I simply can't resist.  I have a paper that talks about the subject of
education and what is wrong.  It was written in 1987, but I have just
revised it and included it in chapter six of my book, The Restoration of
Truth, and this chapter wi appear in the Real Truth section of my
Restoration website later this week.  Enjoy!

HOW SOCIALIZATION AT HOME, IN THE SCHOOL, AND
BY THE COMMUNITY PREPARES CHILDREN TO
ASSUME ADULT ROLES LATER IN LIFE.

Many people go through life taking how they act and what they believe
for granted.  They do
not seem to comprehend that they have been carefully prepared by the
organized system to
assume the role in society that they are now playing.  They have
unquestioningly accepted what
the system has taught them, and would, indeed, in many cases fight for
those beliefs to the
death.  But, just HOW have we come to believe what we do?  How have we
acquired the
habits and followed the role models that we take so much for granted?
The answers to these
questions can only be found by probing back into the childhoods of all
of us, for it was there
that the genesis of what we now are occurred.  Without the early
conditioning we received from
out families, schools, and communities, we would not be performing the
roles we are today.
We could just as easily have assumed the roles of Roman society or
Russian -- what we are
and what we believe is inextricably intertwined with the impact these
institutions had on our early
lives.  In this paper I intend to briefly touch upon the impact of these
institutions on the minds of
children to prepare them for their roles in adult life with special
emphasis on the role of the
school.
The first institution that touches our lives, and therefore the one with
perhaps the most profound
implications for the future is that of the family.  Despite what people
say about the impact
schools and society have on a child’s chances in later life, “Of greater
importance than either of
these,” according to Audrey Schwartz (1982), “are children’s experiences
at home; within their
families they acquire perspectives about themselves and the world around
them which influence
in some way most of what they do in later years” (p. xiii).  As if this
was not enough, Schwartz
goes on to state that, “In spite of American folklore that desirable
positions are equally available
to everyone, most people still end up in a relative social position
close to that of their parents.” It
can be concluded, then, from these statements that it is the family
which acts as the first and
perhaps the most important determining factor in the later success or
failure of the child.  As we
shall soon see, though, the schools certainly do their job in insuring
that people stay in their so
called places.  In other words, despite all the hoopla people make about
upward mobility and
opportunity in America, the sad truth is that we already are virtually a
stratified, class oriented
society.  It is the rare person indeed who can escape the circumstances
of his or her birth, and
the schools simply reinforce this tendency.
Many will protest that, despite this fact, America still provides equal
opportunity for all.
Perhaps, the critics maintain, lower class children ENJOY begin where
they are in life.  To some
extent this may be true.  It a person does not know what he is missing
in life, it is hard for him to
visualize anything different and thus break the cycle of lower class
existence.  However,
according to Christopher Hurn (1978), “All the odds are stacked against
lower class groups --
they simply lack the resources to teach their children how to do well in
school, and they lack
the resources to change schools to serve their interests rather than t
he interests of more
privileged groups” (p. 179).  In fact, he continues to state that,
“Lower class children attend
inferior schools and there receive an inferior education.”
It would seem, then, that we have a self perpetuating cycle of social
stratification that is
reinforced by both the family norms and environment as well as the
school system.  In fact,
Schwartz indicates that social order (or stratification, with everyone
staying in his or her place) is
upheld in three basic ways:
“1.  Power is used by stronger members of the group to force weaker
members to comply with
their preferences.
“2.  A social contract is entered into by most members of the group,
each of whom willingly
relinquishes some personal freedom out of enlightened self-interest and
promise of personal
reward.
“3.  A core of values is held in common by most members of the group
which guide and control
their behaviors” (p. 5).
As we begin our exploration of the role of the schools in socialization
and in helping keep
people “where they belong,” the enforcing agent of this social contract
will be revealed.  It is
interesting to note that it was business and industrial leaders of the
early twentieth century who
really pushed for compulsory education so that they could have a trained
work force for their
industries and businesses (Schwartz, p. 11).  This fact is conveniently
left out of most history
texts, probably to try and hide the relationship that has existed from t
he beginning between
business and the school system.
