I think Eugene is getting to the heart of one of the problems of our
current "education" - the need to find the one, correct, idiot-proof
answer/solution after which the teacher (or anyone else) can simply stop
thinking, ignore the context, and proceed on auto-pilot with guaranteed
results.
There seems to be a basic distrust of the individual and his/her judgment
underlying a lot of our current thought about methodology. The use of
the significance level in psychological experiments as a judge of whether
the findings are worth bothering with or not is another symptom of this.
The use of a cut-off, formula, script or other "closed" way of making a
supposedly fool-proof choice is one of the sources of our current
impasse. Witness the mindless use of the IQ score. Toulmin explores
some of the historical roots of this in "Cosmopolis" but it seems to me
that another source of its current dominance is the need to make
criticism-proof administrative (and class-room) decisions. If you follow
the script, then your mistakes aren't "yours," but the fault of the one
who wrote the script. (Whether the kid learns or not - but who cares
about the kid? He/She will be replaced by another identical unit next
year anyway.)
Another example could be the taboo on touching students which is now
accepted even in kindergarten, although touch is one of the most powerful
forms of interpersonal communication, particularly for younger,
less-verbal children. If there's the least possibility that the teacher
might do something to get the institution in trouble the blanket
prohibition is put into effect.
This may be the land of individualism, but as Francis L.K. Hsu pointed
out many years ago, the most extreme forms of individualism paradoxically
lead to the most extreme forms of conformity.
Rachel Heckert