Posted on 01/05/2004 3:30:18 PM PST by Jaysun
Your prescriptions are correct as far as they go. But the more you look into the schooling monster (I used to run a non-profit, pro-voucher organization), the more you'll see that the problem with schooling is far, far deeper than what is addressed with these reforms. In fact, it only skims the surface.
What few people know is that modern mass-schooling (a phenomenon resisted by and unknown to civilized people until the mid-1800s, and imported from Germany [see Kindergarten: "Child garden," or more accurately, "Child farm." Get it?]) was designed to produce a passive working class. Period. I don't expect you to take my word for it. Do your own research.
You might want to start with the history of the Blaine Amendments in various state constitutions.
The system cannot be reformed because the system is the problem.
Read the "Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" all the way through. If you went to school like most of us, either public or private, these are the lessons that you learned. The lessons on the blackboard were incidental. You went through 12 years of brainwashing. It's an unpleasant fact, but it's true.
The Land of FrankensteinThe particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian. The seed that became American schooling, twentieth-century style, was planted in 1806 when Napoleon’s amateur soldiers bested the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is renting soldiers and employing diplomatic extortion under threat of your soldiery, losing a battle like that is pretty serious. Something had to be done.
The most important immediate reaction to Jena was an immortal speech, the "Address to the German Nation" by the philosopher Fichte—one of the influential documents of modern history leading directly to the first workable compulsion schools in the West. Other times, other lands talked about schooling, but all failed to deliver. Simple forced training for brief intervals and for narrow purposes was the best that had ever been managed. This time would be different.
In no uncertain terms Fichte told Prussia the party was over. Children would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning. They could no longer be trusted to their parents. Look what Napoleon had done by banishing sentiment in the interests of nationalism. Through forced schooling, everyone would learn that "work makes free," and working for the State, even laying down one’s life to its commands, was the greatest freedom of all. Here in the genius of semantic redefinition1 lay the power to cloud men’s minds, a power later packaged and sold by public relations pioneers Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee in the seedtime of American forced schooling.
Prior to Fichte’s challenge any number of compulsion-school proclamations had rolled off printing presses here and there, including Martin Luther’s plan to tie church and state together this way and, of course, the "Old Deluder Satan" law of 1642 in Massachusetts and its 1645 extension. The problem was these earlier ventures were virtually unenforceable, roundly ignored by those who smelled mischief lurking behind fancy promises of free education. People who wanted their kids schooled had them schooled even then; people who didn’t didn’t. That was more or less true for most of us right into the twentieth century: as late as1920, only 32 percent of American kids went past elementary school. If that sounds impossible, consider the practice in Switzerland today where only 23 percent of the student population goes to high school, though Switzerland has the world’s highest per capita income in the world.
Prussia was prepared to use bayonets on its own people as readily as it wielded them against others, so it’s not all that surprising the human race got its first effective secular compulsion schooling out of Prussia in 1819, the same year Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, set in the darkness of far-off Germany, was published in England. Schule came after more than a decade of deliberations, commissions, testimony, and debate. For a brief, hopeful moment, Humboldt’s brilliant arguments for a high-level no-holds-barred, free-swinging, universal, intellectual course of study for all, full of variety, free debate, rich experience, and personalized curricula almost won the day. What a different world we would have today if Humboldt had won the Prussian debate, but the forces backing Baron vom Stein won instead. And that has made all the difference.
The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.
The area of individual volition for commoners was severely foreclosed by Prussian psychological training procedures drawn from the experience of animal husbandry and equestrian training, and also taken from past military experience. Much later, in our own time, the techniques of these assorted crafts and sullen arts became "discoveries" in the pedagogical pseudoscience of psychological behaviorism.
Prussian schools delivered everything they promised. Every important matter could now be confidently worked out in advance by leading families and institutional heads because well-schooled masses would concur with a minimum of opposition. This tightly schooled consensus in Prussia eventually combined the kaleidoscopic German principalities into a united Germany, after a thousand years as a nation in fragments. What a surprise the world would soon get from this successful experiment in national centralization! Under Prussian state socialism private industry surged, vaulting resource-poor Prussia up among world leaders. Military success remained Prussia’s touchstone. Even before the school law went into full effect as an enhancer of state priorities, the army corps under Blücher was the principal reason for Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, its superb discipline allowing for a surprisingly successful return to combat after what seemed to be a crushing defeat at the Little Corporal’s hands just days before.3 Unschooled, the Prussians were awesome; conditioned in the classroom promised to make them even more formidable.
The immense prestige earned from this triumph reverberated through an America not so lucky in its own recent fortunes of war, a country humiliated by a shabby showing against the British in the War of 1812. Even thirty years after Waterloo, so highly was Prussia regarded in America and Britain, the English-speaking adversaries selected the Prussian king to arbitrate our northwest border with Canada. Hence the Pennsylvania town "King of Prussia." Thirty-three years after Prussia made state schooling work, we borrowed the structure, style, and intention of those Germans for our own first compulsion schools.
Traditional American school purpose—piety, good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance, etc.—was scrapped to make way for something different. Our historical destination of personal independence gave way slowly to Prussian-purpose schooling, not because the American way lost in any competition of ideas, but because for the new commercial and manufacturing hierarchs, such a course made better economic sense.
