The Permanent Reform of the American School

In New York City during the 1930's, my father's elementary school classrooms contained 35 to 40 students, sitting in rows, facing a teacher who gave her instruction standing in front of a chalkboard.  The students' shirts and blouses were of one color: white; the suits were usually some shade of grey.  Learning was highly regimented, and students were generally afraid of incurring the displeasure of the teacher.

On the one hand, my father's school experience sounds stifling, judging from his description.  On the other, the "outcomes", to use contemporary jargon, of the educational methods and classroom structure of my father's childhood were in many ways superior to what we achieve nowadays.  He was amused when I pointed out that in many of today's public schools, any teacher whose student desks were arranged in rows, and who failed to "circulate" throughout the classroom might receive unfavorable marks on a lesson evaluation.

The temptation to think back on American education of the period 1920-1960 with nostalgia is almost irresistible.  Teachers and administrators were not enthralled by faddish theories; they taught only what we would nowadays call "content", often through rote memorization, drill, and lecture.  Class discipline could be severe, but it was unequivocal and usually effective.  Students and teachers wore decent clothes in the schoolhouse, and it was assumed that students would treat one another with civility and adults with respect.

It is true that schools in that period sometimes brutally reflected inequalities in the larger society.  Students who were black and brown, or lived in disadvantaged areas of the country usually languished in appalling facilities.  The notion of education as an instrument of social justice barely existed.

However, my purpose is not to defend nor to question traditional education methods.  I am more interested in why our system of education has been in a constant state of revision over the last four decades.

In the period just mentioned (1920-1960), there was consensus about what constituted proper relations between adults and children, about what children were to learn at school, about child behavior, about the role of the school and the role of the family.  It was thought that families raised children, while schools only had to educate them.

That simple formula no longer applies.  The roles of schools and families are now blurred.  Even if one wanted to recreate the school of our parents and grandparents, it could not be done.  We no longer view authority as absolute; home discipline varies too greatly from household to household; society gamely offers too many distractions; there is disagreement about what should be taught.  The naive notion that students should enter a school completely ready to learn is at odds with contemporary attitudes -- namely, that schools should nurture children -- and moreover goes against reality.

We have decided that the American school must fulfill more than just the educational needs of our children.  To be fair, this is a very well-intentioned idea.  And just because it would have seemed absurd a couple of generations ago does not mean that we should stop trying to address both what educators call the "affective" domain (emotions, self-esteem, etc.) and the "cognitive" (intellectual) domain.  This dual mission is expected of all contemporary educators, and one has to be effective in both of these "domains" to be successful.  However, it is uncertain how successful schools have been in taking on some of the responsibilities that were once squarely in the domain of family life (instilling confidence, building character and work habits, teaching good self-presentation, bolstering self-esteem, etc.).

This is why, I believe, the search for new ways to structure schools will be ongoing (or, less charitably, unending).  We may find some ideas that are partly successful (charter schools, in some cases), but a sure formula will always remain just out of reach, because the educational system can not, on its own, bring about the changes in our society that would ensure long-term educational and career success for the majority of our students.  It is the culture, not the school, that is most in need of reform.

The New Communications Devices

Questioning the role of computers, smartphones, touch-pads, etc., and their ever-expanding applications may seem not only prudish but futile. They have already changed society as few would have predicted even just a few years ago. We are probably seeing just the beginning of an utter transformation not only of  the way we socialize, but of the nature of being itself.

That is, the definition of "humanity" will itself be altered fundamentally, as some are predicting that technology may someday be actually physically integrated into our bodies.  It would be sentimental, then, to note that some social activities and forms of expression we have taken for granted will have completely vanished -- many are already all but gone -- as we ever more make convenience and immediacy the main standard for communication.

One might ask again the question that others have also posed, namely whether this unprecedented access to information, or at least a certain kind of information, isn't making everyone somehow less well informed.  And whether the ability to communicate more or less ceaselessly, yet with remove, does not distort and even devalue that which connects people to one another.

