What Are Schools Really For?
Ann Althouse links to a quote from Cornell anthropologist Meredith Small in the NYT, discussing the roles of children in non-Western societies. Stepping past Small's suggestion that children might be happier running about doing simple chores than they are in classrooms, I'm interested in Althouse's commentary:
[C]onfining very young children to classrooms is an economic concept in America. It's childcare, paid for by taxpayers who wouldn't accept paying for the childcare of parents who want (or need) to go to work... If what's really going on is taxpayer-funded childcare, then not only are taxpayers tricked into accepting paying for something they would reject if they knew what it was, but also children are being run through hours and hours of confinement performing exercises that are not honestly premised on benefiting them.
After being out of the system for a decade, this strikes me as self-evident. Indeed, the childcare analogy is gracious. In its societal function, school is a sort of prison; it's not premised on punishment, but on the understanding that society can't function with kids running free while adults are working. It's about confinement first, with education a secondary concern to all but the upper crust. Of course we all pretend that we're deeply concerned that schoolkids are learning, but which elicits more horror from the public: a child in school who isn't learning anything, or a child who isn't in school? The first gets a shrug and some platitudes, the second is treated as a threat to society. Literally. We use the police to enforce school attendance. Nobody calls the cops when the hung-over teacher puts in another movie for her class. Our reactions reveal our priorities, and they don't align with our rhetoric.
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Mar '11
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Education is perhaps the only thing we’re willing to pay for and not get.
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 9:14amDec '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
What are schools for?
One thing they are supposed to do is teach you to not put prepositions at the end of a sentence.
Mar '11
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
I would suggest that the very passivity with which parents by and large accept the miserable state of public education in the US is a certain proof of the contention. People appear willing to accept the outrageous costs and how little their children actually get from our schools in exchange for simply having someplace to deposit their progeny during the workday.
Aug '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Foxman: What are schools for?
One thing they are supposed to do is teach you to not put prepositions at the end of a sentence. · Jun 14 at 10:07am
But why? There's nothing about English syntax that makes these constructions impossible. So as long as it's not confusing, what's the problem?
This is one of those prescriptivist rules we could do without.
Winston Churchill, after all, was a pretty edumacated man...
Update: Here's Grammar Girl's take. I like Grammar Girl.
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 11:19amDec '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Foxman: What are schools for?
One thing they are supposed to do is teach you to not put prepositions at the end of a sentence. · Jun 14 at 10:07am
But why? There's nothing about English syntax that makes these constructions impossible. So as long as it's not confusing, what's the problem?
This is one of those prescriptivist rules we could do without.
Winston Churchill, after all, was a pretty edumacated man...
Update: Here's Grammar Girl's take. I like Grammar Girl. · Jun 14 at 11:09am
Edited on Jun 14 at 11:19 am
Actually I agree with you. I was just givng BPCRS a hard time.
Aug '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Much of what I learned in school was to become accustomed to wasting my time.
I also learned to neither expect outstanding rewards for outstanding work, nor to be punished for outstanding lack of effort, as long as I was clever enough to get by (which I usually was).
To the extent that schools do reward outstanding work with outstanding rewards, they often do so according to rank, which is only a relative measure of how outstanding work is. That is, to win a school contest, you don't have to do good work per se, just work that's somehow "better" than the other guys'. I suppose rewarding by rank is inevitable -- and at least rewards according to rank are still rewards -- but rank is a zero-sum game and success in the real world is not, and that bugs me.
I now realize that the fact that some folks wanted to pay good money for my artwork in high school meant more than, say, a first-place poetry prize. Just because I wrote poetry that sucked somewhat less than my adolescent competitors didn't mean people would want to read it. But people actually wanted the artwork.
Aug '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Foxman
Actually I agree with you. I was just givng BPCRS a hard time.
Understood. We're here to give each other a hard time, after all.
Sorry for being a humorless anti-prescriptivist zealot ;-)
Oct '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
By the time I hit ten years old, I had concluded that formal education, for me, was a complete waste of time. I am a kinetic learner. I only learn by doing. I totally checked out of school, quit giving a damn about grades, and set out to learn.
