The vast majority see compulsory and free schooling as an unmitigated good.
The "it's only there to make you conform and obey the elites" meme is certainly getting more popular, but its so far from the aims of educators (and the politicians that continue to fund it) that it's about as well grounded and believable as chemtrails, the illuminati or other conspiracy theory.
That depends how you look at it. One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward.
I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it. If I am bored by a project, I still do it. I am lucky that I generally enjoy and care about my work, but some days like everyone, I am working for this abstract, monthly reward.
Exams were like that - you liked some subjects, and read them willingly. Others, you never saw yourself using, but you worked at them to get grades, because grades bought you a salary.
You also probably learned to fear the future. I know I do. More than studying at French because I needed that grade, I studied at French because not getting that grade might mean not going to college, might mean not getting a middle class job. And then... what? I didn't know. I didn't know any non-middle class people.
It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends).
I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy?
The left of philosophy (Marx -> Baudrillard) wrote about how we had fetishized symbols over real things. There is some truth in that, but seeing it has... value, only where it informs our actions. In Silicon Valley, young employees trade their 20s for money, one 12 hour day at a time. The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow. Where were they trained to do that?
All I'm saying (and really all I'm saying) is that I disagree that suppression of individuality and creativity are key goals of education.
They may well be outcomes. They probably are, and that's sad and we should certainly not be content with broken educational systems. I just don't think that's anyone's aim, perhaps just a miserable side effect.
>> Where were they trained to do that?
I'm not sure, I seem to have skipped those lessons. But then I'm one of those people that periodically takes several months off to go travelling.
Johann Fichte, Alfred Whitehead and Ross L. Finney are some thinkers off the top of my mind that were influential in shaping the compulsory schooling system.
Intent is something many people are willing to brush off as mere conspiracy theory, but it is present. Hanlon's razor does not necessarily apply to political contexts.
I'm not sure what bearing an 18th century philosopher has on anything much. I find philosophy as a discipline to be rather self important and contribute little but linguistic sophistry to most debates.
That said I have heard of Alfred Whitehead, and his opinions on education (if he did indeed influence the forming of early compulsory/state education systems) seem so far removed from any idea of suppressing creativity and individualism that I'm not sure why you'd drag him out to support your point.
I'm not familiar with Finney.
Hanlons razor would apply to the wider situation regardless - you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
Whitehead's opinions on education were somewhat mixed and eclectic, but an individualist he was not. He noted the pivotal importance of getting people to perform arduous tasks and conditioning them through education, as well as the teacher as this godlike authority figure who is the sole guide of a child's education. An anti-autodidact. In many ways, he promoted the master/slave dialectic.
you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
That's the thing. It wasn't really nefarious to them. The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there.
Woodrow Wilson himself had this to say in 1909:
"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
Near as I can tell, the mainstream K-12 curriculum today resembles what Wilson would have considered to be a liberal education. Lots of math, science, reading, writing, history, etc.
>> The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there.
The 'Upper Class' have nothing to do with it any more and what some people said well over a century ago has extremely little bearing on the aims of modern state education.
>> "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
Which he said over 100 years ago, and which again bears absolutely no resemblance to what we have now.
You were asking within the context of the relevant time period.
That's when the seeds were planted, and they continue to grow today. Charlotte Iserbyt provides a fairly decent timeline and compendium of relevant documents related to the shaping of the compulsory schooling system in the USA, entitled the deliberate dumbing down of america. Despite a few conservative biases in her writing style, the documents outlined are self-explanatory.
>> You were asking within the context of the relevant time period.
No, pretty sure I was deliberately not asking about it within historical context, because the aims of those people 100 years ago are not really relevant to the aims and goals of the continuing system, IMHO.
One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another
this is entirely appropriate, and has nothing to do with industrialization. to have a mate, raise children, and prosper, you need to be able to respond to the needs of at least one other adult, one or more demanding children who are incapable of satisfying their own needs, and tohe ability to do these things in an environment over which you have relatively little control.
It's all very well to complain about abstraction and what Marx dubbed 'the dull compulsion of economic relations,' but you might as well complain about the fact that your personal creativity is still constrained by the reality of your body's needs for food and sleep, no matter how much you resent stopping what you're doing to make a sandwich.