But to my purpose in writing.  The communications revolution will have completely done away with what is left of American bourgeois culture.  There could well be no more forms, traditions, and ever fewer communal rituals in the mainstream of society .  We will no longer be the embodiment of a heritage that is in the public domain, but will have as our main object the fulfillment of our private needs and the cultivation of our close personal sphere.  Public space is expanding, in theory, while the private sphere grows ever smaller.

Immigration

Immigration vexes the developed world; it is an issue that has shown itself impossible to address in all its dimensions.

One simple reason that immigration defies solution is that the conditions that spur it and the problems of assimilation are on different sides of national borders. Nations that traditionally receive immigrants and the nations that send them have opposing interests; they have no incentive towards a common solution. 

The racial component of immigration is unsettling; at the same time it stifles honesty.  In the United States and Europe, the immigration of today is mainly of non-white peoples. Traditional cultural identity is being eroded, in the view of many Europeans and a good deal of Americans as well. That many of the new immigrants are non-Christian is also an issue.  In spite of a consensus that immigration needs to be addressed, ethnic and religious fears make rational discussion of the issue impossible. 

In Europe, the relaxing of border controls within the continent has brought tension, rather than the intended economic openness and flexibility, as eastern Europeans and others have migrated north and west.   The non-European, often Moslem immigrants who began arriving during the period of colonial independence have played a fraught role in societies at best ambivalent about their presence; they have often found themselves ghettoized, the symbols of their religious practice sometimes subject to legal restriction.

In this country, it is Hispanic immigration has obviously intensified in recent years, and it has also provoked racial and cultural anxiety.  To many native-born Americans, the nation is under assault.  And, as in Europe, there is anti-Muslim sentiment.

Immigration is redefining our national identity in ways that we are not able to control or predict.  While it would be immoral to stop immigration entirely, the haphazardness of immigration in the U.S. over the last 30 years has also had repercussions. There needs to be greater acknowledgement that while the pressures spurring immigration have never been greater, the problems related to assimilating large numbers of immigrants have in no way diminished. 

That said, the United States is a country with a firm tradition of accepting immigrants; it also still has the space as well as the economic opportunity for them.  Additionally, we need immigrants to replenish our national culture; immigrants bring cultural authenticity where there might otherwise be none.  They often have virtues that would otherwise be unacceptably scarce in the general population: self-discipline, a willingness to take on tasks that are unpleasant or unpromising in short-term rewards, family loyalty, reverence for education, and a sense of gratitude.

Yet, lacking a rational, enforceable official immigration policy (and, for some reason, being unable to see even a generous quota as an honorable compromise between the free-for-all that immigration is now, and the drastic reduction or elimination of immigration that some are advocating), we manage to dissatisfy all sides.  It also seems reasonable, as well as intellectually honest, to demand more of the countries for which emigration to the United States is a social pressure release; at the same time we should welcome a certain number (I advocate a generous number) of immigrants from those same countries, acknowledging that they, in the very great majority of cases, contribute enormously to society.

In Europe, things are somewhat different, however.  In my mind, there is no question that a certain number of people from the former colonies (or present foreign possessions) should be permitted to settle in the seats of the former empires that ruled over them (obviously, this has already taken place).  This would not be to assuage guilt, but to recognize that formerly colonized peoples do, to a degree, form part of the national identity.  Europe must also square its anti-immigrant feeling with the declining birthrate of the native population.

However, what is (to me) most disturbing development related to European immigration is that (note that this the exact reverse of what has occurred in the United States) immigrant areas have become cultural no-man’s-lands.  They have neither the cultural richness of the immigrants’ native lands, nor that of the host country (this is leaving aside the social dysfunction that is often endemic in these zones).  While this may seem a secondary concern in the eyes of some, this can only be considered unimportant if one believes that the quest for material necessities, regardless of social and cultural cost, should be unregulated.  During the last 50 years, authentic regional cultures have withered as Western consumer ‘values’ have penetrated even to the most isolated corners of the planet.  Material necessities are a fundamental right; however, the acquisition of these necessities in the setting of a complete cultural vacuum is a phenomenon of which we all should be very wary, if not actually fearful*.

