The industrial metaphor is pervasive, powerful and persistent. The Industrial model was that One guy, The boss had all the power. he delegated work, and hired labor to do the production. The boss was the brains and the workers were the brawn.

Academia basically follows the industrial model power structure but pretends to be different because our "Bosses" are more enlightened. However below the surface we have the "Important People" professors parceling out bits of knowledge to the "less Important" student. The Professor has the knowledge and the students have to be given it by the professor because they are not capable of getting it on their own.

The centralization of authority and lengthy process required to generate nationwide objectives for education has ensured that the industrial model persists.

The reality is that learning has always happened without Academia, For example, Billions of people have learned to speak Mandarin Chinese without ever attending school. Their parents taught them at home or they learned by listening to people speak. It is my contention that the best and brightest could be handed the textbook and told what to study and come back at the end of their class and pass the final. This raises two questions:

What does the educator add to the process?

Why can't all the students do this on their own?

In Peter Drucker's New World order of Accellerating Change, Increasing Complexity, and Global Competition Printed Textbooks and last years lectures are obsolete before they begin. And some would argue that Academic education is slow, provides outdated information and is far too expensive for the result.

The way out is to shift to an Outcomes model that focuses on a growth mindset discovery pattern in which students seek competency and knowledge because they want it. And an educational environment in which people collect skills at their own pace rather than be forced in to the same rate as every one else. Think of the Boy Scout Merit Badge system rather than the assembly line.

We spend most of our time in graduate education in which we are charged with developing competent health care professionals, trying to undo years of misguided fixed mindset grade seeking behaviour.

I am aware that certain universities will talk about 'learning journeys'. Whilst there may be some academic basis for this phrase it makes me feel as if I am observing some sort of reality television where the student is a contestant subject to the sequence of encounters that have been planned or agreed with the permission of some other.

If it is not a reality television metaphor then it may have religious or therapeutic meanings with tutors perhaps having the role of guru or even 'spirit guide'.

Rather than instructional metaphors there may be a move towards slightly more democratic metaphors such as Wenger's (1998) much lauded 'Communities of Practice' which focuses on the processes of articulation and reification of knowledge. Wenger's work follows a tradition that looks at the social and cultural aspects of learning and has links to Cultural Historical Activity Theory which has had a difficult time generating off the peg metaphors for learning. Wenger, however, does talk about four components of learning as a social activity - learning as meaning making, learning as belonging, learning as activity and learning as becoming, The later fits with apprenticeship metaphors for learning in which learners engage in identity projects where they do the things that define what they want to be. eg a writer, a student, a mechanic, a teacher

Richard Millward also noted the issue of overly technocratic and limited metaphors of learning available to producers of on-line materials and has produced a rather useful diagram of different learning theories.

http://blog.richardmillwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Learning-Theory.pdf

A long while ago, I wrote about the potential of the notion of Universal Design for Learning as a reformulation of the concept of Differentiation.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229730744_Universal_Design_for_Learning_Re-establishing_Differentiation_as_Part_of_the_Inclusion_Agenda?ev=prf_pub

This was concerned with design principles in learning relating to engagement and access. It might be that technology metaphors have some use in education because they can enable the creation of learning spaces for all rather than exam factories.

Perhaps the metaphorical tool set is not wrong but the design is wrong and we are using the wrong tools for the wrong job... or has the metaphor been stretched too far?

Article Universal Design for Learning: Re-establishing Differentiati...

The industrial metaphor is pervasive, powerful and persistent. The Industrial model was that One guy, The boss had all the power. he delegated work, and hired labor to do the production. The boss was the brains and the workers were the brawn.

Academia basically follows the industrial model power structure but pretends to be different because our "Bosses" are more enlightened. However below the surface we have the "Important People" professors parceling out bits of knowledge to the "less Important" student. The Professor has the knowledge and the students have to be given it by the professor because they are not capable of getting it on their own.

The centralization of authority and lengthy process required to generate nationwide objectives for education has ensured that the industrial model persists.

The reality is that learning has always happened without Academia, For example, Billions of people have learned to speak Mandarin Chinese without ever attending school. Their parents taught them at home or they learned by listening to people speak. It is my contention that the best and brightest could be handed the textbook and told what to study and come back at the end of their class and pass the final. This raises two questions:

What does the educator add to the process?

Why can't all the students do this on their own?

In Peter Drucker's New World order of Accellerating Change, Increasing Complexity, and Global Competition Printed Textbooks and last years lectures are obsolete before they begin. And some would argue that Academic education is slow, provides outdated information and is far too expensive for the result.

The way out is to shift to an Outcomes model that focuses on a growth mindset discovery pattern in which students seek competency and knowledge because they want it. And an educational environment in which people collect skills at their own pace rather than be forced in to the same rate as every one else. Think of the Boy Scout Merit Badge system rather than the assembly line.

We spend most of our time in graduate education in which we are charged with developing competent health care professionals, trying to undo years of misguided fixed mindset grade seeking behaviour.

@Colin et al.

From my first day as a teacher in school, one of the IA (industrial arts) teachers said to me that this school 'machinery' (teachers) are good, but the raw materials (students) are poor quality. So I was cautioned not to have high expectations concerning my students.

The Biology book stated that the nucleus is like the manager, controlling cell functions.

But these were not the metaphors my dad taught me. His metaphors included: 'All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this hand of mine'. My childhood was rich with meaning and purpose.

At our Department of Teacher Education, we teach about three metaphors of learning: learning as acquisition (i.e. the classical view of learning based on cognitive psychology; one learns through processing knowledge preferably with effective learning strategies), learning as participation (i.e. one learns, e.g., scientific discourse and practice by participating in such a community of practice), and learning as knowledge building (a highly student-centred pedagogical model where students formulate their own questions, explore them, redifine their questions etc.) The first two are based on an classical article by Anna Sfard, whereas the third metaphor draws on the work by Carl Bereiter.

Here is a related study

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225089059_University_Metaphors_A_Study_of_Academicians_Perspectives?ev=prf_pub

Article University Metaphors: A Study of Academicians’ Perspectives

Colin et al.

We all probably couldn't avoid using the factory, manufacturing, engineering metaphors. We have got into the habit. I guess there will be more metaphors that borrow the language of ICT; perhaps in the next few years. But we have to think of our students as humans having their own mind and will, not as materials that we can fashion as we please.

Thanks for these very interesting responses.

@Mike Blamires. Yes, the journey metaphor is familiar. Indeed, it plays a part in our new Scottish Curriculum as one of the major documents for this is called ‘The Journey to Excellence’. However, this has been criticized as not spelling out what sort of journey or what the destination (Excellence) actually is.

