>Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 00:03:41 -0500 > > 1. Schooling and Social Control > >------------------------------ >Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 11:11:32 EST >From: Dave Stratman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Schooling and Social Control >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Content-Type: text/plain > >Please pass the following article to academic and labor lists: > >YOU'LL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH: >SCHOOLING AND SOCIAL CONTROL >by Dave Stratman > >A couple months ago these sample questions from the new MCAS (Massachusetts >Comprehensive Assessment System), given to all Massachusetts students in >grades 4, 8, and 10, appeared in the Boston Globe: > >MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with a flute and >drum. You will find a piano under your seat. BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate >the difference in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed >500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on >the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis. HEALTH: You have been >provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove >your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have 15 >minutes. > >The "sample" was a parody, of course, but it made an important point: the test >was impossible. Students were subjected from 11 to 13 hours of tests in 17 >days—longer than the tests required for college, graduate school, and law >school combined. Some school systems, concerned that young people would not >have the stamina to get them through day after day of test-taking, supplied >high-energy snacks and drinks to the kids. Parents were encouraged to get >their children to bed early. Teachers were told not to assign homework during >the weeks of testing. > These are "high-stakes" tests. When they are fully operational, >students in >grades 4 and 8 will need to pass the state tests to be promoted; students in >grade 10 will have to pass to be eligible to graduate. Teachers will be "held >accountable" for their students' grades. (Forty percent are expected to fail.) >Schools in which students perform poorly on the tests can be placed in >receivership by the state and their faculties dismissed. > The contents of the MCAS are secret: no educators in Massachusetts >except >certain officials of the Department of Education and the Board of Education >have been allowed to examine the tests for their age-appropriateness or their >relationship to what is actually taught. The tests were devised by a company >which had recently been fired by the state of Kentucky for major errors in the >design and marking of tests it had administered there. > In literature circulated to parents and students before the tests, >corporate >backers of "higher standards" boasted that "These are very, very tough >tests—the toughest that most Massachusetts students have ever taken" and that >"good attendance and passing grades" no longer entitle a student to a high >school diploma. To prepare our students "to compete with children from all >over the world," said the corporations, much more is required. > Tests similar to MCAS are being required of young people in state after >state. President Clinton is fighting for national assessments along the same >lines. > What's behind this rush to testing and "higher standards?" > >MAKING SCHOOLS "LEAN AND MEAN" > >As is often the case, these developments inside the schools reflect events in >the wider society. > In the past two decades, corporations have adopted new management >techniques >designed to undermine worker solidarity and integrate workers more thoroughly >into the company machine. Known variously as "continuous improvement" or >"management by stress," or "kaizen," the Japanese term for it, the technique >consists essentially of dividing the workforce into competing "teams" and >"stressing" the production system by imposing higher and higher production >quotas. As workers work faster and faster to meet the quotas, the company >achieves several key goals: production is increased; jobs are eliminated; >"weak links" in the system break down and are replaced. > Most important, " continuous improvement" creates great anxiety in >workers >about their ability to meet the ever-increasing goals, and encourages workers >to replace solidarity among themselves with loyalty to the Company Team. It >forces workers into constant speed-up. Workers are kept running so fast to >meet company goals that they don't have time to think or talk about their own >goals or work together to pursue them. > Corporate-led education reforms use similar strategies. They use >"School- >Based Management" and other techniques to isolate teachers in each school from >their colleagues around the system. Teachers are then encouraged to join with >management as a "team" to compete for students and survival with other >schools. The reforms use testing to keep raising the standards which students >and teachers must meet, far beyond what their parents were expected to achieve >and beyond anything that would be of value. > The purpose is the same as "continuous improvement" in a factory: >raise the >anxiety level and keep students and teachers running so fast to meet the goals >set by the system that they have no time to think about their own goals for >education or for their lives. > These reforms will have terrible effects. Many students who would >otherwise >graduate from high school will drop out. (In Texas and Florida, where "high- >stakes" testing is in place, high school drop-out rates which had been >dropping have already begun to rise.) Young people who fail to meet the new >standards will be condemned to marginal jobs and told to blame themselves. > The reforms redefine education as a process whereby young people >constantly >"remake" and sell themselves to the corporations. The reforms attack the self- >knowledge and understanding of unsuccessful and successful students alike, as >young people are encouraged to redefine themselves—their own goals, their own >thoughts and hopes and desires—out of existence, to make themselves acceptable >to our corporate masters. > Our children have qualities more important than those desired by >corporate >Human Resource directors. Education conceived in this way makes economic >productivity the goal and measure of human of society and makes the >corporations the judges of human worth. It undermines the notion that human >beings individually and collectively possess goals which transcend capitalism. > >CONFLICT OVER EDUCATIONAL GOALS > >There is no more vital issue to understand in education than this: The >corporate and political elite who dominate education policy have goals for >education which contradict the goals of the people who populate the schools: >teachers and students and their families. > Public schools were supported by the industrial elite in America >with the >explicit intention of strengthening elite control over the working population. >In the middle of the nineteenth century Horace Mann, the founder of the >"common school," explained the rationale for public schools: "...common >schooling would discipline the common people to the point where they would not >threaten the sanctity of private property or practice disobedience to their >employer."