As it is in America, the (often) desperate are trying to gain entry into Europe in great (and ultimately, unsustainable) numbers.  And, as it is here, the racial and religious component of the phenomenon has prevented meaningful debate.  The result satisfies hardly anyone: not the immigrants themselves, many of whom lead marginal existences and experience rejection by society; not the host populations, who see their national culture and traditions under threat. 

In my eyes, there is little contradiction between accepting and assimilating the immigrants and their descendants already living on the European continent, and seeking henceforth to regulate their entry strongly.  That said, this tight regulation of entrants to a country, though a necessity, is an unpleasant one, and places heavy moral and financial burdens on host countries.  Worse, it unfairly casts these countries as brutish and ‘xenophobic.’

However, one of the completely wrongheaded assumptions about both American and European immigration is that all the parties to it are behaving responsibly.  The governments of the nations that have historically sent migrants abroad, when they do not openly act as if emigration is their fundamental right, have not been held to account for failing completely to provide livelihoods for their people.** It is also astonishing how few people publicly make the connection between unchecked population growth and desperate, large-scale human migrations.  The absence of rational debate on population control is just one aspect of the intellectual void surrounding the immigration problem; the lack of reasoned voices on most of the issues with a bearing on immigration is what, as much as anything, keeps the problem from coming to a solution.

In order to settle the problem of immigration once and for all, both developed countries and the poorer ones that send migrants to them must accept some contradictory ideas. That is, immigration is desirable, even highly so, but it must be more closely controlled.  Culture, though not required for physical survival, must absolutely be protected, or the result will be social and eventually even physical degradation.  Immigration can benefit the national culture, but can also damage it in some instances.

*Phenomena as seemingly disparate as increased obesity and diabetes among the Inuits and crime and other social ills in the Paris suburbs can result from stripping away the culture (Inuits) or from placing people into a cultural void (northern and eastern Paris suburbs).

** Obviously, the developed nations have frequently colluded with despotic rulers of poorer countries at the expense of ordinary citizens, and so they too have played their part in creating their own immigration problem.

The Country of the Future

One hears that the future of our world, as a natural system, will depend on the willingness of the developed countries to temper their consumerism, on the one hand; and on the other, on the willingness of the developing countries to mitigate the effects of their industrialization.

Though some would try to cast doubt on this hypothesis, all evidence points to it as framing the most important question facing the world community today: how do we carry on our characteristic activities, and still maintain a habitable natural environment?

There is another question one might ask. If, through enlightened policies, technological advances, and collective discipline, we are able to fulfill our basic needs, while also maintaining the integrity of the environment, would we still have a world one would want to live in?

This might seem absurd on the face of it. If our material desires were perfectly balanced with the natural order, would this not be a perfect state of affairs? Regrettably, though, it seems that in spite of any hoped-for future triumph of science and rationalism over our destructive tendencies, a kind of cultural disaster may still come to pass, the threat of which we are almost completely overlooking. I am referring specifically to the general eradication of authentic indigenous cultures throughout the globe, which is happening as relentlessly as the clear-cutting of the world’s rainforests, and whose effects are almost as pernicious.

Though a cultural bleaching process is occurring world-wide (in tandem with the degradation of the natural world), with special intensity in rapidly growing nations like China and India, the country that may most determine whether local cultural practices survive at all in recognizable form is France.

France (although some other nations, such as Italy, have also been successful at this as well – the United States has not been, however, not having tried) may be the best example of a country that has (until recently) successfully embraced capitalism and materialism while preserving practices and traditions that are distinctly local in character (in agriculture and the culinary arts especially, though also in other areas of daily living). It has consciously preserved its agrarian traditions, which (again, until recently) have been authentically integrated into the lives of its citizens, and form part of the national identity to a degree that is uncommon elsewhere in the world (it is to our discredit that we have practically eliminated most traces of our own agrarian traditions in this country).