I can’t resist sharing one of my favourite quotes at this point as it does suggest that we do need to know what kind of journey. A young (presumably very aware and articulate) person is describing her experiences of primary and secondary science education in terms of two sorts of journey.

“…primary science was like being in a small plane flying over a vast open landscape like a desert. You could land anywhere to have a look around and explore for a while. There was a sense in which it didn’t seem to matter too much where you had landed, because it was the exploring that was important, not so much what you found. The fact that the knowledge you accumulated was patchwork, and had big ‘holes’ in it was not a problem.

Secondary science, on the other hand, was like being on a train in carriages that had blanked out windows. You were going in a single direction, about which you had no choice. The train stopped at every station and you had to get off. Whether you liked it or were interested or were not, and pay attention to what the driver told you to. Then you got back on the train and went off to the next station- but because the windows were opaque you could not see the countryside in-between, so you did not know how the stations were linked or related to each other. Obviously, you were on a purposeful journey, you were going somewhere, and the train driver seemed to know where it was. Worst of all was the feeling that you were supposed to understand the direction of the journey too, even though nobody had given you a map, or let you look out of the train as it was chugging along. So you would come to think that it was your fault that you could not put it all together. “(Guy Claxton, 1991, Educating the Inquiring Mind, pages 25-26)

Also Mike, your mention of design reminded me of David Perkins’ book, ‘Knowledge as Design.” It is a long time since I read it, and I do not have a copy, so I am relying on memory and may be mis-communicating its message. As I recall it, the argument was that knowledge is designed for particular purposes – to explain and describe and so on. Teachers then introduce students to the knowledge through making clear the design purposes of the knowledge they are dealing with. Probably a gross simplification of Perkins’ argument, but if along the right lines, it sounds more like an initiation metaphor is being applied also. I return to your points in the last two paragraphs below.

@Gregory Alston. I think that the technological/industrial/manufacturing/engineering set of metaphors are popular with some for the very reasons you mention. They are useful for politicians and others in power more locally in our educational institutions in helping that power to be wielded, to determine what people should learn, and to hold people accountable. I am not sure, though, that I agree that all lectures -classroom activities of any sort in fact – are immediately obsolete. I still find many ideas from the past useful in interpreting the present and might not have come across many of them without introduction through education. Science might be constantly making new findings, but it still uses a lot of now quite old concepts. Just because they are freely available, it does not mean that I will find them, or recognize their significance, without support. Another of my favourite quotes:

"….science teachers have to explain things that do not seem to need explaining at all. How do we see things? Why are our bodies warm? Why does coal burn? Why do hot things cool down? Why is the sky dark at night? Why do mammals have four limbs? Why are solids hard and liquids runny? Such things seem to common sense to be so obvious that there is no need to explain them. Indeed, nobody asks how to explain them because they are just the kind of thing we use to explain other things. Why shake the foundations unnecessarily? And yet, it is typical of the sciences that they do shake the foundations of knowledge in this way. "(Ogborn et al, 1991, Explaining Science in the Classroom, page 2)

However, I agree absolutely that the Boy Scout Merit Badge may be a useful metaphor to apply. I also agree that it would be better all round if education did not so strongly encourage grade-seeking behavior at the expense of the development of real understandings and competence.

@Miranda Yeoh I like the idea of trying to find a way of including the metaphor of 'All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this hand of mine', in the educational set. For me, it reminds me that our students, and indeed ourselves, are intrinsically valuable. Our value does not depend on what others add to us.

@Laura Helle Thanks for sharing these three metaphors for learning. There seems to be some overlap between these and conceptions of learning by Säljö, Marton and so on. You are no doubt familiar with these fellow residents (at least originally) of the Baltic area. I have shared these on two other threads (e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_students_grade-seeking_or_competence-seeking?cp=re65_x_p2&ch=reg&loginT=EkIteW3CWVOLOmJtcsIQ1GBhwsrMgDx273rNN6hkMrM-25uP0e80Bg%2C%2C&pli=1), so no point in adding them here again. What interests me is whether the metaphors are presented to your students as mutually exclusive, or are they presented as alternatives that can be applied in different educational contexts.? Would you like to elaborate?

@ Mehmet Firat I have not had a chance to properly read your study yet but the impression I get on a quick scan seems to support one thought behind asking the question – that no single metaphor of education (I know that your study was into metaphors for university but the same may apply) is adequate to capturing all its nuances. Lakoff and Johnson argue (persuasively in my opinion) that we cannot think without metaphors – they are not just a luxury used in certain forms of thought such as poetry and so on, but fundamental to all thought. However, they also point out that metaphors tend to emphasise certain aspects of what they are applied to and draw attention away from others aspects. I interpret that as requiring a range of metaphors for complex processes (perhaps another metaphor) such as education.

So to return to Mike’s final points, and Mirandas second point above, to reach a conclusion so far, there is the possibility from this discussion already that the set of metaphors in the question do have some useful purpose (I am not sure what they are, yet anyway, but there is that possibility and others may be quicker than me in identifying them), that metaphors may be overstretched (it suits some people to do so, for example), but what we really need is a much richer set of metaphors for education. Let's continue to look for them. Any more ideas?

I don't really object to the "Learners Are Workers" metaphor. Workers get paid. The widgets that workers produce are valued by their employers. Workers have the right to unionize and to go on strike. Workers have legal protection against being mistreated.

The only problem with the metaphor is that it isn't remotely accurate. I enjoyed undergraduate university, but hated almost everything about grad school except the part where I was left alone to get my research done. I lost an obscene amount of money attending grad school, and I felt badly treated by both my supervisors, who seemed to believe I existed for their benefit. Yet without students, the faculty in grad school had no reason to draw paycheques.

I've heard enough stories to know my situation isn't unusual. I've even heard tales of supervisors deliberately delaying the graduation of students simply because their labs are benefiting so much from the free labour. Paying grad students what their labour is worth would alleviate this problem.

I went to a well-regarded North American university for grad school. Perhaps the situation is different in other parts of the world. However, when I was attending grad school I wished many times for union protection and a paycheque. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of throwing good money after bad, which is what kept me in the programme. I think, at the graduate level at least, education will improve when the "Student As Worker" metaphor is made reality; or at least, when students get some of the rights of being factory workers as well as the disadvantages. Now that so much free university-level material is available on the web, I think universities may have to start to work harder to keep good students.

Dear Colin,

Your question reminds me of an animated talk by Ken Robinson about changing education paradigms. It refers to several issues, including the manufacturing metaphor. It offers a critical view towards this paradigm.

