Representative Democracy is No Longer Working: What Must Be Done to Save it?
The “let’s pretend” approach to the education our young citizens is not going to cut it.
The handwriting is on the wall, the ceiling, and the windows. It’s on billboards and in lots of books, articles, and news stories. Our precious democracy is ailing, and one could say that it is failing.
Many people have finally decided that this revered form of government is completely unworkable or too corrupt to repair. They are taking very purposeful and practical steps to dismantle self-government in favor of some version of autocracy, theocracy, a dictatorship, or a significantly modified democracy minus the levels of freedom, justice, equality, liberty, and brotherhood which have been broadcast as our ideal for nearly three centuries.
Those angry, hostile, and often paranoid people who have given up on democracy have many grievances, real and imagined. They mean business. They are well-funded and are growing in number and influence. They are the reactionaries and extremists of the principally religious right who believe God is their copilot and that owning the Libs is a sacred mission.
The attitude of most loyal Americans, thankfully, is that if you want to take our democracy from us, you can have it when you pry it from our cold, dead hands, in the words of the gun fanatics. Unfortunately, it is not that simple in the case of guns, and it is not at all simple in the case of democracy, either. Democracy can slip through our fingers like so much water and evaporate as if it never existed in the first place.
Truthfully, of course, we have never come close to having a true or pure democracy. That level of direct ‘one man’, ‘one vote’ citizen rule on every issue has not ever been regarded by sensible individuals to be a feasible possibility in a nation of millions of people.
However, abandoning the concept of democracy altogether is not remotely feasible either if we prefer not to return to the Dark Ages. Giving up and turning to naked authoritarianism and autocracy is strictly for people who have a pathological need to be led around by the nose, or for people who feel compelled to lead others around by the nose.
The single most critical element in any version of democracy is the people. “The people” is literally how the word “democracy” is defined. The people must know what is in their own best interests and they must know whom to trust (or whom not to trust). They must know how to keep those people who hopefully work for them and represent them, honest. These things are easier said than done, obviously. It is a cliché to say that the people must be well-informed, well-educated, and competent.
This is where we hit a monumental snag in our studied analysis. Democracy appears to be in deep trouble and at risk of a total breakdown (assuming the breakdown is not already complete and democracy is not already a thing of the past here). To be clear, democracy, literally “we the people” is, and therefore, ‘we’ are failing. Democracy is tied inextricably to education. Therefore, we must acknowledge that somehow, our education as a people on the whole has been far from adequate. We the people are in big trouble.
Connect the Damned Dots!
Americans seem to just now have finally discovered the authoritarians, fascists, racists, religious fanatics, and other right-wing extremists in their midst. We have our white supremacists, Christian dominionists and Christian nationalists. We see far too many oligarchs, plutocrats, and theocrats, along with the common variety xenophobes, misogynists, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, gun nuts, sadists, and free market fundamentalists.
These people all tend to align themselves with powerful and capricious leaders and with authority and charismatic authority figures. How has authority become so appealing to so many diverse individuals?
Allow me to offer a clue. Arbitrary authority is the most prominent feature of schools in that the teacher has nearly unlimited discretion in the classroom, administrators have nearly unlimited discretion over teachers and students, and school district and state officials have nearly unlimited discretion over everyone within the district. This has repeatedly been reaffirmed by none other than the U.S. Supreme Court in every case involving schools and students in the traditional systems. Lives are framed by this sad worldview from a very early age. Children learn what they live and draw logical conclusions from what they routinely see.
Students are not stupid. They see how this all works, or more accurately, how it fails to work. But they are impressionable and they often perceive power and authority as desirable things and as a guiding force in many instances. Some are anxious to possess power and authority to have control over others and some come to believe that they need someone to lead and protect them.
Many are convinced that someone in a position of authority with overwhelming capability and power should be in control over them or over everyone. Behind all of this is the ancient notion that there is an invisible but real supernatural persona somewhere with ultimate power and authority, the great teacher in the sky.
