Listen to Yourself!

Last night I stayed up til four a.m. talking to the DH and our roommate about the inanity of public education. What follows is a rant, hastily written.

It occurred to me only a month ago that the three of us all had unconventional schooling (unschooling/homeschooling). I left school two months into the 7th grade, and later attended one year of high school. The DH dropped out of the 9th grade to write software, and didn’t even bother to get his GED until years later. The roommate went to high school but was homeschooled by conservative Christian parents for most of his life; he later served in the Navy for four or six years, and is about as anti-establishment and anti-religion as one can be without actually being an activist.

I thought I had radical ideas about schooling, but these two put me to shame. The DH believes that the traditional public and private education system is not simply flawed, but actually harms children.

A few months ago, when the school year began, I was hanging out at the house of the DH’s parents. His little sister is in 6th grade (middle school). I was disturbed to discover that the students at her school are not permitted to carry their backpacks in the hallways. This is because the school administrators are fearful of guns being toted around. Lockers have also been eliminated, so that students cannot stash guns or drugs in them. Hats and black nail polish are forbidden to discourage kids from engaging in subversive behavior. What on earth kind of nonsense is this? This is a school in a rural/suburban town where there is no history of school shootings! But is it really any surprise? Look at how the adults in our society are so indifferent about sacrificing their constitutional rights in the name of national security.

One of the things that positively disgusted me was reading some of the arguments during the Planet Pluto debate. I couldn’t believe there were educators and scientists in the media arguing that we couldn’t withdraw Pluto’s planet status because then the children would be confused, and question everything they’d been taught in school. Regardless of my opinion of what Pluto should be classified as, that type of reasoning just makes me say WHAT?!

The other day I actually saw a commercial on television: several couples (strangely enough, all people of color) were depicted in the ads talking about how educational some children’s network or program was. One “mother” actually said, “It’s like having a preschool right in your living room.” WHAT?

I once had a customer interrupt me as I was reviewing her electric consumption with her. Her voice dripped with condescension: “Listen to yourself ! How could I have used 74 kilowatt hours in a DAY, when there are only 24 hours in a day?” It remains the only time I have been rendered speechless in my work. This woman was in her 30s. And she had a job that required a college degree.

I feel as though I’m far too young for this to be having these thoughts. I know a young woman who graduated from high school three years ago and did not know (until last week, when she asked someone) who had won the American Civil War. She is not a stupid person; she is actually quite intelligent. But what on earth was going on for those twelve years of suburban public schooling that she so dutifully completed?

The more I think about it, the more I realize how public schools are like corporations. And I have sympathy for all the disaffected, bored adolescents out there whose parents are forcing them to attend school because they don’t know what else to do with them. Surely, these kids must feel as frustrated as the middle aged, middle-class corporate drones and peons most of them are destined to become.

I’m reminded of that wonderful Soderbergh film, Kafka, when one character says to Kafka, “It’s not too bad working here, though.” And Kafka replies, “You’ve never felt it was a horrible double life, from which there was probably no escape but insanity?”

(cover of Grace Llewellyn’s, The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education. Note: Back when this book came out, I was friends with the girl on the cover - she, her mom, her brother, and her goats were awesome.)

Comments

10 Responses to “Listen to Yourself!”

Dan on January 16th, 2007 5:13 pm

You write: “The more I think about it, the more I realize how public schools are like corporations.”

That may indeed be the point of some schools (either explicitly or implicitly) — to educate young people to fit into a corporate cubicle, or onto the factory floor.

On the other hand, I think it’s dangerous to generalize about a heterogenous system of schooling, based on a few persons who happen to have spent time in that system. I could give coutner-examples of well-educated persons who went through horrendous school systems, and uneducated narrow-minded idiots who were homeschooled.

Me, I’m still attracted by the theories of John Dewey — who (as Lawrence Cremin points out) didn’t have a theory of school, he had a theory of school in society. Schooling *could* work in a democracy….
LaReinaCobre on January 16th, 2007 9:00 pm

I don’t think that public education is a bad idea. As you say, schooling *could* work in a democracy, and Dewey had some fascinating ideas about experimental learning. Schooling is not, in itself, an evil thing. Noam Chomsky attended an experimental grammar school; he said grades were not kept, and students didn’t compete with each other - it wasn’t until he went to a college prep-type school that he learned he was a “good student.” This kind of education interests me immensely!

