EDUCATION: Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System > Truthout

Why the United States

Is Destroying

Its Education System

by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig
(Photo: fling93)

A na­tion that de­stroys its sys­tems of educa­tion, de­grades its pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, guts its pub­lic li­bra­ries and turns its air­waves into vehic­les for cheap, mindless amuse­ment be­comes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above crit­ical think­ing and lit­era­cy. It celeb­rates rote vocation­al train­ing and the sin­gular, amor­al skill of mak­ing money. It churns out stun­ted human pro­ducts, lack­ing the capac­ity and vocabula­ry to chal­lenge the as­sump­tions and struc­tures of the cor­porate state. It fun­nels them into a caste sys­tem of drones and sys­tems man­ag­ers. It trans­forms a de­moc­ratic state into a feud­al sys­tem of cor­porate mast­ers and serfs.

Teach­ers, their uni­ons under at­tack, are be­com­ing as re­place­able as minimum-wage em­ployees at Burg­er King. We spurn real teac­hers—those with the capac­ity to in­spire childr­en to think, those who help the young dis­cov­er their gifts and poten­tial­—and re­place them with in­struc­tors who teach to nar­row, stan­dardized tests. These in­struc­tors obey. They teach childr­en to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Be­hind pro­gram, modeled on the “Texas Mirac­le,” is a fraud. It wor­ked no bet­t­er than our de­regulated fin­an­ci­al sys­tem. But when you shut out de­bate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Pass­ing bubble tests celeb­rates and re­wards a peculiar form of an­alyt­ical in­tel­lig­ence. This kind of in­tel­lig­ence is prized by money man­ag­ers and cor­pora­tions. They don’t want em­ployees to ask un­com­fort­able ques­tions or ex­amine ex­ist­ing struc­tures and as­sump­tions. They want them to serve the sys­tem. These tests pro­duce men and women who are just lit­erate and numerate en­ough to per­form basic func­tions and ser­vice jobs. The tests elevate those with the fin­an­ci­al means to pre­pare for them. They re­ward those who obey the rules, mem­or­ize the for­mulas and pay de­fer­ence to aut­hor­ity. Re­bels, art­ists, in­depen­dent think­ers, ec­centrics and iconoc­lasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

“Im­agine,” said a pub­lic school teach­er in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day know­ing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, know­ing in no way are you pre­par­ing your students for life in an ever more brut­al world, know­ing that if you don’t con­tinue along your scrip­ted test prep co­ur­se and in­deed get bet­t­er at it you will be out of a job. Up until very re­cent­ly, the prin­cip­al of a school was some­th­ing like the con­duc­tor of an orchestra: a per­son who had deep ex­peri­ence and know­ledge of the part and place of every mem­b­er and every in­stru­ment. In the past 10 years we’ve had the em­erg­ence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloom­berg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Super­in­tendents Academy, both created ex­clusive­ly to pro­duce in­stant prin­cip­als and super­in­tendents who model them­selves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academ­ies’ accredited? What qual­ity of lead­er needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such peo­ple to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a bril­liant mech­an­ism for un­der­min­ing the school sys­tems, in­still­ing fear and creat­ing a rationale for cor­porate takeov­er. There is some­th­ing grotes­que about the fact the educa­tion re­form is being led not by educators but by fin­anc­ers and speculators and bi­llionaires.”

Teach­ers, under as­sault from every di­rec­tion, are flee­ing the pro­fess­ion. Even be­fore the “re­form” blitzkrieg we were los­ing half of all teach­ers with­in five years after they star­ted work—and these were peo­ple who spent years in school and many thousands of dol­lars to be­come teach­ers. How does the co­unt­ry ex­pect to re­tain di­gnified, trained pro­fes­sion­als under the hos­til­ity of cur­rent con­di­tions? I sus­pect that the hedge fund man­ag­ers be­hind our chart­er schools sys­tem—whose prima­ry con­cern is cer­tain­ly not with education­—are de­lighted to re­place real teach­ers with non­unionized, poor­ly trained in­struc­tors. To truly teach is to in­still the values and know­ledge which pro­mote the com­mon good and pro­tect a society from the folly of his­tor­ical am­nesia. The utilitarian, cor­porate ideology em­braced by the sys­tem of stan­dardized tests and leadership academ­ies has no time for the nuan­ces and moral am­biguit­ies in­herent in a li­ber­al arts educa­tion. Cor­porat­ism is about the cult of the self. It is about per­son­al en­rich­ment and pro­fit as the sole aim of human ex­ist­ence. And those who do not con­form are pus­hed aside.

