Maintenance of the Social Order
Found this on a web site and found it interesting. It answers a few questions of why I meet such resistance when talking to clerks.
The question in my mind is who do you counteract years of training in how to be a tool or commidity instead of an individual?
It's no secret that the US educational system doesn't do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America's schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can't find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don't know who Abraham Lincoln was.
Fingers are pointed at various aspects of the schooling system-overcrowded classrooms, lack of funding, teachers who can't pass competency exams in their fields, etc. But these are just secondary problems. Even if they were cleared up, schools would still suck. Why? Because they were designed to.
How can I make such a bold statement? How do I know why America's public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America's formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing.
Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain. Luckily for us, John Taylor Gatto tracked them down. Gatto was voted the New York City Teacher of the Year three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. But he became disillusioned with schools-the way they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning. So he began to dig into terra incognita, the roots of America's educational system.
In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee's report stated, "We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes."
By the turn of the century, America's new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn't to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.
In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly-the future Dean of Education at Stanford-wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."
The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board-which funded the creation of numerous public schools-issued a statement which read in part:
In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:
The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.
Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about 'the perfect organization of the hive.'"
While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by "certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process."
In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population-mainly the children of the captains of industry and government-to rise to the level where they could continue running things.
This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren't often publicly expressed, they're apparently still known within education circles. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001:
I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn't have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, "They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world."
Edit: Source http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm
I haven't read Gatto, but Toronto Star reporter Sandro Contenta wrote an excellent and similar-sounding book about the Canadian school system called: Rituals of Failure: What Schools Really Teach.
Here's what one reviewer said:
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It is interesting, and perhaps telling, that while many Ontario home-educating parents are familiar with the books of John Taylor Gatto, few know the corroborating work of Toronto Star reporter Sandro Contenta. The Star's principal education reporter for several years, Contenta has produced a book that is as powerful an indictment of Canada's public education systems as anything Gatto has written about our southern neighbours.
In Rituals of Failure, Contenta addresses the historical context for Canada's system of compulsory schooling, beginning with the influence of Egerton Ryerson, 'probably the best known of Canada's fathers of education.' Ryerson, Contenta alleges, de-veloped a 'hidden curriculum,' a 'system that, through the structure and pedagogy of school, tries to shape the behaviour of students. The aim was to develop people who willingly accepted the status quo, and this was to be done by establishing school rituals that implicitly taught passivity and submission.'
Contenta's book examines Canadian public education from many different angles: from anger of al-ienated students, to the frustration of teachers, to the failure of the system to accomplish the task of educating the next generation. He interviews hundreds of students, teachers and parents. In the end he does not come up with any hopeful scenarios, and does not examine home-based education. This is, nevertheless, a book that every Ontario home-educating family should read. The evidence Contenta marshals is an overwhelming indictment of a system we have chosen to circumnavigate.
http://www.ontariohomeschool.org/books.html
So, it seems the majority of us are pre-ordained to produce the honey and the few within the inner chambers of the hive get to enjoy the sweet taste of the nectar produced through our combined efforts and labor! Sure brightens up my day! 
The book R_D mentions brings in to play the home schooling revolution whose advocates are in open opposition to big government and claim public education is destroying our children. This quote is from an article by Samuel Blumenfeld on the home schooling revolution:
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The only effective group of citizens today in open opposition to big government are the home schoolers. They are the only Americans willing to take on the public education system that props up the entire statist enterprise of big, intrusive government. Forget about conservative politicians. They are more concerned about conserving their legislative privileges than rolling back increasingly intrusive government
Having lived in the state that ranks 49th out of 50, on educational opportunities, I was confronted years ago with the public/home schooling issues and chose to home school our children after the eighth grade in the public school system. It was not an easy choice by no means and there were many obstacles as a family we had to overcome. Way too many to discuss right now but I'd be glad to later if anyone really wants to know! 
Mississippi's elementary schools are 16% larger than the nation's average. The teacher's salaries are among the lowest of the nation, ranking 48th out of 50. Mississippi ranks 49th out of 50 when it comes to public school spending, even with added tax dollars from the multitude of casinos which the state legislature shoved down our throats! Out of all our public schools, 54% are listed as being in unsatisfactory environmental condition. Probably due to all the issues I just listed, the state also ranks at the top in teacher shortages. Unionnow, I guess by now you have realized your post hit one of my few nerves huh?
The following quote is from Education Week. You have to sign up for access but it is free.
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Adequacy: The $5,938 that Mississippi spent per pupil in the 2000-01 school year compares poorly against the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. Mississippi ranks 49th out of 51 on that indicator, and spent only 80.5 percent of the national per-pupil average for that school year. Only 2.6 percent of students in the state attend schools in districts that spend at least the national average. The state ranks 48th on the adequacy index, which reflects how many of the state's students are in districts spending at or above the national average, and how far the remaining students fall below that average.
