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A Java-based System for Distributed Shared Learning
Knowing How and Knowing That
Greg Millbank
Managing Director
Praxis Technical Group, Inc.
For thousands of years, the European cultural tradition has maintained a uniquely peculiar view of what it
means to learn and what it means to know. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we have nurtured a view of
knowledge which firmly divides the verb to do from the verb to know. We have convinced ourselves, in spite of
overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that knowing is something that happens in an individual’s head, and
has little or nothing to do with what the individual actually does. To use a distinction developed by the
philosopher Gilbert Ryle, we have divorced knowing how from knowing that. We commonly believe that, for
example, knowing that the Duke of Wellington won the battle of Waterloo is somehow a higher and more
important level of knowledge than, for another example, knowing how to bake a cake. The great (and often
misunderstood) American thinker, John Dewey, called this ancient bias the Spectator Theory of Knowledge,
and proposed that it was the result of what he termed the Fallacy of Intellectualism. 1
Anyone who has learned to play the violin, learned karate, golf, or gardening should realize that most kinds of
learning are not merely patterning of certain neural circuits in the gray matter of one’s head. Learning is a
whole body process, which involves the ability to make certain moves, only a subset of which are correct
utterances, or written responses on paper. Learning is an active process involving all sorts of neural pathways,
only a portion of which are in the head. Thus an ideal teaching environment has lots of opportunities for
practice. It teaches how as well as that.
This fallacy has crept into our ideas about learning over the past twenty centuries. During that time it has
influenced curriculum design, teaching methods, examinations, the entire school and university system, and
almost all of our thinking about thinking to the point that we habitually confuse the memorization of facts with
the ability to perform tasks – the ability to recite with the ability to perform. A consequence of this confusion is
that we spend a lot of time and money teaching people about things and almost completely neglect to show
them how to perform. In a similar way, we aim to improve performance in a job by utilizing teaching methods
best suited to the memorization of facts, not the development of practices.
Individual Learning versus Collaborative Learning
A second aspect of our Western view of man and mind, is that we see human behavior as a largely individual
matter. We see a person as a stand-alone entity, the act of knowing as an individual matter, and the
development of a greater and more capable Self as the desirable end-point of self-improvement – the
individualist’s view of the individual goal of learning. However, this view of man largely ignores the fact that
learning is a very social activity. Thinkers, such as G.H. Mead 2 have long since described the mechanisms of
the social construction of the self . We build our image of ourselves using the mirror of society itself. Our
relations with our friends and relations are the mechanisms by means of which we construct our concept of
self.
Furthermore, the very language in which we construct our thoughts and remember our remembrances is social
in use and origin and evolves through entirely social mechanisms. The very motivation to learn, to struggle, to
1 See, for example, John Dewey; Logic, The Theory of Inquiry –After almost four decades of neglect, there is
suddenly a renewed interest in this most seminal American thinker. Surprisingly, much of the interest is on the
European continent.
2 See, George Herbert Mead; The Philosophy of the Act. Mead is also enjoying a sudden European resurgence.