University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Werklund School of Education Werklund School of Education Research & Publications 2020-08-11 Ernest Becker's Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection Fisher, R. Michael In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute Fisher, R. M. (2020). Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection. (Technical Paper No.99). In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112381 Unless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection R. Michael Fisher © 2020 Technical Paper No. 99 In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute 2 Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection Copyright 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the pub- lisher/author. No permission is necessary in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, or other educational or research purposes. For information and permission address correspond- ence to: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute 920A- 5 Ave. N. E., Calgary, AB T2E 0L4 Contact author(s): [email protected] First Edition 2020 Cover and layout by R. Michael Fisher ISOF Logo (original 1989) designed by RMF Printed in Canada The In Search of Fearlessness Institute is dedicated to research and publishing on fear, fearlessness and emotions and motiva- tional forces, in general, as well as critical reviews of such works. Preference is given to works with an integral theoretical perspective. 2 3 Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection 1 R. Michael Fisher, Ph.D. ©2020 Technical Paper No. 99 Abstract The author reviews the literature in professional education that cites Ernest Becker’s work from the 1960s-70s. Some of Becker’s main ideas from his own writing on education are also reviewed. The purpose here is to establish a sketch, not a full-study, of the importance of Becker’s educational legacy and begin some critique of the biases of professional educators in regard to utilizing Becker’s work. This critical reflectivity is an appropriate model of Becker’s own integrative approach to knowledge and learning. The aim is to ensure that future applications may be cautious to certain reductive tendencies and offer more diverse perspec- tives that are truer to Becker’s oeuvre and core ideas about human behavior and societies in general, and education specifically. The author concludes that the future of Education, formal and informal, would do well to take a long serious look at Becker’s work, especially as the world’s children, youths and adults are is becoming more and more vulnerable to frightening conditions, with cascading collapse of systems, including extinctions of all kinds already well underway in an era of global threats nearing extremes. Becker’s oeuvre is both realistic and ideal- istic, offering Education a way to radically improve to help make for a better world. 1 Fisher is an Adjunct Faculty member of the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, AB, Canada. He is an educator and fearologist and co-founder of In Search of Fearlessness Project (1989- ) and Research Institute (1991- ) and lead initiator of the Fear- lessness Movement ning (2015- ). The Fearology Institute was created by him recently to teach international students about fearology as a legitimate field of studies and profession. He is also founder of the Center for Spiritual Inquiry & Integral Education and is Depart- ment Head at CSIIE of Integral & 'Fear' Studies. Fisher is an independent scholar, public intellectual and pedagogue, lecturer, author, consultant, researcher, coach, artist and Princi- pal of his own company (http://loveandfearsolutions.com). He has four leading-edge books: The World’s Fearlessness Teachings: A critical integral approach to fear manage- ment/education for the 21st century (University Press of America/Rowman & Littlefield), Philosophy of fearism: A first East-West dialogue (Xlibris) and Fearless engagement of Four Arrows: The true story of an Indigenous-based social transformer (Peter Lang), Fear, law and criminology: Critical issues in applying the philosophy of fearism (Xlibris); India, a Nation of Fear and Prejudice (Xlibris); The Marianne Williamson Presidential Phenome- non (Peter Lang). Currently, he is developing The Fearology Institute to teach courses. He can be reached at: [email protected] 3 4 PREAMBLE We are living in a time of uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and des- pair....Humankind will survive only through the commitment and involvement of individuals in their own and others’ growth and development as human beings....Through com- mitment to personal growth individual human beings will also make their contribution to the growth and development—the evolution—of the whole species to become all that humankind can and is meant to be. Death is the key to that evolution. For only when we understand the real meaning of death to human existence will we have the courage to become what we are destined to be....It is the denial of death that is partially re- sponsible for people living empty, purposeless lives...too easy to postpone things you know that you must do....commit your- self to growth. -Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1975, pp. 164-65) Why Educators Might Study Ernest Becker’s Work [re: Becker’s book trilogy devoted to a “new science of man” in the 1960s was meant to achieve] a new orientation...against the ascendancy of medical-psychiatric explanations of human behavior....[adding ] social-behavioral theories of mental ill- ness....[to provide] a unified theory of action....to place the whole understanding of human nature into the historical per- spective of the past two centuries....[creating] an integral framework.... -Ernest Becker (1968, p. xiv)2 This was a challenging paper to write. I thank several scholars for conver- sations, and those readers who commented on drafts.3 One reason of many, for my passionate attraction to Becker’s work now is because of his broad and deep ‘reading’ of the past few hundred years of diverse knowledges and theories, and his dedication to synthesize for readers of his time the ‘best’ picks from his experience of what would make an integral frame- work, philosophy, and theory for understanding human beings. Any educa- tor with integrity ought to be in a constant quest to learn about human be- 2 This quote was penned in 1964, updated in 1966 (cited from Preface, 1968). 3 I have gained insights from Jack Martin, Joseph Scimmeca, and especially Daniel Liechty who commented in detail on this paper. 4 5 havior and society’s organization with emphasis on their deepest motiva- tions. To find rare researchers and thinkers like Becker is a treat for me and that’s why I am dedicating this Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy to the published works in my field of Education at-large. I will not be able to do justice to all of Becker’s ideas in this publication, but to let you know that his overall work is in line with the earlier developments in educational thought by John Dewey4 but taken to a greater extent into dialogues with anthropology, ethology, psychiatry, sociology, theology, and other disci- plines than Dewey had accomplished in his time. In 1967 Becker wrote his one and only book on education itself. I wished I would have been intro- duced to it in my B.Ed. degree program. One might question immediately: What’s the point of studying some old philosopher’s works? Isn’t it enough to be learning new philosophers of education and trendy views about human behavior based on up-dated sci- entific data? I understand that question’s relevance. At the age of nearly 69 years old myself, when I look back of my own learning, I have to say, the greatest things I’ve learned are those coming from history, supplemented with findings coming from current times. It is their synthesis of perspec- tives across time that I believe ‘best’ inform today’s citizens and teachers. There is always an invisibility of great genius, since time immemorial, lurking in historical documents and past memory, which is waiting for ex- posure to improve Education. It takes dedicated ‘archeologists’ to dig up what most stand on with irreverence and forget. Most of us search the land- scapes of cultural explosions and trending for the contemporary most styl- ish heroes for inspiration and guidance. Becker abhorred “faddism” in the domain of research, ideas and knowledge.5 Educators are susceptible to that as well, for I remember my days in the institutionalized educational System, from the pre-service undergraduate courses in how to ‘become a teacher’ through to the on-the-job learning as a public school teacher. I felt the faddish pressures and what priorities are enacted by children’s parents, peer-teachers, school administrators and political appointees, who make 4 And in an American context, before Dewey, the continuity of progressive integrative knowledge quests by Josiah Royce, William James, and James Mark Baldwin (cf. Wilber, 2000a, p. xi) are important foundations to Dewey’s oeuvre and educational philosophy. All of these powerful thinkers were challenging the hegemony of the “new rationalism” (e.g., hubris) since the French Enlightenment—and more a need to go beyond “intellectualism” and “narrow analytic intelligence” only, towards a social philosophy that includes social change brought about by good social systems analysis “during troubled times” (Becker, 1968, pp.