What are schools really for?

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

What are schools really for?

The thug's definition of power is:

The ability to make things happen;

The civilised person's definition of power is:

The ability to get others to accept your description of the world.

This provokes questions such as:

Who describes my world?
Who describes your world?
Who describes our world?

We send children to school to learn. But, to learn what?

The usual response to that question is something like: to learn useful things that will help them survive in society and have a good life. OK, that's pretty good, as far as it goes, but answer me this:

Where is the scientific evidence that shows clearly and unambiguously that schooling is the best way to cater for the needs of children?

My point is that most schools are bureaucratically organised production facilities. Yes, I know that most people would not like to put it that way. But surely it is clear that children are corralled, restrained and constrained by people - teachers and their assistants - organised on the basis of economies of scale through specialisation of function.

There are clearly many children who do not survive this experience very well, and for whom the outcome of their schooling is clearly not what was intended. Given that each of us lives only once upon this Earth, who does this system serve, if it does not serve all children properly?

1 comment:

Mark PeatyOctober 13, 2009 at 8:44 PM
I learn from someone very close to me that it is normal in the Western Australian school system for graduate teachers to be employed on short term contracts of no more than a year and quite often less, for periods of eight years and more. This kind of employment situation is unsatisfactory and unsustainable for many people who started out with the greatest of aspirations towards a teaching career. Banks and other lenders do not look with favour on people employed only on short term contracts. Politicians seem wonderfully obsessed with grand schemes for "development" of their state, but completely incapable of understanding the importance of childhood experiences for the later lives and livelihood of the rest of us. Plainly the Ministers of Education in WA have had no real respect for teachers as people; the operative doctrine is clearly that money is more important than people. Every time there is some economic setback teachers, nurses, police officers and other public servants are told to economise, bite the bullet, and deliver "efficiency dividends".

As far as I can see, the refusal to employ teachers on long term contracts for significant numbers of years indicates that short term political goals and a very narrow fiscalist viewpoint is what controls the thinking of Western Australia's state politicians. As with the Commonwealth government, money is taken to be the measure of all things and the final arbiter of human worth.

The teaching of children is one of the most important things we can do but, as I have been trying to point out, it is a matter of communication which is a two way process where the individuals involved create the process as they go along. Politicians and "Senior Executive" level bureaucrats loose touch with this because they - the 'powerful' ones - are so used to describing the world for everyone else they don't bother to check to see what is real. People become less important than "policy", and numbers are easier to think about and control than people.

The current treatment of school teachers in particular, but nurses, police and others also, is evidence of a profound ethical failure in our society. Such people who perform vital roles in our world, should be properly compensated for their work and given REAL recognition for what they do. At the moment however they are expected to absorb more and more of the "external" costs of production of the social and cultural goods they create.
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A command structure is NOT a communication network.

Command structures have been around since warriors started making themselves into kings. There are many issues, and opinions can be discussed about all that.

Politely expressed thoughts and opinions on the subject are welcome here.

My main concern here is that we now live in the modern era, a new time in human history, indeed a radically new stage in human evolution. My contention is that command structures have always provided mixed blessings. The stability and security made possible by the imposition of laws and ideology of a ruling class has allowed many societies to develop in complexity and influence; "civilisation" was possible but at considerable cost.

Command structures accrue greatest benefits to those giving the commands. Throughout history command structures have served primarily as systems of control with surplus value being channelled up the hierarchies while costs associated with the creation of value were pushed down the hierarchies and out into the rest of the society and the ecology.

This, broadly speaking, has been the way of things since the advent of agriculture and the complex, class societies which it supported. For reasons which we can discuss - if anyone dares - class societies are intrinsically unstable in the long term unless they have entrenched democratic institutions and behaviours. They always succumb to civil strife and insurrection or else warfare perpetrated on neighbours and victims further afield.

The advent of scientific method is what has created the modern era. The application of scientific method and the fruits of its discoveries have put enormous power into the hands of modern people - into the hands of the "haves" anyway. This incredible transformation has only just begun really, we ain't seen nothing yet!

One of the biggest consequences of this change is that most of our old ways of doing things have to be adjusted to deal with the new kinds of situations we can find ourselves in. This can be simple and obvious but heartbreakingly traumatic for many. One example is that everybody in the world now has to use money for at least some of the important tasks of life, and most of us have to use money for nearly everything. The negative side of this is that most of us cannot decree what money is so we are constrained by the dictates of bankers, economists, entrepreneurs and politicians who often have very archaic and outmoded ideas about truth and value.

I think the economic disaster which became manifest through 2008,, and has continued so far through 2009 is clear evidence that capitalist gurus and pundits are nearly as blind and wilfully dysfunctional as the socialists they so often jeer at. A PLAGUE ON ALL THEIR HOUSES!! that's what I say!.

I believe that, if we want our species to survive, there are four fundamental ingredients necessary for sustaining civilisation in the modern era:
Compassion
Democracy
Ethics
Scientific method.

The pleasant side to this realisation is that none of this is "rocket science". When you start looking quite closely into many of the things that have been discovered about human beings, the natural environment, and about things we can make, it turns out that there is vast potential to improve the lives of everybody on the planet and have enormous fun in the process!

DAYTIME - day job or destiny?

Wednesday, June 3, 2009