Taboos are Taboo. They are Irrational and Unscientific; Why Do We Still Tolerate Them?
A taboo ends a discussion before it begins. In the “modern age”, which has been consistently regarded as an age of science, we have convinced ourselves that “we” as science-minded people no longer have actual taboos prohibiting conversations or debates about touchy subjects. We are unafraid of frank, open, and thoroughly analytical presentations of arguments and opinions.
It is generally believed that there are only isolated pockets of resistance to open and free debate on topics which may be especially controversial or sensitive. This is somewhat of a delusion, however, since there are indeed a few topics which are clearly “off-limits” for nearly everyone and there are rare topics which are simply not allowed any space for discussion and exploration in any quarter.
We are concerned here with only one such hot topic. That topic is the dysfunction inherent in compulsory school attendance and the urgent need to put an end to attendance laws in each of the states. I have violated the taboo by even cracking the door open to suggest that these laws are not sacrosanct and inviolable.
Well, I should now bid farewell to at least 98% of my audience. Thank you for reading thus far. It is unfortunate that you have more interesting and relevant things to occupy your busy schedule. Perhaps one other person among the approximately 1 or 2% (?) who might read further might have some inclination to seriously consider the arguments offered herein on my forbidden and completely taboo topic.
It would be instructive to first establish that this particular taboo truly does exist and to inquire as to how and why it exists. The first indication the taboo is a real thing is that there is no literature and no place where the question receives any attention by those who would ordinarily be expected to actively speak or write on the topic, i.e. educators, educational theorists, or professionals of various stripes who care about children and education.
Should one attempt to start a conversation which has as a premise that compulsory schooling may be counterproductive, harmful, unconstitutional, or of questionable utility with respect to education historically, the possibility that one will find anyone, anywhere of any description to seriously engage in that discussion is almost nil. However, should someone actually agree to debate the topic with the heretic who asks the question, their position will invariably be adamantly and most likely passionately in favor of the laws, even to the point of illogic. Their willingness to find any merit in arguments opposing the laws will surely be non-existent. The debate assuredly will not end with anyone’s satisfaction nor with much in the way of mutual agreement.
Only one notable trace can be found in an exhaustive search for either historical or contemporary attempts to eliminate compulsory attendance. That one unimpressive trace is the anti-government and extremist demagoguery produced by libertarians and certain Christian nationalists or Christian dominionists and others for whom rigid control or comprehensive indoctrination of youth are crucial.
Those impotent malcontents on the extreme right object to the power and control exercised by government over schools and ostensibly over educational policies associated with compulsory attendance laws and state laws and regulations which determine the operations of public schools as oppressive. Their approach borders on anarchy in this domain, if not in others. One finds everything else imaginable relative to schooling.
However, a Black Hole has sucked in every other bit of information relative to contemporary overt efforts to end this profound travesty against children and common sense. No one else voices any notable objection to the laws as grossly inappropriate. For the most part, meaningful historical efforts to eliminate the bad laws are absent from the record as well, unless one knows right where to look. How mysterious that one would point to laws as the gunk gumming up the works! Laws do not set specific policies or direct actions, do they? Or, do they?
The libertarians do have strong, coherent, and logical arguments relative to preserving parental autonomy and objecting to state power and control in the inculcation, indoctrination, and education of young people. They are sensitive to the dangers associated with mind-control, behavior modification, and morality, or with political, social, or even economic messages or lessons from state operatives which might run counter to their personal values.
However, their concerns are not even remotely in any legitimate sense with education, nor are they concerned with the overall welfare of children, nor with the care and maintenance of democracy. They have no issue with control, power, and indoctrination; they just insist on being the ones who exclusively make all the decisions and who are able to call all the shots.
How Futility Relative to Reversing Course has Become Second Nature
Starting before compulsory attendance laws were originally passed in both the US and Russia, there was vigorous opposition in both countries. The great Russian author Tolstoy, who was the headmaster of his own small rural school wrote beautiful essays with powerful and highly insightful arguments against the passage of the laws (Tolstoy, L. (1967). Tolstoy on Education (Translated/Ed. by Wiener). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. His original work was published in 1862).
There were individuals in the US who fought against the laws as well. But they lacked the organization and backing that supporters of the laws had acquired. In the next 100 years, there were many others who were critical of the laws, but there were no serious official legal challenges to their presence and there was apparently little discussion on the merits of either position anywhere it mattered. The public became inured to the frequent complaints and negative consequences of the laws as the connections between the problems and the laws became progressively less clear.
