Two Worlds Where Education Can Stand

I would classify philosophical frameworks for education into two categories: the romantics and the realists. Though I have been tending towards the romantics in recent months (which is most uncharacteristic of me) it is essential to bear a certain deference to realism when this realism begins to conform with observed reality. This is to say that we must all possess a certain reverence to what Kipling called "The God of Things as They Are", and never allow our aspirations and optimism to lure us into chasing fantasies in defiance of increasingly undeniable facts. Ignoring unpleasant realities while chasing wishes and dreams has always ended badly; and that is one thing that will never change.

The Romantics

There are (basically) two schools of thought concerning educational romanticism, which I call the conventional and the radical. Both claim that American education can be vastly improved from its current state. The Conventional romantics are those who think that it can be done withing the framework of the American K-12 system, claiming that all this system needs is an injection of whatever reform elements the particular romantic in question happens to endorse. Conventional romantics probably constitute the largest proportion of education advocates and activists, and they come from a wide range of institutional backgrounds and political orientations. In fact, they so often and so vehemently disagree with each other that most would be shocked that anyone could put them in the same classification. E.D. Hirsch, James Banks, the 1990s incarnation of Diane Ravitch, Rod Paige, Linda Darling Hammond, G.W. Bush and Barack Obama all fall into this category, simply because they believe that with the help of a few pet reforms, the existing K-12 educational structure could be vastly improved. Where they differ (immensely) is in the nature of the reforms they endorse, with E.D. Hirsch endorsing a curriculum geared towards promoting cultural literacy, James Banks promoting a radically "politically correct" ethnic pride curriculum, Page professing to promote accountability and standards through testing, Hammond promoting classic "progressive" methods and Ravitch (until recently) endorsing select bite-size samples of charters and choice.

I don't bother discussing the ideas of any element of this faction because their basic premise is dumb; and just the fact that all of these factions exist and are vying for control of the public school curriculum should be enough to demonstrate the impossibility of generating any meaningful improvements in education within the framework of the current system. Frankly, any centralized education bureaucracy is going to be inundated with such interest groups vying for influence over not only curriculum, but all facets of education. And as in all bureaucratic infighting, the winner will not be whoever has the best ideas, but whoever has the strongest organization, the most clout, the best propagandists, and the least scruples. Schools have been the target of reformers for over 100 years, and virtually all reform efforts have left schools slightly worse off. This is simply because any authentic efforts at reform get co-opted by a thousand interest groups who use the momentary activist energy to engender changes that entrench themselves even further under the guise of reform.

Radical Romanticism, the school with which I am most sympathetic, claims John Taylor Gatto as its greatest exponent, offering the strongest argument for the most optimistic vision of education that exists. In Gatto's own words:

I have come to the conclusion that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress it because we haven't figured out how to manage a population of educated people. My solution is simple; let them manage themselves.

The radicalism of Gatto works on two avenues. First, while the conventional romantics talk about raising American test scores so that they compare with other countries, and making other modest gains in performance, Gatto enters in full force and claims that it is possible to unleash a massive well of suppressed genius, and asserts explicitly that it is the school system itself that is suppressing human genius. Thus, he is massively optimistic about the potential of American students. Second, Gatto claims unequivocally that the only way to unleash the full power of student potential is to release them from the oppressive grip of their local public school; which is to say that the entire K-12 apparatus has to be obliterated and replaced with private ventures and the private initiative of students.

It is here where I most agree with Gatto. While I would not go as far as Gatto in asserting that genius is "as common as dirt", I do agree that that the modern K-12 apparatus plays a large role in discouraging whatever intellectual curiosity, intellectual initiative, individualism, and enterprise students indeed possess, and produces a generally mind-numbing effect on students through its constant insistence of conformity and obedience, and through its atmosphere of relentless compulsion. By never impelling the student to take the initiative in his own education, students quickly get the impression of education as consisting of arbitrary rules, facts, and subjects to be learned by shutting up and listening to a professionalized bureaucracy of teachers who are in many cases alarmingly ignorant of the subject they are teaching. What the schools are engaged in doing is in fact a perpetual defamation of the life of the mind. And the only way this can be combated is by breaking the education monopoly and letting as many truly independent schools as possible flourish without the burdens of having to comply with the soul-crushing directives of the modern education bureaucracy.

