DEFINING EDUCATION: teachers left swinging gently in the wind

What do we expect from education? An educated populace, to be sure. But what one person thinks is a "good" education, another thinks is a "bad" one. What's the level of disagreement? More than you might imagine. Let's examine some definitions and see.

 

"Education in virtue ... which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship and teaches how to rightly rule and obey, this is the only education ... which deserves the name." 

Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) Athenian philosopher and seminal thinker.

"There can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end ... there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education." 

Pius XI (1857-1939) Roman Catholic Pope from 1922 to 1939

"The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and genuine rather than the bad and counterfeit." 

Samual Johnson (1709-1784) British lexicographer, essayist and critic.

"Education, beyond all other devices of human origin, (should be) the great equalizer of the conditions of men — the balance wheel of the social machinery." 

Horace Mann (1796-1859) American public education pioneer.

 "Education is the transmission of civilization." 

Ariel and Will Durant, (1898-1981 and 1885-1981) American writers and historians.

A chief aim of education must be to impart to the individual the courage to play the game against any and all odds, the nerve to walk into the ambushes of existence, the hardiness to face the most despicable truth about himself and not let it daunt him permanently."

Dom Marquis (1935-2022) American philosopher.

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us to all humanity." 

Lady Nancy Astor (1879-1964) British politician and first woman seated as a Member of Parliament. 

Education by a national state must aim primarily not at the stuffing of mere knowledge, but at the building of bodies which are physically healthy to the core. Only after this comes the training of the mental abilities."

Adolf Hitler  (1889-1945) German despot, mass murderer and initiator of WW2.

"Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature."  

Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) British naturalist and pioneer of evolution theory.

"There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is life in all its manifestations." Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) British philosopher and theoretical mathematician.

"Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and who is struck with it." 

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Soviet tyrant and mass murderer.

This sampling illustrates the wide range of disagreement regarding a "good" education. And this disagreement readily transitions into a wide range of conflicts and controversies. Yes, there is wide agreement that education involves the acquisition of basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. But even here there is disagreement regarding how they should be taught — much less the ends they should serve.

Rest assured, whatever significant content and methodology educators choose will be controversial — if it isn't first neutered, of course. This is why school "leaders' stick to vague purr words regarding instructional goals and objectives. But trouble still arises because teachers must attempt to add detail in order to create actual lessons. And if that lesson involves teaching anything significant, it will generate controversy. That is when school administrators  scurry for cover, leaving the teacher swinging gently in the wind. So many teachers water down whatever they teach to render that content as unobjectionable as possible. But they often end up teaching harmless humbug that results in little lasting learning.

What is to be done? Not much in a society as diverse as ours. It's just the way things are. Of course smart kids learn anyway. But what they learn is mostly content from the hidden curriculum. That's the unofficial lessons kids absorb by experiencing school routines, rules, sub-cultures and power structures. Is that knowledge valuable? Yes, as far as it goes. But there should be more to school than that. 

Is there any way around this problem? Yes, live in an unusually homogeneous school district whose values match your own. The only other option (Besides home instruction, which is generally a farce.) is to find a private school that fits your values and your pocket book. Good luck with that.

Here's a final thought. Community consensus strongly influences how school rules are defined and enforced. For instance, years ago I taught in a rural public school serving a community that agreed on sparing the rod, spoiled the child. In consequence the penalty for serious violations of school rules was an eye watering encounter with a wooden paddle. (It was an orderly school district where instruction was possible and personal safety pretty much assured.) But that ended when corporal punishment was ruled out state wide by compassionate legislators who would never have to personally suffer the consequences of their magnanimious solicitude. 

SUICIDAL TOLERANCE: championing a judgement free world

The most “woke“ among us champion what might best be called "suicidal tolerance." Why suicidal? Because the foolishness they preach, essentially a judgement and ranking free world, would ultimately eradicate expertise and even tolerance itself.

