This is the final section of my series about school. Part I, Part II.

It seems to me that the foundational assumptions of traditional school are: that children, left to their own devices, cannot and will not learn; that children are basically helpless and stupid and deficient in curiosity; that children must therefore be taught, by a competent authority, or they will fail to grasp concepts and gain skills.

I think anyone who has ever spent any time with a child can attest that all of these ideas are patently false. Anyone who was ever spent time around a child who is learning to talk can attest as much with even greater confidence — tiny babies, unable even to feed themselves, crack the code of language with a speed and an enthusiasm most adults could envy. The reality, as far as I can tell, could not be farther from those assumptions.

And I do believe those are the underlying ideas. We would have to believe that children must be forced to learn in order to ask ourselves, “Is our children learning?”

That is an insane question. I know it’s also a much-mocked one, but no one would have laughed at it if our Ivy Leagued-educated* soon-to-be-former President had managed to formulate it correctly. And that’s absurd. There is no such thing as a child who isn’t learning. The only questions is, “Are our children learning things in the arbitrary order and at the arbitrary pace the school system requires?” If that’s more important to us than whether children are happy, healthy, curious, and engaged — and it certainly seems to be — we have our priorities precisely backward.

Instead of creating a safe, engaging environment where young children can explore, we create sterilized institutions where children are policed, herded like cattle. Instead of recognizing children as humans, with interests and desires, we treat them like identical robots, worrying whether they’ve learned to perform the right tricks instead of worrying whether they’ve learned to make friends, have conversations, critically evaluate ideas, express themselves through writing and art.

I know this has been said before. It’s been said so often it was already cliche when I was born in 1989. These things had been said, written, published in many places when, in 1998, I threw up in the bathroom after my first timed math test. Yes, these were well known ideas in 2005, when my incredibly intelligent twelve-year-old brother was identified as a “problem” by his teachers for such offenses as having unkempt hair, a messy backpack, and unsharpened pencils. I’m quite sure these ideas were familiar to the “head learner” (principal) of my high school when he sat me down and, having seen my SAT scores, proceeded to lecture me at length about the importance of attending a prestigious school, in total indifference to my thoughts, feelings, existence. He repeatedly interrupted me as a I tried to explain myself — to explain that I had more than a few misgivings about running off to spend a fortune for the privilege of joining the system currently destroying the world. His unwavering, self-interested concern for his own ability to use my accomplishments in future fund-raising was shockingly transparent. And this was at a small, artsy, alternative charter school. I do not want to imagine the lives of my cohorts in crueler institutions.

These ideas are well known, but the system continues. I have a lot of ideas about what would make a better school system, but very few about how to get out of the mess we’re in. The machine seems unbreakable, and I am terrified that with each passing year my memories will fade, I will care a little less, and eventually put my children through the same thing, safe in the socially acceptable conviction that it’s good for them. That the best training ground for this cruel world, this cruel capitalist economy, is the schoolyard with its bullies, its asphalt, its sand kicked by wind into little eyes, little mouths.

I’m sorry. I don’t have any suggestions. The point of public education is a very laudable and necessary one: we must have an educated populous in order to have a functioning democracy. But while we have a schooled populous, we don’t have an educated one. And while things are looking up for this country in recent months, the state of our republic is still dubious.

And I’m not just talking about public schools here, though that’s where I received most of my primary and secondary education. It’s the strange project of school itself, the centralization of childhood. It’s the strange truth that we live in a society in which young people, like old people, are useless — are unable to contribute anything we consider to be of value — and so must be occupied by pointless, deadening tasks.

I’m still in school now. In many ways college in depressingly similar to high school — the kids are the same as ever — but in others, it is a great improvement. The single greatest thing about college, the single thing that differentiates it from high school, is the fact that my professors respect me. My professors acknowledge me as a human being, with both the ability and the right to make choices for myself. No one is trying to go over my head. No one is trying to deny me my most basic authority over my own time, my own body. No one treats me a like a robot or an animal. No one treats me like a child.

Further reading.

In the comments to this post, I was offered two invaluable links that helped to catalyze my thinking on this subject. My aunt Stephanie recommended this amazing speech by John Taylor Gatto — it’s his acceptance speech for the New York City Teacher of the Year Award, which he won in 1990. Please read it.

Next, ballgame me suggested Compulsory Miseducation by Paul Goodman — that’s a PDF of the 1964 book. It’s a fast, engaging read; much of the language is dated, but the ideas are still timely and revolutionary.

* You know, enough said, really. That’s my whole point right there.

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