The Fallacy of Universal Public Education & The Greater Fallacy of Privatization
The lowest common denominator can never lead to the highest ideal
Once upon a time it was decided that ignorance could be eliminated by enrolling every child in school. The belief was that children would learn the “basics” of the three “R’s” and build a firm foundation for learning on their own and for living a more fulfilling and well-ordered life. That was a splendid idea and it was, in theory, a great solution to many problems. Regrettably, things have not worked out as expected. That truth, sadly, is in fact a great understatement.
During the relatively distinct period now known as “The Enlightenment”, it had become increasingly fashionable and popular to be knowledgeable about what was taking place with respect to scientific discoveries, literature, history, and philosophy. Rational thinking was replacing superstition, and religious faith and ritual were having less of a grip on the everyday lives of individuals, broadly speaking. Being educated became a status symbol and schooling was seen as the primary way to become educated for ordinary people, while private tutoring was exclusively for the wealthy.
It seemed to make a lot of sense, therefore, for more people, and ideally, for everyone to undergo a certain amount of schooling to bring the level of education within the society up to some higher point, overall. If education is a good, and schooling is the means or vehicle for education, then it appears to make sense that enrolling every child in school is a desirable objective to achieve an enlightened population and an elevated future for all. How could anyone argue with that? Unless perhaps someone believed that learning too much might pose a danger of people becoming too haughty and arrogant or indifferent to the will of God, as many did.
There was some resistance to the idea of universal schooling. In an agrarian society young people were the most essential laborers in producing crops and in the intensive work on farms where growing and harvesting plants and animals were crucial to the survival or economic viability of families and communities. Children were also a valuable part of the workforce in factories during the Industrial Revolution. Physical labor was seen as virtuous and important to character development. Religion and religious instruction were still regarded as the only avenue to a faithful and worthy life for many people.
The people who had great faith in the potential for schooling as a social panacea and as the institution which would promote Bible reading, punctuality and diligence by workers, and peaceful and docile behavior in society ultimately won the day. Not only were schools established but laws were passed requiring attendance in those schools. However, if education was truly the goal for everyone or nearly everyone, the promoters failed to comprehend how the schools would achieve that education under the conditions they had established.
A tremendous amount of confusion developed because so many individuals had their own conception of what purposes schools had or should have and of what they could or should accomplish for citizens, for the nation, for the economy, and for society more generally. Many people, including those employed in the school systems misunderstood the learning process or had no understanding of learning theory, human or behavioral psychology, social or group needs and dynamics, the politics of schools and education, or of how knowledge is created and accumulated through the dissemination of language, symbols, information, and perceptions. Ignorance has ruled all this time.
This confusion and ignorance is highlighted every day in the current literature. Within just the past week, a new understanding of learning came on the scene. New studies reveal that what had been believed and utilized as gospel regarding the speed and facility with which students acquire and retain knowledge varies NOT nearly as much with native intelligence or potential, as had been the assumption, as it varies with the “prior knowledge” of students. The article, for those wishing to research this one aspect is: “An astonishing regularity in student learning rate”, by Kenneth R. Koedinger & colleagues, Proc Natl Acad Sci: USA. 2023 Mar.
The article referenced involved, “1.3 million observations across 27 datasets of student interactions with online practice systems in the context of elementary to college courses in math, science, and language”. They studied 6,000 students. Their primary question was, “…why do some students learn faster than others? Or, do they?” They found that “…initial performance varies substantially”, but they surprisingly found, “…students to be astonishingly similar in estimated learning rate”. Did anyone see that coming? (Yes, some of us did.)
Here again is another rather profound example of how, for literally generations, the practices of traditional schools have been based on misperceptions, mythology, and erroneous theory. Yet educators have steamrolled ahead having phenomenal power and arbitrary control over students as if they had all the answers and that students have virtually no prior knowledge! Why? Because laws were passed based on false assumptions and expectations regarding compulsory attendance in school. Why? Because school and education were erroneously conflated, when in fact the two are frequently antithetical and have opposing objectives. Go figure!
The Old Basics Myth
The place where this discussion must always start, presumably, is with the somewhat facile notion that children can be taught basic skills in a relatively standardized manner and they can be provided with information, data, and knowledge that has been distilled down for them or introduced in selected small fragments and units which are simplified and structured as a foundation for increasingly more sophisticated study and learning as they become older and more mature. This has been assumed as the way the world works and the way the mind of the child works. That conception of the learning process is not necessarily completely misguided or wrong to be honest, although it leads us in a wrong direction and is the cause of some extremely disappointing dysfunction and awful policies.
We typically start, for example, with teaching a child the letters of the alphabet. The alphabet is a code for language, which is essential to communication and to reading and writing. In reality, however, each child has a slightly distinctive approach to processing information and learning that code and others depending on myriad factors having to do with cognitive functioning, life experience, personality, style of processing information, perceptive orientation, etc., etc.