This private advance toward nationalized schooling in America was partially organized, although little has ever been written about it; Orestes Brownson’s journal identifies a covert national apparatus (to which Brownson briefly belonged) already in place in the decade after the War of 1812, one whose stated purpose was to "Germanize" America, beginning in those troubled neighborhoods where the urban poor huddled, and where disorganized new immigrants made easy targets, according to Brownson. Enmity on the part of old-stock middle-class and working-class populations toward newer immigrants gave these unfortunates no appeal against the school sentence to which Massachusetts assigned them. They were in for a complete makeover, like it or not.
Much of the story, as it was being written by 1844, lies just under the surface of Mann’s florid prose in his Seventh Annual Report to the Boston School Committee. On a visit to Prussia the year before, he had been much impressed (so he said) with the ease by which Prussian calculations could determine precisely how many thinkers, problem-solvers, and working stiffs the State would require over the coming decade, then how it offered the precise categories of training required to develop the percentages of human resource needed. All this was much fairer to Mann than England’s repulsive episcopal system—schooling based on social class; Prussia, he thought, was republican in the desirable, manly, Roman sense. Massachusetts must take the same direction.
Interestingly, the last county to fall to compulsory attendance laws in Massachusetts was Barnstable County on Cape Cod. The militia was sent in around the year 1885 to keep order as children were forced into school at gunpoint.
The "Dear Hillary" letter lays out a plan "to remold the entire American [school] system" into "a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone," coordinated by "a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum and "job matching" will be handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program." The plan would change the mission of the schools away from teaching children academic basics and knowledge so they can make their own life choices, and toward training them narrowly in specific job skills to serve the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards.
RE: The emphasis on "self esteem" is producing kids that are illiterate, but feel good about it. The "self esteem plague" has also caused a decline in good ole competition, the dumbing down of lessons and requirements to avoid hurting the feelings of the less intelligent, and leaves children unequipped for a world in which everyone is NOT equal in ability and nobody cares how much you love yourself.
I've been a teacher for some 9 years. I've been looking for this doctrine in public education ever since I started and haven't found it yet. I do think that it may have been in there in the 80's or so, but isn't that about 20 years ago??
That makes me wonder about some other comments that education bashers often make. BTW, I'm from Utah where the research showed that the person's research showed that we teachers in Utah do a lot with a little.
New York $10,725
45th
bump
Oops, you are the person doing the research. I tend to agree with the research. It shows that we teachers in Utah are doing a great job despite the highest class sizes, lowest expenditures, and lowest administrative costs in the nation.
Yet no matter how well you do, people who will complain will complain. My school's k-3 students had well over 90% in at least the nearly proficient category for reading and about 90% adequately reading for the whole school. All of my students the last two years in first grade (98% total in our grade) have tested in at least the nearly proficient categories in reading and math. This is in a lower middle-class school. But of course, people still complain. There is plenty of competition and plenty of educational choices available to parents in my state, particularly in my area. But yes, people still complain.
I find ways outside of taxes to increase the educational quality of my students by bringing in many guest speakers from the community, offering outside tutoring, keeping in close contact with parents regarding behavior and reading levels, offering reading incentives such as happy meals (given when one gets a second grade level or above and personally delivered to their house) at my own expense, and working several extra hours each week in correcting papers and other duties. Egads--I'm actually saving taxpayers money!! I wonder how much I did--let's see--at least 2 (this is a bare minimum) extra hours a day x 5 days a week x a 33-week (modified) school year x the &17 per hour teacher rate = at least $5000. That's not including weekend and vacation hours (which more than doubles it), the month's salary I usually spend each year on my students, the 2-3 hours at least a week I call parents, the tutoring time, etc. My salary? Yes, I still draw a very high salary of something around what a fast food restaurant assistant manager makes in my area. It has gone down 13% in the last 4 years. But I guess I still make more than the newspaper carriers.
Yes, I am just another liberal teacher. I believe in a strong national defense, low taxes, less government, the 2nd amendment, strong marriages (not gay), am against abortion, and against special rights for those of the gay persuasion. Oh yeah--I believe in public education too. That's what makes me liberal. Like most "liberal" teachers in Utah, I try to teach my kids the "terrible" values of not cheating, honesty, respect for the country, respect for those with differences, acting with dignity, not gossiping, working hard, respect for parents, strong families, etc. Yet I often see dishonest and underhanded dealings used by politicians and those in the business world, much to my dismay. Oh yeah, in my school we do "liberal" things like say the Pledge of Allegiance every day and we even sometimes observe moments of silence. Yes, this past Christmas we even sang "liberal" Christmas songs that mentioned deity.
Yes, I got these "liberal" values from my "liberal" father who also supported public education for his eight children, putting education first above (though his children were involved in them heavily) sports, music, and other extracurricular activities. Yes, my "liberal" father had the 'liberal" notion to be a good parent and set high standards for his children despite their going to inner-city schools (schools that some have called as failing). His kids only produced 2 valedictorians, 2 salutatorians, and minimum 3.6 GPA's. He never complained about the system and never sought government funding or tax breaks for his kids to get educated, despite semi-limited means and being out of work a couple of times or so. He passed on his "liberal" values to his kids who continute to lead quality lives as "liberals" today in supporting their neighborhood schools and .
Yes, there are better methods for improving education than simply complaining about it, trashing it, etc. What it takes is people working together and a change in attitude. Everybody seems to know what's best for education, but few actually contribute (I'm not talking moneywise) to trying to make it better. My hats are off to those who do. A little time donated actually takes no taxes at all, but it may change a life or two.
dude- you are a CONSERVATIVE- who told you these views you hold are 'liberal'?
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