Richard Hughes Gibson at Hedgehog Review (h/t Front Porch Republic):
So how should educators proceed? In her Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (2022), historian of science Lorraine Daston recalls another sort of “rule” that we might apply. That is the ancient understanding of “rule”—kanon in Greek and regula in Latin—as “model” or “paradigm,” preserved in English in a formula such as “The Rule of St. Benedict.” Daston argues that “paradigmatic rules” are especially useful because, unlike laws, they do not demand special dispensations (or litigation) when exceptions arise or drastic revisions when circumstances change. “Rules-as-models are the most supple, nimble rules of all,” Daston writes, “as supple and nimble as human learning.”
The model may be to some extent codified, but Daston stresses that this kind of rule’s enactment depends on the relationship between those who provide the model and those who imitate it. In The Rule of St. Benedict, the abbot holds his post because he doesn’t simply know the rule; he embodies it. The abbot, in turn, exercises discretion over the application of the code to promote the good of the members of and visitors to the community. Those under the rule strive to emulate this model person—not just “the rules”—in their own lives. “Whether the model was the abbot of a monastery or the artwork of a master or even the paradigmatic problem in a mathematics textbook, it could be endlessly adapted as circumstances demanded,” Daston observes. The ultimate goal of such a rule is not to police specific jurisdictions; it is to form people so that they can the carry general principles, as well as the rule’s animating spirit, into new settings, projects, problems. We need a new Rule of Education—one that grants educators discretion and is invested in students’ formation—for the age of AI.
This shift in understanding rules as restrictions to rules as formation is amazing and I love it.