Of course we now have the much debated "No Child Left Behind", and Education Secretary Paige has announced that he will issue a new policy on how rural teachers can meet the law's "highly qualified" requirements, which are now simply impossible for many rural – and special education -- teachers to meet. IMHO, all this NCLB program will accomplish in my state is the continued and possibly increased irresponsibility the state has already shown when it comes to the future of our children. I think we have mentioned before that if we teach our children well, they will in turn teach us! Bottom line is, I believe it's our responsibility to insure the kids don't get left behind. They are the future!
So completely true. I cringe at the state and the purpose of our public education system, The purpose is the same on both sides of the border by the way. It teaches conformism and presents knowledge as something unpleasant and boring.
I hated going to school once it dawned on me (and it did pretty early on) that they were trying to mass produce morons. I got got decent grades because I didn't want the tools of the corporatist state to label me a dummy. And I got an A+ in shitdisturbing. My grade school had an annual public speaking contest and I almost got expelled a couple of times for saying controversial things. In one of my rants, I compared public educators to Richard Nixon (it was during the Watergate era) - that went over like a turd in punch bowl but I loved every minute of it.
Sorry, for the reminiscing - the topic brought back memories.
I think we have to do what we can to raise shitdisturbers who believe that using your brain is a good thing - even if the tools of the existing order don't like it. You can bet I'm doing my part. 
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I got got decent grades because I didn't want the tools of the corporatist state to label me a dummy. And I got an A+ in shitdisturbing.
I tended to get good grades, too. It's a strange sort of experience, though, to do well at school while you internally struggle against the "lessons" at the same time. The whole thing becomes a game, then. You can get a lot more leeway for shit-disturbing, as well, if you also get good grades.
The sad thing was, I knew a lot of people who wouldn't or couldn't master the rules of the game in the same way that I did. The system just spit them out, and it's often very hard to find yourself again after such an experience.
I don't know quite how I feel about home schooling. I certainly understand why people do it. If it were my kids, I might do the same. But I think ultimately, we have to take control of the educational process as a community, and remake it into something that better suits us. Education is in many ways the most powerful form of collective action, and it is the base for any other such endeavors we undertake.
Education, and often re-education, is something we can do as a community here on this site, too.
So you what you are basically saying is it pays to play by the rules learn the system and then use it to further rightoues interest?
It makes sense to me but I do have one question what is wrong with conformity?
Is this not necassary for justice to work?
If science and nature have laws and checks and balances should not humans?
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So you what you are basically saying is it pays to play by the rules learn the system and then use it to further rightoues interest?
I don't know if that's what I am saying, actually. I'm fairly conflicted about this. It's "paid" for me in that I go to a good graduate school now and I'm going to get a good job when I'm done. So I've sort of "won" the "game."
But I also know many people, some who have been close to me, who, for various reasons, just can't seem to win. And that to me seems terribly unfair, since the game itself is fairly arbitrary.
You are right I want to change the system, though. Whether from inside or out. The reason why I don't really like home schooling is because it seems to me to be less about changing the system than it is dropping out of it. OTOH, if it were my own kids, I might feel differently.
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what is wrong with conformity?
Other than the fact that it can be personally stifling, the other problem with conformity is that you must conform to something.
And the kind of conformity the school system currently teaches is to a power structure that gives much wealth and privilege to a very few people, while puts the rest of us to work to support their idle pleasure.
In some respects I really like the school system to me it's two biggest drawbacks are it is not hard enough on those who wish to use for illeagal purposes.More should be done to eliminate assault and drugs in the school system, this is better for both teachers and students.
Second teachers have to be held accountable if they are failing in their jobs to teach kids the basics they should be removed or retrained,also they should not use children and their futures as hostages in labour negotiations.
But like all things in this society it will be the parents that will set the example unfortunately most children have been failed before they reach the school system.
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But I think ultimately, we have to take control of the educational process as a community, and remake it into something that better suits us.
The very reason so many are choosing home schooling now. Until the social and political structure is changed, the educational system will remain just as it is, which is supportive of the current social structure. How do you change education within the community unless you take more drastic and nonconforming steps? Do we just keep playing the game and let the chosen few reap the rewards?
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The reason why I don't really like home schooling is because it seems to me to be less about changing the system than it is dropping out of it. OTOH, if it were my own kids, I might feel differently.
You sound like a politician running for the state legislature of Mississippi R_D.
As I mentioned above, it wasn't an easy choice because I believe the same as you. Non-comformity in our situation was a matter of necessity and at the same time I guess you could say it was a political statement also. Although that definitely was secondary to the welfare and education of our children.