Foreigners may or may not be aware that the indigenous culture of France is under every bit as much threat of eventually disappearing as that of the tribes of the Amazon rain forest. The French ways of life that those from other countries have alternately envied, dismissed, or idealized are eroding under the pressure of the same larger forces that threaten local cultural peculiarities everywhere.

One would reflexively blame America for these trends, but though the tendency to destroy everyday culture is something that we Americans harbor, and in many respects, have originated and propagated, to do so would be simplistic. The forces that are eroding the traditions of France and certain other countries are at once less visible and more widespread than some may think.

The tendency of contemporary progress is to seek a convenience that is almost purely material in nature. The intangible qualities of a way of doing things, the ineffable pleasures of daily existence, are under constant and growing threat by the desire to carry out normal activities with the least possible trouble to the individual. The subjective experience of that individual, possibly because it can’t be measured, is of no importance. In our own country, the customs related to meal-taking, for example, have almost completely vanished, even in the more favored classes of society. Greater social and economic stresses on families are usually blamed for the ever greater rarity of shared family meals, but the real cause, in my opinion, for Americans consuming ever more dreadful food on an as-needed basis, rather than sharing a home-cooked meal around a table, is the toxic individualism of a technological, materialistic society lacking in cultural counterweights.

At the risk of reiterating an obvious point, France is, again, a consumerist, materialistic society. Its level of religious devotion is at historically low levels. Yet it has preserved its civilized rituals of life doggedly (this tendency is associated with the “snobbery” which is often misapplied to the French). But the cultural dam surrounding the country is weakening. Snacking between meals, once unheard of, is making inroads; fast food, which arrived in the 70’s, is taking ever greater hold. Hundreds, if not thousands of English words, most of them unnecessary to making one’s point in the language, have seeped into the French dictionary. Wine consumption, which is a good measure of how much the French are really savoring life any more, is on the decline. The mood in the country, which even in the best of times might tend to be pessimistic and otherwise dissatisfied, is unsettled. France’s current debate on “national identity”, which has been spurred by the presence of non-Western immigrants, is, under the surface, every bit as much about the place of the country’s cherished customs in a “globalized” world.

Though in this country we are completely indifferent to preserving group rituals and practices, the forces of cultural homogenization are, at this point, transnational. One is shocked at the degree to which we (when we have even cared to notice) accept the cultural leveling of the planet as inevitable. “One World”, however seductive it may be as a political ideal, might end up a cultural wasteland. There is also evidence that the erosion of cultural norms and practices ultimately affects our safety (I didn’t mention that France is aghast at a recent wave both of street crime and school violence, which, though having multiple, complex causes, has been contributed to by the weakening of traditional culture and societal order, in the eyes of some commentators).

France is gamely trying to keep the forces of generic consumerism at bay. It has, for example, a nursery school program that introduces pupils to good cooking and table etiquette. The Acédemie Française has attempted to find authentic French equivalents for the foreign words that are entering the language (though with mixed results, by the looks of things). But there are probably limits on what can consciously do to maintain a nation’s cultural heritage. One approach is to make museum piece out of one’s patrimony. Though the French have tried that as well, here is wishing them success in their efforts to preserve the authenticity of their way of life against the depredations of cultural globalization.

"Pedagogy" and Education

In the last sixty years or so, education has been gradually transformed in the United States and some other countries.  The focus has shifted away from the teacher instructing and towards the student "discovering" knowledge, the latter now being considered more valid, in many cases, than the former.  This change in how children are taught in school has mirrored the evolution of the parent/child relationship, and on an even broader level, the way authority is viewed in the public mind.

The notion we have of the child as a special, separate being, with its own distinct sensibility, is a relatively recent one. This changed conception of childhood (and it was a revolutionary change, departing completely from the view, held for hundreds of years if not longer, of children as virtual non-entities) found its full flowering in decades following World War 2, and is of course still very much with us now.  

As regards education, the child's mind had been viewed formerly almost as a mere physical recipient, its personality a moral blank slate.  Through rote learning and reading material carefully selected by adults, all children would learn more or less the same body of knowledge, in the same manner.  There was also the belief that education could impart a sense of morals.  There was, on the other hand, little concern about the learning process itself and whether it was intrinsically at all enjoyable for the students.  Their individual will counted for little or nothing in the classroom.  The teacher's authority, in theory, was absolute.

