Monday, July 26, 2010

Consequences of a Failed System: Part 2

(Excerpt  from Stop Beating the Dead Horse)


Deterioration of the Family Unit

It is no wonder that there is a weakening of what was known as the family unit. In days long gone by, the family unit consisted of two parents, children, and often extended family members such as grandparents and cousins. Families were together for a large part of each day, often working together, playing together, and always eating together. Children played with their siblings, shared a room, sometimes even slept in the same bed with them, and shared the same toys. Parents taught their children what they needed to know to get by in the world.  Children respected their parents and trusted them to steer them right. Grandparents were especially respected for their knowledge and wisdom. Families generally got along with each other, enjoyed being together, and, indeed, treasured each other.

Fast forward to today’s family. Today’s family may consist of parents and their children, many times only one parent, or sometimes a grandparent raising a grandchild without the parents’ involvement. Today’s family spends most of the day apart, with parents working and children going to school or day care. Often, they spend an average of only two or three hours a day together. Parents entrust the education of their children to institutions instead of teaching them themselves. Children mistrust their parents, roll their eyes at them, and rebel against them. They feel their parents can’t possibly understand what they’re going through, mainly because they really don’t know each other very well. Today’s family often eats breakfast on the run, lunch apart from each other, and supper together only if their various schedules will allow. Siblings often fight and vie for their parents’ limited attention; they have playmates from school and don’t like playing with their siblings; they have their own bedrooms and their own toys which they do not share with their brothers and sisters. Grandparents, though loved, are often thought of as old-fashioned and out of touch with the world and therefore not worth listening to. When the grandparents can’t care for themselves, they are sent to an institution for care, instead of into the arms of the family they raised. Today’s family treasures independence and encourages separateness.

It’s no secret how all these changes came about. With industrialization came the need for workers. Women entered the workforce and their children had to be cared for by someone else. Some people believe that public schools were instituted for the sake of industry for two reasons: it provided free babysitting so that women could be free to work outside the home, and it provided a training ground for future workers who would be required to work in large groups and not do too much thinking on their own. Other people believe an additional goal for public schools was to create a nation of consumers to drive the industrial age. Early industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie spent huge sums of money (actually more than the government did at that time) on public schooling between 1900 and 1920.1 Their actions may have been purely altruistic or may have had an underlying purpose.

Whether or not public schooling was started for the sake of industry, the reality is that it separates children from their parents, both physically and emotionally. The system, in recent years, has been trying to separate children from their parents at earlier and earlier ages. In the 1800s, the average age for beginning compulsory school attendance was eight years old: by the year 2000 the age requirement was lowered to five or six in over half the states. In the other states, even though attendance isn’t compulsory until later, usually age seven, it is universally accepted that children start school at the age of five or six.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Consequences of a Failed System: Part 1

(Excerpt  from Stop Beating the Dead Horse)


The focus of education today must be reexamined to determine what we, as a country, want from our system of education. In the past, the system has been focused on socialization and homogenization of our citizens. This focus has not only failed to educate our students well in the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic but, most importantly, it has also failed to prepare them for life.

An unknown, but wise, author, wrote, “An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.”

Many of this country’s current social problems would not be happening (the mortgage crisis, surging unemployment rates, rising teen violence, irresponsible parenting, preventable vehicle deaths, etc.) if the system had been educating students to prepare them for life. In the public school setting, we have a great opportunity to address these problems and any other problems which may arise, and educate students to prevent them in the future. It is very important that any system of education be flexible enough to change as the educational needs of society change. The inflexibility of our current system has been a major problem of education in the United States today. Our current system is using the methods and curriculum developed for an early industrial age to educate students for the entirely different world of today.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Who Killed the Horse?: Part 4

(Excerpt  from Stop Beating the Dead Horse)


Our culture is eroding to the point where crime and violence have become the norm in some places. A country which must expend much of its valuable resources to maintain order and peace is not going to remain on top for long. The deterioration of family and community life is rampant everywhere. Without these basics of human need, the quality of life sharply declines. The public school system encourages the deterioration of the family and community and instigates the anger and despair that fuels crime and violence. It is ironic that the very system that was created to control the masses and force obedience and morality – the public school system – has failed miserably at those basic functions. The system disregards human nature, just as communism does, and so was destined to fail even before it began.

Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, stated that “it is time to admit that public education…more resembles a Communist economy than our own market economy.” 
 
A simplified definition of communism is a scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life. A communist state is generally run by an authoritarian form of government in which its citizens are told how to live. In these ways, the public education system is run like a communist state. The problem with communism, as well as with our school system, is that people are not equal in their natures; they have an amazing array of different levels of intelligence, energy, industry, interests, values, hopes and dreams; people, even children, recognize this about themselves and others, and many rebel at the idea of being homogenized. When a system seeks to equalize human beings who are by their very nature unequal (that is, in personality, not human rights), the system cannot hope to thrive. The ideal of equalizing the masses through education seems a good idea but, in reality, is impossible and undesirable. One of the most crucial things the system has failed to do is differentiate between equal educational opportunity for all and equal (or identical) education for all. Instead of trying to make everybody the same, an educational system must ensure equal rights for everyone while still allowing them to develop at their own rate and in their own way. Only then can we have the diversity, creativity, and ingenuity needed to compete in the world today.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Who Killed the Horse?: Part 3

(Excerpt  from Stop Beating the Dead Horse)


Unfortunately, truly successful people are getting fewer and fewer in the United States. The traits of the successful adult (independence, creativity, high energy, inquisitiveness, motivation, joy) are discouraged and suppressed in the current system because they create unruliness and disorder in the system. John Dewey, a progressive educational reformer of the late 1800s and early 1900s declared that
“children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.” 

By suppressing these traits, we are, by default, preventing truly successful adulthood. It is but a few rare individuals, usually those with strong familial support, who are able to overcome this repression of spirit and find real success in adulthood.

Take, for example, Albert Einstein: Einstein was enrolled in the Prussian compulsory institutions of learning but studied mathematics and reasoning on his own. In secondary school, Einstein was in constant conflict with school authorities and resented the confinement of school regimen. About school, he later wrote,
“One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.... It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” 

Like Einstein, many of the intellectuals who were publicly schooled were less than satisfied about their educational experiences. Mark Twain, who seemed particularly discontented with his experiences in public school, said,
      “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

George Bernard Shaw wrote,
“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.”

I believe that most students in our country can succeed in a meaningful way in adulthood, given a system of education that encourages the traits of a successful adult. In the current system, however, this could never become a reality. This system encourages dependency, immaturity, irresponsibility, and mediocrity.