I was one of those kids who could do well on the exams and proficiency tests but was a terrible student and I really hated the structure of our schools (both academic and social) and I rebelled religiously. But remember, it was the sixties when I was in the school system! 
So I'm sure my feelings concerning the hierarchial system had a bearing on the choice for home schooling. But there is something to be said about changing the system from the outside. We are not all cut out to play the games on the inside! I'm not saying it's easy trying to change the system from the inside, I know it is almost impossible. That was tried in the sixties also but it finally came down to nasty, nightmareish, brawls in the streets and on our campuses. Along with this came the deaths of many good people. The inside theory really sounded good but nobody could ever really pull it off! Let's hope you will be the anomaly R_D!
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posted by robbie_dee:
And the kind of conformity the school system currently teaches is to a power structure that gives much wealth and privilege to a very few people, while puts the rest of us to work to support their idle pleasure.[/QB]
All businesses had to start with a person or a few persons and an idea, usually followed by financial risks.These ideas grew and blossomed and the children of these men and women reaped the benfits of their parents and grand parents and in some great grand parents fore sight, so where is the problem?
The same people who very often complain about the idle rich spends hours of their lives in line ups to buy lottery tickets with a view to joining them, and as we have seen by some at this site they no problem sacificing fellow workers by the way of lay offs for their own pockets.
With this thinking at home and every where you go why blame the school system.When I went to school the whole idea was get educated so you can get ahead.
If it wasn't for the idea of getting rich many people would not invest in the stock market giving the companies the funds to buy other companies becoming larger and more lucrative decreasing competition and driving down wages, something to think about next time you buy stock in a company.
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All businesses had to start with a person or a few persons and an idea, usually followed by financial risks.
Well, I dispute this premise. IMO, both when capitalism started in this country and when it is taking root now in the former communist countries, the key to success was to be close to a political elite which divides the spoils of power with you, including exclusive early access to certain business opportunities. The real risks in our economy are borne by workers who risk their very lives in unsafe workplaces, or who lose their pensions and benefits through no fault of their own as businesses "restructure."
That's kind of a whole other discussion, though. I will agree with you that there are also many people who have become successful as entrepreneurs - who have had a good idea, worked hard and taken risks to get to where they are today.
What I find interesting is that many of them are school drop outs. Bill Gates, for example didn't make it past his first semester of college. He thought it was a waste of his time.
Before I was saying I didn't think the education system did much to help working people - it just taught them to submit to power. Well, I can say I also don't think the education system is necessarily serving these creative, entrepreneurial types very well either. It's just that, for whatever reason, they were better able to resist the demoralizing lessons and strike out on their own anyway.
And they were able to go and become the great finacial giants able to crush all the competition in there wake until the government has to step in and protect all the other businesses.
Good example of someone who uses the system to get rich and then the checks and balances step in.
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posted by unionnow:
...the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning.
When I was first presented with numbers in grade one I saw great wisdom, the whole universe revealing itself to me, and beautiful patterns leading toward infinity. I was so thrilled I was going to learn these things! Oh Boy! I could hardly wait! I was so excited!
Then the teacher (Mrs. Ethel Vint, bless her soul) said to add 1 and 1 and add 1 and 2 and add 1 and 3 and add 1 and 4 and add 1 and 5 and add 1 and 6 and add 1 and 7 and on and on and on and on and on and on..... until my mind had been put completely to sleep. 
It took only three years. By age 9 I was bored crazy. I spent the next 8 years mostly staring out the window, daydreaming, and being a general nuisance. When the teachers attempted to force me to pay attention, I would tell them to go f*** themselves. Then came the punishment. 
They called it paranoia! 
Hmmm... maybe I wasn't so crazy after all. 
It's absolutely wonderful to read what you have written, and have my reality validated in such a powerful way.
Sincere thanks from another robot/slave who's just trying to be human.
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posted by unionnow:
The question in my mind is who (sic) do you counteract years of training in how to be a tool or commidity (sic) instead of an individual?
In response to your excellent question, a very important question in my view, and one that we must continually ask ourselves if we wish to find our way out of the unhealthy constraints and limitations that have been imposed upon us, and those we have imposed upon ourselves. Just a few random ideas off the top of my head, for whatever they're worth:
- Transformational Psychotherapy
Change your thinking
Ever think maybe it's not always so bad to be a tool?