You can find the talk here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html

Mathematics education researcher Anna Sfard discusses two metaphors for learning (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1176193)

On one hand, in a constructivist spirit, we talk of knowledge as an object that we as learners can acquire or build, so that we have it.

On the other hand, in line with Mike Blamries' reference to Wenger, from a sociocultural persective, there is also a participation metaphor for learning. Here, the goal of students is appropriation, becoming competenent members of a society.

Sfard argues that as educators, we need both these metaphors.

Alternative frames of reference include learning gymnasium from Claxton in "What's the Point of School?"; Drucker employs an orchestral metaphor with indicators such as tunefulness, harmony and sounds; Meadows recommends dance - http://www.ioia.net/images/pdf/DancingWithSystemsDMeadows.pdf

It is worth remembering that the messages inferred from the metaphors we use are 'in the eyes of the beholder'. Students draw their own conclusions despite our best efforts. I personally use a range of metaphors, with a focus on participation rather than performance. My key message whichever metaphor I use for any student is one of personal satisfaction in doing a good job. I was for a time, a professional dancer and the greatest pleasure was not the performance, though pleasurable, but the rehearsal, the striving to be always better than I was the time before, so I try to incorporate that into my teaching. The industrial/job filling metaphor is useful in many students eyes as it is the reality for them at later stages of schooling. Trying to give them a range of metaphors is useful. Industrial, social, participative, self worth so students can move themseleves through these metaphors as they need in their self talk.

I think it's critical that we find another metaphor for education, a vivid one that can capture the imagination of the public and provoke a paradigm shift about the process of learning and the educational institutions we construct. Yes, metaphors constrain how we envision their topics--in this case, education. If you're not familiar with Lakoff and Johnson's METAPHORS WE LIVE BY, I strongly recommend it.

I also agree that it would be wise to choose a metaphor that's not technological. Notice how the dominant technologies of an era tend to provide the metaphors for important things. In the era of computers, for instance, the human brain is envisioned in terms of a computer, and human relationships turn into "networking."

Sir Ken Robinson isn't the only major thinker to talk about the factory model of education (that insight has been around for over 30 years), but I did have an opportunity to ask him what his metaphor would be--he's thinking in terms of a garden. When I posed the same question to a small group at a symposium on creativity, they chose the metaphor "community garden." I like those ideas but am not sure they're strong enough to stimulate paradigm shift.

@Colin Smith - Liked the examples of the learning journeys. The train one is reminiscent of Lenin's trip to the Finland Station. I have ordered the Perkins book being unaware of his work.

@Suzanne Burgoyne

I am going to be a bit flippant but I do hope that I have a valid point to make. The garden metaphor does not work for me as it reminds me of the cultivation of mushrooms which you probably know is a metaphor for working in a organisation that keeps you in the dark and keeps on feeding you manure.

The garden metaphor might be about being kept outside and weeded if you deviate. I am sure that was no one's intention when they thought of it. It is also about nurturing, tending and cultivating which I identify with. José Martí (the Cuban pedagogue and nationalist) talks about the importance of cultivation within education as one can learn something about the earth and end up with something to eat for your efforts. (Foner, Ed., Martí and Education). Martí was also more into the agricultural needs of a developing country than the aesthetics of gardening. but his emphasis on cultural development was matched by his emphasis on cultivation.

However, I think the garden metaphor is somewhat passive.

As Mark Gould states "Students draw their own conclusions despite our best efforts"

So is the teacher the gardener or the greenfly ? Is the pupil one seed planted in a row, encouraged to head to the light only to pruned when they have gone 'to far' or in the 'wrong direction'.

I like the identity component of Wenger's social model of learning and the idea of learners actively engaging in 'Identity Projects' to begin to define who they might become as well as reinventing culture to meet the needs of a new generation. (another Martí-ian idea).

We have also not mentioned Postman and Weingartner's 'Teaching as a Subversive Activity' where the aim was to encourage pupil criticality which they gave a slightly vulgar name to. (rubbish detecting in ultra polite English).

So as Otto Santa Ana suggests we might have a self referential metaphor of education as acculturation where the learner actively seeks understandings and skills which they apply and develop often in collaborative ways in order gain the knowledge required for whoever they shall be.

If we have an agreed definition of education or at least some of the key ideas of education then we may not need a metaphor as we can say what it actually is rather than what it is like,

The ‘community garden’ metaphor.

Thanks Suzanne. I could be wrong, but I am not sure that any metaphor is strong enough on its own. A metaphor seems inevitably to draw us to some features of what is to be understood and away from others. That’s why I refer to a set of metaphors in the question. But the ‘community garden’ metaphor is interesting so let’s explore it a little. What sort of features of education might it draw us towards and which, perhaps, might usefully expand our ways of thinking about it? Here are a few starters.

1) A community garden, by definition, is tended and maintained by a community for that community’s benefit and enjoyment, while also providing a range of some immediately useful items (vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers, for example), while also being a benefit to wild life (bees, butterflies, hedgehogs, frogs, toads, slugs, snails aphids, ladybirds, etc. etc. – substitute local forms, if necessary) These forms of wildlife, even the one’s we regard as pests, contribute to the wider ecology in which humans live. This suggests to me educational institutions in which the community more directly controls what goes on, that the community enjoys and values those institutions. The danger might be in the idea of ‘useful items.’ Our students are part of the community, not just useful products. We could be returning to the manufacturing, engineering metaphors, albeit in a different form. Or perhaps, the idea of serving the community is essential to educational metaphors, in some form. Some contributors above seem to think this is probable. Is this metaphor better at incorporating that necessity – better in the sense that it is less dehumanizing?

2) A garden has micro-climates, so that different plants thrive in different parts of it. Should our educational institutions (schools, universities, and so on) follow this principle? How?

3) Some of what the plants need in a garden is naturally present (nutrients in the soil, water from rain, carbon dioxide in the air, light from the sun). What would an educational system be like that naturally provides much of what our students need to thrive?

4) For certain plants, we may need to increase the fertility of the soil. When might it be necessary to increase the ‘natural fertility’ of our educational institutions – our ‘community gardens.” What does this involve?

5) Gardens have seasons – some plants are permanent across those seasons, others see only the spring and/or summer. Some blossom in winter, some in autumn (fall) but most in spring and summer. Not sure where that aspect of gardens takes us educationally though. Any ideas?

Feel free to add your own insights and answers to some of these questions.

@Mike Blamires You have certainly convinced me that the garden metaphor has negative aspects, but again that may just show that no single metaphor captures something as complex as education. Your final point would be great if we could do it, but scholars of metaphors seem to be uniting around the idea that we cannot think without them. What I take from this discussion so far is that education has many key ideas, and so is perhaps not reducible to a definition or even a single metaphor. That need not stop us understanding it though. Biologists and philosophers of biology have never been able to define life to the satisfaction of all - there are always counter definitions. Machery argues that they should stop trying. We possibly could possibly substitute the words 'education' and 'educated people' for 'life' and living beings in the following quote.