While my classmates were doing math drills, I had built my own television set from components. By the time I left high school I had already had a 40 hour a week job at an electronics manufacturing company for over 6 months. I was living in England before I hit 18, Scotland before 19, and Paraguay, in South America, before 20.
Every single penny of tax money for education is a complete waste and a fraud brought on by the socialist control freaks who infest America at this present time.
You say your kids can't learn that way? Try teaching them yourself, or, better yet, hire someone who can teach them. Too busy? Can't afford it?
B.S. This rationalization is how we got here. Get over it. Most of us are simply too lazy to live REAL lives. Seduced by laziness and television.
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 2:21pmNov '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
This is such an interesting question, but I took it rather differently from the authors of the other comments. I'd like to know what we think kids really need to be taught, if they are to function well in modern society. That is, assuming that the premise is correct and that modern schools aren't doing any recognizable good to our kids, what good would we like them to do in an ideal world?
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
There is a book by Michel Foucault entitled Discipline and Punish. It bears on this question.
Jun '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
I wish it was practical to go back to the old one-room schoolhouse. Part of the education there, for the older kids, was helping to teach the younger kids. If you want to understand something better, try teaching it to someone else. That's where my mother got her early education. It's the part of her education that she still remembers.
Sep '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Anyone reading this thread should be familiar with a few gems:
Teacher in America; Begin Here; The American University; The Culture We Deserve; The House of Intellect; The Art of Teaching;
and then for dessert:
The Idea of a University
May '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Public schools are in pretty bad shape. But the general trend of this thread seems to me far too negative. Don't we want all kids not just to be kept busy, but to learn to read, write legibly, and be introduced to things like history, art, music, science?
Aug '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
One question is, how long does it take to teach reading & writing? How long does it take to get introduced to the arts, humanities, and sciences?
Another question is, how necessary -- really -- is giving children a "broad education"? Yes, we want kids to survey what's out there so they can find subjects that are rewarding for them (intellectually or financially).
But is it really necessary for a youth whose talent and joy is music or chemistry to spend time he could be using to practice what he loves (or earn a little money or do physical activity) cooped up in a classroom taking his mandatory fourth year of high-school English, even if he already reads and writes at a college level?
Opportunity cost...
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 6:16pmDec '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
I never learned to do that, despite the efforts of the nuns.
May '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
One question is, how long does it take to teach reading & writing? How long does it take to get introduced to the arts, humanities, and sciences?
For you, dear Midge, hardly any time at all. But most kids are slower on the uptake, wouldn't you agree? And few there are (I'd wager), who find in themselves anything like real talent or true passion until later in life. Meanwhile, it's good if they have the basic tools to get by, no?
I can still remember the excruciating humiliation of a sixth grade assignment to "share a talent" with the class. I had no talent. None at all.
I don't want to talk about it.
May '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Pseudodionysius:
and then for dessert:
The Idea of a University · Jun 14 at 4:44pm
I practically worship the Idea of a University.
Sep '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
I'm curious, professor. Do you endorse?
Jan '11
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
Read Eric Buehrer's The Public Orphanage: How Public Schools Are Making Parents Irrelevant. It's a real eye-opener.
If the question here is whether parents are aware that they have abrogated parental responsibility, the answer clearly is yes. Statistics on the depth of failure of the American educational establishment appear periodically on major news outlets, but they continually astonish, as though each revelation is unique.
Having generally failed in teaching the three R's, public schools have settled into being day-care centers, which takes considerably less effort and expertise. The babysitting function of public education is comfortable, wide-spread, parental-guilt-free, and best of all, apparently cost free. Lots of luck trying to change that.
Jun '10
Re: What Are Schools Really For?
"Every single penny of tax money for education is a complete waste and a fraud brought on by the socialist control freaks who infest America at this present time."
I can't agree with this statement. I see many fine things being accomplished by public schools. I also see room for improvement in certain areas along with some awful things that should be tossed out completely. It's a mixed bag and in a nation as huge as ours, the variety of school systems and quality is vast.