Likewise, I really don't like the fact that my dog tends to wake me up around 6am, but it's not because of any ideology; if I ignore his entreaties by refusing to get out of bed then sooner or later he'll end up peeing on the floor. I mention this very prosaic example because of the lessons of Zen Buddhism (a philosophy dedicated to the identification and avoidance of unnecessary abstractions) is that while meditation can free you from illusions, it's not going to free you from the basic necessities of living in the world.
That was a very long way of saying "I do work for my employer so I get paid". School doesn't teach you that, hunger does; even without school, you'd still need money to live, and even people who drop out of school have jobs (unless they're rich or run their own businesses).
While the tax code may use a different definition for clarity, having a job is still technically running your own business in every other way. What is interesting is that while there are an infinite number of ways to make money, the vast majority of the population all choose to run their business in the exact same way (single client, set working hours, defined pay schedule, etc.). Is that business model chosen because it is the most efficient way to run a business, or is it because they learned to run their business that way from an external source, such as school?
I'm not sure we can garner any meaningful data from dropouts as only 8% of the population (in the US) drop out of the public education system, and I expect you'll find that the majority of them drop out in their later years, after already spending many years exposed to the system.
Re "set working hours": I think a lot of it goes back to early Industrial Age, when blue-collar people worked a lot more than now, as much as 14-16 hours/day. Most of their life was work, there wasn't any structure around it, and they worked for a single factory (the same factory, it didn't make sense to move around, or maybe there was only one factory in their town). Set working hours (limited at 8 hours/day) were a limitation imposed by the workers (or unions) against being over-worked (8hrs/day is much better than 14-16hrs/day). In most countries, this is still established by legislation.
Re "defined pay schedule": In some fields, you can get paid by a percentage-based commission (real estate, car sales, middle men in general, actors, movie directors etc). That's not always practical, and some employees prefer a fixed monthly salary (versus the insecurity of a percentage).
> One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward.
Really? That is what you got out of schooling? If so, I am sorry for you.
Let me tell you what I got out of schooling.
- An appreciation for the English language and the many ways in which it can be used.
- An understanding of the beauty of mathematics.
- A cynical realization that history was written and controlled by Old Dead White Men.
- Basic knowledge of the arts. (Not enough, budget cuts are quite unfortunate!)
- The ability to think critically about a problem and apply any of a multitude of problem solving or analysis techniques to its resolution.
- An appreciation for the beauty of nature.
- Knowledge of the human body.
- Knowledge of biology and genetics.
And that was just my public school education! I went on to college and learned far more!
I will readily confess that roughly 50% of schooling is a waste of time, but that is because students are not being pushed hard enough, rather teachers will assign one book to read over the course of 2 months! Of course this all changes once one goes off to college, where all of a sudden 150+ pages of reading per class per week can easily be expected!
> I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it.
Quite unfortunate. I am in the privileged position of only having to work on things that I love, I have a manager certainly, but he respects that he has hired me as a professional and he trusts in my judgement as to how I go about solving problems.
> It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends).
I can imagine it. I'd be bored shitless. I happen to love what I do for a living. Is it work? Sure technically, in regards that I get up, get in my car, drive a few miles away, park my car, and step into an office.
But honestly? I count everyone I work with as a friend. There is a smile on my face from when I step into the office to when I leave. There is a grand sum total of 0 things in this world that I enjoy more than what I do for work each and every day.
> I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy?
I feel angry that he is selfish and is thinking only of himself! There is so much that can be done to improve the world. If you told me he left his job that was of little to no societal value, and went off to help others around the world, then I would applaud. But to go off and do nothing but laze around? What good is that, to have the sum of one's life measure up to not but self indulgence.
> The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow.
The reward is impact! Change! The reward is having millions of people use what one has created! Programmers are artists, and our audience is the world! Every day a million symphonies are played out, and a thousand more sonatas written to be performed in the morrow.
2) The educators' intentions may be good, but the results are much more important.
3) The politicians do not fund things, they appropriate money from tax receipts.
4) There are many defenders of the public school system who justify it on the basis of creating a 'shared experience' for the citizenry, which sounds quite collectivist. Why would singing national anthems and pledges of allegiance be so common in schools around the world, if not for statism?
5) The government schooling system has historically been used as a tool of oppression against minorities; it would be naive to believe that politicians and bureaucrats suddenly stopped using the schools to achieve their ends .
