that we attempt to give up or get rid of epistemology altogether. It is this
possibility--and its implications for schooling--that I consider.

In my opinion, we need to question whether knowing itself--not merely
the kind of ideologically biased knowing that schools perpetuate--is the
source of our problems. Might it be that centuries-old philosophical biases
about what it means to understand, to mean, to learn--to be human--have
as much to do with how schools run as do politics, economics, and pedagogy?
Might it be that the overidentification of learning and teaching with the
production, dissemination, and construction of knowledge is at the root of
school failure, teacher discontent, and school mismanagement? Might we
not need to consider the possibility that "knowing" has run its historical
course? Might it be possible that we human beings no longer need to know
and, further, that continuing to employ knowing (cognition, an epistemo-
logical paradigm) when it has outlived its usefulness is potentially destruc-
tive of human life? In my view, without considering these questions as part
of a re-examination of the philosophical structure of education, we will
continue to treat only symptoms.

The circumstances of history seem to raise such unsettling questions.
What many theorists today call postmodernism refers to both the circum-
stances that give rise to these kinds of questions and the questions them-
selves. Modernism (some call it modernity)--the historical period during
which modern science and technology, industrialization, the discovery of
the real, the ideas of progress and enlightenment, and so on--has ended,
we are told. Postmodernism (or postmodernity) typically is characterized as
a breakdown of categories, truth, objectivity, and meaning. If there is
anything is to be discovered, we are told, it is that there is no reality, that
there is nothing more to be discovered. Although a review of the voluminous
postmodern literature is beyond the scope of the present book, I occasionally
make reference to some current postmodern writings. ¹

Regardless of whether one views postmodernism as an accurate charac-
terization of the current historical period, the latest "buzz word" of intellec-
tuals, or somewhere in between, something unsettling at the core of our
daily existence is going on in the world. Even within the natural and physical
sciences, there are many who suggest that we have reached the limits of
knowledge ( Horgan, 1996). Certainly, those of us who deal with the hu-
man-social realm need to raise this question too; the quantity and intensity
of social-psychological problems we currently face demand such an inquiry.
The educational crisis requires, it seems to me, more than a critique of
scientific knowing or a reform of traditional ways of knowing, learning, and
teaching. It requires investigating the presuppositions of the grand narrative

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