"Life definitionists could reply that if one puts aside some categorization decisions, one could capture the remaining decisions by means of a definition. Thus, even if categorization decisions within the class of living beings rest on a prototype, on a set of exemplars, on a theory, or on a perceptual symbol, it may be possible to capture most of them, instead of all of them, by means of a definition of life. Although this is in principle possible, this move faces two challenging difficulties. If any of the views presented above is correct, a large number of categorization decisions might have to be excluded for the class of living beings to be definable. The definition that would capture the remaining categorization decisions would probably look arbitrary since it would capture only a small subset of our categorization decisions within the class of living beings. The second problem is even more challenging. There are plausibly many ways of restricting the set of categorization decisions to a definable subset. As a result, one would probably end up with several definitions. Which of them would be the concept of life? How could we choose?" ( Machery, 2012, pp.155-156, added emphasis)

Marchery, E. (2012) Why I stopped worrying about the definition of life…and why you should as well. Synthese, 185, 145-164

We need much more organic metaphors ...quantum paradigmatic shift needed...empty metaphors keep us stuck.

I think of the first metaphor (which still is alive in some brains): „education“ derives from Latin e(x) + ducere which is ‚to lead out [of somewhere]’. This means an action where somebody (the leader) is active and a second person (who is affected by the activity of the first person in the way that he/she is led out) is (more or less) passive.

Similar in Greek: παῖς (pais ‚boy’) and ἄγειν (ágein ‚to lead‘). Girls must stay inside. (But in the beginning the paidagogos was just a slave who had to oversee a boy. A little bit like school-education nowadays resp. its political function.)

Similar in German: „erziehen“ consists of er (< ur = ‚up’) + ziehen which means ‚to draw somebody up’, which means that the leader is on a higher level and tries to DRAW the child up to his level. (The problem is that the leader is not always [or seldom?] on a higher moral level, because he/she is an adult, and adults are responsible for all wars and dirty things which happen in the world that the children live in.)

Some thousands of years of drawing children.

To where?

@ Klaus Schuricht : I like your etymological explanations, but what then, in this metaphor, is the meaning of Andragogics (not excluding women) aka Andragology (there is/was a department of that name at the University of Amsterdam, perhaps also elsewhere?). In other words: who is leading the leaders, and how?

The problem with our languages is, that they are full of metaphors (cf. Lakoff) which are extremely time-, culture- and geography-dependent. Could it thus be that the ideas emanating from the old Greek and Latin wor(l)d don't fit anymore with our (equally contingent) world views, with which we have to live, whether we like it or not, being "children of our time and culture"?

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403858221&sr=8-1&keywords=Lakoff

@ Paul

Andragogics is a neologism oft he 19th/20th century built parallel to pedagogics. Anyway - according to „Enzyklo.de Deutsche Enzyklopädie“ is „Andragogik … etymologisch vom griechischen Wort Männerführung abgeleitet“ (derived from the Greek word 'leading of men'). –

Etymology doesn’t tell „the truth“, but sometimes it reveals the way (culture) of thinking at a certain time. -

Maybe it helps if we question every leadership (every „duce“) if we really need it (him).

Strangely enough, a neglected but very rich source of metaphors for education is mathematics.    Mathematics as source of metaphors has already been suggested by @Jesper Haglund  in an earlier post in this thread. 

In this post, I am suggested additional helpful metaphors that include

> structure (a principle idea in mathematics).   See sample structure in the attached image.

> space (set with some added structure such as that provided by a nearness relation).  See sample spaces in the attached image.

> mapping (a way to associate unique objects to elements in a given set).   The arrow leading from "The bigger picture" to elements of creative thought (e.g., problem solving, exploration, recognition) is an example of a map in the attached image.

Thanks for these James. One reason mathematics is neglected as a source of metaphors may be that not all of us think naturally in mathematical ways and need someone like yourself to point them out to us.

Anyway,these examples lead me to think that we need also to consider what the metaphors we use are for -  for example, to guide educational practice or to explain and describe what is actually going on (see also https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_Education_Science?cp=re65_x_p2&ch=reg&loginT=JAy-Br8DkG5ZXSoezZqaNWSMZu-wNK1bnw8czqfdhmy4FG4WPdNwRg%2A%2A&pli=1)

The metaphors you offer seem to me metaphors that would be useful in describing and explaining education as it actually occurs - at least the first two clearly do. In fact, the second one reminds me of Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of nested systems. I am guessing the idea of structure being included through 'nearness relations' also fits with his idea that people move in different micro-. meso and macro systems - a student, for example is in the classroom, in a family, in a group of peers, and so on. "System' is, of course, another metaphor in this context.

The reason that I am less sure about the last one is that it itself contains metaphors that  fit with the technological/manufacturing metaphor ("resource,' for example) or have been discussed elsewhere ('consumer'- https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_a_teacher_focus_on_rigorous_learning_or_learning_with_entertainment2/15) They could be there because they are currently used and so form part of the explanation or they could included be because they represent values that someone thinks we should follow. However, I guess that it is possible to develop the overall metaphor/model as either of these. Perhaps also, our own values inevitably creep into the way we explain and describe. 

Education underlies the dilemma that (in the best case)  it wants to form an independent person – by making the person dependent. The educator knows what is good for the person.

A metaphor is in danger to sugar-coat this dilemma.

Gregory,

''We spend most of our time in graduate education in which we are charged with developing competent health care professionals, trying to undo years of misguided fixed mindset grade seeking behaviour.''

The emphasis on getting good grades on the part of the parents and educators, starting in primary education and increasing in intensity into higher education, is in itself a manufacture of grade seekers.  The grades givers manufacture the grade seekers; it undermines what it means to foster genuine knowledge seeking.  Genuine knowledge seeking is natural in all kids, they have a genuine pleasure to discover new ways to interact and understand the world; Grades are  an external given pleasure, an external reward that is provided by parents and educators for the purpose to motivate learning for those who do not seem interested in learning. But real learning has to be fully integrated and productive for the whole life is the one that comes from the pleasure of learning. The learning that only produces good grades and external gratification will not be fully integrated.  The over-emphase on grades detracts the attention to the real reward and pleasure of learning in itself and for itself.  It fact it is constantly discouraged in the education system in the very name of encouraging it.  

