The End of Education Read Online Free PDF Page B

reasons for learning; now they become famous for inventing a method.
    There are, of course, many things wrong with all of this, not least that it diverts attention from important matters—for example, the fundamental simplicity of teaching and learning when both teacher and student share a reason for the enterprise. As Theodore Roszak has written: “Too much apparatus,like too much bureaucracy, only inhibits the natural flow [of teaching and learning]. Free human dialogue, wandering wherever the agility of the mind allows, lies at the heart of education. If teachers do not have the time, the incentive, or the wit to provide that; if students are too demoralized, bored or distracted to muster the attention their teachers need of them, then
that
is the educational problem which has to be solved—and solved from inside the experience of the teachers and the students.” 3
    That problem, as I have been saying, is metaphysical in nature, not technical. And it is sad that so many of our best minds in education do not acknowledge this. But, of course, some do, and it is neither fair nor accurate to say that educators have been entirely indifferent to the metaphysics of schooling. The truth is that school cannot exist without
some
reason for its being, and in fact there are several gods our students are presently asked to serve. It will take the rest of this chapter and all of the next for me to describe them and to show why each is incapable of sustaining, with richness, seriousness, and durability, the idea of a public school.
    As it happens, the first narrative consists of such an uninspiring set of assumptions that it is hardly noticed as a narrative at all. But we may count it as one, largely because so many believe it to be the preeminent reason for schooling. It may properly go by the name of the god of Economic Utility. As its name suggests, it is a passionless god, cold and severe. But it makes a promise, and not a trivial one. Addressing the young, it offers a covenant of sorts with them: If you will pay attention in school, and do your homework, and score well on tests, and behave yourself, you will be rewarded with a well-paying job when you are done. Its driving idea is that the purpose of schooling is to prepare children for competent entry into the economic life of a community. It follows from thisthat any school activity not designed to further this end is seen as a frill or an ornament—which is to say, a waste of valuable time.
    The origins of this worldview are traceable to several traditions, beginning, obviously, with the never-ending struggle to provide ourselves with material sustenance. People need to eat. Nothing could be plainer than that. What are schools for—what is
anything
for—if not to provide us with the means to earn our bread? But there is more to it than this. The god of Economic Utility is not entirely without a spiritual glow, dim as that might be. It does, in fact, tell a story of sorts, parts of which can be found in Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations
, in the tale of the Protestant ethic, and even in the writings of Karl Marx. The story tells us that we are first and foremost economic creatures, and that our sense of worth and purpose is to be found in our capacity to secure material benefits. This is one reason why the schooling of women, until recently, was not considered of high value. According to this god, you
are
what you do for a living—a rather problematic conception of human nature even if one could be assured of a stimulating and bountiful job. Nonetheless, that assurance is given through a clear delineation of good and evil. Goodness inheres in productivity, efficiency, and organization; evil in inefficiency and sloth. Like any self-respecting god, this one withholds its favor from those who are evil and bestows it abundantly on those who are good.
    The story goes on to preach that America is not so much a culture as it is an economy, and that the vitality of any