I will make no attempt at entertaining the thought that Sam and I agree on most things. Indeed, at times it feels like we take it upon ourselves to disagree. Whether that’s done to create the atmosphere for further debate and hone our positions to be used against others, or that neither of us likes to accept the fact that we’re wrong, we disagree a lot. So is it a surprise then that I disagree with his latest post when he states that the goal of education is to teach thought process?
After many years of experience in this countries system of public education I can’t help but feel that the purpose of education has shifted. Where it once might have been designed to train and educate the next generation of statesmen, soldiers, and workers, it now fails in that purpose. Indeed, today’s system of education serves no better purpose than that of a large form crèche, a public, tax-payer funded day care.
I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.While I sat in packed classes listening to teachers drone on about algebraic equations and chemical interactions I often wondered why exactly I was there. Did the teachers truly think that the system they were employing to educate me was effective? Seriously, after looking at the scores our country gets on tests and to see how many schools pitifully fail year after year, one has to wonder.
John Taylor Gatto
Look at the massive changes in a person’s perception once they reach the shores of higher education. When a person is thrown into a college scene suddenly they lose their ropes. They’re placed into classes with people of all ages, with teachers that assume a bare level of education and fluency. The students are asked to think. In primary and secondary education, your not. They don’t want you to think. They want you to listen, to obey, and to go where your told.
The first lesson I teach is: “Stay in the class where you belong.More and more when I look back upon my days in high school I don’t feel like I was educated. I don’t feel like I was taught to think in constructive manners, to take the world around me and rip it apart and truly wonder at the majesty of it all. I’m lucky in my own respects, I had parents to do that and a few very special teachers that helped guide me in that desire for knowledge.
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.
The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study.
In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer’s measure of your worth.
In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched.
John Taylor Gatto
However, for the vast majority of students and schools out there, their dreams of education become nothing more than forced solitude. A place where the parents can leave their children to be “safe,” in a world that is full of contradictions and irrelevancies. A world where you can be taught that sleeping with heads down on the desks is fine, only to find years later that its a sin and worthy of detention. A world where leaving your kids under the tutelage of strangers the parents will never meet is considered fine and standard practice. A world where teachers often have less training than what would be considered acceptable and ethical in any standard work environment.
Our educational system is in shambles and it’s truly sad how few adults take the time to realize it. I don’t admit to having the answers on how to fix it or even the eyes to see all the symptoms for what they are. However, I could see the decay of the system. I could see the idiocy in its methods.