You've probably heard what they say about making assumptions. Old age and bad experiences may have something to do with my irritability about having my words misrepresented and about my intelligence being insulted, and I regret that I am not more tolerant in such instances. I am as much a feminist and a respecter of women as you are, believe it or not. However, you jumped to conclusions which have no basis in the statements I made and those conclusions are offensive to me. Ask William if I do not hold males to the same standard.
If you would be so kind as to go back and read what I actually wrote and take the time and trouble to process the logic and the message, you will see how far off base your comments were. You may not have seen my frequent posts here in the past where I have consistently reiterated my support for public schooling, teachers, teachers’ unions, and equality for all. But I did go to some trouble yesterday to spell out my thinking and to focus on the core issue.
Teachers have been given an outsize role and image which is impossible to live up to within an authoritarian paradigm. Every student should be seen as a “prodigy” of one sort or another and no student should be harmed. Maybe you believe that there are benefits which outweigh the harms. But I refuse to see victims as mere collateral damage and I am outraged at the indifference and blasé attitudes I see about what we allow these systems to do to children.
If you have doubts or questions about anything I have said, I will be more than happy to answer respectful questions.
Please do not let my negativity discourage you from expressing your thoughts and opinions. Your original statement appeared to be very defensive and intimated that I had said in effect that I was anti-school or against teachers or that I am one of the people who is trying to “destroy public education”. It was all the more upsetting because you did acknowledge the harm which is done and has always been done in traditional schools. It felt a little too much like a personal attack but I appreciate very much your understanding and desire to clear the air.
I see no way to address compulsory attendance as a separate issue. The proximate cause of the harm IS precisely the attendance law and everything that follows it. Forced attendance and the “attendant” or logically coherent conceptions of learning as drudgery, unpleasant “work”, and externally sourced are so ingrained in our psyches that no one can imagine that children would go and learn without coercion. The idea that it is okay for government to be the agent of force in this one exceptional case (involving innocent and impressionable naïve children, no less) doesn’t seem to disturb people in the least. Getting rid of the law is a taboo subject which even people with great awareness about other topics (such as Thom) are not able to think about objectively. This is very sad and has been a massive frustration for me for over five decades.
This is not rocket science. Long before anyone tried to privatize schooling or before the libertarians tried to eradicate the liberty from education the schools were failing in their own stated mission and doing Immeasurable harm, however well disguised and deflected. The cartesian perspective on knowledge and knowledge acquisition were and are still predominant. The connection between coercion and the whole institutional usurpation of the educational function got obscured. We will not have democracy much longer if we do not figure this out and get rid of the bad laws.
Here is that big mistake, again, better known as the “Error of the Third Kind”, identifying and fixing the wrong problems. You say that “Public schools need to re-invent themselves”. Public schools have tried six million times (probably not an exaggeration) to re-invent themselves. That is the whole point of my assertion. Power resides externally. There are impenetrable barriers to change, innovation, and “school or educational reform”. Those barriers emanate directly from the law and from the illegitimate authority and control that under the law must go to state officials, designated appointed or elected authorities, school board bigwigs, and school administrators. None of those people know squat about education! Who is kidding whom?
We have some wonderful examples of good schools. They do not educate in the way that people have imagined that schools should because that is a pathetic misconception. Schools are very limited in what they can do and education is a matter for personal growth and development which cannot be legislated or bought. However, free schools are great examples and experiments which provide autonomy and a free environment for learning, teaching, and organic development. Many public schools have tried to imitate the free schools and many advocates have tried to spread the free school philosophy. They invariably and almost immediately hit the brick wall. Compulsory attendance law is about control, management, authority, social engineering, and making sure the people remain passive and obedient. Freedom and democracy in schools, as Dewey and so many others have found out the hard way are directly at odds with what the laws require. Reforms are DOA. Changes are dead in the water. The school must always go back to business as usual. The status quo is baked into the cake. Tell your friends. The ironic thing is that getting rid of the laws would not cost anything or "interrupt the flow of money" except to remove the middlemen which Thom has noted are making a killing on textbooks, programs, workshops, etc., etc.
You are not incorrect, course. Money, or capitalism and economics and powerful people with their own interests and imagined superiority have always been the problem. However, that still leaves the issue of how to reverse the trend and rectify the problems and bring the power imbalance back into some semblance of normality or sanity. That, I repeat, means taking the power and influence away from people who should not have it by reinstating the people as the determiners of how their children will be influenced, socialized, indoctrinated, and in specific instances, educated. It means bringing democracy to schools where children can experience it daily in their bones and eliminating the arbitrary authority which is inescapable with compulsory attendance and which morphs into authoritarianism, fascism, and often right-wing extremism and religious fanaticism.
Whose idea was mandatory attendance? It was promoted and pushed relentlessly by the uber-wealthy of the day, the industrialists, the capitalists, and the religious moralists who wanted a highly disciplined populace who could read the Bible, fight the expansionist wars, and produce and consume goods. They never even pretended that education as it was understood then to be a goal. They used their money to get what they wanted and for the most part, they got dedicated patriots and obedient sheep.
The only contemporary author who seems to understand this history well is David Gabbard, most recently a professor at Boise State. I highly recommend his writing if you really want to learn more about the topic. You should be able to download some of his work by Googling his name. If you can find Tolstoy’s Essays on Education from 1862, you will find revelations that will alter your outlook on education for all time. Tolstoy was writing specifically to oppose the new attempts to sell compulsory attendance laws in Russia and the US.