Further, it is interesting to note in passing that the rich and powerful
have always enjoyed the
benefits of education.  And today they still enjoy the benefits of their
own private educational
system.  They do not attend the same schools as the average person, but
instead maintain their
own private systems to dispense superior education.  I know this from my
own personal
experience.  I got my undergraduate degree from a small private
university.  since I had nothing
to compare it to, I took the personal attention, academic rigor, quality
of the professors, and
efficiency of support personnel for granted.  I naturally assumed that
my university functioned
like almost all universities.  I was in for a rude awakening when I
began attending Cal State,
L.A., where inefficiency of support personnel, laziness of many
professors, unresponsiveness to
personal concerns, and lower academic standards are the norm.  The
hostility and bureaucratic
morass that large state universities thrive on teach students that there
is nothing they can do.
They are simply taught to passively take whatever is done as the norm.
This was not my
previous experience, where expression of views was encouraged.  This has
served as a fantastic
example to me of the dual educational system that exists.
I was also brought up in a wealthy suburb.  Though my parents were not
as well as many of my
classmates’ parents, I attended a good school system rich in academic
courses that prepared
me well for later life.  I can contrast this to deprived environments
such as the Los Angeles
School District, or Bell Gardens High School, where advanced rigorous
courses are very
scarce, and were each student does not even have a book to take home
because the district
cannot afford it.  To say that these students have an equal opportunity
is simply unrealistic.
The public school system is expected to instill certain values in its
students that employers value
in employees:
1.  Patriotism.
2.  Belief in the legitimacy of existing governments.
3.  Democracy.
4.  Legitimate authority of government employees.
5.  Toleration of minority views.
6.  Participation in the electoral process.
(paraphrased from Schwartz, p. 17)
Students are taught, both overtly through the stated curriculum and
subconsciously through the
hidden curriculum.  Other writers have developed other lists of  values
taught by the hidden
curriculum, which serves to teach students their life roles as obedient
adult employees.  Simply
looking at the school classroom environment will demonstrate this.
Schools are not bright,
cheery, happy places, but are, instead, usually housed in an ancient
building reminiscent of a
penitentiary, or, more properly, an industrial plant.  Life is regulated
by bells.  Students learn that
they must regulate their lives according to outside stimuli such as
bells, grades, etc. rather than
what they might naturally prefer to do.  They are taught that there are
rewards for compliance
and stiff penalties for non-compliance.  Students with superior
intelligence, though, learn that,
even in this stifling environment, they can manipulate things to make
life more comfortable.  The
administration has created useless, powerless, student senates to keep
the smarter students
occupied, and to reward the intelligent student leaders for compliance
by dispensing special
favors, such as an office to go to, unlimited hall passes, etc.  Thus,
those students aware enough
and with enough leadership ability to cause potential problems are
safely channeled into
harmless activities.
As to the passiveness of modern students, this was brought home very
clearly one day in a
discussion I had with my tenth grade class.   These were working class
Hispanic students.  They
were on the next to the bottom track in this particular school:  perfect
candidates for
tomorrow’s unskilled labor.  We had just finished reading a story by
Isaac Asimov (“The
Feeling of Power”) about depersonalization brought about through
computer technology.  I
informed the students that anyone who wants to could find out where they
lived and other
personal information simply by contacting the Department of  Motor
Vehicles [I believe this is
no longer the case today in California; however, credit reports with the
same information are
readily available to any and all comers].  If they had credit, a simple
credit report would give a
person very detailed personal information.  I then told them that when
they graduated and
wanted to look for their own apartments, the landlord would probably
give them an application
so that he could find out such personal information from them.  I asked
them what they thought
of refusing to give certain information to foil the search, such as not
giving the social security
number or refusing to answer other questions.  I was shocked to get the
response from them
that they were not the ones in charge, and so must give whatever
information was asked for.