And Louis' contribution brings us to the discussion on Mark Gould's question at https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_the_way_we_describe_success_in_education_affect_students_and_teachers_perception_of_their_roles

What metaphors underpin our concepts of educational success - from the discussion of metaphors here, is it: winning, growth, ability to play in an orcherstra, upgrading as a resource for society, reaching a point on a journey, and so on. Or from Mark's thread, is it achieving a personal best? 

Also relevant are the discussions at:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/To_what_extent_does_an_assessment_system_affect_pupil_student_performance

and

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_students_grade-seeking_or_competence-seeking

The following thread explores an interesting metaphor:

How can we recreate the adventure of education as a voyage of discovery on a ship guided and navigated by teachers but steered by each student?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_we_recreate_the_adventure_of_education_as_a_voyage_of_discovery_on_a_ship_guided_and_navigated_by_teachers_but_steered_by_each_student

J A N  A M O S  C O M E N I U S (1592-1670)

Jean Piaget

http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/comeniuse.PDF

Thanks for these Loiuis. It is interesting how discussions often overlap on RG. Would be good if they were somehow linked more efficiently - a keyword system??

Anyway, we now have education as a particular form of discovery adventure to addd to our list here. Also, craftsman and apprentice. You probably know this work already, but for followers who do not, forms of this metaphor are already well known in the literature and some can be found here. 

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=learning+through+cognitive+apprenticeship&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

and here

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Lave+and+Wenger&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1

'Guided discovery.' Guided exploration.' These do seem attractive metaphors for education. However, the sceptic will ask, 'Discover/explore what?'

The implicit answer in the terms is, 'That to which we guide them.' Klaus, above, points to the dilemma of education. Promote independence but treat students as dependent - in this case dependent on guidance, and we know what guidance they need. So, do these metaphors actually hide this dilemma (Klaus' answer implies they might) and is there a metaphor (or metaphors) that meet it head on and help us to deal with it? Do we need to? Perhaps education implies' that someone needs ' to know best." Or are we back to wondering if no single metaphor can capture the educational process. and what is the implication of that, if true?

Colin,

Trying to find an ultimate metaphor would be illusory and counter productive.  We need a tool box of good metaphors and we need to know how to use them in the best circumstance.  Metaphors are powerfull cognitive guide but all all of them break at some point. Each one illuminate a certain point of view that could be usefull.   They all have a limited range of applicability. It is why two metaphors can be opposed to each other and each of them can be usefull in different circumstances.  There is not need of perfect consistencies between the metaphors. The art of teaching is to know which one is more productive at a given time and use it creatively.

Yes Louis - too much haste last night before going to bed. My last sentence should have been,

Or are we back to wondering if no single range of metaphors can capture the educational process and what is the the implication of that. if true? 

However, i am also fascinated (one motivation for the question)  by how we do use opposing metaphors and perhaps you are right that we should just accept that. The problem is though that  education (including from Otto's earlier contribution also many in the general public view of it) tends to be dominated currently by the technological, manufacturing range and I wonder how much this actually undermines the educational process, as the values it implies (treating people as resources, etc) tend not to be those that we consciously espouse. 

The dominating industrial/service metaphors are problematic if the teacher buys into them too much. As in my earlier post, I think it is OK if the student accepts the industrial model for themselves as ONE of their metaphors, if the teacher takes it on board too much though, the impact can be unbalanced influencing the students inappropriately. Metaphors are powerful in the way they frame thinking for people. Too much buy in of one type, especially one that is focussed on the utilitarian, which in other discussions has been shown to have negative influences on motivation, is a risk. The metacognitive processes required for self understanding of the way we use metaphors is a sophisticated skill and teachers have a professional responsibility for helping students manage their learning framework, so maybe pedagogical professional development should include discussions of the importance/weaknesses/management of metaphors.

Interesting idea Mark. I wonder from this and comments by others if we should also find room for it in school curricula. Awareness of the metaphors we use, understanding of their impacts and management of them might be a life skill that is generally required in modern life.

Colin, what about putting your initial question to those affected: to the students/children? 

Being retired, I no longer have easy access to students and children Klauss. However, it is a very good idea and I am happy for any followers  of this thread who do to try it and report back. Will also think about what contacts outside RG might be interested.

One of my teachers is very interested in the idea of analogies and metaphors so I will talk to him and see if we can get a response from the students. Bear in mind that they are young (13 to 16) and may not have the necessary knowledge base to give a coherent response. If it is interesting, I'll let you know.

Great Mark. I recall that Scottish students were taught the concepts of analogy and metaphor in their English lessons and seemed to grasp the ideas well. They would sometimes point them out in Science. I feel Australian students might understand the metaphors we have discussed pretty well. The interesting thing will be how they react to them. Even incohernt responses can be informative. After all, we are struggling. Actually exciting stuff. Research on Research Gate. 

I work with lots of teachers and student teachers (and sometimes their students) in Maine - I'll do some investigating as well and report back.

Thanks Linda. That's great.

Maybe it helps to see students not as engineers in a factory but as designers in a studio?

@ Jelle :: In what way !?

@ Paul: I just got triggered by the word engineering. So, apparently there is this metaphor to see students as engineers in a factory? I'm not the expert on educational science, but I teach, in an engineering department, as it happens. So my students *are* going to be engineers, some of them in factories. To me engineering and factories traditionally associate with modeling, planning, control, efficiency, clear targets, optimization, error-reduction (risk avoidance), procedures, methods, standards and mass production. In actual engineering projects, say an industrial design-engineering project or a project for some interactive system (the new iPhone, say), there is also design. Design agencies, bureau's and design departments in big firms typically have a markedly different culture from engineering, almost in contrast you could say. Because both meet in actual projects they also position themselves against each other and exaggerate each others practice. Designers - in a caricature, as opposed to engineering - do not follow rules but go beyond the rules ('out of the box'), they allow themselves intuition, gut feeling, judgement is based on their skills rather than rational problem solving, they do not model a problem in abstract space, put put a prototype, a rough sketch, into the real world and explore what happens, they think not in terms of controlling a situation but being in dialogue with it, they don't want to avoid risk but act on the basis of risk (the difference between drawing a line against a ruler versus learning, and daring, to draw a line freehand) they do not cut up complexity into simple components, but treasure complexity, ambiguity and try to work with that, get to the core of the issue by making one whole that hits the target instead of breaking it up into subproblems each dealt with seperately, and there's probably  much more to get from this metaphor. I wouldn't know direclty how to translate this to education but a 'designerly attitude' I guess would seem to be a good mix of a pro-active, creative, adaptive but also self-conscious and autonomous individual, at least somebody I would like to see in my class. Well perhaps it may just inspire in a way.

(But perhaps I got the whole metaphor wrong in the first place and you were more talking talk about students as the products that need to be delivered efficiently to the job market?)