If given the time and opportunity, each child is likely to make sense of things and to find ways of interpreting the symbols and data around them to gain a satisfactory and satisfying comprehension of the way things are, the way things work, and the way people think, all which vary along several dimensions. They will develop an organic process if left alone and allowed to function and flow in their world, and for most, that will usually result in an ability to speak, read, and write reasonably well using the prevailing language.
Modern societies are not willing to wait for children to gradually learn the imagined “basics” presumably in the way that a computer is programmed or to take the chance that children may not organically find their way to understanding and using language, communicating, learning all there is to know, and becoming competent in a complex world, however. We are compelled to speed up that process and to apply a contrived formula or methodology to achieve certain (ambitious and arbitrary) goals.
But we are incredibly clumsy and get in our own way. We insist on the “phonics” method or some other alternative or pet theory when the child may need to approach learning to read using half-a-dozen different modes and methods at different times or stages and on a totally different schedule and track than the one we have arrogantly chosen. We have little confidence in the intellectual capacities or curiosity of ordinary children. We insist on teaching, rather than creating environments and opportunities for learning, which is a radically different concept.
What has been missed completely is that there are NO basics which can be formulated and prepackaged for students as some set of particular units or pieces of information. The child has already created his or her own “basics”, which may or may not match up at any given juncture with what supposed experts have identified as fundamental or rudimentary material essential to learning. The child starts creating a reality at or before birth and that reality is multi-dimensional, primarily below the level of language or consciousness, highly idiosyncratic, and mostly private and inaccessible to outside scrutiny.
None of the above is meant to state that we cannot have public schools which provide invaluable services to children for much of their developmental period. No one is saying that schooling is somehow categorically harmful or a waste of time. However, it should be understood that curricula designed in advance and standardized and administered within a monolithic institution can never effectively contribute meaningfully to education.
The student must always be engaged as a consequence of interest, prior knowledge, curiosity, and personal drive. It does mean that making schooling universal through laws requiring attendance is misanthropic and absurd given what we have known for decades about learning theory, human behavior, history, and common sense.
What exactly do all children need to learn? Do they need to know their multiplication tables up to 10 x 10? Do they need a vocabulary of 2,976 words by age 11? Do they need to know who the president was in 2008? What do we as a society want schools to do and not do? Who gets to decide these thorny questions?
If all children must attend as a matter of law, there must be people in positions of power and authority making those kinds of decisions and setting the policies and the agenda and enforcing the law. Does anyone see what a cluster of confusion and conflict we have invited and indeed, created for ourselves with this Machiavellian scheme?
When children are conscripted into the service of schooling and when learning is their duty, and when everyone must attend except for the children of the wealthy and privileged, the concepts of student-centered, intrinsic motivation, and high morale are lost on day two, if not on day one. As in military service during peacetime, the conscripts feel put upon, neglected, bored, and useless. Mull for a second or two the bizarre idea of learning as an obligation and a requirement imposed by the state! Contemplate that pathological invention for a bit. Could we get any more ridiculous?
Morale under such circumstances is always a problem for some significant number of individuals. Rules must be firmly in place and enforced. Order must be maintained at all cost. Discipline takes center stage. Authority must be arbitrary and it must be understood as nearly absolute. When it is not, the inmates are likely to take over the asylum. What were we saying about child-centered education earlier? Some of the children will fade into the woodwork, and some will test their limits or exceed their limits. This all strikes me as a case of ‘farmers in an academic’s world’.
I have written extensively about the inimical effects of arbitrary authority in this context and I cite others who have examined the many pitfalls thoroughly and with much greater eloquence elsewhere. We simply cannot have mandatory attendance enforced by law without the threat and intimidation of serious negative consequences and the inevitable issues and problems which accompany arbitrary authority.
Learning and education are not amenable to a climate of fear or the pressures of compliance, obedience, and passivity. Superimposing the framework and the expectations of adults conforming to some great agenda and plan is not a healthy or functional approach to the encouragement and guidance of children and teens.
Children are not stupid. Most figure out very early that obedience, compliance, and conformity are their only safe options. Most make the choice to put up with indignities and the impositions on their lives and their time without complaining, despite their discomfort and boredom. Most accept the deadening of their soul and spirit as a necessary sacrifice, although it never makes sense, nor is it ever justified by true education and enlightenment, unless one thinks of cynicism as enlightenment.
Schooling should focus on socialization, training, social services, public health, providing inspiration, guidance, resources, and nurturing relationships. Parents should and would be more involved and tuned into any indoctrination of a political, religious, or ideological nature if attendance were voluntary. Without a massive administrative bureaucracy and all of the encumbrances of legal compliances money would be available to individualize educational services and classes.
Education is not a science because humans are wildly variable and dependent on autonomy and liberty to find their way to their own specific knowledge. Knowledge is embodied, while school deals in disembodied information and data as symbols on a superficial level. Intellectual matters are too much of a distraction from keeping on a schedule, drilling, and hammering dogma and trivia into brains, and incessant evaluation.