Whence springs their wooly-headed demand that value judgements and rankings must perish? The main source is their conviction that values are mere “social constructs.” That conviction leads them to jump to the conclusion that no culture is better than any other. They ignore, or are ignorant of, the fact that some cultures are so intolerant that merely advocating tolerance would get them killed. (Isis comes to mind.)

Paradoxically, women are among the most vocal disciples of this new-found religion. And the worst offenders are academic women. One wants to ask these females, so you don’t think it wrong to have some crone excise village girl’s clitoris’s with a razor blade? How about forbidding women to vote? Requiring them to be absolutely obedient to their husbands? To meekly suffer death by stoning if thought they might be guilty of adultery? Should these hyper-tolerant ladies disapprove of any such things they cannot logically insist that cultural practices are value free! But they do.

In the real world cultural practices often have weighty moral content. Attitudes regarding individualism provide one example. The fact that valuing or even tolerating individualism is a moral choice is precisely why some cultures suppress it. They disapprove of the underlying value it places on individual perceptions, judgements and choices. The Taliban, for instance, permit nothing of the kind. These zealous fanatics punish any individuals who question the smallest details of their very narrow interpretation of Islam. They even forbid listening to music, dancing and flying kites — the later a very popular past time with Afghan children. Why? Because they perceive such enjoyment as being immoral.

Cultural practices often have very weighty moral value. That is exactly why they are NOT morally equal. Just the opposite. In fact, this moral content is why cultures are more or less dysfunctional. Why? Because of what they will or won’t tolerate and the human happiness or misery that results. 

The Taliban are a sterling example of a dangerously dysfunctional culture. Of course it’s intolerant to make such a claim. But tolerance is not always desirable. After all, some practices, rape, honor killing, and genocide, for instance, are plainly intolerable. Even a Harvard professor should be able to grasp that. Although some don’t.

Let’s dig a little deeper into cultural relativism’s implications. A major one is that this relativism necessarily opposes any rankings based on merit. Do you want your favorite baseball team to acquire a highly skilled pitcher. Would you prefer having your heart surgery performed by a masterful surgeon? Well, according to these believers, you are supporting existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies. So also does insisting these “woke” individuals be able to tell their ass from third base. And most can’t.

A recent protest by Harvard students illustrates how far this silliness has advanced. Concerned that A’s now make up 60% of all Harvard course grades — up from 24% in 2005 — Harvard has now capped course A grades at 20%. This prompted a student petition asserting that assigning grades on the basis of performance creates “a system of ranking and sorting that mirrors and reinforces existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.”

To some extent it does mirror these hierarchies But far from perfectly. If it did, neither upward nor downward mobility would exist and both certainly do. For example, I know a woman who was born in a deep south home with a dirt floor and parents near the bottom of the social hierarchy. But, by dint of academic accomplishment, risk taking, good judgement and damn hard work, she now owns her own accounting firm and also is producing major motion pictures. Are there similar success stories? Of course there are. So the assumption that a system of ranking and sorting simply “mirrors and reinforces existing hierarchies” is plainly false. 

Besides, where would we be without ranking and sorting? We would find ourselves in a competence free world. Heart surgeons selected non-judgementally wouldn’t necessarily know a damn thing about what they were doing. Buildings and bridges would regularly collapse because they were designed by incompetent structural engineers. In short, we couldn’t rely on any specialized expertise whatsoever. What a nightmare.

Clearly a system without judging and ranking belongs in Lala land. So we must vigorously reject the judgement free style advocated by the most “woke” among us. Besides, these folks aren’t really woke at all — they’re dreaming! But as their crackpot social philosophy gains ascendence, their dream is becoming our nightmare.

ARE MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS A THREAT? a historic comparison

Many Americans worry about Muslim immigration. They fear these newcomers are culturally incompatible, religiously intolerant and potentially larcenous. Plus they imagine them flooding into this country in unacceptable numbers. What should we make of this? 