Jelle,

Very well stated and an interesting and informative comparison/contrast between engineering and design mentalities and perspectives.  Could we also call it a dichotomy of rational and creative thinking?  You interestingly point out how the two need each other and actually feed off each other in many industries and enterprises.  If so, the metaphor for pedagogy might be "where rationality meets creativity."  Our slogan could be "Get an education to unleash your rational creativity and your creative reason."

Or how about my pet peeve for a slogan:  "We don't get paid millions of dollars like those who catch a ball, throw a ball in a basket, cite a few lines in front of a camera, or sing a song but what we have to share with you is worth millions to your life and career."  

Jelle and John,

The original  range of metaphors in the question applied (at least in my mind) more to teachers and the educational process than to students - the students are shaped by the process, or are the products, or are workers directed by the teachers to produce products ('best work'). However, this is an interesting contribution that brings a new perspective to the debate, particularly if we can think of the teaching roles (and metaphors that apply) that relate to students being designers of their own learning, (putting up prototype ideas and exploring them, would that be?) - lead designer, perhaps, not sure?.

Guess the range of technological metaphors for education is a rather modern invention based on a need to relate (and thereby possibly explain) technology to human endeavor.

If you dig deeper, however, you will find that any technological metaphor is actually a metaphor between a man-made artifact (nowadays often information-processing devices, communication gadgets, or organisational schemes) and man hinself. In that sense, a metaphor is a rudimentary model of man, often posited without the (scientific) intention to verify or validate its faithfulness. Just an easy way to grasp a certain perhaps striking regularity. It is your own risk if you stretch such a metaphor too far.

As models of man are (by definition) always partial truths based on sweeping generalisations carrying with them a bag of well-known exceptions to the rule, it makes sense to maintain an array of partly overlapping metaphors from quite different disciplines. In that way you may more fully cover the extraordinary rich variety of behavorial and educational patterns produced by mankind-in-the-wild.

http://www.amazon.com/Models-Man-Rational--Mathematical-Rational/dp/B0007ELZJ4/

Paul wrote „a metaphor is a rudimentary model of man“. I agree. So let’s ask which model of man is embedded in the technological metaphor of education? It is the model of causality: the educator educates and causes educated people – like a driver causes the behavior of his car. I think the technical metaphor is dangerous because students are no cars, no machines. Many teachers still believe that what they are teaching gets into the minds of the students. But many of these minds are already filled, are already working with other themes: How can I find money for xyz; why is the boy A or the girl B not interested in me. Which joke can I make to attract attention; how can I help my sick mother; why am I not as beautiful as C, and so on. Most of these themes are much, much more important than what the teacher tells (except the case the teacher himself is very important for the student, because he/she loves her/him).

We should find metaphors which incorporate the idea of man which we have.

Some people in power loves the causality model because they want to be the cause and see other as their instrument of their will.  But the most productive human relations are not those of instrumentalization but those of genuine cooperation which do  include the possibility of leadership.  But leadership in genuine cooperation relationship is not a question of having an authority.  That type of leadership has to be earned, has to be accepted by the students not because someone is called a teacher and he/she has an authority but because this person seems to really beleive in what she believe.   This cannot be acted or fake.  A teacher that is not sincerely enthusiam will through body language tells the student : do not listen to me, I am bored, I do not want to be here but like you , I am forced to work.  This message is clear to the subconscious of all those wathcing this boring individual and become totally unreceptive of whatever come out the mouth of that teacher. 

Hi Colin,

Ah, yes I thought so while I was writing my reply. But in that case the recent revival of participatory design methods (now often called co-design or co-creation) could be interesting as well: education as a co-creative process between teacher and student. (but also: the school co-creates, together with the stakeholders that form the job market, the society for which it educates its students: to explain: many of my colleagues resort to talking about 'what industry needs' and therefore 'what we need to teach students'. But I have spoken to industry representatives that said: *We* have no clue what we want, we are already yesterday, and what we want is whatever we need to be ready for the future. What that is is what we ask *your* students when they come here as interns. They are the future. So please stop asking us, and create your own vision for education, because with each new batch of students you are transforming the world already, so you are in the driver's seat here! Along that line, the question for education once again becomes: what kind of world do we want, and how should we educate people so that we will be going into that direction, instead of: what is the world like, and how should we educate people to fit in with the status quo?)

Very interesting contributions. Late for me here, so will sleep on idea of education being in driving seat. Thanks to all.

We have a tendency to reduce learning to the episteme.  The episteme metaphor reduces learning to what we  can say, to what we can explain; it reduces learning to the intellect and to the world of words. We accept that it is not the case for trades or manual or artistic types of learning but for the sciences we have a tendency to reduce learning to the episteme.  The episteme metaphor is very damaging for the sciences.  It has to be replaced by the doing/techne metaphor prevalent in the manual labor and the artistic fields. Polanyi was a proponent of this techne metaphor for learning science; he called it the tacit dimension.  He was saying that we know much more than we can tell and that most of our scientific knowledge is implicitly embodied into our practices and that theoretical knowledge can only be discovered from the intuitive within of our practice  Comenius was talking of the learning by doing instead of by being told.  The techne metaphor engages the educator in a very different way than the episteme metaphor.  Epistemic testing and scoring and rewardingnis not the ultimate evaluation anymore.  The techne metaphor is an embodied metaphor while the episteme metaphor is desembodied since it can be wordly embodied.  The techne metaphor like intuition and imagination and all that can be feel but not necessarily explained.  It does not substitute the world of words to the world we experience and does not tries to discover the world we experience primarily guided by words and the intellect but let the body leads and use words only after to explain, to communicate and do a bit of episteme but is not in the driver seat.  Words are an hypnotic music of the intellect and transform us into zombie of the intellect.  The techne metaphor put us back in control but it is a hard and a tiresome metaphor; we have to keep doing. The episteme metaphor has been forged by the philosophers of the enlightment.  Philsophy for most of them became the art of writing the book of the world, the art of saying the world.  An art which denies to be an art.  Pierre  Hadot have showed that ancient philosophy was not about saying the world but was a primarily about a doing, a way of life informed by saying the world but primarily an art of life.

for the doing metaphor we could use techne

Thanks Jelle for the sudgestion.  I made the changes and so making the techne metaphor more hypnotically pleasing for the intellect which always want to go in the driver seat and reject it.

Linda and Colin, I have put the question as supplied to a small number of students. My 16/17 year old Chemistry students contributed in small groups. Only a couple of the 15/16 year olds showed any interest. Another class is going to look at it and when complete, I'll scan the responses and upload it here.