Democracy and Authoritarianism are at Odds: How does Democracy Prevail?
One thing is glaringly clear. Democracy cannot succeed if enough of the people do not learn about it early and well, if they are not intimately familiar with how it is organized and structured in its practical application in some detail, and if they do not know what they as individuals must know and do to effectively help make it work (or at least to not undermine it). Likewise, authoritarianism and autocracy must be understood to enable the people to prevent those things from rearing their ugly heads.
This one first question must be asked at the outset of our inquiry; how is it possible for young people to become intimately familiar with democracy and with what it feels like and how it is maintained if they are living for their entire youth in an undemocratic environment?
If schools are not democratic institutions, how can students appreciate and understand the essential concepts and relationships of representative government? If authoritarianism appears to many to be a benefit or a tolerable evil, what will prevent its spread? The answers seem quite apparent and undeniable to anyone able to use logic and unwilling to suspend disbelief.
Children can only relate to democratic ideals and principles on an abstract level under the current paradigm. They experience a world in which freedom is foreign and justice is only aspirational for some theoretical or hypothetical future place and time. Even in the classes in which politics, civics, and history are “taught” there is little in the way of probing beyond a superficial level.
The curriculum must invariably be watered down, sanitized, homogenized, standardized, and rendered suitable for the lowest common denominator in traditional schooling. In this process, the word ‘rendered’ is exactly the right choice as a descriptor.
Hello, Hello! Is this message being received anywhere? Can anyone break the code? I am transmitting from deep space. There is intelligent life out here in the wide universe. Believe it. Your schools are not merely undemocratic. They are anti-democratic.
How We Got Here – A Little History
The father of our educational paradigm and the person I like to call our “Johnny Appleseed” of “public schooling” mandated by state laws and under state auspices and authority,
and ultimately controlled by state regulations beginning in 1840, was Horace Mann. Mann was a passionate advocate of publicly funded non-sectarian, egalitarian schooling. So far, so good.
Parents do not have unlimited time and energy to devote to teaching their offspring, they may not have the technical training or skills needed for optimal teaching in some areas, and many find it necessary to be out of the home or busy for work. Schools pool resources and can help introduce children to the great variety of things they may not discover at home.
Unfortunately, Mann and others who pushed for public schooling were social reformers and crusaders who had big, one might even say Utopian, hopes for future citizens. Their faith in schools was not matched, I strongly suspect, by their faith in the students, however. Their visions and ideas were not necessarily based on scientifically or historically proven methods of pedagogy. They were responding to the issues of a particular place and time, namely the issues of the Industrial Revolution, national expansion, social upheaval, and innovations in many fields.
While Mann understood the need for schools to be inclusive and secular, his background was religious and traditional. He saw children as “unruly”, “undisciplined”, and immature, or “injudicious”. He felt the need for moral training, and the Bible was the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom for him and most people then, even though he discouraged allowing any one church or specific religion to gain ascendancy.
Mann recommended bell ringing to prepare students for factory employment where the time clock was all-important. The “factory school” was specifically identified as the preferred model. A “harsh pedagogy” similar to the Prussian military academies was seen as essential to proper decorum.
Standardization was crucial to the paradigm. Official state control was necessary to avoid problems with squabbling at the local level over policies and methods when parents, teachers, or administrators had different views. The state was not just taking over from parents or local communities and school boards; it had power over the minute-by-minute lives of individual children. The institution for assuring the perpetuation of a democratic system was a product of social engineering of the worst kind. It had to be flagrantly undemocratic to achieve the ideological objectives of these ambitious social engineers.
The mistake was fatal. If we had “public schools” which were truly public with the protections and funding of government, without the incarceration of children, the public would not be forced now to compete with billionaires who want to monetize and privatize them. We have created instead state schools in which the children of the public are often involuntary recruits and victims. Look to the teacher for guidance. Look to the state to make decisions for you. Look to DeSantis, Abbott, and the governors who have the authority. Now, look the other way, again. They are only hapless children, after all.
