November 5, 2004
-
Topic: A short paper for a class i’m not in
Isn’t it strange how if you go to college, you write research papers for 4 years, but they make 0 difference in the world. And then, when you’re out of college, odds are you’ll never write a research paper again. Well…now that I’m no longer in college, I feel compelled to research and write, so here’s what I would have submitted for a class if I were currently a student in a school that encouraged self-motivated and self-guided learning…
Education and democracy
The Bush – Kerry election has come to an end, and so passes the event that our country hails as the event that distinguishes our country as a country of freedom. America has voted. So, why is half of the country, and perhaps, half of the world, so glum, after the passing of our golden democratic event?
In an op-ed piece the day after the election results, Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, writes, “America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values – critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences.” Commenting on the strength of Christian Evangelical votes in the Bush victory, he continues, “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?” If there’s one thing I learned from this election, it’s that a significant portion of those who participated in our celebrated democratic event took part not as critical intellects, tolerant human beings, or as informed citizens, but as religious zealots. And I think to myself, “this is the freedom we are bringing to Iraq?”
With the advance of so many forms of technology, with communication easier than ever, with an abundance of information available to all, how is it that American democracy in the year 2004 has been stained by a portion of the public that votes on faith rather than reason, or any of the other qualities of the Enlightenment? When you ask yourself the question, “How did Americans lose those qualities required to have a vibrant democracy?” you will be led to the heart and soul of the problem. Our schools are not designed to help students learn or practice those values. Yes…the real problem with our democracy, is the one issue that only 4% of voters thought was the most important issue in this election. Education.
While education was not very important in the political arena these past few months, real improvements in education are the only thing that will produce Americans who are critical thinkers and tolerant of others. With more thinkers, surely the problems of terrorism, foreign policy, economics, health care, and other issues will be handled in more creative and efficient ways. With more tolerant Americans, surely the problems of partisanship and the most grotesque and dirty of campaigning will go away, as well as an expected increase in action towards issues that require us to take action for no other reason than the progress of human rights and values (no more helping countries gain democracy only when its in our economic interest).
While we often believe our schools are designed to create good citizens, the reality couldn’t be farther from that. According to school critic John Taylor Gotto, American schooling, which began developing strongest between 1905 and 1915, was based specifically on a model of education developed in Prussia, and was “deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life…to ensure docile and incomplete citizens – all in order to render the populace ‘manageable.’” And while that statement of schooling may be hard to swallow or to believe, the affects of modern schooling shouldn’t be. A November 8th article about AP exams in Time magazine describes the reality of an A.P. U.S. History class from McNair Academic High School in Jersey City, NJ. “This fall with a presidential campaign under way, [the teacher] would have loved to draw some lessons from current events, but, he laments, ‘there’s no time. The kids love when we break away and talk about today’s election, but I’m looking at the clock – and that’s not a good thing.’” A fifth-grade teacher at Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa, had this to say about President Bush’s education policy and its effect on democracy. “There are parts of [No Child Left Behind] that are positive and good…but there’s a huge portion that’s horrible.” As a result of the President’s emphasis on testing as a method of ensuring accountability, social studies, creative writing, and teacher autonomy have been lost. The teacher continued, “They’re not learning civics, history, geography – a lot of essential skills that they’re going to need to be good democratic citizens.”
The culture of school in America has kept a large portion of society politically ignorant and apathetic for over 100 years now. In the year 2004, it takes on the form of testing, of shuffling students through classes where they are unable to develop meaningful relationships with their teachers, and by curriculums that leave out civics, and the teach history in patriotic, rather than in objective terms. (Some may argue that this form of un-democratic education is a deliberate aim of some in government, as former President Woodrow Wilson told the New York City School Teachers Association 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 forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks).
I believe fixing democracy is as easy as fixing our schools. And I believe fixing our schools is easier than we think, because it is not so much a funding issue or a political issue, as it is a philosophical issue. Those who are unhappy with Leave No Child Behind state a “loss of spontaneity, breadth and play – problems money won’t fix.” Perhaps Kerry would have done himself a service by recognizing the educational, rather than the economical flaws in the President’s plan.
Comments (6)
the focus on the lack of science is dangerous…also the reflection of those states that wanted to ban darwinistic teachings from the schools is telling…
First of all, thanks for giving this much thought to the very important subject of education. Two things -
I am particularly disappointed in the TAG program as it is practiced at middle school level in my city, Portland, Oregon. I arranged that my grandson take the exams for it and he demonstrated scores that put him at the top 3% of his peers. However, beyond testing him the program has done absolutely nothing to better his educational experience. After some hounding of various personnel responsible and taking action myself to create a chess group on weekends for TAG kids, I finally completely abandoned hope and gave up participation.
Secondly, do you have any specific suggestions for how an individual citizen can make a difference at say the high school level where my grandson will be going next year?
Its true that education should not be just for passing exams it should be to make the person whole
hey, thanks for commenting on my site- by the way i found yours through the beat blogring(yay beat generation!)-peace
Of course much responsibility falls to the parents as well. The schools should be teaching these children to be more than manageable citizens, but the parents should be pushing their children as well. Creative, free-thinking children, that is where the future lies.
An excellent essay good sir. Incredibly enlightening.
Two books I recommend: Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better, by John Holt (if I haven’t recommended it already). This is the most practical book I’ve seen on ways to help people learn what they want to learn, without having to go through the years-long process of buying and earning a degree, and taking, and paying for, all kinds of unnessary or unwanted classes just to get the “ticket” that will allow them to do what they want to do with their lives. He also talks about ways that people can teach without having to be part of the usual systems.
Also, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which is about how to educate people to take control of their own lives and begin to look at the world with “critical consciousness,” something that we don’t learn in school because it poses a threat to the status quo.