A Classical Education: Back to the Future

From the New York Times online Opinionator column:

Martha Nussbaum, philosopher, classicist, ethicist and law professor, starts from the same place. She critiques the current emphasis on “science and technology” and the “applied skills suited to profit making” and she argues that the “humanistic aspects of science and social science — the imaginative and creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought — are . . . losing ground” as the humanities and the arts “are being cut away” and dismissed as “useless frills” in the context of an overriding imperative “to stay competitive in the global market.” The result, she complains, is that “abilities crucial to the health of any democracy” are being lost, especially the ability to “think critically,” the ability, that is, “to probe, to evaluate evidence, to write papers with well-structured arguments, and to analyze the arguments presented to them in other texts.”

And

Diane Ravitch, noted historian and theorist of education, writes as someone who once strongly supported the promise and goals of No Child Left Behind but underwent a de-conversion in 2007: “Where once I had been hopeful, even enthusiastic, about the potential benefits of testing, accountability, choice, and markets, I now found myself experiencing profound doubts about these same ideas.”

Her conclusions, backed up by exhaustive research and an encyclopedic knowledge both of the literature and of situations on the ground, are devastating. The mantra of choice produced a “do your own thing” proliferation of educational schemes, “each with its own curriculum, and methods, each with its own private management, all competing for . . . public dollars” rather than laboring to discover “better ways of educating hard-to-educate students.” The emphasis on testing produced students who could “master test taking methods, but not the subject itself,” with the consequence that the progress claimed on the basis of test scores was an “illusion”: “The scores had gone up, but the students were not better educated.” A faith in markets produced gamesmanship, entrepreneurial maneuvering and outright cheating, very little reflection on “what children should know” and very little thought about the nature of the curriculum.

More here.

Well, that's what I've been saying.

No, seriously. In so many words. My ongoing assertion that the schools are, contrary to conventional wisdom, far more about indoctrinating children into a culture of obedience and authority than they are about learning is pretty much what the education critics cited in the above linked essay are saying. I mean, they don't frame it in quite the same way, don't use words like "authority" or "obedience," but it amounts to the same thing: the underlying philosophy guiding educational decisions made in America runs counter to the goal of creating a deliberative, contemplative, and well informed population suitable for democracy.

Indeed, this notion of educational philosophy, that is, what it is we're trying to accomplish with education and how we do it, is rarely part of public discourse on the topic. Everybody agrees that education is important somehow, but rarely do people talk about what that means exactly. People vaguely mention careers, or being economically competitive as a nation, or understanding the need to vote or to be engaged in various civic responsibilities, but don't really discuss the best ways to achieve that, or even what it looks like in finished form. In other words, to most Americans, "education" is defined by the institutional experience they had as children and teenagers: critiquing that experience is, by and large, off the table. "Education" is what we grew up with, and, therefore, all discussion is in terms of good old fashioned American schooling, and variations thereof. Hence, the emphasis on test scores, discipline, attendance, and graduation rates.

It is almost as though participating in "education" is an end in itself. It is no wonder that most of the national conversation about "education" is in terms of "what worked for me when I was a kid" and how to replicate that down home experience for today's children.

Frankly, I don't think "education" worked too well for anybody when they were kids. We've got a pretty stupid, docile, self-involved population, one that was utterly duped into supporting a pointless war by clumsy post 9/11 White House lies that were easily disproven by any and all skeptical minds. Most people don't vote or participate in the political process. We've got a de-unionized work force, easily pushed around, with maxed out credit cards. We've lost any semblance of civil society and community--what happens to the people across the street has nothing to do with me because they're the people across the street. In short, we have one majorly fucked up country. No, "education" hasn't served us too well at all. Getting back to the good old days, "what worked for me," is just not a good idea--it did not work for you.

The solution proposed in the above linked essay, a return to the classical model of education, is one I can support, as well as several other alternative approaches. I'm not so particularly concerned with how we get there as much as I am with the outcome: the creation of students who have intellectual skills which can be applied to multiple aspects of life in our cosmopolitan society, who are well suited to understanding, analyzing, and critiquing the many arguments and persuasions continually rammed down our throats in this era of public relations and mass media, who are, in short, good and forward-looking citizens for a democracy. If you've got a nation full of people like that, everything else, economic competition, civic engagement, career, should take care of itself. That is, such an education makes people who are imminently capable of mastering any subject or field they choose, all the while maintaining a layman's expertise on everything else.

This is totally do-able. All it takes is the will. But until we start having a meaningful conversation on education in this country, one that is not guided by people's expectations based on their own shoddy educational experiences, it won't happen.

Nonetheless, I'm hopeful.

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