The Education Machine

Learning and Leviathan:

By and large, until, say, 1945, the expansion was fairly harmless. The underlying motives were noble, benevolent, or at worst foolish: a democratic ideal, the need to occupy the young increasingly excluded from the labor market, the quest for prestige. Certainly the affluent society could afford keeping the kids in school. The academic types were probably not much hurt—smart kids can adjust to anything, except being debauched by base rewards. And so long as the attitude was easy-going, the others did not suffer more than boredom. Unfortunately, however, there came to be established the misconception that being in school was the only appropriate way of being educated. Academic talent, the ability to profit by going to school, is a special disposition, neither better nor worse than any other. It does require good intelligence; yet high intelligence, grace and inventiveness need not be academic at all. A school is fundamentally a box with seats facing front. 

Paul Goodman's perceptive comments date from 1963. Please go and read the whole piece, its relevance has only grown. The author still approves of state financed education, his ire is directed only at modern public schools. The transformation of education into a bureaucratic machine, which began even before 1945, has destroyed education. It isn't simply the dumbing down of the subject matter, to increase the graduation rates, but the needless torment inflicted on the academically uninclined. 

As Goodman points out, only a small percentage of the population, he suggests about 15%, are geared toward book learning. This does not mean that all the rest are unintelligent, merely that their aptitudes are different. The young grease monkey might be a mental match for the future graduate student, but our bureaucratic system of schooling does not recognize this potential equality. This is not accidental. 

Bureaucrats breed more bureaucrats. A system manned by university graduates, with ever higher levels of accreditation, believes that such a type of learning is socially useful. The Mandarin believes his role to be central in society. The state will manage society, and he and his class will manage the state. Other forms of learning are useful, but inferior. Since the Mandarin also controls the state schools, he will wish to gear the whole system to the generation of more like him. 

This may seem counterintuitive. Why have more competition? Why not, like the original Mandarins of Imperial China, select only the best and brightest for higher education? Because the modern Mandarin lives in a democratic society. Such obvious selectivity would be damned as elitist. Mass high school and university education has the added benefit of reinforcing the bureaucratic system. This goes beyond the crude propaganda used in the schools, which really works only on those too young to challenge it, but to the very methods being employed. 

The academically uninclined, even though still intelligent, youth acquires a grudging admiration for the academically talented. He begins, and the whole system reinforces this notion, that only this type of aptitude truly matters. His own talents, which might be every bit as useful to himself and society as any other, he begins to regard as inferior. Reluctantly, sometimes bitterly, he begins to defer to the "smart kids." He has been prepared for a society in which the academic student has become the intellectualized bureaucrat. It will be easier for him to defer to the bureaucrat, whom he regards, if only subconsciously, as his superior.

This process has gone very far in Continental Europe, most of which has never really escaped the feudal spirit. See the ruling elite of the European Union as Exhibit A. In North America, our more individualistic and entrepreneurial culture has resisted longer and harder. We cannot help admire college drop outs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and further back minimally educated geniuses like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Brains, daring and hard work are what count, not the ability to jump through a series of scholastic hoops. 

It is this spirit which the Obama administration, packed with Ivy League power lusters, is keen to destroy or subvert. President Obama has declared it a national objective that all children should go to college, an absurd and dangerous boast. It would mean vast amounts of time and money wasted on those not inclined, or perhaps not even capable, of such an education. It would require even further dumbing down of the curriculum. It would place virtually the whole youth of the nation under the remit of the state, well into what previous generations would described as adulthood. A bureaucrat's dream, but a nightmare for the rest of us.

Comments

[nomdeblog]

This guy sounds like a bit of a hippie:

“For many others, who have chosen work-camps, farms or paid apprenticeships, but who then want a more liberal experience, we could copy the Danish Folk Schools designed for ages 18 to 25.”

[Publius]

Not quite a hippie. But definitely a Leftist. HIs essential point about education becoming a bureaucracy is correct. He just thinks some other kind of government solution will work. It won't, of course, we'll just wind up with a different kind of bureaucracy.

[Leslie]

I always find it interesting that there is a free market vs state-run debate surrounding health care but never for education. State involvement in education is perhaps, quietly, the bigger beast.

[Nicholas]

I've swiped a few paragraphs of this as today QotD post. Will be up a bit later on.