We are “one nation”, under the sun, moon, and the stars. At the moment, we are under a very dark cloud of incipient fascism because of massive miseducation. Of course, there should be a federal Department of Education! It is the obligation of the federal government to take the temperature and have an accurate assessment of what is happening in the nation as a whole educationally. The federal government should know where the money is going and take measures to guarantee safety for students and prevent discrimination or exploitation.
Curriculum, however, is none of the government’s business, whether local, state, or federal. Uncle Sam has no expertise in educational or pedagogical theory and he is not permitted to tip the scales of opinion, philosophy, politics, or knowledge in one direction or another. David Koch is 100% right that school and state should be separate, although for all the wrong reasons.
Those of us who think rationally do not find it difficult to understand that church and state must be separate. Faith and belief are matters which are highly personal, subjective, and private, involving great unknowns or even what is unknowable.
Unfortunately, most of us have fallen into the common fallacy that because education presumably deals principally with hard science and objective facts, it is acceptable or desirable for the state to exercise control over the process for all citizens as an executive or managerial function. This is an egregious error.
Education is inherently political. Politics are highly personal, subjective, and private, involving great unknowns, also. Politics, like religion involve belief systems, faith, emotional investment, and perceptions that cannot be independently validated or verified. One’s education is much too much of a personal attribute and a matter of choices and attitudes to be determined by state officials, authorities, and supposed experts. State control of schooling is authoritarian, bureaucratic, and fascist in nature. State power should be reserved for all the other things of a less personal nature.
How ironic that the Kochs and their ilk have been throwing tantrums about students being indoctrinated in government schools with liberal values! When in fact, most of the indoctrination is toward conservative, or reactionary values thanks to the conditioning and programming that leans heavily toward the sink-or-swim, rugged individualism, and original sinner needing salvation mentality carried over from the middle ages. If you did not do your homework, hang your head in shame and repent.
Why are people trying to dismantle the public school systems? First, it is because they can. They can because power over schooling is in the hands of political operatives. All that is needed for charter schools to become the pet projects of political people is for political people to recognize that they can enhance their power and influence by pitching those mismanaged schools as the answer to chronic problems in the public systems. “School Choice”, “parental rights”, homeschooling, and charter schools are controversies only because laws grant inordinate power to state authorities and executives. Duh!
The Alternative
If anyone has misgivings about allowing children to have a meaningful say in important decisions in schools’ functioning as active democracies, one need not wonder if there will be disorder or chaos and a lack of academic or intellectual progress in those schools. The feared and fictional “Lord of the Flies” scenario in which groups of uncivilized children spin out of control and necessarily become an abusive hierarchy ruled by intimidation and violence is conjured up from erroneous beliefs and ancient mythology.
The “law of the jungle” metaphor may be apt when there is no management or organization and supervision in place. However, we are talking about schools here, not anarchic orphaned children in back alleys in huge cities or remote jungles.
There is a substantial body of literature which documents how students fare in democratically operated schools. Probably the best source is AERO (Alternative Education Resource Organization). They list many books, articles, websites, and sources for schools which fall into these categories on their website.
There have been alternative schools of various descriptions, frequently called ‘free schools’, for generations. Montessori schools may be the most well-known and well-established of this genre, having locations in many states for over a century (for elementary ages only, I believe).
One of the more prominent schools with this liberating philosophy is the Waldorf Academy near Boston, which appears to be thriving and beloved by the graduates and their families (covering K-12, I believe). Another was the “First Street School” in the 1960’s which is beautifully described in the inspirational book, “The Lives of Children”, by George Dennison.
Jonathon Kozal wrote the book, “Free Schools”, which argues passionately for the proliferation of schools built around the idea of freedom and autonomy for students as an antidote to the terribly regimented, conformist, and creativity-destroying schools that were the public schools throughout the first half of the 20th century.
