I’m quite often critical of the public education system that I went through for the last 12 years of my life. Some people are curious just exactly what I have against school. Mad Cow has asked me to expound for the purpose of having a debate. So here goes.
Do I not like learning? Hardly. Maybe I’m just to dumb to realize that I could have been learning in High School? Hardly. Let me describe for you my objections to compulsory public education as a whole. The reasons I believe that Cyprus, and all that was a waste of my time. Then we’ll see what Mad Cow has in response.
Jumping right into it, one of the worst things about the education system is that it is unconstitutional (and thus illegitimate). The federal government has grossly overstepped its bounds in creating the current system, basically giving the Constitution the finger and saying, “to hell with the Founding Fathers.” I’m an avid Constitutionalist, and such topic could form an article in and of itself, but I’ll try to be brief in explaining to the general gist of it.
The Constitution sets out a list of powers the Federal government has. Is public education on there? No. Is anything close to Education in there? Nope. Is there a law that would allow the Federal government to come in and add that power after the fact? Yes. It’s called an amendment. Has the Federal government ever made an amendment allowing for them to control education (or Social Security and Welfare for that matter)? Not at all. Every other power not enumerated is clearly left for the states in the Constitution, but it doesn’t seem the states are in charge when there’s a national Department of Education, now does it?
So, aside from being constitutionally unsound, public education is good isn’t it? I mean, I know it’s against everything this country stands for to break its own constitution, but they should just add that in, right? In its current sense, no. Indeed, I can not deny the fact that an education is important for every person, but that’s not at issue here. The compulsory education system is.
The real question is whether our current system is what can be called an education. This divides itself into two smaller questions. Is the current education system necessary to gain an education? If not, for what purpose does it exist?
To answer the first requires a simple look at homeschooled students. Do they require the regimented grading and age separation, the 12 years of minutely defined study, or anything else “educational” the compulsory system offers? No. Did our forebears suffer without the “godsend” of compulsory education? No. Washington was a surveyor by 17, which required extensive amounts of trigonometry. Farragut commanded his first naval ship at age 12. Edison never had more than 3 months of formal schooling. None of the works of any of these men can be called small by any means.
Of course the retort to those latter claims is that they were somehow more extraordinary than any other person can hope to be. I think it would be a fallacy to consider them and the many others that never experienced what we now call public education were simply better than the kids going today. They all received an education, but their education was real and applied to their life, where the “educations” provided today are boring and don’t apply to anything.
It would be a stretch to call public education a necessary aspect to a child’s life, at least in a beneficial sense. People too often dismiss the value of the education one can gain simply by living life. It is obvious at this point to mention that doctors and other professions do require some schooling, but college can hardly be likened to the public education system.
So our public education system doesn’t fill in some mysterious lack of an education. Why is it there then? Let’s look at the words of Alexander Inglis, a proponent for the current public education system. His book “Principles in Secondary Education” (1918) described many reasons for the public education system to be adopted nationwide, and he was supported by those seeking legislation to make it happen. Let’s take a look at what functions he thought school would have:
1. The “adjustive” or “adaptive” function: schools are to establish fixed reactions to authority. They are to ensure that all students respond properly when told what to do.
2. The “integrating” function: schools are to make students as alike as possible.
3. The “diagnostic and directive” function: the school is to determine each student’s ‘proper’ social role.
4. The “differentiating” function: once a role has been determined, the school is to ensure that they are sorted and trained only as much as necessary.
5. The “selective” function: the school is to label the unfit and ensure that they are selected out of the population, as per Darwin’s natural selection theory.
6. The “propaedeutic” function: schools are to ensure their continued existence by making a few ready in their role to preform these functions on the next generation.
I don’t know about you, but this is slightly disturbing, if true. If you think these functions are appropriate for a government to be doing: choosing appropriate roles and tagging the unfit, I can not appeal to you further, for you do not believe in the freedoms this country is based on. For those that would be concerned, let us view those functions and see if they are being applied:
1. Schools establish fixed reactions to authority in several ways. Dictating exactly what must be learned, how it must be learned, even when exactly you can go to the bathroom. This quite obviously meets the function of establishing obedience in the large majority, for it’d be silly to consider just walking out of class without a hall pass.
2. Schools make students alike. It’s no question that we are being trained to enter the workforce. We heard rumors about it all the time. “Companies are coming to us and saying students aren’t good enough writers, so we’re going to make sure you’re all better writers.” It’s almost as if they’re packaging us and preparing us as products to be picked up by the companies. Our educations are dictated based on what we’ll “need” in the workforce by way of forced credits to graduate.
3. Students are separated and categorized all the time. That’s what grades are for. That’s what age level separation is for. That’s what AP and resource classes are for. Kids are being categorized and sorted, this fact is undeniable.
4. The results of the categorization are easily evident. Every student is sort of put into a track. “Smart kid”, “Average”, “Dumb” and it’s pretty much impossible to break out of that once they’ve been labeled. How many resource kids catch up, really?
5. Are kids being selected out? If you haven’t seen this in our school systems, I’m not sure what you’re looking at.
6. We’re getting more and more people every day that believe public education is the way to go in society. The support has been ingrained, and of course there are new teachers teaching still.
It’s quite obvious that there is something going on in the school systems, and it’s not about teaching. What is it about? It’s about turning those in the system into whatever specifications are laid down. What are those specifications? To make children. Well-trained, completely docile, hard working, unthinking children. You can see the childish aspects of those in the system across the board.
Maturity is a scarce thing in high school, and there’s a good reason: mature people don’t make big business happy. They don’t buy the $150 pair of tennis shoes they don’t need. They don’t need the constant glow of the TV or computers. They don’t buy thousands of dollars on credit when they can’t afford it. They don’t question the norm and think inventively. I’m not suggesting there’s a conspiracy to make the children stupid, I’m just suggesting that it works out for the people with the money funding the program.
These are my issues with the compulsory public education system. Cyprus is not guiltless. It was doing its task as set apart above. I just hope it didn’t work.