In the 19th century many Americans were similarly concerned about Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, flooding into what was then their Protestant America. A major worry was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch, the Pope. He led an undemocratic and anti-Protestant institution that they found especially threatening. They asked how a people, accustomed to religious authoritarianism, could ever learn to live in democratic America? They feared these Catholics would band together and become another America altogether. 

Their concern was intensified by the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics immigrants. By the dawn of the Civil War the Catholic presence in America already exceeded the total population of the U.S. just 70 years previously. And their numbers swelled more and more as the 19th century advanced. 

This amounted to a whole lot of culturally different people for America to absorb. But these Irish Catholic immigrants, despite vicious discrimination, ultimately proved capable of blending in to the fabric of the nation, Understanding, embracing and even exploiting democracy, a third generation of Irish-Americans actually provided the nation with the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, .

How have the Muslims done in contrast? Well, first off, there has never been an America without Muslims. But most of them arrived as slaves and soon lost their Muslim religion. In contrast, contemporary Muslims arrive in very different circumstances; coming, as they do, direct from Muslim lands. These new arrivals pledge no allegiance to the equivalent of a Pope, nor even embrace a unified religion. In fact there are bloody disagreements among them about what it takes to even be a Muslim. 

But the one thing they aren't, is Christian. And that makes a decided difference in how they are received. First of all, there is not always a happy coexistence between Muslims and Christians, nor the Western way of life. The most fanatical among them, a small minority to be sure, want to convert all Americans to Islam — if necessary, by the sword. And they want to install their version of Sharia Law in place of current law. But again, they are a small minority. 

But there is another problem.  A small number of Muslim  immigrants or visitors have proven to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent. And even though these perpetrators were foreign nationals, many Americans link terrorism to Muslims — especially after the Boston Marathon bombing. And that means a sizable segment of Americans will oppose any Muslim immigration.

Present day Muslim immigrants constitute a tiny portion of the historic flood of Irish Roman Catholics. And Muslims amount to less than 1% of American citizens. And less than 5% of the immigrants currently entering the U.S. are. And the dangerously fanatical among them is very small indeed.

What about present-day Muslim immigrants? Will they too fit in culturally? Or will they, unlike the Irish Catholics, prove durably alien and become a separate America? We shall see. Recently some Somali-Americans defrauded Minnesota and the United States government out of multiplied billions of dollars. This massive fraud is causing some Americans to link criminality and lousy citizenship to Muslims collectively. And if people believe it to be true, it will be true in its consequences.

Besides, the Irish-American immigration experience proves that Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish became criminals of the first magnitude. In fact the Irish Mob was one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime gangs. Later arriving Italian-Americans proved equally capable of organized criminality. So the Somali’s have no patent on that kind of behavior. 

However, a substantial number of America regard the United States as a Christian nation For them, non-Christians are, ipso facto, un-American. A substantial number of these true believers even maintain that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. A false belief that is continually reinforced by right wing preachers.  

In actual fact some of America’s most influential founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, were deists or rationalists, not Christians. Moreover the nation's founders agreed that the United States should  NOT to have a state religion. However, this reality gives no pause to those who believe the Christian America myth. 

 Looking back, many Americans once initially thought Irish-American Roman Catholic immigrants were a distinct threat. That is long gone. But will Muslim immigrants also attain, or ever desire, the same degree of integration? That remains to be seen.

"WOKE" RHETORIC AND THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

Over emphasis on injustice backfires. It discourages the personal responsibility that is essential for meaningful growth. Become convinced you are a powerless victim and you will be. 

For instance, African-Americans have dealt with profound injustice in immoderate amounts for centuries. But repeated hammering on this injustice, by excessively "woke" educators, for instance, can trigger the self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Better known as the Thomas Theorem by sociologists, here is how it works. Put simply, when a situation is defined as true, it is true in its consequences. Why? Because outcomes depend as much on the individual’s perception of the situation as they do on the situation itself. Should a person believe that they are a hapless victim, they will behave accordingly. 