“It is ex­treme­ly dis­pirit­ing to rea­l­ize that you are in ef­fect lying to these kids by in­sinuat­ing that this diet of cor­porate rea­d­ing pro­grams and stan­dardized tests are pre­par­ing them for an­yth­ing,” said this teach­er, who feared he would suf­f­er re­pris­als from school ad­ministrators if they knew he was speak­ing out. “It is even more dis­pirit­ing to know that your li­velihood de­pends in­creasing­ly on main­tain­ing this lie. You have to ask your­self why are hedge fund man­ag­ers sud­den­ly so in­teres­ted in the educa­tion of the urban poor? The main pur­pose of the test­ing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teach­er.”

“I can­not say for cer­tain—not with the cer­tain­ty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloom­berg who pon­tificate with utter cer­tain­ty over a field in which they know ab­solute­ly not­hing—but more and more I sus­pect that a major goal of the re­form cam­paign is to make the work of a teach­er so de­grad­ing and in­sult­ing that the di­gnified and the truly educated teach­ers will simp­ly leave while they still re­tain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a de­cade we been strip­ped of auto­nomy and are in­creasing­ly micro­managed. Students have been given the power to fire us by fail­ing their tests. Teach­ers have been li­kened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic col­lap­se of the Uni­ted States. In New York, prin­cip­als have been given every in­cen­tive, both fin­an­ci­al and in terms of con­trol, to re­place ex­perien­ced teach­ers with 22-year-old un­tenured rook­ies. They cost less. They know noth­ing. They are mal­le­able and they are vul­ner­able to ter­mina­tion.”

 

The de­moniz­ing of teach­ers is an­oth­er pub­lic re­la­tions feint, a way for cor­pora­tions to de­flect at­ten­tion from the theft of some $17 bi­ll­ion in wages, sav­ings and earn­ings among American work­ers and a landscape where one in six work­ers is with­out em­ploy­ment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasu­ry. They stymied any kind of re­gula­tion. They have avoided crimin­al char­ges. They are stripp­ing basic soci­al ser­vices. And now they are de­mand­ing to run our schools and uni­ver­sit­ies.

“Not only have the re­form­ers re­moved pover­ty as a fac­tor, they’ve re­moved students’ ap­titude and motiva­tion as fac­tors,” said this teach­er, who is in a teach­ers union. “They seem to be­lieve that students are some­th­ing like plants where you just add water and place them in the sun of your teach­ing and every­th­ing blooms. This is a fan­tasy that in­sults both student and teach­er. The re­form­ers have come up with a variety of in­sidi­ous schemes pus­hed as steps to pro­fes­sional­ize the pro­fess­ion of teach­ing. As they are all businessm­en who know noth­ing of the field, it goes with­out say­ing that you do not do this by giv­ing teach­ers auto­nomy and re­spect. They use merit pay in which teach­ers whose students do well on bubble tests will re­ceive more money and teach­ers whose students do not do so well on bubble tests will re­ceive less money. Of co­ur­se, the only way this could con­ceivab­ly be fair is to have an ident­ical group of students in each class—an im­pos­sibil­ity. The real pur­poses of merit pay are to di­vide teach­ers against them­selves as they scramble for the bright­er and more motivated students and to furth­er in­stitutional­ize the idiot no­tion of stan­dardized tests. There is a cer­tain di­abol­ical in­tel­lig­ence at work in both of these.”