Since the first attendance laws were passed over 150 years ago, there has been adamant opposition in certain quarters periodically, and particular demands for religious exemptions. Prominent voices have spoken out and much has been written about the dangers inherent in creating and retaining such a top-down system. Scholars, such as Dewey, Goodman, Holt, and Illich have clearly articulated lines of connections between the persistent issues faced in schools with forced schooling. Regrettably, all were given their brief moment to speak and be noticed, and then promptly forgotten and sidelined.
Unfortunately, none of the efforts to defeat the organization and support for the laws and for traditional schooling under the compulsory paradigm, which came to represent the legal requirements in situ, were adequate to bring about seriously contemplating the termination of the laws and the systems. A negative stigma among traditionalists and eventually even the public developed attached to all protesters. A culture or collective consciousness of failure and discontent now characterizes anyone who has the temerity to persist in bringing up the topic.
It must be noted also that it is virtually impossible for any student in any traditional public school to avoid the incessant “stream of consciousness” in favor of forced schooling and all the many appurtenances associated with compulsory attendance and public schooling as an institution. Teachers, administrators, public officials, parents, media figures, and community leaders almost without exception reflexively and enthusiastically heap praise upon these revered “systems”, which often include references to the benefits of universality and the inclusion of those “poor unfortunate individuals” whose parents are delinquent or absent and who do not have “books in the home”. The paternalism is taken for granted as a good.
School reform and “innovation” have become the mantra for generations of students and parents. That there were major problems and ubiquitous institutional failures was undeniable. That did not stop many of the boosters of schools from a regular practice of de-emphasizing the obvious patterns of dysfunction and chaos and from re-engaging in continual hype and promotion of the supposed miraculous successes and benefits of their staid institutions, however.
Books and reports were regularly published outlining myriad issues, such as discipline problems, high drop rates, low test scores, scandals, teacher morale problems, complaints of lack of involvement by parents, student apathy, and all the other complaints which have customarily plagued schools, along with a million splendid formulae for rectifying each and every problem, as if by magic. Nothing could ever gain traction and move people to remain engaged long enough to retain effective methodologies which invariably must buck the authoritarian power structure. Harsh criticisms were like the proverbial water flowing off a duck’s back.
Cynicism about the impossibility of changing anything and the unresponsive character of the bureaucracy and the hierarchy became a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one had ever anticipated how much power would reside in the hands of a few individuals where something presumably as anodyne as schooling was involved or that the power and the actions of those people would be largely unrelated to the specific goals of students, parents, or teachers.
This following excerpt relative to the standard practice of appointing school superintendents was copied from a Wikipedia page (“History of Education in the United States”).
“The state superintendents were business managers more than educators. They identified with the business community, and made frequent analogy to making schools a business-like bureaucracy, with maximum efficiency and minimum waste, at reasonable expense to the taxpayer, with a long term benefit of enhanced economic growth. They believe that students should be tightly controlled and teachers closely supervised. The superintendents emphasized the need for uniformity, strict adherence to elaborate rules, and avoiding local variations.”
This set of circumstances is designed to maintain, reinforce, and justify a status quo. It is designed to block any appreciable modification of or deviation from the institutional stability and preservation. There are succeeding waves of new faces who hope to change the many things which are uncomfortable, unworkable, and misanthropic but plenty of immutable barriers in place to frustrate those dreams. People have discovered this through intuition and more often painfully the hard way.
It has become part of institutional memory that true reform is just not in the cards. The idea that attendance laws could possibly be eradicated becomes a pipe dream and a fantasy that no one should ever take seriously. Why give up on a perfectly good model (which has been deemed “good enough” and fixable by trusted “experts”)?
I have been astounded and extremely exasperated that even people such as Dr. Peter Gray, who wrote that, “School is a prison -- and damaging our kids” and his supposedly progressive-to-the-point-of-radicalism friends in the alternative community have a bizarre aversion to any discussion of ending compulsory attendance through any sort of courageous direct legal, political, or social action. Ending that destructive paradigm is precisely what they passively and implicitly advocate with their every breath.
Yet that action can be effectively accomplished in their minds, for some weird reason, only gradually and incrementally by reaching a magical “tipping point” or a “critical mass” of enlightened and freedom-loving citizens who inertly transform the schools quietly and in an orderly fashion. They are unable to say out loud and with conviction that these damned destructive laws should have been struck down a very long time ago, full stop, End of story.