Kozal must be very discouraged to see that the second half of that century and the first two decades of the current century have only led to more of the same dreadful milieus in which children are browbeaten, guilt-tripped, pressure-cooked, and tested nearly to death (assuming he is still with us). I contacted him about eight years ago. He was still active but seemed unimpressed with my appeal.
Many factors explain why the alternative models for schooling have been limited to a tiny number and why that ‘movement’ is not moving. The biggest reason for their lack of success is ostensibly that nearly all the cost of establishing and operating schools outside the public system is borne by parents and individuals. A handful of “experimental” or model schools have been supported in part by some federal funds, I believe, and some large colleges and universities had pilot programs for teacher training. Two of my children attended one such public/private hybrid school in Brockport, N.Y., in the early 1970’s during their elementary school years.
However, the real problems were, and remain, the incredible difficulty of getting the American people excited about giving kids genuine freedom and finding ways to convince anyone that the students are actually learning and becoming good citizens in such an uninhibited environment, when testing and grading are no longer obsessions. In the public schools, tests and evaluations are still ubiquitous and grades and test scores are the comforting security blanket for parents and everyone else, sadly, even including the parents of those who do not do well.
Now, standardized tests are all the rage. Rage certainly should be the response. It does not matter that those anachronistic and highly specious barometers are practically useless as accurate indicators of authentic learning and knowledge, that at least half of what they measure are behavioral indicators, that certain privileged students have clear advantages over others, and that there is inevitably much manipulation, also known as cheating, to make the teacher or school look as if they are doing a better job than they actually are doing.
The reality is that mythology about schools and about ignorant children holds sway over the American public. The phenomenal volume of research studies only confuse the issues and do not ever break through the heavy clouds of misinformation, propaganda, and inane happy talk which pervades every aspect of the dialogue about schools. Their PR is unsurpassed.
Professionals who actually do know something about education are powerless. The science has no effect and no real influence. The big bureaucratic machines lumber on blindly, mowing down anything or anyone which might interfere with their destructive operation.
If we do not understand anything else we must understand that education is much bigger than and much more than mere facts and information. Knowledge is much, much more than what can be obtained from sitting at a desk and studying what has been learned and recorded by others in the past. School is NOT education, and NEVER will be. Repeat after me: School is NOT education, and NEVER will be.
There is no education without autonomy. There is no knowledge without actually being in the world and experiencing life as a free individual with freedom of movement and the time and freedom to think undisturbed and without undue external influence. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, is a genius with information and facts and plenty of academic skill. He has published books while imprisoned. But he is one of the multitude of the miseducated, rather than truly educated.
I, for one, have never said, nor will I ever say schools are unnecessary or that they do not provide valuable services. However, by the end of the first semester of first grade most students in the public system under compulsory attendance have become fully aware that they are not citizens with the birthrights of citizens within a democratic society. They know that to stand up for their rights and dignity is futile. To complain to their parents is futile. Most totally capitulate and go along with what often feels like abuse, neglect, and a bizarre waste of precious time.
School as we know it is, after all, a totalitarian environment. Despite all the lovely denials and declamations of the passionate school boosters and school cult members, kids must bend to external pressures and authority unless they are lucky enough to be assigned exceptionally capable and competent teachers willing to circumvent the rules, risking sanctions or termination. Only those extraordinary teachers who have sacrificed their time and energy to respond compassionately to the individual needs and ordinary insecurities of students can make the experience fully rewarding. Teachers must bend to external pressures and authority as well, right along with their students.
Developing emotional regulation, or self-control and self-discipline surely do fit within the many tasks involved in becoming educated. Socialization is crucial, and learning the norms and rules of one’s culture and society are of great importance for young people.
However, once again, it is a democratic principal that those lessons and skills should be learned without undue coercion or abuse and with the individual’s integrity and dignity intact. When discipline is a problem, it is a problem created by the school. The truth is that those things are not taught as math and science are taught. They must be an integral part of one’s life experience and learned through modelling, mutually respectful interactions, strategic illustrations, and genuine love and affection.