The Realists

Realists can also be subdivided into two categories: the coherent and the incoherent. The incoherent realists we can dispense with quickly, since they are few in number and basically claim only one prominent exponent: the 21st century version of Diane Ravitch. Ravitch, in her book, The Death and Life of the Great [sic] American School System, portrays herself as undergoing a conversion, claiming to have realized that she was naive about the effectiveness of Charter Schools and other "free market" reforms. This would be defensible if not for her conclusion that the right way to move forward would be to push her desired reforms through the existing school system, these reforms including a robust curriculum, somehow forgetting that she had spent 20 years of her life chronicling that it was this very centralized public institution that has proven incapable of producing the sort of strong curricula that Ravitch has always desired because of its susceptibility to political pressure groups and educational fads. Ravitch contradicts herself in innumerable other ways, such as insisting forcefully that test scores are bad measures of school quality, and then relying heavily on such test scores to demonstrate the disappointment of Charter Schools. But her most dishonest tactic is the absurd description of highly centralized Charter school developments as "market reforms", when she knows full well that a real market reform allows for independent entrepreneurial ventures, not public school spin-offs that the local political bodies deign to tolerate.

The Principle exponent of coherent realism is Charles Murray, who wrote in his Real Education that it was high time that education activists abandoned romanticism and drastically lowered their expectations. Murray's position on the potential of American students is the polar opposite of Gatto's, as he claims that the schools are already running up against the limits imposed by biology of student performance. Just as we can't teach dogs to play poker (the analogy is actually Greg Cochran's) and just as we can't teach the average person the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or General Relativity (in its most rigorous terms), there is a certain limit that human genetics places on the potential of the average student, and we have hit it. It is time that American education activists radically lowered expectations and stopped trying to compel kids to outperform their IQs, which is impossible, irresponsible, and abusive.

Murray does not go into the organization of American Education in his book, which is mostly about curriculum, but I have a hunch that he would be as radical as Gatto in his prescription of what to do with the American way of schooling; (Gut it). Also, his emphasis on curriculum is one that is echoed by Gatto and even Ravitch. Put more substance in the curriculum. Saturate the kids with captivating tales of larger than life mythical and historical figures and intrigues. Enough with this inundation of Dick and Jane and sterile standardized tests.

Which is why the school reformer, even should he disagree with Murray on the potential of the American student body, has nothing to fear from him. I disagree with Murray in many respects. History shows that children and adults alike used to be far more literate, more serious, and better educated than they are now as recently as 150 years ago, and this cannot be the function of genetics. And much of what Murray attributes to lack of natural ability I would argue to reflect an acquired numbness to the life of the mind and disinclination to think (especially think for oneself) that the public school inflicts on children.

But what we must understand is that nature does indeed impose limits on all of us. The question is simply a matter of what those limits are. Murray himself has acknowledged (and given name to) the Flynn Effect, which reflects a general increase in IQ, such that the average IQ of 1980 would actually have made the top 35% in 1920. (I use 1980 as a benchmark since the Flynn Effect has been weakening more recently.) Furthermore, while IQ does measure something real and central to the concept of intelligence, it does not measure everything. Even the most hardened IQ-imperialists must concede that IQ appears to be unrelated to creativity, to cite just one example. I would also venture to speculate that IQ does not factor in nearly as much when dealing with things in the realm of the concrete rather than the abstract, meaning that if schools should arise that establish a more vocational hands-on approach, IQ would be less of a decisive factor of school success. There is much danger in overstepping our boundaries regarding how much we know about human general intelligence. Thankfully, we can let those questions answer themselves once we free the students from the stranglehold of the state and let them and their parents take charge of their own education, so that they can discover for themselves if they have a genius and where their genius lies. The public school system is not doing it; that is for certain.