Bateson- Steps to an ecology of mind

The education that we receive at schools are closely related to what kind of culture or society we live in. For schools are institutions, and Berger states that "institutions, by the very fact of their existence, control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of product."

One of the most important things we learn when we are at school is the meaning of our actions. In the case od City Springs School, students were taught that they had to be quiet and pay attention to the teacher in order to learn how to read and write well. I interpret this kidn of learning as to fall into the category of Classical Pavlovian Context, which is characterized by "a rigid time sequence in which the conditioned stimulus always precedes the unconditioned stimulus by a fixed interval of time." As bateson says, " the rigid sequence of events is not altered by anything the animal may do." Similarly, in City Springs School, the reactions of the children didn't alter anything about the teacher's teaching methodology.

Bateson also mentions that our society is based on seeing people's action as either means and/or ends, and he supports Mead's idea of "looking for value in the act itself rather than regarding the act as a means to an end." This argument would support the idea of enjoying learning by the act itself, and not seeing it as a means to achieving something in the future.