Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Postformalism and Critical Ontology—Part 2 893
a finalized completed “true self.” Since the self is always in context and in process, no final
delineation of a notion such as ability can be determined. Thus, we are released from the
rugged cross of IQ and such hurtful and primitive colonial conceptions of “intelligence.” In this
context it is interesting to note that famed psychometricians Richard Herrnstein and Charles
Murray (1994), in The Bell Curve, noted without any data that the average IQ of Africans
is probably around seventy-five—epistemological/ontological neocolonialism in a transparent
form.
One can quickly discern the political consequences of a Cartesian ontology. Human beings
in Western liberal political thought become abstract bearers of particular civic rights. If individuals
are relational, context-embedded beings, however, these abstract rights may be of little
consequence. A critical ontology insists that individuals live in specific places with particular
types of relationships. They operate or are placed in the web of reality at various points of
race, class, gender, sexual, religious, physical ability, geographical place, and other continua.
Where individuals find themselves in this complex web holds dramatic power consequences.
Their location shapes their relationship to both dominant culture and Western colonialism and
the psychological and curricular assumptions that accompanies them. In other words the intelligence
mechanistic psychology deems these individuals to possess profoundly depends on this
contextual, power-inscribed placement. A prime manifestation of ontological alienation involves
a lack of recognition of the dramatic effect of these dynamics on everything that takes place in
the psycho-educational cosmos.
In the context of postformalism’s critical ontology the autonomous self with a fixed intellectual
ability becomes an anachronism. As an effort to appreciate the power of human beings to affect
their own destinies, to exercise human agency, and to change social conditions, critical ontologists
study selfhood in light of the sociological, cultural studies, cultural psychological, and critical
analytical work of the last few decades. Much of what dominant psychology and education
consider free will and expressions of innate intelligence are simply manifestations of the effects
of particular social, cultural, political, and economic forces. While we can make decisions on how
we operate as human beings, we are never completely independent of these structuring forces.
This is true no matter who we are—nobody can operate outside of society or free from cultural,
linguistic, ideological influences.
It is important to note here that neo-positivist educational policy makers contend that their work
takes place outside of the influence of these dynamics. They claim that their work avoids cultural
values and morally inscribed issues and because of such diligence, they have presented us the
truth about how students learn and how teachers should teach. In the critical ontological context
developed here, such researchers must take a closer look at who they are and the structuring forces
that have shaped their views of the world, mind, and self. Their inability to discern the effects of
these forces reflects ontological alienation. Such alienation undermines their ability to imagine
new and better ways of being human both for themselves and for the teachers and students their
knowledges and policies oppress.
A postformal education informed by a complex ontology asks the question: how do we move
beyond simply uncovering the sources of consciousness construction in our larger attempt to
reconstruct the self in a critical manner? Critical teachers must search in as many locations
as possible for alternate discourses, ways of thinking and being that expand the envelopes of
possibility. In this context teachers explore literature, history, popular culture, and ways of
forging community in subjugated/indigenous knowledges. Here teachers develop their own and
their students’ social and aesthetic imaginations. As postformalists we imagine what we might
become by recovering and reinterpreting what we once were. The excitement of education as
ontological quest is powerful.