Lake Woebegone Redux

The usual exchange of ideas on education you can peruse. It starts with an essay by Christopher Lasch, then a comment from a colleague, and the Gaga follow-up.

Enjoy?

Yer Gaga

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Gaga sez:
I know you'll think of some pun for the subject of Lasch's essay. Here's the URL:

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/lasch_new_illiteracy.html

Dear Gaga:

At U.Mass., where Marxism prevailed, we called Christopher "Backlasch" because of his move to the right in Haven in a Heartless World and Culture of Narcissism. The idea that education has become commodified is intriguing given someone who, out of sentimentality, seems to affirm capitalism but hate its products. Daniel Bell in THE CULTURAL CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM does much the same thing , namely; long for a world in which, somehow, capitalist commodity production would continue, albeit, with higher standards. It is not an economic critique that leads this assault, but a critique of what in Marxian parlance is termed superstructural.

Herb Gintis, with whom I studied, wrote SCHOOLING IN CAPITALIST AMERICA. While the ideological axis of this critique is about poverty, gradations of school merit reflect and are reflected by class society. The schools teach lies, too, and this upsets Bowles, Gintis, and others of that ilk.
But, notice, Lasch is not upset - as was , say, Zinn, with the lies foisted by right-wing ideologues on kids, he is irritated that they are learning consumerist slop. At U.Mass we had a name for these so-called "intellectuals" who talk about the "dumbing-down" of schools. We called them "Backlaschers". Think of Ortega Y Gasset's famous book "The Revolt of The Masses". We hated that piece of trash. Sure, says Ortega, democracy brings its egalitarian freight into schools - and then, voila! Warhol rather than Da Vinci. But really, think about it honestly, isn't one of the cool things about Da Vinci the fact that NOT EVERYONE HAS ACCESS TO HIM.

The central question to ask as educators is do we want elitism or not, do we want social equality or not. The elitist stuff has always been foundational for schools. You go to school to learn to be better than someone else. You climb the ladder, where each rung is another student. You learn not for the beauty of learning, but to spout bullshit at cocktail parties so you can impress people with your status - a status which, as Veblen attests, comes from the conspicuous consumption of leisure. Leisure assures others that you're not a proletarian, that you didn't get your hands dirty, that you studied the romantics or Goethe.

But if you read Dewey's DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION you arrive at the idea that education can train you to be a good auto-mechanic and that that is even more germane than being a mediocre poet. Dewey wanted education to be pragmatic, useful. The irony is that the drivel that passes as education is useful because it is laden with ideological undertones which uncritically escape awareness. School wants robots to behave. Full stop. So if the education that it gives students succeeds in pacifying them by making them behave and follow orders, it has worked. Rabelais?! What a "Gargantuan" mistake.

Of all the educators that I've read, including Illych, Freire, Giroux, and other leftists, the most insightful was Friedenberg who, at sixteen, entered college, and realized that educational institutions are not simply empty wastelands, but, alas!, dangerous minefields where class society perpetuates itself.

Dan

Gaga Sez:

Dan,

Clearly Lasch was not without his critics with his views on education and from whence his views were coming from. Here is but one such critic:

http://samvak.tripod.com/lasch.html

I was a minor "fan" of Joseph Schwab, the Berlaks , and Rudolf Steiner in regards to their views of curriculum and education. I also appreciated Northrop Frye, Harold Innis, and Marshall McLuhan . Curriculum was my field of study after all (University of Toronto), and I still feel these views on education are relevant.

Of the five orientations to curriculum proposed by Eisner and Vallance , for some reason I lean towards Academic Rationalism, that is, I believe there is a body of knowledge to be passed around to the next generation to get them hooked on intellectual growth. Call me an elitist, which would be very odd considering I come from a family where education is not at all important (my parents had little time for smart-ass intellectualizin'...they just worked hard to keep food on our plates) but there is something I found incredibly rich in learning from the classics. I recall standing at the fireplace reading Latin outloud from a church book at about 5 years old, not knowing anything of what I was saying, but I knew it was...important. That contact made me interested in learning. From that day on I never really thought I needed a teacher or school, but rather contact with wisdom from all those generations of humans that had lived and left their knowledge and wisdom for all of us. So education remains, to me at least, contact with the best thoughts that have been passed down through time.

Then again, there is the danger of Cargo Cult Science here (to quote the title of the
Feynman speech at Caltech in 1974...). By being "close" to the minds doesn't mean you "are" the mind. This is certainly a danger. I have nightmares occasionally that I never really did finish school at all because at times I just simply don't get it-- I don't get what everyone else thinks is important.

Anyway, I've seen the dumbing down in my lifetime. It isn't imaginary. In the UK, the call for curriculum renewal (because it was sclerosed and irrelevant...or...the kids just got fed up) was the impetus for the New National Curriculum that ate up tons of resources in the late 70s, and 80s, and 90s. In the US, A Nation at Risk was a call to get more standardization into the public schools because kids were "behind" in maths and English (behind what? I don't know). But the US is currently living the curriculum reform. Nationwide standardized tests, the 2002 Bush educational reform entitled No Child Left Behind has made it such that everyone is a "winner"-- (and maybe that's what Lasch foresaw). And since everyone is not behind, everyone is the same--or perhaps-- better! Lake Woebegone--we have arrived-- embrace the parvenus!

While our technology is in full stride, pumping out answers for everything, most of us can't balance our bankbooks. It is estimated that 25% of the American population today are functionally illiterate . Ask an American where any place is outside a radius of 200 miles from their reality and they will have a hard time in describing it. This is both anecdotal and a generalization. So, is standardization working? I think it allows that the lowest can say they've made it, but I don't think it's working. Do you? By making such national standards, it has ensured everyone has the minimal competence. It cannot account for excellence at all.

Us Canadians aren't that far behind as low achievers as our American friends; the only difference is that we are obliged to keep track of what goes on down south because, well, our airwaves are filled with American sights and sounds. We hear and see what you hear and see, and yet we live in a very, very different world. A world, I have no qualms in saying, I am happy to be from.

Anyway, with this thread on education and who is it for, I am haunted by the 1961 story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., entitled Harrison Bergeron, in which equality became law. Hmm. A very scary prediction... perhaps we really have arrived.