"Education: Demonstration or Dialogue?" : A Dialogue with Saeed Ghapanvari, a Distinguished Scholar

Chahardoli:
Socrates declared the goal of education to be the "discovery of truth" and "cultivation of the self," whereas the Sophists considered the training of "skilled orators" for "persuading others" and "achieving success in society" as the goal of education. Since those times, an instrumental view of education has been intertwined with rhetoric. As Sophocles writes in the three Theban plays: "I have never seen a noble man who is also a smooth talker!" But now, in the sphere of our pedagogy, we are witnessing the dominance of "rhetoric," "performance," and "excessive simplification" over "literacy," "wisdom," and "seriousness." This inversion of values, which has infiltrated the school and classroom from society, has turned the "orator-teacher" into a symbol of success, while the "scholar-teacher" continues a silent existence on the margins. Many deeply literate but quiet and unostentatious teachers become victims of the noisy yet superficial performance of others. This process not only tarnishes the dignity of authentic teachers but also turns students into actors on this stage of performance, who, in seeking the beautiful forms of knowledge, are deprived of its essence.

ghapanvari:
The concept of education carries with it an immense number of combinations of shallow and profound matters. From this perspective, those in charge of this important undertaking fall into these two central cores. In his book Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky says: "A progressive man always lives in contradiction." If the word contradiction is given special consideration, it can be said that people of inner depth possess, in a way, those very forms of knowledge or "episteme" that Foucault emphasized, and it is plausible to say that what is on their exterior—both in tone and in rhetorical techniques—may not hold much appeal for an audience. This inner emptiness, which solidifies the progressive's contradiction and episteme in the person's psyche, has always carved out a space in education as vast as a regression in everything. The exterior can create transient persuasions in education, but it cannot ignite the power of penetrating doubt within knowledge. I mean contradiction in the sense that we should constantly move from one-dimensional thinking in minutiae toward progressiveness in transient forms of knowledge, and replace external carriers in education with a critique from within. The gift of nihilism and shallow personalities is deep fissures in the forms of knowledge, which can plunge education into stagnation and daily routine. At times, language becomes so lacking in depth that thought, in Hafez's words, turns into "confirmation by gaze," and rhetoric becomes completely empty of impact: "Last night I took my problem to the Magian elder / Who, by confirming gaze, would solve the enigma."

Chahardoli:
Very well, how beautifully you said that true knowledge is always accompanied by questioning, doubt, and inner conflict. Socrates owed his knowledge and wisdom to his own ignorance. He believed that dialogue is the product of a person's attention to the fact that they do not know. Socrates never claimed to be wise and only claimed to know a path by which individuals could arrive at wisdom. This very knowledge—that is, the knowledge of one's ignorance—became a motivation for a person to cultivate their knowledge in dialogue with others. In a dialogue, the parties, conscious of their own ignorance and then with a desire for knowledge and knowing, with mutual understanding, fondness for one another, and a belief in the need for each other, engage frankly and without pretense, in an empathetic manner, from a state of knowledge, to achieve an understanding and cognition of the world's concepts. Dialogue leads to a proper understanding and a life-giving awareness, and it is a way to bring order to humanity's fragmented cognition and to avoid pulverizing human thought regarding the phenomena of existence.
Today, we are witnessing the dominance of an "instrumental rationality" over the educational system, in which knowledge is defined not as a value for discovering truth, but merely as a tool for success (in a competition like the university entrance exam, Konkoor). This view is the origin of phenomena such as exam-prep institutions that reduce science to test packages and quick techniques, turning students and families into consumers of this cycle. In this atmosphere, "rhetoric" and "eloquence" have become tools for performance, persuasion, and even deception; a place where a passionate and amusing but shallow teacher can appear more successful than a profound but unassuming teacher. In exam-prep books, videos, and content, we repeatedly witness gross and unscientific errors presented as exam techniques. Technique has overcome depth, and performance has overcome authenticity; truth and knowledge are sacrificed in this instrumental battle.
The importance of teaching techniques and skills, which includes facilitating the transfer of concepts, is not hidden from anyone, although I emphasize the point that the skilled teacher is not an orator, but a "fellow traveler in knowledge." They strip their language of ambiguity and unnecessary complexities, but this simplification never comes at the cost of distorting the truth or extreme oversimplification. Their ultimate goal is to create a space for dialogue; a conversation in which both teacher and student, conscious of the limitations of their own knowledge, step onto the path of discovering truth. On this path, the teacher uses their techniques not for persuasion and performance, but to provoke questions, cultivate thought, and smooth the way for "mutual understanding." This dialogue, whose origin is a love of knowing and humility before the depth of knowledge, does not seek to impress or triumph over the other, but searches for the discovery of a truth that places even the teacher themselves on a transformative path.

ghapanvari:
Albert Camus says: "Man is man's destiny." We stand precisely at the point where verbal images and graphic writing, in a structured fusion, emanate the orientation of thought from us. Which intellectual radiation can a human be the creator of, that leads to the construction of another? Knowledge is a necessary condition, but which knowledge? The herald of this great vessel of knowledge must always be a matter of speech and writing, both ancient and contemporary, along with our experiential life, though not all of it. A great transformation is to take place here, and it is assigned to the student. This process must occur in speech. Speech that breaks and destroys in order to bring forth a new structure from the heart of these shatterings. The novelty of this offering must spring from a source that can erase external references and, in a way, invite a kind of inner referentiality. The exterior can be anything other than knowledge and capability, which does nothing but cripple thought and reflection. Rhetoric, perhaps, has everything from the exterior in its bag of tricks, and it causes these flights to the exterior not to distance us from a feeble education, and so to speak, leads to the proliferation of cultivating the lumpen. In contrast, going inward confronts the learner with findings that stem from their personal abilities, born of studies and analytical knowledge. The wise opening of the chest in education advances in a bed of knowledge and frees everyone from the prison within; slogans fade away, and consciousness settles into all affairs. The English poet Eliot says: "We think of the key, each confirms a prison, and thinks of the key."

Chahardoli:
Thank you, dear professor. So, in conclusion, I summarize the entirety of our dialogue as follows: In the sphere of education, the age-old conflict between two notions persists: on one hand, the Socratic wisdom that defines the purpose of education as the discovery of truth through dialogue and self-awareness based on the knowledge of one's own ignorance, and on the other hand, the Sophistic paradigm that reduces education to the art of persuasion and rhetoric, prioritizing social success over the cultivation of thought. In the present era, this conflict has resulted in the dominance of instrumental rationality and performance, where form has overcome meaning, technique has overcome depth, and empty rhetoric devoid of intellectual depth has overcome critical thinking. In this inversion of values, the orator-teacher becomes a symbol of success, and the thinker-teacher is marginalized, while the educational truth depends on a dialogue in which the teacher and student, conscious of the limitations of their own knowledge, step forth as fellow travelers on the path of discovering truth. This path, which is inextricably linked with questioning and inner critique, stands in opposition to excessive simplification and transient formulations, striving to make education a living and empowering process for confronting the complexities of existence.