Privatization is not the Primary Threat
The move to privatize public schooling is a real and present danger. If the moneyed interests are permitted to monetize schooling on the scale on which they have projected, public schooling will disappear for all practical purposes. Schooling will be focused completely on economic, financial, and industrial production and development at the expense of everything else. The haves will quickly increase their dominance dramatically, while the have-nots will be relegated to virtual slavery. Schools will be even less hospitable to ordinary poor, working, or middle class families than they are currently. Those circumstances would be unsustainable.
However, the greater danger is the further degradation of the public systems because we have failed to acknowledge that public schools are not and never have been the best places for education. Delusions about how great and wonderful our schools are pervade the culture (they will tell you when you visit and we see for ourselves when kids perform in special staged events, holiday or graduation ceremonies, and programs to show off science projects, spelling bees, debates, etc.). This is, to put it bluntly, another big, big, lie that will not die.
Our schools have failed so many students that serious and highly reputable scholars and professionals have asked whether they are worth saving. Exhibit one is an article entitled, “Are Public Schools Worth Saving? If So, By Whom?", by Kovacs, P. E., Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2006.
Kovacs is not a libertarian or a reactionary fanatic on the far right trying to “destroy public education (sic)”. He speaks with disdain about the “corporatist ideology governing public school reform”. He believes that the answer to the question of whether schools are worth saving is yes. His answer to the question of who should save schooling is clearly not the libertarians or the fascists. But he at least recognizes that it is the failures of the institutions historically and in the here and now which highlight the danger of the mercenaries and pencil pushers moving in to fix the severe chronic problems.
It is not merely a coincidence that I have just received an email from teacher Jim Strickland in the State of Washington with an excerpt directly addressing this same set of issues. Here is his serendipitous quotation from Wendy Priesnitz's, “Challenging Assumptions in Education”, along with a list of the assumptions she challenges:
“Challenging assumptions can be uncomfortable. No matter how open-minded we are, most of us have at least one sacred cow based on the way we were raised or are currently living our adult lives. So some of the conclusions in this book will be controversial to some readers. They certainly are radical, because my own process of challenging assumptions has convinced me that we need to do nothing less than dismantle our public education system and start over from scratch. There is no point continuing to pour increasing amounts of money into trying to fix our school systems, when it is those very systems that are the problem.”
The assumptions that she challenges in her book are these:
1. Education is something that is done to you.
2. Knowledge belongs to a cult of experts.
3. Others know best what children should learn.
4. Schools provide effective training.
5. Schools have a noble purpose.
I have quoted from another of Priesnitz's books previously. She is on the right track, although she makes the same mistake of calling our schools a “public education system” and she is another educator who refuses to give up the notion that change can come through policy changes within the compulsory paradigm. When she speaks about dismantling the system she is imagining disrupting the existing paradigm without a adopting a new (or the original voluntary) paradigm. It is magical thinking and it cannot happen as long as power is delegated by law.
Regardless of the motives of the privatizers and regardless of what their plans are should they be successful in “destroying public schooling” and in turning the entire enterprise over to billionaires, bankers, and bullies, we are obliged to admit that if schools were truly living up to the hype and providing a minimally adequate education universally or even close to that level, there would never have been any talk of vouchers, charter schools, or home schooling on a grand scale. The research and the history are irrefutable.
It is common knowledge that employers frequently find it necessary to teach and train entry level employees things and skills that most certainly should have been learned in 12 years of schooling. We also know that remedial classes are common for college freshmen because of severe deficits, thanks to school failures. It is easy to blame the students, parents, teachers, and teachers’ unions. But the schools are responsible and by now, the people claiming to be educators should have figured this out.
The people who have grown up attending these schools and who have chosen to work in traditional schools all seem to suffer from an optimism virus which they must get from their most hopeful and enthusiastic students. They live in a fantasy world where it is passionately believed that we can all simply move on from a badly flawed paradigm under an authority-based system without first getting rid of the malicious arbitrary authority imposed via law. That is like a smoker choking with emphysema and cancer who continues to smoke cigarettes on her deathbed. Or, to repeat my favorite metaphor, it is like refusing to cut out a cancerous tumor. If you have a problem and you know the cause of the problem, why would you hesitate to eliminate the cause? Where did this taboo against talking about eradicating attendance laws come from?
On the “National Campaign for Justice” website, Lee Ann Hall reports in a piece entitled, “Stop the push toward privatized education” that, “In a move that highlights a troubling trend across the nation, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has proposed significant funding cuts to public schools. She writes,
“By slashing public education, Republicans aim to create a vacuum that can only be filled by private institutions. At a time when our nation should be investing more in our youth, these proposed cuts threaten to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.”
How much more money will we invest in “our youth” if we invest more in failing schools without first changing the failed paradigm? We are not investing in our youth. We are investing in institutions devoted to programming young people to follow the leader and remain loyal to the authority, regardless of the discomfort they feel or the waste of their minds. The citizens of Virginia have seen how our schools undermine intellectual excellence and democracy and Younkin has an easy sell for his snake oil.
Public schooling is not public education. How many different ways can I say it? The privatizers can use this false conflation to substitute their highly perverted conceptions of education for the traditionally perverted conceptions of education. Either way, we all lose.