I am disappointed that we did not have the time to discuss Kathleen Berry’s essay in class on Wednesday. Now I feel as if she’s getting away with something and I don’t like it. That is, there is a part of her auto-ethnography, Exploring the Authority of Whiteness in Education which not only misleads the reader but also, I think, does a disservice to the very minorities she seeks to elevate.
She writes on page 26,
Compatible with the Enlightenment, today’s teacher education programs still pay homage to the principles and structures of knowledge such as subject disciplines, objective outcomes, and standardized testing/courses. Even mathematics is based on Greek and Roman perceptions of the world. Time, measurement, angles, geometry and arithmetic with its base ten configurations, are created out of the need for early Western rationality to manage, control, unify, shape and govern a diverse population with its plurality of nation states, languages, cultural knowledge, and values. Cultural groups who construct time, place, organize family and spiritual centers, and build connecting artefacts such as tunnels and bridges did so without Western rationality. When asked to consent and conform to a different consciousness, however, the Other is positioned on the fringes of power or silenced. Those students with a non-Eurocentric ancestry sit before me as they are forced to consent to time and space configurations that were created and enforced by Western rationality.
Berry goes on to claim that pluralism requires the “eradication” of educational standards:
Just as oppositional binaries and Eurocentricism have defined rationality, scientific objectivity, and separation of mind (as cogitative, biological), body (as object), and spirituality (as metaphysical waste), so too as modern education. The public (ignited by the likes of publishers, government interests, and media) and educational professionals (fuelled by fear of loss of power, control and Whiteness) whine about diminishing “standards,” the need for “standards,” plus more and earlier “standardized” testing. What, in fact, is happening is a need to maintain control over privileges that come with a society based on Whiteness…
After reading this essay several times, I have come to realize that it is not Berry’s (discouragingly negative) perception of White culture that annoys me, but rather the fact that she speaks of ‘Whiteness’ and ‘rationality’ and ‘scientific objectivity’ in the same breath, as if these concepts were somehow synonymous. In fact they are not, and any argument based on the premise that reason is a cultural particularity of the West is nonsensical. Reason is as universally human a faculty as love. Mathematics, it is said, is the only truly common language. Indeed, empirical observation may be the only absolute standard of truth we have, and to throw into doubt this point of universal understanding is, I think, very dangerous. Every culture can have its own opinion about the afterlife, or about how best to distribute wealth among its people, but when we begin to claim that an object’s acceleration due to gravity at sea level is a topic open for debate, then we are in very big trouble.
Now, I realize that I am using a rational argument to defend rationality, which is a circular paradox that is at best irrational, but if I were to use an irrational argument to defend rationality then I fear it would be even worse. Now, you see the sort of logical cul-de-sac Berry’s argument has backed us into. But my problem with her essay does not end there, because ours is not only a philosophical disagreement - Berry also has got some of her facts wrong.
Twice in her essay, Berry makes specific reference to “base-ten numbers,” claiming that these, among other things, were invented “out of the need for early Western rationality to manage, control, unify, shape and govern a diverse population with its plurality of nation states, languages, cultural knowledge, and values.” I can’t see how this is even remotely possible, because the number system in question is not Western in origin. Base-ten notation was used in ancient India and later in the Arabic Empire, but never by the Greeks and never by the Romans. The decimal notation we use today was only imported into Europe much later, in the middle ages by an Italian mathematician who studied in Algeria. This is exactly why we call our numbers ‘Arabic numerals’ – they’re Arabic!
In fact, our scientific vocabulary is filled with artifacts of Eastern contributions to early science – ‘algorithm,’ ‘algebra,’ ‘alchemy,’ and ‘alkaline’ are just a handful of words whose origins can be traced back to the Islamic Golden Age, when Muslim scientists were pioneers of discovery and Baghdad was one of the centers of the intellectual world. It may surprise some people to know that two-thirds of the stars in the sky have Arabic names, thanks to Muslim astronomers who meticulously scoured the skies between the years 800 and 1100 AD. Even the scientific method itself - taught as Gospel in every high school science classroom - was pioneered by an Islamic scientist. (Dennis Overbye wrote a brief piece on the rise and fall of Islamic science for the New York Times: you can read it here.)