Thanks Mark. Great and looking forward to them. Interesting in itself that seem show interest and some do not. A proper research project for someone there who is able to file a formal proposal somewhere.

Louis. I wonder how the techne metaphor applies to literature, history and so on. I think I can see where you are coming from in the sciences (doing science, rather than passively learn it), although the episteme, if I understand the term correctly and I may not, also seems important - science does aim to describe and explain (put things into words {and formulae}).

Fillipo - thanks for adding another metaphor. Could you expand on it and show us how it is more representative of the educational process than the ones we started with? Thanks.

For some reason, since returning from holiday, I cannot go backwards in RG at the moment or upvote answers (several days now), but I wanted to return to the idea that employers say we are in charge - forgive me if memory is playing tricks  and I am not citing it correctly as I cannot reread the original posting. Certainly, when I was teaching it did not feel like we were in charge as we were told that we were not meeting employers' requirements (by the press and politicians, i think, though they claimed to be giving the views of employers). Interesting that some  employers at least do take on the argument that I thought was only made by academics that basing education on the needs of industry etc was an infertile line to take. However, it does put a tremendous responsibility upon us to find the right sort of metaphors

Colin,

The episteme or what we comprehend in a way that we can expressed in language is always important but according to the techne metaphor is should be in the passenger seat.  First you practice, experience.  The talking whould be about favoring the techne and course should always provide opportunity to experiment.  Even writing essays or the creation of episteme is in itself a techne.  But just listening about how to write essays and not doing essays is not in the techne spirit. The two needs to be there but the techne in the driver seat and the episteme in the passenger seat.  

I am now reading Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition - and it gives an altogether new perspective. I have only just began reading but what I understand the old Greek city-states favored Action over Contemplation (which came much later, and marked the beginning of philosophy as we know it, with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as the first to favor contemplation - not acting but pure thinking - over action). Now that seems like favoring techne over episteme, But note that Action was not the same as physical labor, because labor and in general the biological struggle to 'stay alive' and produce off-spring were part of the domestic household and primarily the task of slaves and women, while the pater familias would go out as a 'free man' and be part of  the city (the Polis) to discuss and talk with other free men, and that talking as member of the Polis was considered Action. So to Act was more like to take a stand on things than to actually craft or produce something, if I understand it correctly. As in a political act, (Polis - Politics). To be free to discuss amongst equals in the city, and to prove that you were the best amongst the others (show your courage) was the ideal, and you needed to have sorted out your household business (if needed by force and violence) first, such that you would be free to do so.

Not sure at all how it relates to this discussion really - but I thought I'd share it, perhaps there's some more useful metaphors in it. If I understand more of the work I will come back to it.

Jelle,

The free citizen of the polis were the soldiers.  Socrates and Plato were soldier until the age of 60.  They understood political action but they understood combat action, real ultimate physical action.  Courage was a fundamental value given the phalange battle technique which was a highly collective skill which was as good as the weakest link.  Lack of courage by only a few means collective death.  Cultivation of body strenght and courage was fundamental.

I love this thread. Thanks for sharing!

Dear Louis,

Yes, I understood so, but thanks for the details. Do you see a positive aspect in this for thinking about present-day education or do you see it as mostly leading us into dark waters?

On a more technical level: what interests me at least is that physical action was not separated conceptually from 'taking a stand' on something. In my Phd thesis I analysed people discussing in small groups and, because they were using an interactive floor projection we designed, I was specifically interested in the relation between physical, bodily position and the 'position' people were taking in the conversation, and how all of that relates to the way people collaboratively learn and make sense of things. At that microlevel one sees that 'taking a position' is both physical (literal) and conceptual at the same time, and that 'making sense' of things always means taking up a position with respect to other people.

Our language, both natural and scientific, is full of metaphors, the origin of which is either unknown, lost, unconsciously or ignored (unless attended to) because it is so common/natural in the cultural context of discussion (cf. link).

• E.g., Holland's history and culture is strongly tied with its struggle with water, so it is natural for Jelle van Dijk to use the phrase "dark water" where others would use a different metaphor, e.g. dark forests (e.g. in South of Germany), or a more neutral phrase like "troubles" (although interestingly there is also a famous song with the name "Bridge over troubled water" ...)

Anyway, what I want to say is that we are normally bathing in a sea (yes, I am Dutch too ;-) of concepts, or thoughts, which shouldn't be taken too literally (because they are just metaphors) nor too abstractly (because they loose all meaning then, or may mean anything you like).

• You know of course the test: repeat by speaking a single not too trivial word many times in a stroke, after a while the word will indeed loose its meaning ...

Back to our discussion: what we call "theory" may be taken as something completely abstractly, or arbritarily, because we have invented its meaning by construction. For instance, logicians have a very clear, but highly special, concept of "theory", which has nothing to do with what e.g. physicists or social scientists call "theory".

But: actually the word "theory" itself stems from old greek, and in that language (and thus presumably also in the minds of the people formerly speaking that language) the meaning of "theory" is strongly tied to vision, visual perception.

That immediately raises the question, what would have happened if we human beings wouldn't have got visual perception. What we as scientist be talking about e.g. harmony all the day, and our explanations and experiments would be full of concepts and methods borrowed from the practice of speaking and hearing as well as sound and music and the structures studied currently by audiologists and musicologists, playing the role of methodologists?

I am not sure whether this helps much, but I thought it might clear the waters a bit so that we might better see through it at the hidden meaning of metaphors.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0226468011

BTW: did you realize that the word "metaphor" is itself a metaphor? [cf. entry "etymology" at wikipedia]

What does that imply for science, or at least for the linguistic theory of George Lakoff, the author of the book I recommended? Are we forever doomed to explain metaphors by other metaphors? And the latter by still other metaphors?

What will we arrive at in the end, i.e. when we don't see or have other metaphors to exploit? Or would we by that time have forgotten about the original "explanandum", the concept to be explained, and use it as our current metaphor, thereby creating an awful circularity in our intended explanations?

Of course, natural languages do allow circularity. The famous "Paradox of the Liar" can be fully explained logically by such circularity in certain (most?) languages (cf. link).

Perhaps metaphoric circularity is not so awful after all, not even in science, research, and education? How often, in your lectures, do you refer your students to stuff they should have learned already in other lectures by colleagues of yours, without checking whether the latter refer again to your lectures to explain what they are teaching?

Paraphrasing George Lakoff I like to propose that education is alll about "Metaphors we Teach by" (lecturers) and about "Metaphors we Learn by" (students).

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195059441

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor

Metaphors are also dangerous. We think our eyes are 'a kind of camera' and that our brains are 'a kind of computer'. Such metaphors used to be drivers for progress in science, but later on started to hinder further progress as the metaphor became so powerful that they started to overrule any alternative perspective.