Unfortunately, too many public schools have become institutions that process children; they do not support them in their learning.

I have educator friends who found themselves used and abused by the system. That shouldn’t be happening. Why are some of the best teachers being driven away or burned out? One of my best friends (an educator who is the daughter of a school principal) reminded me that un/homeschooling is not necessarily an option for the millions of low income folks who can’t afford to have someone stay at home. I totally understand that, and yet it makes me sad that one of the strongest cases for public education is that parents need babysitters while they’re at work.

I’m also very disturbed by the authoritarian nature of most schools. It’s almost a cliche that kids hate school and the adults in their lives are constantly battling with them to make them go. That just doesn’t sit well with me.

I think a school that doesn’t function as a machine that has more power than the students and instructors within it is probably okay.
Philocrites on January 17th, 2007 6:02 am

A high school classmate of mine was outraged to discover, after we had graduated, that there had been a civil war in the U.S. “We had a war?!” she said. “Why didn’t anyone tell me!”
LaReinaCobre on January 17th, 2007 10:35 am

Oh, Philo … *shaking head*
Barbara Preuninger on January 20th, 2007 7:27 am

I think homeschooling/unschooling sounds great except that it would mean a large number of (mostly) women having to stay home with children for quite a long period of time. Not saying that having a “career” is everything. But if large numbers of women stay out of the public workplace, or play minor roles in it, it necessarily implies that large numbers of women will be economically dependent on the men in their lives.

So while I can see the benefits of homeschooling for children, I’d much prefer other kinds of reform in public schooling.
LaReinaCobre on January 20th, 2007 11:15 am

Hi Barbara,
Again, I think we’re getting to the question of school as babysitter. If I implied it, it was never my intention to suggest that homeschooling was the best - or only - way of educating children.

I don’t think any significant reform will occur on a wide scale in public education until some other issues are looked at more closely: Namely, what are we raising children to do/be in the world? how much time are we going to spend with the children that we bring into the world? and how much stuff do we need?

One of the things I’m still trying to wrap my head around is the differences in circumstances for low income families compared to middle class families.

My gut tells me that all children should be treated with respect in these “institutions” (though this might be expecting too much) - and as it happens the poorest children receive the worst public educations. Even in areas where the children are not poor (such as where the DH and I live), senseless and arbitrary reactionary behavior on the part of authority figures + fear mongering is normal.

Personally, I think it’s unfortunate that only a relative few parents are able to send their children to schools or learning environments where it is believed that children are human beings, intelligent, don’t need to be coerced all of the time, should be told the truth, shouldn’t be humiliated or hit when they make mistakes, etc.

Then I think that it might be - again - expecting too much when I look at how so many adults are treated and treat each other.
Jamie Goodwin on January 21st, 2007 12:57 pm

oh.. oh.. I got one.

A good friend of mine a few years back, she was a sophmore in college. We were sitting around at her house when her sister showed up with her new boyfriend. He was from South Africa. My firend, completely confused by this white guy saying he was from Africa eventually asked him “Your from Africa.. so you live in a grass hut or something?”

She had no ideas cities even existed in Africa.
LaReinaCobre on January 21st, 2007 4:04 pm

Jamie -
Please tell me you all helped this friend out! Oh my goodness …

I know there are cities in Africa, but I am often embarrassed that I know far more about Europe than I do Africa. And I wish I could be more specific about countries within Africa, instead of just lumping them all together and referring to countries as a single continent.

I got’s to get my learnin’ on.
Lizard Eater on January 30th, 2007 9:48 am

Okay, now, not to defend public school, but to give an anecdote from the other side:

My friend’s husband went to one of those completely unstructured schools, where kids direct all their learning. (They also could just play two-square all year if they wanted.)

She was having some dental problems and he just looked at her confused and said, “Well, if your tooth falls out, another one will grow in its place.”

He honestly thought adult teeth were like baby teeth and another one would replace it.
LaReinaCobre on January 31st, 2007 1:02 am

Lizard Eater -
Wow, just wow! It sounds like your husband’s friend might know about zoology than biology!

One of my UU friends revealed to a group of us at church that he didn’t know what day Christmas was until he started teaching RE. And he grew up celebrating it, but just never really thought about the actual date, seeing as how it always happened during winter break. We all got a kick out of that one!