Those with a nostalgic view of this style of education would say that, at the very least, the children at least used to learn a uniform body of knowledge: arithmetic, geography, literature, (in some cases) ancient and possibly modern languages.  Most of us, however (those with a living memory of this old-fashioned education are ever rarer), while we might admit to the quaintness of education as it was practiced before the interior life of the child had been discovered and exalted, would be dismissive of this strictly hierarchical style of education.

Educational theorists have, in more recent times, informed us that children are not to be instructed, but rather guided in their acquisition of knowledge.  The inherent creativity of the child's mind must be treated with respect; it should never subjected to excessive rigor, lest the child's spirit should somehow be harmed, or even extinguished.  Teachers must seek to "motivate" their students by providing an underlying rationale for learning a subject, by appealing to their imagination as well as to their reason.  Rote learning has been called into question, and if it is not possible to avoid memorization altogether, the tediousness of memorizing multiplication tables, chemical symbols, and so forth must be addressed by applying "creative" methods.  Students write on subjects they find appealing (grammar is seldom taught as a separate subject any longer); they also select a good deal of their reading based on interest.  If books are assigned, care is taken that they should possess some inherent appeal to the student.

In the contemporary view, the child's mind is a temple to which educators must show a devotion bordering on the dogmatic.  The teacher is not an absolute authority, but an "educational leader" with a strictly provisional hold over his or her classroom.

I am aware that in France, there has recently been a backlash against contemporary educational practices (which they call, with some contempt, "pedagogy", so as to distinguish the child-centered approach from what its detractors view as truly substantive education).  This dissent has firmly entered the public debate on education in that country.  For all the debate in this country on how to reform education, we, on the other hand, hear few lasting arguments that might call pedagogy into question.  The child in our society, for better, but so very often for worse, holds a place of outsized importance.  We could never again subject children to rigorous 'top-down' instruction lacking in creative amenities.  Children are our equals in some respects, maybe even our betters.  Pedagogy is the foundation of our American educational thought.

While the contemporary child's experience of school may be more pleasant, in many cases, than it was a hundred years ago, by any number of  measures American students leave school less well educated than their forbears (even allowing for the great advances in knowledge of the intervening years).  The ability to write a pleasing, grammatical letter, to read a map with confidence, to compute by hand, to speak of literature in a knowledgable way, to make a coherent oral argument -- all of these skills were once possessed by many citizens of modest upbringing.  Beyond the elite level of society, very few Americans can apply any of the aforementioned skills with competence anymore.

In the ongoing American debate on education, one sees a kind of circular motion of blame: adminsistrators complain of teacher's unions and their arcane work rules; teachers blame a fractured society for creating students who are unable to learn, or who lack interest in learning; parents say public schools are underfunded and chaotic; public commentators say school systems are self-protecting fiefdoms more interested in creating employment than upholding standards.  All of these arguments may be justified.  However, lacking a commitment to address them, we will make only halting progress in solving the many problems that face American public education.  And what we will never see, it is safe to say, is a serious questioning of our "pedagogical" teaching methods.  Our society is convinced that the exercise of pure authority in the classroom is inherently suspect, and that erudition need not be the principal goal of education.  The "process" of learning is more important than the acquisition of knowledge and skills, it seems.  Until we bring ourselves around to exactly the opposite view, our educational system will remain inadequate.

The Loblolly Pine

Through grafting, forestry science has developed an especially fast-growing variety of the Loblolly pine for timber (this variety has been termed a "super species", becoming ready for harvest in about 15-20 years). In Franklin County, Mississippi, stands of these artificially-planted trees are seen everywhere. In fact, in some parts of Mississippi (including Franklin County), the Loblolly has largely supplanted the native Longleaf pine.

Planted Loblolly stands give the appearance of a one-species scrub forest. Little other plant life can grow among them, as herbicide is applied among the trees to suppress the growth of hardwoods and other unwanted plant competitors. Some have termed these forests of cultivated Lobblolly a "biological desert", as they harbor so little other life (although a few animal and bird species do apparently like cultivated Loblolly forests).

