hypothesis; in other words, an idea you already suspect is true. The idea is so pervasive in the sciences that it even has its own name: confirmation bias. Studies that demonstrate an already established relationship have better odds of getting published than studies that do not show that result. Certainly, there are exceptions to this majority, occasionally of a staggering scale. Throughout modern history there have been research papers that turn knowledge on its head, such as Einstein on relativity, Chomsky’s defeat of behaviorism, or Watson and Crick revealing the structure of DNA. Nevertheless, the prevailing trend in research is to confirm what we already know, augmenting our knowledge by small increments. The tone of research is generally cordial and collaborative, not confrontational.

I believe that effective education, in contrast, must be confrontational. Every person, even children, will come to some new lesson with various preconceived notions about how the world is. These notions often come from common sense, and the fact of the matter is that very little in the world operates as common sense would dictate. Before you can change someone’s knowledge, that person must be willing to accept that they are wrong. Fundamentally, they must be willing to have their sensibilities or common sense “offended.” That, I think, is the crux of real education. To simply confirm what a person already knows is dogma, not education.

Another important difference between education and research has to do with the intended audience. Education can happen on the individual level. It is certainly possible to educate one person. This is not possible in research. Real research implies being part of an intellectual community, and research cannot happen in a vacuum.

So where do the two meet? Research comes first, because research findings must be adequately vetted and reviewed by the scientific community before they ever reach a wide audience. Once a lot of research has been done on a given topic, patterns and themes begin to emerge. It is these patterns that we then seek to pass on to others in the form of education. Both education and research can, of course, be motivated by a preconceived agenda, but ideally they seek an objective truth. Research can be at odds with itself, assuming the truer finding eventually wins the argument. Education, however, cannot be at odds with research.

In a basic way, research changes the facts, but education changes your thinking. It is an obvious fact that the Holocaust occured. It is an obvious fact that millions of people were ruthlessly exterminated for psychotic political ideals. The evidence for the Holocaust cannot be denied. I almost want to find a better word than “evidence,” because evidence implies clues that are open for interpretation, whereas there can be no other interpretation here. The facts in this case are immutable, and so it falls to education to change our thinking. To gloss over one of the greatest atrocities in mankind’s history for fear of offending a myopic and racist worldview does a disservice to the very idea of education.