Carolyn,
You've probably heard what they say about making assumptions. Old age and bad experiences may have something to do with my irritability about having my words misrepresented and about my intelligence being insulted, and I regret that I am not more tolerant in such instances. I am as much a feminist and a respecter of women as you are, believe it or not. However, you jumped to conclusions which have no basis in the statements I made and those conclusions are offensive to me. Ask William if I do not hold males to the same standard.
If you would be so kind as to go back and read what I actually wrote and take the time and trouble to process the logic and the message, you will see how far off base your comments were. You may not have seen my frequent posts here in the past where I have consistently reiterated my support for public schooling, teachers, teachers’ unions, and equality for all. But I did go to some trouble yesterday to spell out my thinking and to focus on the core issue.
Teachers have been given an outsize role and image which is impossible to live up to within an authoritarian paradigm. Every student should be seen as a “prodigy” of one sort or another and no student should be harmed. Maybe you believe that there are benefits which outweigh the harms. But I refuse to see victims as mere collateral damage and I am outraged at the indifference and blasé attitudes I see about what we allow these systems to do to children.
If you have doubts or questions about anything I have said, I will be more than happy to answer respectful questions.
Carolyn,
Please do not let my negativity discourage you from expressing your thoughts and opinions. Your original statement appeared to be very defensive and intimated that I had said in effect that I was anti-school or against teachers or that I am one of the people who is trying to “destroy public education”. It was all the more upsetting because you did acknowledge the harm which is done and has always been done in traditional schools. It felt a little too much like a personal attack but I appreciate very much your understanding and desire to clear the air.
I see no way to address compulsory attendance as a separate issue. The proximate cause of the harm IS precisely the attendance law and everything that follows it. Forced attendance and the “attendant” or logically coherent conceptions of learning as drudgery, unpleasant “work”, and externally sourced are so ingrained in our psyches that no one can imagine that children would go and learn without coercion. The idea that it is okay for government to be the agent of force in this one exceptional case (involving innocent and impressionable naïve children, no less) doesn’t seem to disturb people in the least. Getting rid of the law is a taboo subject which even people with great awareness about other topics (such as Thom) are not able to think about objectively. This is very sad and has been a massive frustration for me for over five decades.
This is not rocket science. Long before anyone tried to privatize schooling or before the libertarians tried to eradicate the liberty from education the schools were failing in their own stated mission and doing Immeasurable harm, however well disguised and deflected. The cartesian perspective on knowledge and knowledge acquisition were and are still predominant. The connection between coercion and the whole institutional usurpation of the educational function got obscured. We will not have democracy much longer if we do not figure this out and get rid of the bad laws.
Carolyn,
Here is that big mistake, again, better known as the “Error of the Third Kind”, identifying and fixing the wrong problems. You say that “Public schools need to re-invent themselves”. Public schools have tried six million times (probably not an exaggeration) to re-invent themselves. That is the whole point of my assertion. Power resides externally. There are impenetrable barriers to change, innovation, and “school or educational reform”. Those barriers emanate directly from the law and from the illegitimate authority and control that under the law must go to state officials, designated appointed or elected authorities, school board bigwigs, and school administrators. None of those people know squat about education! Who is kidding whom?
We have some wonderful examples of good schools. They do not educate in the way that people have imagined that schools should because that is a pathetic misconception. Schools are very limited in what they can do and education is a matter for personal growth and development which cannot be legislated or bought. However, free schools are great examples and experiments which provide autonomy and a free environment for learning, teaching, and organic development. Many public schools have tried to imitate the free schools and many advocates have tried to spread the free school philosophy. They invariably and almost immediately hit the brick wall. Compulsory attendance law is about control, management, authority, social engineering, and making sure the people remain passive and obedient. Freedom and democracy in schools, as Dewey and so many others have found out the hard way are directly at odds with what the laws require. Reforms are DOA. Changes are dead in the water. The school must always go back to business as usual. The status quo is baked into the cake. Tell your friends. The ironic thing is that getting rid of the laws would not cost anything or "interrupt the flow of money" except to remove the middlemen which Thom has noted are making a killing on textbooks, programs, workshops, etc., etc.
You are not incorrect, course. Money, or capitalism and economics and powerful people with their own interests and imagined superiority have always been the problem. However, that still leaves the issue of how to reverse the trend and rectify the problems and bring the power imbalance back into some semblance of normality or sanity. That, I repeat, means taking the power and influence away from people who should not have it by reinstating the people as the determiners of how their children will be influenced, socialized, indoctrinated, and in specific instances, educated. It means bringing democracy to schools where children can experience it daily in their bones and eliminating the arbitrary authority which is inescapable with compulsory attendance and which morphs into authoritarianism, fascism, and often right-wing extremism and religious fanaticism.
Whose idea was mandatory attendance? It was promoted and pushed relentlessly by the uber-wealthy of the day, the industrialists, the capitalists, and the religious moralists who wanted a highly disciplined populace who could read the Bible, fight the expansionist wars, and produce and consume goods. They never even pretended that education as it was understood then to be a goal. They used their money to get what they wanted and for the most part, they got dedicated patriots and obedient sheep.
The only contemporary author who seems to understand this history well is David Gabbard, most recently a professor at Boise State. I highly recommend his writing if you really want to learn more about the topic. You should be able to download some of his work by Googling his name. If you can find Tolstoy’s Essays on Education from 1862, you will find revelations that will alter your outlook on education for all time. Tolstoy was writing specifically to oppose the new attempts to sell compulsory attendance laws in Russia and the US.