NOT ONE STUDENT IN THE ROOM COULD BE PERSUADED TO FIGHT FOR HIS
RIGHT TO PRIVACY!
In order to get them concerned about violations of their privacy, I then
posed the hypothetical
situation of a girl who encounters some creep in a parking lot.  Even
though she eludes him, the
jerk manages to copy down the license plate number of the car she is
driving and gets here
address from the DMV.  Needless to say, she is surprised to come home
one day to find him
waiting for her in the driveway.  Even with this extreme example, I
still could not get any of the
students even mildly interested in joining or starting a pro-privacy
crusade.  The school system
(along with television, no doubt) seems to have done its job well in
creating a docile population
willing to accept whatever is foisted upon it by those in power.  It is
frightening indeed.
I am not the only person who has noticed this, though.  Hurn states
that, “The organization of
traditional schools does perhaps imply a set of messages to students [a
hidden curriculum]:
obedience, passivity, concern for correct rather than thoughtful
answers” [p. 190].  I have
already covered most of the material in the first part of this passage
with my own personal
experience, but the last part, where students are taught to give
“correct” rather than thoughtful
answers is very interesting.  This is the age of  Miss Scantron [“Miss
Scantron” is based on a
real teacher in the school where I did my student teaching.  She was an
older English teacher
whose lectures were painfully boring.  She used yellowed old tests, and
the students used a
scantron form to fill in the multiple choice answers, which were then
machine graded.  An
English course without essay questions is an abomination.] and the
multiple choice exam.  It is
not the age of reasoned, logical, thoughtful essays or speeches.
Robert J. Conners, in an article entitled “Mechanical Correctness as a
Focus in Composition
Instruction,” tells how the modern educational strait jacketed,
stimulus/response system of so
called education developed.  Until 1870 (about the time employers
decided they needed an
“educated” work force) an important component of secondary and college
education was the
subject called rhetoric.  Rhetoric had its roots in Greek and Roman
civilization, and recognized
the fact that the written and spoken language were merely tools to be
manipulated by the
intelligent mind to present logical arguments and as an aide to deep
thought.  There was no such
thing as a “writing” class independent of oral communication.  The
educators of the day
recognized that one should first instruct a student to present his
arguments logically in oral
discourse, and then the transference of the same logical systems to more
formal written
discourse would be very simple.  Professors and teachers at the
secondary level were
concerned with t he CONTENT of essays, not ridiculous mechanics.  In
fact, the first style
handbook had not yet even appeared.  People put comas where they felt it
would be natural to
take a breath, and other matters such as spelling were still somewhat up
to individual discretion.
Far from being chaotic, this system insured that students could do that
which is most important
with language -- viz., COMMUNICATE their thoughts using LOGICAL
ARGUMENTS.
Passivity certainly had nothing to do with such an education!
In fact, I know from my own personal experience what effect speech
training has on the whole
personality.  Since I am a handicapped individual, I was a social
outcast throughout my junior
high years.  Perceiving this, my ninth grade English teacher insisted
that I take speech the
following year in high school.  I was very shy and isolated.  I was a
hermit who came home from
school and locked myself in my room.  Needless to say, that first day of
speech class when the
instructor had us all stand up and introduce ourselves was a traumatic
experience.  Fortunately
for me, my speech teacher was of the old school of rhetoric.  Reading
one’s speech from a
piece of paper WAS NOT public speaking.  He taught us the logical
outline format, and insisted
that we stay on our feet even if we forgot where we were.  This
experience totally changed my
own personality, as well as the personalities of my classmates.  By the
end of my first semester
of speech class I began to develop a more extroverted personality, and
that process has
continued to this day.  In addition, my written compositions improved
dramatically.
Unfortunately for those who want to instill passivity and conformity,
such training has exactly the
opposite affect on students.
