Recently, one of my good friends wrote this in an e-mail:
I arrived in the US with the misunderstanding, common among Brits, that because the language is the same (similar), the culture would be familiar. It didn't take me long to realize I'd have been more at home in Spain, even though I don't speak the language. What surprised me most was how controlled US society seemed. It fit my image of Soviet Russia more than the (TV) image of Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. It's difficult for me to cite specifics, but in general, Americans simply did what they were told more than Brits.
How did the first nation to deny the authority of its monarchy became populated by compliant zombies? Some would blame the media, but I think it starts sooner than that--in our schools.
Compulsory schooling was deemed necessary to a healthy democracy. The bulk of people must be able to assess their political environment and vote in their own self interest. They must be able to read and reason well enough to see the pitfalls of arguments.
Does schooling provide this service? Would you be an illiterate dolt, if not for your primary school teachers? Do we learn to read because we are taught, or because we are steeped in a society where reading is essential and powerful?
In public school, every effort is made to teach children to read. Although 98% of Americans can read something, only about 50% can read well enough to function in our society:
The US Dept. of Education, Institute of Education Sciences has conducted large scale assessment of adult proficiency in 1992 and 2003 using a common methodology from which trends could be measured. The study measures Prose, Document, and Quantitative skills and 19,000 subjects participated in the 2003 survey. There was no significant change in Prose or Document skills and a slight increase in Quantitative skills. As in 2008, roughly 15% of the sample could function at the highest levels in all three categories. Roughly 40% were at either basic or below basic levels of proficiency in all three categories.[2]. The study dentifies a class of adults who although they do not meet criteria for functional illiteracy, nonetheless face reduced job opportunities and life prospects due to inadequate literacy levels relative to the requirements of contemporary society.
The study, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in April 2002 and reapplied in 2003 giving trend data. It involved lengthy interviews of over 90,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." Further, this study showed that 41% to 44% of U.S. adults in the lowest level on the literacy scale are living in poverty.[2]
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed some upward movement of low end (basic and below to intermediate) in U.S. adult literacy levels and a decline in the full proficiency group.[3]
Thus, if this bottom quantile of the study is equated with the functionally illiterate, and these are then removed from those classified as literate, then the resultant literacy rate for the United States would be at most 65-85% depending on where in the basic, minimal competence quantile one sets the cutoff.
The 15% figure for full literacy, equivalent to a university undergraduate level, is consistent with the notion that the "average" American reads at a 7th or 8th grade level which is also consistent with recommendations, guidelines, and norms of readability for medication directions, product information, and popular fiction.--Wiki
No effort is made to teach children to read in Democratic Free Schools. Yet, they all master it on their own. In fact, they become literate faster and with less effort. This echoes the explosion of touch typing that occurred with the internet and cell phones. Hard to believe people once took classes to learn to type.
It calls into question the relationship between schooling and learning. All learning, after all, is a deeply personal process. Without the will to learn something, you can not be taught.
The very founders of our compulsory school system made it very clear what they needed from a school system. They wanted a large compliant workforce. They needed consumers who would become a reliably homogenous market. They needed people to submit to authority figures so they would change consumption and work habits when needed. A barely literate but docile proletariat was a fringe benefit.
So what, then, is the purpose of school? Are schools more about breaking a pupil's will, than about learning? Are they to create a society of people able to assess information and the condition of their world so democracy can survive? Or is it to dumb down the masses and create a docile workforce so democracy will die?
In this episode of our series on education and schooling, we hear from the one person we most need to take into account in this discussion--the student.
"People could not free themselves from the crown, until, at least, some of them had freed themselves from the established church. [Now] They can not free themselves from progressive consumption, until they free themselves from obligatory school."--Ivon Illich
The following remarks were made by the Valedictorian of Coxsackle-Athens High School in New York State, US in June 2010:
Here I Stand
Erica Goldson,
Coxsackie-Athens High School, 2010
Unwelcome Guests Audio
You Tube Video
There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years."
The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast - How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?"
Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."
This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.
Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.
John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.
H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. (Gatto)
To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?
This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.
And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.
We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.
The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.
For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.
For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.
For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.
So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.
I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!
"Graduating with honors will provide many advantages when applying for a doctoral degree, as it's an obvious demonstration of your capabilities as a student and a professional."
Transcript on Erica's Site
Erica Goldson has been busy traveling the world since she graduated in 2010. She is currently at the other end of the North American Continent in the Pacific Northwest. She continues her blog at: Erica's Blog.
Upcoming Diaries
Nov 20: Justina--"The Real Right to Life: Capitalism Jails Senior Citizens, Socialism Gives Them Housing and More."
Nov 27: NY Brit Expat-- "Campaign for Food Sovereignty: Agricultural Production for People's Needs Not for Profit."
Dec 4: T'Pau--"Miliary Democracy" as a tool to reclaim power.
Dec 11: Don Mikulecky--Sustainable Systems and Why Capitalism is not One of Them
Dec 18: T'Pau--"Nullification and States Rights" as a way to reclaim our power.
Dec 25: Blue Dragon--"Teaching from Radical Texts in the College Setting." (She is using Shock Doctrine in her class.)
Jan 1 T'Pau: "The Power Behind Resolutions" and an exciting announcement.
Jan 8 Geminijen: Cooperatives Changing Relationship to Unions, Part III