1) They are free at the point of access, we all pay for them. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point this out as it's a useless distinction
2) Not when we're talking about the subject we're actually talking about they're not. I quote from the OP - "the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system". That's what I dispute. It may well be an outcome, and that would be bad and should be changed, but it's disingenuous (to say the least) to ascribe this as a motive.
3) The politicians decide what to fund out of the public purse, yes. Again, useless distinction
4) Is collectivism evil in and of itself? I don't subscribe to this view in the slightest, in case you were wondering, and I've only ever heard a few left-wing talking heads claim that that is what we should be trying to do with schools. Personally I 'justify' it by observing that education is given to people who otherwise would not get it for a variety of reasons, and having a base level of education throughout society being a very Good Thing.
5) It's also verging on conspiracy to ascribe nefarious aims and goals to every person involved in education.
1) "We" do not all pay taxes, and I want to point it out, because I am being forced to finance a system which I do not believe in.
2) The OP said that 'suppression' was a goal of the system, not of each individual actor; you were addressing the teachers, and I was saying that they are participating in a dangerous broader system.
3) It is not useless to point out that politicians pay for nothing; if they were paying, I would not care how the money was disbursed.
4) Please address the nationalism and statism which is evoked by the anthems and pledges at schools; how does this help the children better their lives?
5) If there have never been "nefarious aims" in the public education system, why did Brown sue the Board of Education? I am simply reciting history, do you disagree with the history? Or do you disagree with my conjecture that all "nefarious aims" may not have disappeared when Little Rock was desegregated?
1 & 3) Oh noes! The evil taxman! We all pay for things we disagree with, but I prefer we do that than have no commons at all. Feel free to disagree with this but you're basically walking into "Public education is bad by definition" which is not something I'm here to argue. I'm really only saying that I don't think it's anyone's aim.
And no, we do not all pay taxes, some do not because they are as poor as dirt. It's an awesome facet of modern society that they are not condemned to stay there by lack of access to education, nor by parental indifference to it.
2) I do not believe that it is the goal of educators, nor of others that operate or support the system. I do not believe that even if it was set up to do that by some bad evil people last century it is a key goal now. This is the root of my argument. It may be an outcome, it is not a goal.
4) We don't do that over here in communist UKia, because it's weird.
5) I have no idea who Brown is, or anything about Little Rock beyond it being where Bill Clinton came from, sorry. Not american.
For 1), I think the GP meant "free as in freedom", not "free as in beer". Taxpayers pay for school, but everyone is allowed in (I do agree with you in your interpretation).
My eldest's year 1 [5 -6yo] teacher had a phrase "do it first time". She drilled in to the pupils the necessity for absolute and immediate obedience to her demands.
I find that sort of behaviour abhorrent as it denies the individual the right to express their own will. Yes, some conformity is required in order to make school work but certainly not to that level - this is a common trait throughout [many] schools in the UK.
Indeed I was lecturing a 4yo this evening, with some trepidation, as to why absolute obedience of an authority figure is not essential to welfare and can cause the loss of much that is of value. "There must be a good reason for Mrs. REDACTED to make that rule, otherwise it's a bad rule.".
You're presenting a complete straw man argument and you're incorrectly trying to make a reductio ad absurdum by comparing these views to mythical pop culture conspiracy theories.
It doesn't seem to me like you're well versed into the actual arguments presented by authors and thinkers who write on the inherent flaws of compulsory schooling.
>> You're presenting a complete straw man argument
??
I'm responding to this -
>> the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system
Which AFAICT is unsupportable and certainly not the stated intention of any of the people I know in education, nor does it seem to be the intention of the politicians who continue to keep the system funded. How is that a straw man? I'm arguing against what you actually said!
>> It doesn't seem to me like you're well versed into the actual arguments presented by authors and thinkers who write on the inherent flaws of compulsory schooling.
There are all sorts of flaws in schooling, compulsory or otherwise. We could probably take the whole weekend just writing out a list of the ones that spring to mind without serious study.
That doesn't mean that suppression of creativity is the goal of the system.
The "it's only there to make you conform and obey the elites" meme is certainly getting more popular, but its so far from the aims of educators (and the politicians that continue to fund it) that it's about as well grounded and believable as chemtrails, the illuminati or other conspiracy theory.