The Purpose of Public Education

I recall reading years ago some left-wing educational writer complaining because he believed our entire public education system was originally designed by mill owners and those sympathetic to them to create a population that would be good for working in mills and being obedient employees. I now think he was only half wrong. I thought of this again when Grim had an education piece up. 

I am fond of pointing out how little effect school has on academic results, which has been demonstrated repeatedly, despite the researchers often wanting to find something else.  Teachers, didactics, and curriculum may matter more to worse students, but even then it is often just the occasional rescue of one on the brink.  Certainly, there is an advantage to going to a school where you aren't constantly worried if violence is going to break out right next to you. Though I went to a mill-city highschool that had fights a fair bit.  Now that I think of it, though, about half of that were "I'll meet you after school" fights (and they did, with a crowd), which is already putting some boundaries on shock and what will occur. So there needs to be safety and some structure for the students on the brink. Beyond that...

So schools fall back on teaching values, which is what they have always done.  Not so much as they hope, and often not quite the values they intended.There is also conflict when the professional educators teach the values they think are important, regardless of surrounding culture. That's why you got taught so much pointless grammar, because it was supposed to be important for schools to turn out kids who sounded middle-class. Ditto Latin, which is a class signifier more than an education.  The energy would have been far better spent on a living language. Conservatives look back fondly on what was taught for values then, but I'm less impressed. We were taught a lot of patriotism, but that turned out to be a lot of "respect for the flag" and some songs.  Nothing particularly wrong with teaching such ceremonial aspects of living in a place, and it is hard to teach the young abstract ideas, so one sees how it happens.  Focus on the concrete acts, it's probably about all you're going to get anyway. My son went to a Baptist school where he had a workbook page about one boy saying something bad about the flag and the hero punching him in the eye. The usual mouth agape, the bruise already formed just a moment after the punch, and large exclamation marks next to his head. I don't know how often first graders hear another child say something bad about the flag, and I'm not sure that's the patriotism I want taught. But it lingered on even to 1990 in such circles.

Yet in teaching patriotism it often turned to citizenship. I don't mean Civics and the three branches of government or right to a speedy trial, but a fair bit of focus on how a good citizen behaves. I think there was a lot of emphasis, though not expressly stated, on obedience. I know, I know, when you've got thirty hoodlums thrashing about your fourth grade, anything that promotes obedience is going to be looked at fondly, and as above, you have to teach concrete actions they can understand. Doing what the policeman says was not an automatic in a lot of our neighborhood, and I'm talking about the parents, not the teenagers. It was mostly applied as a civilising influence at the time - no trash in the streets, no destruction of property, no stealing - all good things. 

Not all of it. We were also taught not to jaywalk, to register our bikes, not to be too noisy, not to be tardy or (horrors) skip school, to do our homework. To stay within the lines, do what authorities told us. That was citizenship, and thus indirectly, patriotism. Now citizenship is more focused on environmentalism, being extra-careful to being respectful of other groups (rather than of older people and government people), but still staying within the lines.  It's the patriotism that Obama talks about, and I don't think it's an act.  He thinks that is what is supposed to be good about America and he wants to see more of it.  Respect for the flag?  Well, fine, but really, not so important.

I guess all this to say that public education - and private education even more so, perhaps - has always had the goal of teaching children to stay within the lines. (See Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn.)  Just different lines in every generation. It's very much what education does in all cultures. Next up, I think I'll have to say something about the conflict between the stated rules, the real rules, and the unintentional rules does to us.