The End of Education Read Online Free PDF

“deconstruction.” Invented, so to say, by a reformed Nazi sympathizer, Paul de Man, deconstruction postulates that the meanings of words are always indeterminate, that words are less about reality than about other words, and that the search for definite meaning in words or anyplace else is pointless, since there is nothing to find. How he came to this conclusion is not entirely clear—perhaps he wished us to believe, by way of self-justification, that it is possible to read
Mein Kampf
as a paean of praise to the Jewish race.
    In any case, no philosophy of deconstruction can conceal the crisis in narrative, the decline of once-sturdy gods. The carnage is painfully visible, for example, in the trivial uses to which sacred symbols are now put, especially in the United States. There can, of course, be no functioning sense of a great narrative without a measure of respect for its symbols. How are such symbols now used? Take almost any of America’s once great narratives and we can see. There is, for example, the story of our origins, summarized so eloquently in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It tells of a nation “brought forth” through revolution, destined to serve as an example to the rest of the world. This is the same Abraham Lincoln whose face is used to announce linen sales in February. Emma Lazarus’s poem celebrating an immigrant culture is lodged at the base of the Statue of Liberty. This is the same Statue of Liberty used by an airline to persuade potential customers to fly to Miami. There is the story of a God-fearing nation seeking guidance and strength from the lessons of the Old Testament and the commandments brought by Moses. This is the same Moses who is depicted in a poster selling kosher chickens. Of Christmas and the uses made of its significant symbols, the less said the better. But it probably should be noted that Hebrew National uses both Uncle Sam and God (with a capital G) to sell frankfurters, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is largely used as an occasion for furniture sales, and the infant Jesus and Mary have been invoked to promote VH-1, a rock-music television station.
    It is difficult to say if this erosion of symbols, this obliteration of the difference between the sacred and the profane, is the effect or the cause of a crisis in narrative. Mostly, I would say, the effect (although effects quickly become causes in these matters). Whichever the case, we are led to conclude that it is not a good time for gods and their symbols, andis therefore a bad time for social institutions that draw their power from metaphysical sources. This leads us at last to the question, What does all this mean for the enterprise of schooling?
    The answer that comes most readily and nastily to mind is that the majority of educators have ignored the question altogether. Many have focused their attention on the engineering of learning, their journals being filled with accounts of research that show this way or that to be better for teaching reading, mathematics, or social studies. The evidence for the superiority of one method over another is usually given in the language of statistics, which, in spite of its abstract nature, is strangely referred to as “hard evidence.” This gives the profession a sense of making progress, and sometimes delusions of grandeur. I recently read an article in
The American Educator
in which the author claims that teaching methods based on research in cognitive science are “the educational equivalents of polio vaccine and penicillin.” 2
    From what diseases cognitive science will protect our students is not entirely clear. But in fact, it does not matter. The educational landscape is flooded with similar claims of the miracles that will flow from computer science, school choice, teacher accountability, national standards of student assessment, and whole-language learning. Why not cognitive science, as well?
    There was a time when educators became famous for providing