Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.


August 31, 2003

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM: BREEDING A NATION OF DRONES

Filed under: How the World Really Works — Dave Pollard @ 19:57
libraryIn my recent post on rebuilding the American civic state I argued that one of the five key requirements to do so is re-educating the public — about the issues facing the world, about history, geography, civics, economics, and the workings of government. It’s not the first time I’ve suggested that education reform, if not a panacea, is at least a necessary condition for meaningful social change.

Recently however several bloggers have suggested that, far from being part of the solution, our education system is part of the problem. Most recently, Emma at Late Night Thoughts wrote:

There is something monstruously evil in children going hungry in the world’s wealthiest nation…We know that well-nourished children do better in school, but the first thing to go during budget cuts are school meal programs. We know that healthy children are more likely to grow up to be productive adults, but we skimp on pre-natal and children’s care. We know that children who have access to interesting activities are less likely to become delinquents, yet art, music, and after-school clubs are now rare as dodo’s eggs in the American educational system…

We are told that in this global post-industrial economy, the most important assets for a nation are its workers. We are told that an educated, creative workforce is the key to maintaining national economic growth. But actions indicate that we want exactly the opposite, and that makes no sense. Unless, of course, we accept my friend’s theory. I don’t want to. But it’s beginning to make a sick kind of sense: It doesn’t matter if children can’t learn, if most of them are not meant to do much with their lives.

What set Emma off were two articles that suggest that’s exactly what the education system is designed to do: To separate and elevate the elite, and sedate and restrain the majority. This article from Russ Kick citing the work of John Taylor Gatto describes the history of the American education system and those that had responsibility for its design and administration. Some excerpts:

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberlyóthe future Dean of Education at Stanfordówrote that schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen: “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

[This philosophy continues to direct the American educational system to this day]. In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the populationómainly the children of the captains of industry and governmentóto rise to the level where they could continue running things.

Although Gatto may be a little too quick to see conspiracy theories everywhere, the sheer mediocrity of the education system, and its effectiveness at dumbing down young people and making them mindless consumers and conformists, despite the efforts of mostly well-meaning educators, are sobering.

Emma also cites a new 60 Minutes report on the explosion of poverty in America, and how it especially affects children:

Almost half the people fed by these lines are kids. The Agriculture Department figures that one in six children in America face hunger. Thatís more than 12 million kids. Nationwide, children have the highest poverty rate.

Looking at the [long Ohio food bank lineups, that start every day at dawn and often run out of food before the line is exhausted], Bob Garbo says, “This is it, and youíll see this pretty well all over the country…Weíve gone backwards. This is what I heard from my mom and dad. This is what it was [like] during the Depression era. That people stood in line to get government commodities. We havenít come very far, have we?î

In Ohio, the lines continue to grow. In the first three months of this year. The lines jumped by nearly 20 percent with over 200,000 more families standing in line for food.

It’s an effective combination for sedating and subjugating a nation: ‘Educate’ people when they’re young — to be uninformed, to feel inferior, and to value themselves by what they consume — and then, when they get into the workplace, fill them with fear of unemployment, hunger, and deprivation, so they willingly work for next to nothing, and expect and demand nothing of their employer. Then add the final clincher: make them feel as if their failure, their poverty, their unemployment and underemployment, is their own fault, so they feel guilty and blame themselves for not thriving when “any American can rise to become President or a captain of industry”.

Perhaps it’s not an accident that the people at the Dean MeetUps, at the anti-globalization rallies and the anti-war protests, are generally well-to-do, highly educated people. They’re the only ones that have so far escaped the noose of suppression and despair, the only ones who have had the opportunity to learn what a great nation can be, and still have the hope that one day theirs could be one again.

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