Confusion Reigns: I am NOT with Those People
I have a problem. It often feels very much like a personal problem, and indeed it is that. However, my problem is not just my problem exclusively; it affects innumerable people, whether or not they are aware they are affected or whether they are aware of how they are affected. My problem specifically, is that much of what I believe and say; what I know, in fact, with great certainty, coincides identically with some of the beliefs and statements of people with whom I disagree on core principles, vehemently. This has caused a great deal of confusion for years and has hampered my ability to convey my very different fundamental message to people whom I know have a certain need to hear and understand that message. People become fooled by the commonalities and do not seem able to discern the hugely significant distinctions.
My crucial message at its center is fundamentally in direct opposition to the fundamental beliefs of the group of people with whom I am in disagreement. Their mission is anathema for me. The odd parallels exist because everyone including the traditionalists, the radical reformers, and a handful of people such as me are all looking at the many negative effects and outcomes of policies, procedures, and philosophies, but from wholly different perspectives.
The traditionalists try to deny or minimize the problems and attribute them to old familiar causes from inside their box. The radicals and I are on the outside of the box with the same harsh criticisms and strong objections, but attribute them to totally opposite causes. Yet I am being tarred with a brush that makes it appear that I am somehow like those obnoxious people or in significant agreement with them. One primary reality, on which we do agree, is that schools are not performing essential services adequately, if they are performing them at all.
I have never been alone in recognizing that there are chronic and profoundly serious problems in how our schools operate and in what we have believed to be a ‘system of education’. That statement standing alone already illustrates a couple of major issues before we can even get started, however.
I find the idea of a “system” of education problematic because of my beliefs about and definition of, or conception of, education. I do not believe education can be systematized. Nearly everyone else expects and accepts some manner of systemization as a necessity for schooling and education, although they only want it to be according to their own preferences. Mediocrity has become the accepted norm as a result; I loathe mediocrity in schooling.
Also, most ordinary people, with the exception of those reactionaries, libertarians, and religious extremists with whom I am being confused have strong inclinations to adamantly resist the undeniable facts that our schools are NOT “superior”, NOT “the best in the world’, and that they are NOT “not quite perfect, but are constantly unfairly criticized, inadequately supported, and interfered with by meddlesome outside people and forces with an unhelpful or misguided agenda”. The volumes which have been written on these topics would fill several large libraries.
My particular dilemma arises as a result of a number of complicated factors. One is that the language I find myself using and the issues and arguments I am raising are in many cases identical to those used consistently and sometimes quite correctly by those on the far right, even if they use them for the wrong reasons and with a faulty logic. For example, I insist that the state should not usurp parental rights, deny students autonomy, or micromanage cookie-cutter curricular content and various aspects of the school experience. On the extreme right, their pitch is identical. But their motivation, in contrast, is about who has power and control. Their main interest is in the termination of modern thought and freedoms.
My motivation is that schooling, as well as education, should never be externally or politically controlled at all. Our institutions for the inculcation of youth are not appropriate places for the allocation of arbitrary power and authority in my estimation, which is a uniquely unpopular position.
Tolstoy said, “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” I am not seeking to become a member of a mutual admiration society. I have not written in total obscurity for endless hours and endless years because of any special talent, for profit, recognition, or glory. I do not offer yet another splendiferous grand scheme with bells and whistles as the one final solution to all the frustrating problems. I am compelled by the knowledge that my message is essential.
The people on the right end of the spectrum also complain loudly and persistently that students are being indoctrinated. They sincerely believe that the indoctrination is with ideas or ideology which is liberal, leftist, socialistic, too favorable to the Democratic Party positions, and secular. This illustrates just how distorted their perceptions truly are.
In reality, as I have always insisted, there is indeed indoctrination happening in traditional public schools on a massive scale, however much it is unrecognized and covered up. However, the indoctrination is primarily and persistently in the other direction and it is not all that subtle. Students are imbued daily or even hourly with a steady bombardment of messages and experiences which prejudice them regularly toward conformity, conservative ideation and orientation, blind obedience to arbitrary and anonymous authority, and values derived directly from and based solidly in religion (specifically in Christianity).
It appears to be extraordinarily difficult for any of the people, including many professionals involved in or interested in the schooling field (as opposed to the “field of education”, which covers an infinitely larger scope of activity and inquiry) to see how distinctly different my proposals, beliefs, and philosophy are from the reactionary libertarians, religious fanatics, and fascists who happen to share my disaffection for the harms inflicted by dysfunctional schools. Likewise, it is difficult for anyone else to even acknowledge the sad reality that our schools are dysfunctional in many ways and for many students. The messages of superiority, success, and necessity have been drilled into our consciousness from early childhood.