Getting back to the Conners article, in the year 1870 the entire
educational system was radically
changed.  Rhetoric was broken up into two separate disciplines: writing
and speech.  Writing
became emphasized by the establishment, while speech diminished in
importance over the
years,
until today it can only be found in higher class suburban high schools
or private schools for the
rich elite.  Meanwhile, the type of “writing” that was done took an
abrupt change of course.
Whereas in the past writing had concerned itself mainly with logical
essays, it quickly
degenerated into a hunt for so called “errors” in mechanics.
The first handbooks were published, and teachers seized on these as
Bibles of authority for
“proper form” in writing.  Instead of being taught to write logical
essays in “writing class,”
students were no drilled on parts of speech, punctuation placement, and
error finding in endless
workbooks.  Rather than raise the level of literacy and student
competence as its proponents
claim, this system has served to strip the curriculum of any meaningful
thought content.  I am
now faced with massive numbers of students (as are all teachers) who
would not know how to
put together a logical argument if there life depended on it.  And if,
horror of horrors, they are
ever called upon to get up on their feet and give their views on an
issue impromptu, they do not
have the first idea of where to even begin!   They would much rather
simply sit passively doing
multiple choice exercises and listen to lectures (all passive
activities) than have to do any
thinking.
It is beyond the scope of this brief chapter to trace the full history
of this atrocity, but I feel that
the foregoing can shed at least a glimmer of light on the travesty daily
being perpetrated on
modern students.  rather than teach high level skills to prepare
students for higher level
positions,
“Traditional schools ... teach the kinds of qualities and personality
characteristics that are
essential for the performance for low and middle status occupations
[that require little or not
thought, I might add]:  obedience, punctuality, respect, orderly work
habits, and the ability to
follow instruction” (Hurn, p. 201).  In fact, Hurn concurs with my
premise stated above.  He
says on p. 188:  “Schools, many believe, do not foster independence of
spirit and mind, they
foster conformity.”
All of this preparation for mediocrity creates docile, compliant adults
willing to continue
following orders from their elite masters.  Their whole lives have been
spent in preparation for
their monotonous, unthinking roles.  I feel that I have uncovered, with
the Conners article, the
underlying CAUSE  of the present conformist education foisted on the
public today.  If anything
is to be done to reverse this trend, I think the reintroduction of
rhetoric as a unified discipline
and a deempahsis of petty conformist mechanics in the writing curriculum
will be the only means
to reverse the current trend towards conformity and mediocrity, and
then, and only then, will the
schools produce high caliber men and women in greater quantity.

[Note:  Since writing the above, I have found that indeed the power of
the major corporations is
behind much of the mischief that has turned most of the world’s people
into wage slaves.  This
power is everywhere manifested, from the school classroom to the
corporate owned newspaper
and television network’s newsrooms.  People are daily fed a steady diet
of what their corporate
overlords want them to see and hear.  We occasionally publish articles
in The Real Truth
exposing these machinations.  A great author to study for mounds of
information on these types
of subjects is Dr. Noam Chomsky.  His insights into the inner workings
of the world around us
are penetrating and amazing, and will bear out in much more detail some
of the things I have
commented on in this chapter.  It is worth a trip to your local library
or internet search resource
to read some of the works of  Dr. Chomsky on these and other subjects.]
===============================================================
References:

Conners, Richard J.  “Mechanical Correctness as a Focus in Composition
Instruction,” College
Composition and Communication, Vol. 36, No. 1, February, 1985.  N.Y.
pp. 61-
72.
Hurn, Christopher J., (1978).  The Limits of Possibilities of
Schooling.  Boston, MA:  Allyn
and Bacon, Inc.
Myers, Greg.  “Reality, Consensus, and Reform in the Rhetoric of
Composition Teaching,”
College English, Vol. 48, No. 2, February, 1986.  pp. 154-171.
Schwartz, Audry J., (1982).  The Schools and Socialization.  N.Y., NY:
Harper and Row.


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