Arbitrary Authority Leads in Only One Direction
Recently, while reading about how smoking damages lung tissues and cells, I discovered that not only do the nicotine, smoke, and smoke by-products damage the cells, but the immune response is inhibited when damage is also done to the capability of cell DNA to repair itself normally when damaged. Insult is added to injury. This is analogous to what happens with arbitrary authority.
Another metaphor for this that I have preferred for some time makes the problem of arbitrary authority even more evident, I believe. If one tries to domesticate a baby alligator and feeds it daily, and it lives in the back yard and swims in the pool, do not be surprised after it grows beyond a certain point if someone loses an arm or is eaten alive, if they decide to go swimming with the pet alligator. The alligator in the school pool is arbitrary authority (as distinguished from legitimate and organic authority based on knowledge, experience, and respect).
Laws which require attendance in schools have sharp teeth and strong jaws. They delegate power and authority which are assumed to be necessary, harmless, and beneficial. Order and structure imposed through authority are ostensibly needed for the school to perform its functions properly. There is a need to justify that power, and the students must be made aware of their limitations and where power lies. We just love those precious little kids, do we not?
Now however, with those laws mandating universal attendance (with certain exceptions), there must be innumerable ways to assure compliance with the law, to establish protocols, to set parameters with rules and prohibitions, to measure effects, and to maintain the entire edifice. None of this is done in a vacuum. Real people are the actors and real effects are felt daily.
The alligator will not be domesticated, regardless. Authority will not remain purely beneficial and innocent. It morphs into something insidious and feeds on itself.
Authority is one thing. Arbitrary authority, or in other words, the individual discretion to reward and punish those of lesser status down in the trenches, is something else. Even when teachers are not inclined to use power abusively, the institution will evolve in ways which pervert and misapply authority.
Teachers will no longer have control. They are the part of the “immune system” which no longer works as intended. They cannot meet all the demands and requirements imposed from higher authority without violating their own standards and personal rules.
There will be deadlines, curricular guidelines, pressures to excel, distractions, interruptions, questions, and students who are unable to focus and comprehend. It is not possible to have a law and apply it in this domain without the arbitrary feature placing immense power in the hands of poorly trained or over-zealous people and the profound risks which accompany it.
Bureaucracy creeps in imperceptibly and takes over completely. We have not yet even considered that there will always be teachers whose implacable desire is to exercise complete control and domination.
Our schools do not pass the smell test, nor any other test. We are not opening the doors to enlightenment for our young citizens. Students do not love reading and learning as they might. They are not broadly ready to accept responsibility and to BE the government that they must have with the essential immune response for the DNA of democracy to remain healthy and to repair itself when attacked.
The problems are in the schools, and the solution – the sole solution – is to get the alligator out of the pool. Compulsory attendance laws MUST be eradicated or democracy surely will fall by the wayside as some are predicting.
Self-delusion and inane happy talk are our enemies. You are the new messenger. No one else will be stepping up in time to insist that the myths be debunked and the bad laws be taken off the books permanently. There is no more time to waste. Do you care? Will you accept the challenge? Or, will you continue to remain silent and indifferent about what is a profound threat and a travesty?
Thanks for this Robert: I am not sure what you are really saying here especially with regard to attendance. I think the sole responsibility of attendance is probably by the parents but how can parents assure this if both parents are working and assume your kid goes to school if they are not there?
I 100% agree with you with regard to endless testing. I think a lot of good teachers left when this happened. I know 1 or 2.
Apparently the US spends more money on education than any other country in the world but Education is well below a huge number of countries.
I did have a daughter in the US school district and was appalled by her education. She was learning nothing. We had come from the UK at the time. Her Elementary school in a Canyon was fantastic mostly because a lot of parents were involved.
I don't live in the US now but in France where the system is OK/not brilliant but at least they are learning. I have met so many stupid Americans in my life and have always understood education is key.