To distinguish myself from the right-wing radicals who have exhibited a desire and indeed, an aggressive intention to privatize public schooling or to replace the “system” (which is actually many separate “systems” in many locales with many different modes, modalities, and methodologies) which are in place currently, I have repeated my own intentions and desires for how schooling should be seen and operated, over and over. I make no pretense of being an authority in pedagogy. I merely point out the one major error which took the entire train off the track. Unfortunately, confusion still reigns.
It is all too easy to criticize traditional schools and traditional schooling as an institution with their long and varied history. The most consistent feature they have shared, in fact, is that there has been a love/hate relationship with the public. Interminable conflicts, controversies, criticisms, scandals, and negative reports, especially from those working directly within those systems from their earliest inception have been legendary. Success rates are overshadowed by failure rates more often than not. Finger-pointing is ubiquitous and the litany of complaints and excuses is inexhaustible.
In analyzing the documented history of schooling over nearly two centuries, again the parallels between the attitudes and opinions expressed by historians and scholars whose interpretations veer off extremely in conservative and rightward ideological directions are barely distinguishable from the analyses in the literature of school history on which I have relied (following from my mentor who was a brilliant scholar, who sadly died a few years ago) and which have a strong liberal/progressive character. Frequent references appear with regard to independent thinking, healthy positive development and attitudes, and knowledge over a broad spectrum. The reality for most students is dramatically different from what the reactionaries project or the traditionalists propagate, however.
Bad Beginnings Portend Bad Endings
The original impetus for establishing public (common schools) came from individuals with a vested interest in industrialization, expansive development or colonialism and imperialism, social engineering and control, and pacification of the population, and from moralists promoting religious dogma and doctrine. These all have been subject to harsh criticism from various quarters in the last century, including some on the far right. I do often find a great deal of common ground with the statements about questionable motives on the part of the early promoters of mass schooling from even some conservatives. Their means do not lead to the ends they propose however, and their desire for domination does not match their stated goals toward independent and critical thought.
Some of the arguments utilized on both parts are identical and some are based in good psychology and on other behavioral science. Some reflect an awareness of modern circumstances and changes. Predominately, however, those from the libertarians are based more on a total mistrust of government to do anything well and on a strong anarchical orientation. They are stuck in reverse and have romantic notions of life in the past or an imagined future which are completely unrealistic.
In contrast, I fully trust government to do what government is designed to do, which does NOT include deciding what children should study or learn; does NOT include using behavioral modification, conditioning and control to reward and punish students, and does NOT include mass production or consumption of curriculum with extensive official authority, oversight and input. Broad and overarching authority to define and administer “education” like so much bad tasting medicine for the supposed good of the ignorant masses is not a legitimate purpose of government or schools.
The privatizers claim to offer academic excellence, intellectual rigor, critical thinking, and good personal discipline for students. These are attributes we all want. What we have already seen from them however, is quite opposite. They, like the traditional school crowd are willing to settle for shoddy standards based on highly subjective test scores, along with anti-intellectual and unscientific cognitive styles and patterns. Groupthink and blind obedience to authority, and discipline according to external prescription without regard for personal conscience based on solid moral convictions, principles, and beliefs proscribe any chance for critical thinking to occur. Empathy is nowhere to be found on the right or from the traditionalists, either.
The Disconnect is Disconnected
Obviously, if there is no agreement that there are major chronic problems in our schools, there is no utility in having some scheme or alternative or for a paradigm shift in thinking and process, whether that would be privatization (which has already proven to be a failure) or something else. The traditionalists live in a happy artificial space, and while they are often forced to acknowledge the problems, they merely pretend they are not so serious and quickly dismiss them from their consciousness in the manner of an addicted person rejecting the possibility of their addiction. And herein lays my real conundrum.
The anti-government, anti-democracy, anti-science people on the far right do agree about how bad things are in our schools. They have somehow removed the rose colored glasses. In their cynicism or ideological purity they have found it expedient to honestly and accurately assess how woefully inadequate students are in nearly every domain which can be evaluated at the end of twelve or more years – if a student manages to endure the degradation and torturous boredom all the way to graduation. Professional researchers and educators are mostly all quite aware on some level that the problems are endemic and profoundly serious, as well. But they are too busy pointing fingers and being lured by novelties and ostensible innovations and grandiose reforms to deal with root causes.
Most people directly involved in schooling see the problems as externally caused or balanced out by the few great success stories and the tolerable (for them) mediocrity. They typically consider the disasters which some students’ lives become the fault of their own inadequacies or backgrounds, likewise exonerating the schools. The public has a negative view generally, while they feel their own local schools are quite good, relying on the frequent self-reporting of their children’s teachers, popular sentiments, and highly biased (fluff and happy) local media stories around holidays and transition periods.