The assertion that our modern understanding of space, time, geometry and mathematics are based on White perceptions of the world not only overlooks the vast contributions to science made by Eastern cultures, but also betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of science itself. Science is not a perception, it is a process, and the product of this process is empirical truth. Truth cannot be politicized, and truth is not answerable to the kind of cultural relativism to which Berry has subjected it here. To do so not only cheapens science, but also delivers a backhanded insult to those cultures which can, and do, and have for a long time, made meaningful contributions to this school of thought.
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What Berry’s essay suffers from, I think, is a lack of clarity in differentiating the scopes of science and philosophy. That is, the real conflict does not lie in the subjugation of Eastern culture by scientific objectivity. Rather, the problem arises when scientific materialism usurps the role of philosophy and spirituality as the only logically tenable worldview. For instance, I think that a good argument can be made that White culture sometimes values scientific truth to the exclusion of spiritual and philosophical insight. If this is true, then I would argue that it is not our standard of scientific literacy which is to blame, but rather the lack of diversity in our social science curriculum. Whereas science is uniquely concerned with what is, philosophy, theology and studies in spirituality are concerned with what ought to be, and there may be great understanding to be gained from Eastern perspectives.
In his book, The Universe in a Single Atom: the Convergence of Science and Spirituality, Tenzin Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama) articulates a position that respects the boundaries of science and spirituality while also realizing how each might complement the other. On page 205 he writes,
The insights of science have enriched many aspects of my own Buddhist worldview. Einstein’s theory of relativity, with its vivid thought experiments, has given an empirically tested texture to my grasp of Nagarjuna’s theory of the relativity of time. The extraordinary detailed picture of the behaviour of subatomic particles at the minutest levels imaginable brings home the Buddha’s teaching on the dynamically transient nature of all things. The discovery of the genome all of us share throws into sharp relief the Buddhist view of the fundamental equality of all human beings.
What is the place of science in the totality of human endeavor? It has investigated everything from the smallest amoeba to the complex neurobiological system of human beings, from the creation of the universe and the emergence of life on earth to the very nature of matter and energy. Science has been spectacular in exploring reality. It has not only revolutionized our knowledge but opened new avenues of knowing. It has begun to make inroads into the complex question of consciousness – they key characteristic that makes us sentient. The question is whether science can provide a comprehensive understanding of the entire spectrum of reality and human existence.
From the Buddhist perspective, a full human understanding must not only offer a coherent account of reality, our means of apprehending it, and the place of consciousness but also include a clear awareness of how we should act. In the current paradigm of science, only knowledge derived through a strictly empirical method underpinned by observation, inference, and experimental verification can be considered valid. The method involves the use of quantification and measurement, repeatability, and confirmation by others. Many aspects of reality as well as some key elements of human existence, such as the ability to distinguish between good and evil, spirituality, artistic creativity - some of the things we most value about human beings – inevitably fall outside the scope of the method. Scientific knowledge, as it stands today, is not complete. Recognizing this fact, and clearly recognizing the limits of scientific knowledge, I believe, is essential. Only by such recognition can we genuinely appreciate the need to integrate science within in the totality of human knowledge. Otherwise our conception of the world, including our own existence, will be limited to the facts adduced by science, leading to a deeply reductionist, materialistic, even nihilistic worldview.
That an Eastern spiritual leader harbours such deep respect for science is very inspiring to me. If we are to diversify our educational system to include a more global perspective, then this is exactly the kind of approach that is needed: not the elimination of our standards for scientific excellence, but the addition of substantial study in Eastern history, philosophy, literature, and religion. Just as I believe that students of Eastern origin can flourish in a physics classroom, so too do I believe that Western students can excel in studying Buddhist philosophy. Unlike Berry, I do not believe that the mere existence of standardized testing exhibits a White bias – the bias lies only in what we are requiring the students to learn.
If we fail to realize this, and instead choose to deconstruct our entire system of instruction simply because we can trace its structure and principles back to a period of Western Enlightenment in which racist thought was prevalent, then I fear the result will be to destroy the all the positive, universally productive characteristics that system has to offer students of all ethnicities. That is to say, in our quest to achieve truly inclusive education, let's not end up throwing out the Berry – er, I mean, the baby - with the bathwater.
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