"The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake ... One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness ..." I hear Russell telling us to be prudent, even a little mindful about our lives. The tendency to utilitize action and thought (to work in order to achieve something else, for which we use to achieve the next thing; repeat) effaces our choices, our thoughts and even our happiness. What matters is not the present moment, but the possibilities the present provides.
Larry is riven with this instrumental rationality. A veteran for the Great War, he has been shaken by the futility of purpose; what is to come, the ends, can not compensate for the experience of bringing it about, the mean. There is no erasure of consciousness, just a grasping for the solace of progress. Larry's answer comes from a life spent, as he calls it, "loafing;" and he finds purpose in the journey itself, into the heart of meaning.
Education can use a fuller dose of loafing. The pursuit of competencies and knowledge, skills and dispositions, place as goals the outcomes of student learning, which themselves are useful only for future outcomes. Knowingness obscures any valuation of what is worth knowing. Learning serves as a full-tilt rush into future learning. Which is necessary, in many ways, of course. Yet the usefulness of learning, or "modern learning" in Russell's terms, erodes what is learned. Full consciousness may not be possible, yet the abandonment of its possibility contaminates the importance of education. We teach not for our students to experience what they learning, and thus not to learn what learning is. Rather, we teach our students to project a future good, not to understand the present.
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This recent essay demonstrates the paradox of educational loafing. Though others have made the author's point about authentic learning, I find much to like about a project-based curriculum. Still, the idea of finding a "use value" for schooling dredges up tools to account for that value. Put another way, a utilitarian approach to schooling has obvious face value, especially for convincing students to stay in school and to make commensurate effort while in school. It does not, though, offer reasons for why those (or whatever) values should be sought. The purpose of schooling remains beyond itself, pointing the better tomorrow. A necessity, of course. Just not different from where we are now.
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