@ Jelle : of course, I fully agree. But that was not my point. 

From a neurological perspective, does the way the brain learns and remembers by pattern matching in itself a description of metaphor. Perhaps it is 'hardwired'.

Jelle,

Your observations on the bodily/mimetic languages confirm t Merlin Donald'notion on how language evolved from a mimetic language that is still there integrated into us.  Mithen's book: the singing neantherthal expands this notion and include dance and singing into the original cocktail.  Before the time of writing, our cosmologies where all expressed into a mythic style, a style dominates by metaphor.  Still most religions and most ancient native culture express their most sacred knowledge in the mythic style.  It makes a lot of sense for a varieties of reasons.  The mythic style do not at all tries to be realist.  It tries to teach by showing the underlying psychologies of the various situation not realistically but theatrically, metaphorically.  It is much more effective ways to engage people directly making use of our natural theory of mind.  When writing began to dominate aroung the fifth century BC in what is called the axial age, it also displaced the mythic style for a discussive naturalisitc historical realistic style and that style do not engage our entire theory of mind, it privilege our object side of it and the world began to be disenchanted by the gradual dominance of this style which diminished the people reliance into their full artistic intuition which make use of the whole theory of mind.  

@ Paul, I read something of Barwise and Perry - can't remember what it was about. I think their work got reviewed in a book by Bill Clancey, called Situated Cognition, which you might like. He has a very detailed and nuanced view on how meaning emerges in situated action what the role of (external) representation is in it.

I like your idea of the circularity of metaphorical grounding. I tried to think of whether I could come up with a historical example that might be just that. But I cannot even reason whether or not I would actually be able to recognize such a circularity if it ever existed (as my capacities for recognizing things in the first place is already most probably grounded in the metaphoric series of groundings that I am trying to spot).

Something else. (Sorry if this goes beyond the original post). It has been argued that throughout history man has always compared himself to the most advanced technologies that he has been able to create. So the Greeks, masters of waterworks, compared the human body to a waterworks system, in early industrialisation we saw our inner mechanics as clockworks, Freud, early 20th century, saw our passions and drives as a steam-engine (that needed to blow of steam once in a while), and not so long ago we conceived of the mind as a digital computer. In the nineties when the internet came we adapted that to see the brain as a network of interacting units. 

But... what is next? I can actually think of no technological metaphor that would describe the way we presently see ourselves. Do we still see ourselves as a computer? Does that mean nothing essentially new beyond the computer has been invented yet? Or is it something else: is it that technology is now actually starting to merge with human being so literally  (artificial eyes, ears, brain implants, neurofeedback, artificial legs, robot enhancements etc) that we can no longer technology to explain the human body and mind? Just wondering.

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-Memory-History-Ideas-about/dp/0521650240

@ Jelle >>> Thanks for the interesting references.

As for a new emerging metaphor replacing the computer metaphor - or IPS Information Processing System, as late Nobel laureate Herbet Simon called it, but it never took off - indeed I haven't seen it yet. It is not that there aren't very creative new interpretations of what we call e.g. memory. Actually they have been around for a while. But all metaphors you have alluded to are not purely scientific constructs, they are based on technical artifacts which proved to be so successful that many people got used to it. And then it happens, so to say.

An explanation for the absence of a new metaphor may be that we are still in the midst of unfolding and commercializing computer/information technology. As long as the brain power of researchers and engineers is 50% occupied with ICT and for the rest with other equally challenging but more conventional technology, there seems to be no room for something fundamentally new here. Probably also we are looking on the false place then, because there's the light!

Indeed, I doubt if you can come up with a new metaphor deliberately, i.e. on purpose. It just happens, by accidence, by serendipity. It has all to come together by chance: a cocktail of culture, economics, funding, engineering, research, science, creativity and personality. Probably the last ones are most important.

Some may believe that we don't need metaphors of the mind any more, because now we have neurophysiology / neurobiology / neuropsychology and all those scanners and other tech stuff, but that's missing the point.

Metaphors are for sharing (otherwise complex) knowledge among most (lay) people, the rest may be able to use more abstract concepts or technical means to understand and manipulate knowledge and do innovative research and create sophisticated theories. 

Or so are my ideas on a sunday morning beginning november ...

Perhaps 'coctail' will be the new metaphor :-) (Both you and Louis used it just now)

Metaphors are not vehicle of precise knowledge but all our knowledge even the scientific knowledge is pervaded by powerfull metaphors and the most powerfull and important one are so ingrained that everybody act by them without knowing it.  Ask people in marketing about the power of metaphor to make people act.  Being so powerfull means that they can be powerfully used for good ends and powerfully used for damaging ends.  Metaphor is like music.  We adopt them if we like them but we do not know why.  Metaphor are not strictly interpreted by the rational part of our Mind, they speak to our subconscious and are approved or reject by this subconscious without us knowing why.  They allow us to go much further than what we consciously know and are not limited to our intellectual power but are connecting to our whole.  It is why they are so powerfull, can change the world for the best and for the worst.  Another reason education ideal should be expressed metaphorically instead of being express discursively is that the discursive style in its very form objectify and so can only transform humans into objects.  The discourse may say it is not the case, may acknowledge that humans are not objects but the discourse in the discoursive form in discoursive culture is its theoretical form necessarily and absolutely objefify any subject matter including humans.  A metaphorical style do not have this limitation, it is naturally anthropomorphic, naturally animistic, acknowledge naturally that humans have will are not object and so allow all this natural tendencies in us to express themselve through a metaphorical style.  Poetry is the ultimate oral metaphorical style.  So maybe a good educational metaphor should be expressed  through an educational poem.

Maybe we should ask a question where contributors pen a poem on education and see what we get. Anyone mind if I do that? I'll refer to this question.

Mark,

A sudgestion for the educational poem.  The mode of the request of the poem should favor a passionate poem.  So one way to get good poem would be to find a very good one and put it in your question.  Any justification talking to the intellect will cool the poems.  So the mode of getting the poem will also need to convey the mood.  If it is cool the response will be cool.  

Famous Education Poems | Examples of Famous Education Poetry:

http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/education

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?' Answer. That you are here--that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.''

What will your verse be?"

Tom Schulman

from "Dead Poets Society"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUTDJ72q9k

No objections from me Mark. Thanks to all for this fascinating discussion. Hope to find time to put in my tuppence worth soon.

I take your point Louis.

Learning aboutEducation Metaphors:

Study as a Way of Life

https://www.academia.edu/4087615/Learning_about_Education_Metaphors_Study_as_Way_of_Life