Careening Off a Steep Cliff
Irrespective of the reality and the constancy of the overwhelming sense and often conscious recognition that the whole schooling enterprise is a massive charade and that what has been regarded as learning and progress are nothing more than marking time and getting past testing and evaluation by mostly rote memory and passable compliant behavior and attitudes, everyone invariably agrees nevertheless, to join in the delusion and the belief that an important mission is being accomplished. It is the great and wonderful fraud that is perpetuated ad nauseum because no one can be pinned down or required to answer for the conspicuous failures.
Who can one blame, and how does one prove anything? If the consensus is that all is well and students IS learning, to quote George Bush the lesser, and if the only victims are democracy and powerless and inept youths still having potential, usually actually believing the big lie themselves, then why worry?
The transition from believing in many gods (polytheism) to believing in one god (monotheism) has been seen by scholars of history, society, and human behavior to have been a positive development for civilization, overall. Likewise, the movement from blind faith and superstitious beliefs to a greater reliance on scientific discovery and a broader philosophical inquiry has been considered a leap forward in modernism and human progress. That leap (or step at least) has led to a general recognition for most people in most places that learning, study, curious inquiry, knowledge, and education signify great progress in the betterment of mankind (and womankind). The Enlightenment was amazing. It came and it went and it is profoundly missed.
This is where we have gone off-track and over a steep cliff. We have conflated schooling with education, habitually. Those two things, which are demonstrably and preponderantly separate and different are now seen in the minds of everyone as part of a unitary whole or a continuum. This error has led to profound mayhem and perplexity.
Schooling obviously can provide terribly important and critical services, and it often does. Teachers are a valuable resource and a national treasure. Yet it is a grave mistake to think that schooling automatically equates with education or even with learning and knowledge. It is an even greater mistake to fail to recognize that it can also do immense and even irreparable harm.
As schooling has become a supposed necessity and as something good for the advancement and enhancement of social development, and therefore worthy and essential to impose on society, education has consequentially declined and suffered immeasurably. School (or what I will now call “Big School) is the worst possible substitute for education one could imagine when it is institutionalized, required by law, and thereby standardized, externally controlled, and credentialed. Magically, ostensibly, the unquantifiable has been quantified and the ineffable has now become effable.
For over a century-and-a-half there have been regular protests to these disastrous developments. The most eloquent and brilliant protesters to this gross misappropriation have been elevated in status temporarily and given a distinguished voice; think Dewey, Montessori, Goodman, and too many others to mention. My voice is but an echo in a very long and frustrating series. Those dedicated scholars have never been able to dismantle the machine and reassemble it however, and they all have quickly faded from memory. I lack the skill and eloquence of those greats and my voice has been ignored much more than theirs were ignored. But that is not an excuse to stay silent. Truth has to win out in the end.
The malcontents and misfits on the right (those people) are moving ahead by leaps and bounds, and their arrogance and insolence is unlimited. They will do a great deal more damage before enough people decide that the only way to defeat them is to have schools which are hospitable and nurturing, rather than dehumanizing. And the only way that will ever be the case is to eradicate compulsory attendance laws and to rewrite the laws so that governmental power is limited to funding and allocations, protections against discrimination and abuse, and oversight to include research and recommendations from a federal perspective.
One might ask if it is that simple, why it has not been done yet. There are myriad factors. But the most obvious answer is that the laws require a hierarchy and authority, and authority is power, which people rarely relinquish voluntarily. Other very significant factors are that public opinion is formed by adults who were all conditioned and propagandized about the theoretical indolence and ignorance of children for twelve years; the school mythology and cult of school mentality have been impenetrable, and educators wear rose-colored glasses and live in an optimistic bubble that better suits kindergartners.
It is no less important to recognize that the failures of our schools mean that a majority of adults have little curiosity, they are cynical, apathetic, and anti-intellectual, and they are averse to reading, study, and introspective rumination. Thinking has become painful for them and reading was made into a tedious chore. They are alternatively disturbed by feelings of inadequacy and feelings of superiority or over-confidence, believing that they attended marvelous schools but occasionally recognizing that they did not actually learn what they needed to know, despite being held in confinement for their entire childhood for six hours a day.
If you have read this far, you could be the one person who “gets it”. Eventually, there will be one, and that individual will find a way to get a ball rolling that will ultimately score a strike. It will not bring Utopia, but it will reduce misery and ignorance. I do not expect to see it happen in my lifetime, unfortunately.