* Public schools have been used ever since to instill in young >people a respectful attitude toward those in power. William Bennett, while >Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, explained, "The >primordial task of the schools is the transmission of social and political >values." In a class society, the values which the schools are designed to >transmit are the values of the dominant class—competition, inequality, the >sanctity of private property, and the belief that the good things in society >trickle down from the elite. > At the heart of the education system, there is a conflict over its >goals. On >one side stand educators and parents and students, most of whom share >democratic values and want to see students educated to the fullest of their >ability. On the other side stand the corporate and government elite, the >masters of great wealth and power. Their goal is that students be sorted out >and persuaded to accept their lot in life, whether that be the executive suite >or the unemployment line, as fitting and just, and that social inequality be >legitimized and their hold on power reinforced. > This conflict over the goals of schooling is never acknowledged >openly, yet >it finds its way into every debate over school funding and educational policy >and practice, and every debate over education reform. > >WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SCHOOLS? > >The corporate critique of the schools has served to cover up what's really >wrong with them: the schools promote inequality, competition, and >unquestioning acceptance of the social order. > The elite pursue these educational goals in many ways. Shortages in >school >funding undermine the work of students and teachers and tell them that they >are not valued. School-business partnerships promote business values in the >schools. Textbooks teach that history is made by presidents and kings; >ordinary people are dismissed as passive victims or a dangerous problem. > But many of the means of achieving elite goals for education are >far more >subtle: >*The schools assume that there are big differences in people's intelligence >and that most people are not very smart, and are designed to "prove" these low >expectations. Teachers are trained to find supposed differences in children's >abilities; standardized, "norm-referenced" tests are designed to sort kids out >and produce a range of test scores which match the social hierarchy—in other >words, which show that richer people are smarter. Shortages of teachers and >textbooks, lack of support for their work, and countless other devices are >means by which students and teachers are set up to fail. > >*The schools use competition and ranking to legitimize the social hierarchy. >Students reluctant to compete for approval get low marks: what is really a >conflict over values is seen as a failure of students' intelligence. For >teachers, school life consists more often of an isolated struggle to survive >than being encouraged to join with other teachers to nurture students. > >*Course content often has no value except as a measure of students' >willingness to master it. Much of the content consists of "facts" torn out of >their social context, with all the life sucked out of them, because their life >is rooted in the class war the elite seek to obscure. > >These and other means are used by schools to prepare most students for working >lives spent performing boring tasks with unquestioning obedience in a >"democracy" in which the goals of society are not up for discussion and in >which the idea of people acting collectively for their own goals is considered >subversive. > >WHAT'S RIGHT WITH THE SCHOOLS? > >Teachers and students and their families share goals which contradict the >goals of the elite, and they work to achieve these goals in every way they >know how in spite of elite domination. The gigantic effort by corporate and >political leaders to impose education reform is necessary precisely because >the people in the schools have worke for their goals with enough success to >threaten elite control. > When teachers stimulate and challenge; when they encourage all >their students >to learn and inspire them to think about the world as it really is; when they >create a nurturing environment; when they fight for smaller class sizes; when >they offer each other words of support: when they do any number of things they >do every day, they are opposing elite goals for education and working for the >shared goals of ordinary people. > When students help each other, or raise critical questions, or >refuse to join >in the race for grades and approval; when they exercise their curiosity and >intelligence; even when they hang on the phone for hours, talking about >"life," they are resisting elite goals and working for a better concept of >life. > When parents listen sympathetically to their children, or talk with >their >friends or each other about the school or raising kids: when people do these >things that they do every day, they are resisting elite goals and working for >the opposite values of solidarity and equality and democracy. > To the extent that students succeed in real learning and teachers >in teaching >and parents in raising their children to be thoughtful and considerate, they >succeed in spite of the education system, not because of it. > The remarkable thing about the public schools isn't that some >teachers become >demoralized and "burned out," or that some students drop out or do poorly, but >that so many teachers and students achieve so much in the face of a system >designed to fail. > >EDUCATION AND REVOLUTION > >Capitalist society is based on slavery: the enslavement of workers to the wage >system and the enslavement of human beings to things. Education worthy of the >name must help set us free, not further bind us in chains. > The conflict over the goals of education is part of the class war >over the >goals of society. Only a movement which challenges the goals and values and >power of the elite can change education. > There are a thousand questions about society which elite >institutions will >never raise but which are critical to our future. The revolutionary movement >must consider anew the goals of human society and the measures of human >achievement. It must re-examine our relationship to technology and to Nature. >It must enable people to transform work and play into sources of creativity >and fulfillment. > We do not have the power at this point to change education, but we >can begin >to pose these questions. The most liberating and humanly fulfilling education >for all of us will come as we take part in the struggle to overthrow elite >rule and recreate human society. >*Thanks to Bill Griffen for the H. Mann quote. >********************* >Reprinted from New Democracy, Sept-Oct 1998. For free issue, send your postal >address to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] New Democracy works for democrtc revolution. See >our website at http://users.aol.com/Newdem > >-------------------------------- >