Human behavior is not defined by objective facts, but by how people view and make sense of those facts. So as "helpless" victims, they discount their own agency; their own ability, even their own degree of responsibility, for what happens in their lives. When that happens no oppressor is needed. The "oppressed" become their own oppressor. Seeing themselves as powerless, they do nothing but impatiently await salvation. And that can be a long wait indeed. 

I spent over 50 years as an educator. And one of the saddest and most disheartening aspects was watching the above happen over and over again. Instead of availing themselves of the opportunity a free education offered, too many kids, viewing effort as useless, turned their backs. And in so doing they threw away the very best life chance many of them will ever have. 

In 2025 providing this gift to all of America's kids cost the public an average of $17,000.00 per student per year. That's one hell of a present. And it's made repeatedly over 12 long years. Perhaps so many kids do so is because accepting that gift has been made compulsory — possibly a critical mistake. But whatever the reason, a dispiriting number of kids turn up their noses at a gift worth over $164,000.00 — actually far more considering inflation. 

Yes, school curricula, policies and procedures can be out of step with the world many of these kid's live in. But however imperfect it may be, schooling still provides them with a precious means of life enhancement. 

It's especially ironic that many of the kids I saw rejecting this opportunity are African-American. Are these kids aware that slave owners rigorously opposed any and all attempts to school "their property?" Do they know that enslavers also stifled any attempts by that "property" to learn on their own? Their enslavers knew that an education was potentially liberating. Too many of their descendants do not. 

Whatever our school's shortcomings, and there are many, they still offer one of the best opportunities for advancement many kids will ever have. But that opportunity can only by seized by youngsters who stay clear of self-pity, focus sharply on their own agency, and take full responsibility for their own behavior. And, ironically, the well meaning sympathy of the excessively "woke" undermines all of that. In trying to be supportive, they do these kids a profound disservice by preaching the gospel of defeat.

 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: who's really in charge?

Until the 1920's America's public schools were chiefly a local responsibility. In the 1920's, for instance, some 162,800 local school districts were governed by locally elected lay people who raised the bulk of the revenue, enjoyed considerable autonomy and were responsive to local pressure. These days, state imposed consolidation has reduced that number by 88%, or a total of 13,598. Consequently local autonomy, control and sensitivity to local pressures have shrunk dramatically. 

At the same time school funding gradually shifted from the local to the state level — although the proportion varied from state to state. These days Vermont provides the most: 87%. Utah the least: 58%. The remaining balance of the funding falls mainly on local school districts. The federal government provides just 8%. 

Here's why this matters. Whoever pays, usually sets the rules. With state funding predominating, most key decisions are made at the state level. And when the federal government has gotten more and more involved. Local authorities often are not consulted in any meaningful way. Just told what they must do. These local authorities also are often required to pick up some, sometimes all, of the tab. (State and federal law-makers are fond of enacting one requirement or another then imposing much, sometimes all, of the cost of accomplishment it on local school districts.

There was a brief increase in federal funding beginning most markedly with the administration of George W. Bush — the self-styled "Education President." At this time the federal government increased education spending about 33% to 12% of the total. This further diminished state and local power by adding federal rules that went with the funding. As time when on, enthusiasm for education spending diminished and with it all the increased federal funding. Their rules, however, are still around. Consequently parents and local communities find themselves further and further removed from meaningful influence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another source of community and parental disempowerment is the ever decreasing number of schools and a concomitant  increase in the number of students per remaining schools. In 1920 there were some 190,000 public schools, k-12, with an average of 100 students per school. By 2020 there were only 131,000 public schools serving an average of 528 students per school. That's five times more students per school than in1920.  

As school populations grew, individual student differences became less and less important. The chances of a principal even knowing the name of every student, much less anything about them, shrank to nearly zero. Their knowledge of individual parents also shrank dramatically. 

So where does this leave us? With public schools that are less and less responsive to individual differences and more and more indifferent to community values. Who's really in charge? State and federal bureaucrats who are in the hire of state and federal legislators, that's who. Whether or not that's what we want, that's what we've got.