October 23, 2009
Against School
American public schools, according to John Taylor Gatto, do not have problems, they are the problem:
We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight – simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
But we don’t do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the “problem” of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no “problem” with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would “leave no child behind”? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
I would also include most university education under this rubric. My experience has been that the more successful the academic, the more likely he/she will be an uncompelling thinker.
via Paideia
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Cf my “There’s Solitary, And Then There’s Solitary.”
Homeschool.
This essay is included in many anthologies used in first-year composition courses at universities far and wide (It’s in a book I’m using this year). The essay is naturally popular with students who also believe that school sucks and resent the fact that their parents are making them go to college. Gatto really strikes me as a disgruntled ex-employee more than anything else. He says he is against schools–not education–but the alternatives he suggests amount to an every-man-for-himself approach, in which the absence of prison-like schools suddenly results in free and creative people spontaneously blossoming all over the place. This is great fodder for those touting anti-intellectualism: who needs school?. Meanwhile, those who can afford private schools for their kids are still also sending them to Harvard and Yale and MIT. I guess they didn’t read Gatto’s essay.
Also, about academics being more likely to be uncompelling thinkers: I have surely met some academics who seemed to have settled into a routine that allowed them to not think too much or too deeply about anything, but on the whole I would say that most thinking any of us take note of is likely to have an academic connection. Perhaps one thing that academics often have is an understanding of how important it is to avoid oversimplifications and general statements that get in the way of actual thought.
Andrew, I’m curious about your statement that “the more successful the academic, the more likely he/she will be an uncompelling thinker.” Have you studied any places other than seminary and the Catholic college you attended as an undergraduate? I can’t help but wonder if the very nature of the schools you attended tends to produce the kind of limited thinking you are describing.
I’ve known some academics who couldn’t find their own assholes without help, but I’ve also known some great thinkers in academia. It’s a shame that your experience has been so negative.
The problems with my particular alma maters aside (they are not inclined to producing a limited scope of thinking you might suspect), I’ve audited enough classes at Princeton Seminary and generally spent time with academic sorts where ever I’ve lived*. I have a pretty good lay of the land than most would think.
Also, I don’t pretend to be smart, but I have a good memory and I know a parrot when I hear one–and that’s what I meant by ‘uncompelling.’ That said, I don’t damn the whole lot either. I’ve met a few good ones in my day.
*Seriously, I know a shit-ton of academics.
Doesn’t it seem that the real problem is the number of people there are–whatever their jobs might be–who are not particularly curious about a broad range of things?
And Andrew my friend, I guess we don’t need to start the who-knows-more-academics process; Cindy and I together have about 50 years on you in terms of direct contact with academics who hail from universities far and wide, large and small. And since I have worked in all kinds of blue collar jobs as well, I can say for a fact that you are more likely to run into people who want to talk about books and ideas at a university than at a meat packing plant. Think for a moment about all the people you do like to talk to, and ask yourself if that selection would still be the same if those people had eschewed all contact with the academy.
Andrew, I posted a failed comment in response, but it is suspended in the queue of anonymity thanks to an occasional glitch when I post from my phone. I’ll retrieve and revive it later or just say it again.
I didn’t mean to start a pissing contest, Daryl. I was just trying to communicate that I was judging from an extremely small pool. Secondly, at no point do I mean to communicate (however extreme my position may sound from the outside) that all contact with the academy should be eschewed. It’s just that I have personally seen minds ruined or ostracized by it (I am not talking about my experience).
There is no doubt a great amount of knowledgeable people in the academy, but a dearth of wise ones–and compelling thinkers are wise. And it has been my experience that those who are wise and in the academy are wise in spite of it.
That said, I do recognize that my experiences will color my assessment of the academic machine and it is well known that those experiences were not good.
Andrew: I didn’t want to start a pissing contest either; I wouldn’t presume to speak for such a vast realm of employment, aims, and activities. As I said before, I have known brilliant academics and I have known academics who were simply avoiding the real challenges many people face every day–riding on an ability to impress in a very narrow context. Being a writer, I have certainly seen the way an academic environment can do more to blunt creative activity than to foster it. But then–there’s me, attempting to offset that deficit with every fiber of my ability. What makes a person generate original thought? Must it be linked to the academy? Of course not. But given the wear and tear of making a living in this world, many things offered by an academic setting make it more likely that people will have the opportunitiy to pursue possibilities that would otherwise be buried. I had no chance in the world until I realized the power of argument and the challenge of articulating an idea instead of simply claiming to have it. Academia is typically brutal, even when Humanities is one’s discipline. But that force brings clarity or makes people quit and seek other avenues of endeavor
I find myself wondering, Andrew, if you would have these same reservations if you weren’t so involved with academics in the seminary. Surely there are some fine minds in that discipline, but when you speak of “parrots” the seminary is the first thing that comes to my mind. Seminaries are often subtly dominated by doctrinal views that are used to attract students who already know what they will find after years of study.