Even the sole teacher with whom I have often communicated whose eloquent and amazingly straightforward writing on the urgent need to make schooling voluntary has consistently always seemed content to sit it out and patiently wait for the world to catch up. He has also reliably over nearly two decades, despite a clear awareness of the damage done by the compulsory framework, focused on halfway, stopgap measures, the slow-walk approach, a thoroughly moderate and unassertive approach to fighting the good fight, which must for some inexplicable reason be calm, cool, and collected at all times and never a bona fide flaming fight to ultimate victory involving meaningful sanguine controversy and conflict.
Everyone surrenders before a single shot is fired in the existential conflict to defend education, children’s integrity, and the foundational blocks of democracy! Why?
In a recent exchange, that friend recommended the book, “Challenging Assumptions in Education?” by Wendy Priesnitz. He included a great quote from the book and her list of assumptions that she says should be challenged. I agreed enthusiastically with the quotes and the list and with his appraisal.
However, I said, in effect, “ho hum”. We have heard it all before dozens of times in language that is strikingly similar and with ample documentation of empirical evidence. I have the greatest respect for this friend and did not mean to be dismissive or insulting. But re-inventing the educational wheel ad infinitum has resulted in NO significant change for many generations.
In responding to my friend I referenced the book, from 1993, “The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It's Too Late?”, by Seymour B. Sarason. I referred as well to an article by MIT professor, Seymour Papert, (Papert, S. (1998). Why School Reform is Impossible. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6 (4), pp. 417-427). These both illustrate the main point of my article very well.
Still, after saying quite unequivocally that reform is impossible, Papert, a veritable genius, waffled at the end and tried to give (false) hope and spelled out his projections for how schools could surely change with the “right” attitude and focus, again not ever once mentioning the core problem if my memory is correct. Sarason does essentially the same thing I believe, although I cannot bring myself to plod through another formulaic and pedestrian book full of empty promises. I have only scanned and skimmed his book, which I have had in my library for years.
I find such books and articles extremely exasperating. They catalogue the chronic problems and the lengthy history of failures and reforms which go nowhere and then they boldly declare, as if today is the first day of history, that there are viable solutions. More study is needed and greater resolve. None of their astute analyses ever mention dealing with the actual cause of the problems, namely the arbitrary authority emanating from attendance law. They cannot get that far. They are well aware of the taboo, and they dare not break it.
This is a sickness with people in the school business. My sickness is my inability to give up on them totally despite my endless frustration. The latest iteration of the sickness is the so-called “GERM” (Global Education Reform Movement). Try, try, and try again! These people will simply not give up, either. If it did not work locally or nationally, then perhaps taking it worldwide will miraculously fix the intractable problems! There is safety in numbers.
One professor has come dangerously close to making the connection between the authoritarianism so prevalent within our schools, and now, within our society, and attendance law. Professor Bruce Romanish wrote a brilliant and extremely comprehensive treatise spelling out how a climate of arbitrariness and control invariably develops in traditional schools, with lucid arguments, explanations, analyses, and connections, including many from history. He seems to hit every relevant nail squarely on the head. (Romanish, B., (1995) Authority, Authoritarianism, and Education, Education and Culture, Fall Vol. XII No. 2.).
Unfortunately, Romanish also repeats the familiar irritating error made by everyone else in the field. He cannot bring himself to pin the tail on the donkey. He whizzes right past the conspicuous connection between mandatory attendance, the resulting authoritarian bureaucracy, and the enormous compendium of faults, flaws, and failures of the traditional schools, all of which he catalogues with stunning brilliance. He has all the pieces of the puzzle except for that one crucial piece, which he leaves in the margin on the table waiting to be fitted into its proper spot by some more insightful or courageous person, soon.
Possibly the biggest problem with a taboo, or with this one at least, is that the tacit agreement to avoid the topic keeps it out of sight and out of mind. If people are not aware that this taboo is a real factor in quashing any serious discussion of the topic, it will never enter their consciousness. No overt conspiracy or agreement is needed to prevent the topic from entering the public debate.
In other words, this has now become an impossible situation. I’ve been wasting my time for over half-a-century. The “lost cause” truly is a lost cause. The writing is on my wall. In which case, democracy is likewise, a lost cause. This is not a pretty picture.
Does anyone know a good shrink? I am definitely suffering here from masochism and nihilism. The taboo lives on. Tradition wins. There is no hope. But I imagine I will still compulsively and obsessively continue to the bitter end, nevertheless. Am I missing some promising new transforming insight to circumvent human nature and human intractability emerging from the dark cloud?