The Science of Education summarized – Chapter 1
The Science of Education Pt. 1 : Theoretical Considerations
Chapter 1: How a Science is Born
In this first chapter, Gattegno discusses what a science is, the role of awareness in every science, and then how awareness became a science of its own – the Science of Education.  Below is just one interpretation of the messages in Chapter 1: How a Science is Born.
Firstly, to address awareness, we need to acknowledge the inner dialogue inside our minds. Humans have always had inner dialogues with themselves, at every age, in the past and present. A “need to know” drives these inner dialogues. Talking to ourselves in our minds is extremely important – it is what translates the world into the visible, audible, tangible, and mechanical world we each recognize. Awareness makes us human, and also makes science possible.
The accumulated experience of our ancestors, from the first humans onwards, is not designated as a science because their experience was not recorded in scientific journals and has not been accepted by academic pundits. Yet what early civilizations found led to the basis of all work ever done by humans. We now see these findings as natural, and common knowledge, but they are truly the results of human awareness.
Our ancestors had a need to know; they had to survive in their environment, and they had to pass their findings on to others. They learned how to work the soil to produce food, they discovered materials like clay to make art and household items, they discovered hunting and how to kill an animal with tools they created, and they discovered how to make their inner self go further, to push themselves to run faster, climb higher. These people discovered the Science of Optics. How can we trust what we see? What is light? What happens when it bounces or absorbs into various media? They also discovered the Science of Acoustics. We take for granted now that a sound sounds differently when moving through different substances like solids, liquids and gases, and that it has different qualities like pitch and intensity. An inner dialogue with the self is needed to know about any of these things, and so it could be said that early humans were constantly involved in scientific activities.
The mind does not want to fool itself, or be fooled by anything else. This made people watchful and skeptical, which translated itself into repeatability. Whatever one person found, another could find too, and these became the “facts” of optics and acoustics that we take for granted today.
Today’s scientists are only concerned with the contents of their awareness, the “facts,” and not the awareness itself. This is illustrated well with mathematics. Mathematics is based on the awareness that relationships can be perceived as easily as objects, but mathematicians mostly focus on the result of the awareness. Pure mathematics focuses on creating statements that are equivalent to another statement; this only proves that there are a number of possible inner dialogues someone can have when considering a relationship. Since we focus on the result, we have lost contact with the maker of the answer – the mind conversing with itself.
All sciences are human endeavors, and they change as humans contribute new ideas. Some viewpoints are altered, and some are abandoned altogether. This tells us that “knowledge is the working of knowing.” Or perhaps that knowledge is knowing in progress. Gattegno writes that, “the history of every science is a history of awareness,” and therefore, “everything could be the source of a new science.”
For example, astronomy became astro-physics, cosmology, radio-astronomy, spectro-astronomy, planet evolution, star evolution, galactic systems and more. This can be seen as specialization within one enormous challenge, but it could more accurately be seen as the ways various scientists prefer to address themselves with questions. Different inner dialogues produce different sciences.
Sciences are imprinted with the mind that proposed it. A science is as dependent on the scientist’s inner dialogue as it is dependent on “scientific method.” It is an illusion to believe, “that reality is totally fathomable and that it will be possible to reach a stage at which eternal unalterable knowledge will be available if the ’scientific method’ is used more carefully.” Reality grows and changes because it is only, “the construct of the minds who dedicate themselves to it.”
For example, 200 years ago, electricity was only a reality to a handful of people who imagined it. It started as thoughts, ideas and projects in minds, then as experiments, which turned into factories, stations, and machines. No one can deny the existence or reality of a concrete factory. But neither can anyone deny the existence of a person’s mind in the factory – after all, it was man-made.
What we know about our current sciences is very important; we need all of the sciences in order to define the reality of our time. But that’s not enough. New sciences must be born to define new awarenesses.
The Science of Education is an example of how a science can emerge from the raw material of human experience, and progressively become a presentable system of thought. At the basis of the research of this science is the fact that humans are capable of being aware of their awareness – there is an ongoing dialogue of the mind with itself.
Sciences bring to light awarenesses that we receive as facts, like the ones in the Science of Optics or Acoustics. Since all new sciences begin with a new awareness, the Science of Education took awareness itself as the subject. The science is actually the awareness of the awareness of awareness (using the word three times is necessary). In other words, this science is not about looking at something. It is about looking at looking (at something), and knowing what the self does as it looks.
This science does what no other does, yet can follow the attributes of the established sciences. These attributes are: domain, approaches, methods, presentations, and verifications. Verification, for example, takes the form of continuous feedback.
This science has been worked on since 1940, but is still very new. Over the years, decades, and generations to come, it is hoped that revisions and alterations will be made to the science presented in the next chapters.