“If the Bloom­berg ad­ministra­tion can be said to have suc­ceeded in an­yth­ing,” he said, “they have suc­ceeded in turn­ing schools into stress fac­to­ries where teach­ers are runn­ing around won­der­ing if it’s pos­sible to please their prin­cip­als and if their school will be open a year from now, if their union will still be there to offer some kind of pro­tec­tion, if they will still have jobs next year. This is not how you run a school sys­tem. It’s how you de­stroy one. The re­form­ers and their friends in the media have created a Man­ic­hean world of bad teach­ers and ef­fective teach­ers. In this al­ter­native uni­ver­se there are no other fac­tors. Or, all other fac­tors—pover­ty, de­praved parents, ment­al il­l­ness and mal­nut­rition­—are all ex­cuses of the Bad Teach­er that can be over­come by hard work and the Ef­fective Teach­er.”

The truly educated be­come con­sci­ous. They be­come self-aware. They do not lie to them­selves. They do not pre­tend that fraud is moral or that cor­porate greed is good. They do not claim that the de­mands of the mar­ketplace can moral­ly just­ify the hung­er of childr­en or de­ni­al of med­ical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 mill­ion famil­ies from their homes as the cost of doing busi­ness. Thought is a di­alogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask ques­tions, ques­tions those in aut­hor­ity do not want asked. They re­memb­er who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They re­main eter­nal­ly skept­ical and dis­trust­ful of power. And they know that this moral in­depend­ence is the only pro­tec­tion from the rad­ical evil that re­sults from col­lec­tive un­conscious­ness. The capac­ity to think is the only bul­wark against any centralized aut­hor­ity that seeks to im­pose mindless ob­edi­ence. There is a huge dif­fer­ence, as Soc­rates un­derstood, bet­ween teach­ing peo­ple what to think and teach­ing them how to think. Those who are end­owed with a moral con­sci­ence re­fuse to com­mit crimes, even those sanctioned by the cor­porate state, be­cause they do not in the end want to live with criminals—them­selves.

“It is bet­t­er to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,” Soc­rates said.

Those who can ask the right ques­tions are armed with the capac­ity to make a moral choice, to de­fend the good in the face of out­side pre­ssure. And this is why the philosoph­er Im­manuel Kant puts the dut­ies we have to our­selves be­fore the dut­ies we have to oth­ers. The stan­dard for Kant is not the bi­bl­ical idea of self-love—love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you—but self-respect. What br­ings us mean­ing and worth as human be­ings is our ab­il­ity to stand up and pit our­selves against in­jus­tice and the vast, moral in­dif­fer­ence of the uni­ver­se. Once just­ice per­is­hes, as Kant knew, life loses all mean­ing. Those who meek­ly obey laws and rules im­posed from the out­side—includ­ing re­ligi­ous laws—are not moral human be­ings. The ful­fill­ment of an im­posed law is moral­ly neutr­al. The truly educated make their own wills serve the high­er call of just­ice, em­pat­hy and rea­son. Soc­rates made the same ar­gu­ment when he said it is bet­t­er to suf­f­er wrong than to do wrong.

“The greatest evil per­pet­rated,” Han­nah Arendt wrote, “is the evil com­mit­ted by nobod­ies, that is, by human be­ings who re­fuse to be per­sons.”

As Arendt poin­ted out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through con­scious­ness. It comes with the ab­il­ity to look at a crime being com­mit­ted and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt war­ned, those whose moral sys­tem is built around the flim­sy struc­ture of blind ob­edi­ence. We must fear those who can­not think. Un­consci­ous civiliza­tions be­come totalitarian was­telands.

“The greatest evi­ldo­ers are those who don’t re­memb­er be­cause they have never given thought to the matt­er, and, with­out re­membran­ce, noth­ing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human be­ings, think­ing of past matt­ers means mov­ing in the di­mens­ion of depth, strik­ing roots and thus stabiliz­ing them­selves, so as not to be swept away by whatev­er may occur—the Zeit­ge­ist or His­to­ry or sim­ple tempta­tion. The greatest evil is not rad­ical, it has no roots, and be­cause it has no roots it has no li­mita­tions, it can go to un­think­able ex­tremes and sweep over the whole world.”

 

 

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Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.