Become a conscious tool
A self-directed tool
Become the tool that you want to become
Be the tool that you are and find a new use for yourself
Be a custom specialty high-power tool
Be a multi-purpose tool
I am a new high-tech custom specialty super-tool that is constantly being redesigned and upgraded
Become a valuable commodity
Become a commodity that is in demand
Become a self-directed conscious creator of your existence
Seek out healthier friends
Give away all of your money and possessions
Sports
Hiking
Temple
Nature
Sleep
Toastmasters International
Relax
Dream
Synagogue
Laugh
Take risks
Chase a butterfly
Running
Yoga
Sex
Do things differently
Let go of non-essentials
Get rid of your car
Walk
Freemasons
Breathe
Practice mental housekeeping
Study and learn everything you can
Read
Church
Dance
Psychiatry
China
Laugh
Mosque
Contemplate Death
12 - Step Programs
Meditation
Music
Knights of Columbus
Grow a flower
Psychoactive medication
Spiritual Groups
Religion
Silence
Discussion Boards
The Public Library
Africa
Time: to research, to study, to learn, to try to apply, to fail, to try again, to succeed, to adapt to success. Time is an essential requirement. We need to take time, and invest time in our own personal transformations.
Your dog,
Your cat,
The soup kitchen
Your children
Old People
Self-help groups
Contemplate the structure and scope of the Universe
India
Your mind
Keep the question at the forefront of your consciousness and the answers will continue to come to you. And as the answers come to you, the question will fade away. You will no longer need to ask that question. You will know the answers that you need to know, and you will make space for new questions, as you journey into the unknown.
Thanks, I have spent a great deal of my life doing what you have suggested. How do I get others to do the same?
How do you create vision in people who cannot see past their stomach? How do create leaders among those who want to follow? How do create individuals in a sea of conformists?
How do you break the bonds of a powerful cultural order that has hypnotized us with a one eyed box?
How do you make the fearful fearless? How do you get people to see that others are as important as themselves. How can we make the psychology of Me into the psychology of We?
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posted by unionnow:
Thanks, I have spent a great deal of my life...
...How can we make the psychology of Me into the psychology of We?
I will not pretend to have answers to these questions. The best I can do is to keep such questions at the forefront of my awareness and try to be patient, while I seek the answers.
I am prompted by your questions to ask myself even more questions. "For what and to whom am I responsible, and to what extent? Who sets my agenda? What is my legitimate sphere of influence? Who appointed me? Who is my judge? To whom am I accountable for my actions?"
Perhaps part of the answer to your questions is to become the best selves we can be, and to learn to recognize what is good and valuable within others, and connect with them at those places of goodness.
March 23:
I believe we should try to fully comprehend the true nature of the things we have identified as problems. We should be diligent in our efforts to accurately define them, and understand them in their fullness and complexity, within a realistic context.
We must identify, admit, and correct our own false assumptions. We need to become aware of our own hidden motivations, and identify and eliminate or transform those motivations that do not serve our best aspirations.
I am firmly convinced at this time in my life, rightly or wrongly, that the most effective way to transform our world is through transforming ourselves.
I believe, rightly or wrongly, that in the grand infinite scheme of the universe (if there is any such thing), the only thing that I have a legitimate right to control is me, my thoughts, my feelings, my beliefs, my actions, my interpretations, my attention, my values.
I believe that every individual should have the same rights, as long as in the exercise of those rights, the individual does not bring harm to others, directly, or indirectly. By harm, I mean anything that would detract from another's quality of life.
How do you measure quality of life? How do I measure quality of life? I think this is one of the most basic, fundamental, and important questions that we in the organized labor/labour movement must give attention to, en masse, and that we must achieve consensus upon. When we achieve solidarity in our view of what constitutes "quality of life", in the best possible sense, we will more easily achieve solidarity in lesser matters, such as the methods whereby we can move toward the fulfillment of the high quality of life we seek.
We must not delude ourselve into thinking that we are somehow responsible for transforming the world, or correcting the errors, or for solving the problems we see around us. We were not born into this world to fulfill any particular mission, or achieve any purpose. The only mission or purpose (if any) that we have is the one we have chosen for ourselves, whether as a result of conscious intentional and deliberate effort, or unconscious adoption of that which has been imposed upon, or offered to us, or by some combination of the above.
I am beginning to wonder if what I am writing is going to make the slightest bit of sense to anyone else out there, or if most people would just dismiss these words as the rantings of another malcontent who is fixated on playing with his own ideas.
I think this is a good place to stop writing for the moment. Thank you for raising the questions you have raised, unionnow. They have certainly provided my brain with some powerful "fuel for thought"
I will have to return to what I have written at some future time and attempt to determine if my thoughts are actually on course, and moving toward a worthy target, or are they like a failed rocket launch spinning wildly out of control.
I think we will become better able to obtain the results we desire when we give attention to, and when nurture that which is life-affirming and constructive, in ourselves, and in others.
After having identified that which is undesirable, let us, rather that directing resources into eliminating it, direct our resources into that which is desirable. Nurturing that which is desirable, will encourage the growth and development of the same, and eventual displacement of the undesirable. Resources should only be directed into defeating a negative when all other options have proved fruitless, for example, Adolph Hitler and his supporters had reached a point where they had to be put down. Expressions of kindness were not an option.
Cheers. 
