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An Embarrrassing Surprise?
"I'm shocked, shocked to find that schooling is going
on in here!" (with apologies to Claude Rains, Julius Epstein
and Casablanca)
I work for an educational not-for-profit in New York City. We have contracts with the city's public schools for classroom work and professional development and run an NSF-funded after-school science education program in ten community centers of the New York City Housing Authority. In our internal discussions about our students, we often do the rueful review of their educational deficits, at times sounding not all that different from Mark Slouka in his essay, "Dehumanized," the Harper's Magazine article that our editor asked to use as our source material for this month's issue.
But when I first read his piece in September 2009, then re-read it for this essay, I found myself then and now irritated by his special pleading for the humanities and his speculative assertions about their supposed salutary effect on human behavior. I was also irritated by his posture of shock that a state-funded school system, fueled by money granted to it through a capitalist economic system, would dare do the bidding of that system by creating workers knowledgeable in those things that will benefit that system. Surely none of what he rails against should be a surprise to him, and posing as if it is a surprise is embarrassing to watch.
He does not make a new or fresh complaint (read Bowles and Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America, published in 1976) -- and I would argue that American schools have done such a mixed job in educating their students because they have been trying to serve split masters (as they have done since the days of Horace Mann) — the spear-side of the economic system and the distaff-side of Mr. Slouka's sentimental notion that education should ennoble, soften, and expand in order to create thoughtful and active democratic citizens. Maybe what schools should do is simply jump whole hog into STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] education, just as President Obama recently called for, and not worry about whether they have equipped their students with deeper knowledges or more democratic souls (though there is nothing in the study of STEM that would prevent such soul-delvings). Especially when, like some students we work with, they can't, at the age of twelve or thirteen, use a ruler properly or make change and don't have the least understanding of any mechanical or biological system important to their survival.
In short, perhaps schools should just frankly acknowledge that, yes, their role in the culture is to create people who fit into the system in its historical time and place and fit into it in this way: imaginative enough to create the things that will advance both corporate profit and social goodness (usually in that order) but not so imaginative that they pose a legitimate threat to the system (faux-threats, such as those posed by artists of all stripes, are acceptable, especially since they can be so easily co-opted and exploited). It's foolish to think our educational system, at any level, has a mission to create people who then will resist and rebuke the economic and political masters that feed that system. Why would a state, even one nominally democratic, like our own, fund its own dismantlement?
Perhaps such an acknowledgement of their indoctrinal purpose would help schools educate students better because it might get them to realize that students need many more skills and tactics than the system currently offers them, focused as it is on ersatz divisions of knowledge into "subject matter" and excluding from that "matter" such really helpful things like plumbing, carpentry, car mechanics, understanding a lease or contract, learning how to navigate the hallways of government, and so on. I would argue that kids spend too much time in school, at least "school" as it's structured now. It would be great if they could spend a portion of each day outside of Smart Boards and curricular strait-jackets learning how to wash a load of clothes, kill a chicken, fix a flat tire, unplug a toilet, write a decent thank-you note, sew a seam, cook a simple meal for four, and so on.
In fact, it would not be too far-fetched to say that our educational system unprepares students, not through incompetence (or only) but because it insufficiently focuses on the important things in life -- that is, "important" because they actually contribute to the survival of the individual on a daily basis and contribute to that individual's sense of mastery over this thing called "life." Students currently feel mastery over nothing because they are hardly ever required to master something that can anchor them in the actual world.
These constraints may be obnoxious to those with Mr. Slouka's inclinings, but, as usual, liberations can be found within the constraints, even if they can't become matters of policy. Individual teachers working with individual students can do what they can do to promote questioning authority, analysis of lies and truth, and so on in the ways that Mr. Slouka would cherish -- the quiet subversiveness so enamored of aesthetes, that fuels art-making and feeds memoirs and poetry (but withers under the joust of politics).
(A connected aside: Another thing I found irritating in this essay was Mr. Slouka's unvoiced class and tribal bias -- that the "right" education is liberal(ish) in nature -- that an education that might teach someone to be conservative, to honor the authority of tradition and the tradition of authority, to be a patriot (even if one is critical of the patria), to be content with being content, and so on would not be a proper education in the sense that he used the word.)
But I would suggest something even more vigorous he could do with his indignant heat than write one-off articles for a national magazine. Just as it might be liberating for the school system to state, "Yes, we are, indeed, the educational adjunct of the capitalist system and will do our best to see that our students are equipped to succeed in that system," it might be just as liberating for Mr. Slouka to state, "Well, okay, since I can't force the system to make humans humane in the way I think they should be humane, then I will strive to create organizations and associations that will accomplish this goal."
This work would be well within the democratic tradition he claims to honor. De Toqueville, during his early-19th-century walkabout in the United States, found the blizzard of voluntary associations astounding and thought that they provided the proper incubator for (and protector of) democratic behavior, situated as they were between a state interested primarily in maintaining its own prerogatives and the weakness of individuals acting in isolation from one another.
The Christianists and conservatives understand this principle completely, which is why they have spent years building up their local and regional associations in order to apply pressure against the levers of the state and the culture when pressure is needed. Ethnic groups have always done this, as have workers and countless others. So why shouldn't avowed humanists like Mr. Slouka do the same rather than depend upon a state system to do their heavy lifiting? It may not be as sexy as outrage, but it will have longer legs when it comes to running the race.
I share his frustrations but, in the end, can't take them that seriously -- after all, when existed this Golden Age from whose grace we have fallen? Answer: Never. Rather than slipping him into dreamtime and nostalgia, his frustrations should spur him to step outside his writerly cocoon, accept the fact that, of course, we need more math and science education since poetry can't engineer a worthwhile bridge, and build his shadow humanist-education associations in concert with like-minded others.
An Addendum:
In the organization for which I work, the SalvadoriCenter, we use the built environment as the entry-point into helping teachers teach whatever subject(s) they're teaching. As we say in the office, we state outwardly that we promote STEM education, but inwardly we call it STEAM, adding "arts" as a way to leaven and expand the insights that STEM education give teachers and students about the way the built environment works.
We do this not because "arts" is like some secret ingredient that adds irresistible flavor to some flavorless mash but because our founder, Dr. Mario Salvadori, did not draw strict lines between science, math, and the humanities because he felt each was a reflection of the other, that science had beauty embedded in it, and that aesthetic understanding was most durable when grounded in the materialistic measurings of a mathematical formula.
The problem is not teaching more math and science, or simmering the curriculum down to "mathandscience," as Mr. Slouka lamented, but recognizing the humanities factors marbled throughout math and science -- that math was once considered a religious language, that science grew out of efforts to explain the ways of God to man, and ensure that these roots do not wither or get disappeared. Or, as Mario once said, every structure holds history, math, science, and so on -- one just needs ways to extract it, compile it, link it, forward it.
Instead of being the defense counsel for the humanities (which begins to sound like Oliver asking for more gruel), Mr. Slouka should instead argue to expand the definition of what is "useful" to a capitalist society, that it can generate more and better profit if its workers at all levels have greater curiosity, better literacy, and a more agile intellect as well as a kit-bag of utilitarian skills that will allow them to make their way through the capitalist gauntlet.
Some of us may not like the capitalist system and work in our ways to amend it or bleed it dry, but it is still the only game in town and will be for a long time, and we might as well ensure that those souls for whom we take on the responsibility to educate know how to play this game as expertly as possible -- not as drones but as beings with intellects as full-fledged as possible, stuffed to the gills with as much science, math, and humanities as they can carry.
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