What is Public Schooling For?
Should it be child's work?
I read a critique of schooling for my cultural studies class. It's by Kevin M Gannon. It's chapter 1 of a book called Radical Hope: a teaching manifesto.
It uses phrases like "classrooms of death" and similar hyperbole. (Title of chapter 1) The idea comes from a Danish educator from a couple of hundred years ago who was writing that the curriculum that was taught had nothing to do with "life".
I've had a bit of experience of that. Starting in grade 9, I studied latin for 3 years, because it was then a requirement to get into university. I don't regret what I learned. It's a part of me now and I never was fluent. But then the universities dropped the latin requirement and I stopped studying latin.
I didn't like it but I understood why I was taking latin.
It was presented as a sort of universal language that spanned many cultures and disciplines. By the mid-60s it wasn't really fulfilling that role any more.
Since I left university to go live in the woods I've certainly been an outsider to the world of education but also have watched it evolve with keen interest. I've seen new pedagogical theories evolving as educators make sincere attempts to engage their students better. I don't think it worked very well. My impression is that literacy and numeracy rates have been dropping for decades.
Also I've observed that the idea of a public education that is the same for all students is falling by the wayside. We have all sorts of private schools promoting their own private view of society and culture. That seems to me to have contributed a lot to the polarization of society.
I now realize how bad it was when I was a kid that the public school narrative was about how good and great white anglosaxon culture was so a lot of the polarization that existed was just not acknowledged.
I do feel though that public education for all students is extremely important. All students to learn to read and write well. All students should learn the fundamentals of science. Daniel Dennett, a famous atheist, recommended that religious studies be a big part of a public school curriculum. By this he meant a serious sympathetic study of all the major religious ideas extant in a culture. A similar approach could be taken for the study of history and art.
The idea is that all adult citizens have a shared body of knowledge and understanding. This does not mean that everyone would agree with what the public education taught but would give a common ground for conversation.
When I was a kid I took going to school as my job. Adults go to work (both my parents did) and my job was to go to school. And it was work. It took many hours of practice before I knew the alphabet well enough to be able to read. But the thrill I felt when I actually first read a sentence (something like "Dick sees Spot") is still a high point in my life. But it was work to get there. Same with arithmetic. I can do it pretty automatically now - but it took years of practice to get there. That was all work. It wasn't unpleasant but it's not what I would have done spontaneously. And the skill I gained then has been invaluable.
Besides skills, schools also teach attitudes and behaviours. When I went to school there was an unspoken curriculum that kids absorbed through their skin. We got used to being punctual and sitting quietly listening to the teacher. We got to know what the bells meant. Also we learned how to get along and make friends with people who were outside our family and church.
Lots of the curriculum was physical education. We got stronger but we also played games and learned to compete as teams.
Public education need not preclude private education as well. And as students advance in their education they specialize according to their interests building on the base of literacy and numeracy that they got when younger.
The point I make is that public schooling should be thought of as giving citizens the tools they need to have to prosper as citizens.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.