However, one must remember that in Franklin County at least, if not elsewhere, in past decades one would have found cattle pastures, cotton, corn, or soybeans in some places where the commercial Loblolly now grows. Moreover, by the 1930's, much of the "old-growth" forest of Mississippi had already been exploited for timber.

And in discussing Loblolly cultivation, or any other type of monoculture, it is also difficult to avoid a certain preciousness. One is by implication rebuking society only for developing the resources that it seems we could not do without. Still, even an amateur's familiarity with the swamps, natural lakes, and forests that used to exist in Mississippi is enough to marvel at the elegant interdependence of life that once prevailed in them. A complex world existed and maintained its own balance, independent of humans.

One guesses that the natural world of Mississippi before the arrival of white settlers was brutal, inhospitable. Human beings* were seemingly its least important element: their greatest virtue (as regards the natural world) was their relatively small number and lack of technical ability and inclination to alter the land.

It is odd to think that the biological and cultural richness of the cypress swamps, lowland hardwood forests, and other largely vanished ecosystems of the South has gone mostly unmissed. They were only a kind of curiosity, without the clear human purpose of the Loblolly pine.

*the Choctaw and Chickasaw

Self-Abnegation

The notion that through the act of suppressing one's sense of self, one could achieve a noble result is an idea that has generally inspired our conduct up until relatively recently.

However, our notion of the self has changed over time. In fact, the very idea of the self is fairly new one, viewed over the span of history. The consciousness of self that we take for granted would be unfamiliar to our earlier ancestors. And now that we know we have a self, we must treasure it. To deny the self, or to allow it otherwise to be diminished, would be viewed as a violation.

I am convinced that at one time, people occupied less aesthetic and psychic space than is the case today. In fact, it is undeniable that many of our citizens could not care less how they are viewed, and if it is a distasteful chore to look at them, it is none of their concern.

I don't believe it was always so. Our dress, manners, and other modes of expression were much more restrained at one time. This societally-imposed restraint on our way of being in the world, it has been said, made it difficult to achieve happiness. But did happiness used to be the goal of living? I think it was not.

Instead, I gather, that if any one principle guided our existence in former times, it was a desire to find our place in the moral order of the society (whatever that may have been). We believed that there was an abstract notion of the good and the not-good that held true for all members of society. Not everyone could live up to it, but all could be measured against it. I do not wish to claim that virtue used to be more prevalent. But, for example, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that, successfully or not, an attempt used to be made to try impart "goodness" in the young, as an aspect of one's overall education. Such an emphasis would be regarded nowadays as quaint.

Formerly in society, because the notion of good and not-good held so much sway, I think we walked a humbler path. We ourselves were not so important; the moral order of society was. We accepted our lot, by and large. Whoever sought to stand out did so because he or she felt in possession of something genuinely worth exposing to the world, and not as much in order to bring attention to one's own person. And if our sense of injustice was aroused at all, it tended to be over larger concerns. I think one could prove easily that the public today is somewhat indifferent to the larger concerns of society and the world, but is acutely sensitive to anything that would impinge on what it sees as its prerogatives.

Since the self was not a sacrosanct entity, as it is now, it used to be more within the bounds of imagination to take on suffering, and use it for creative ends. The artist, for example, used to exist more or less in opposition to society. Now, partly out of guilt, I believe, for our past treatment of artists, but more so out of distaste for the violence to the self that art clearly could demand, the artist has been invited into society. We have institutions that "nurture" artists that did not exist formerly: creative writing programs, fellowships, teaching positions and the like. We have publicity, lest the artist's work should go unnoticed, as used to be very often the case in earlier eras. But however much our solicitude for artists has aided in assuring their personal well-being, it is questionable whether this solicitude has done much to make the art itself any better.

Our over-protection of the self has not just been harmful to artistic endeavors; it has affected virtually everyone's daily experience. Without denying that there are still lonely people around us, nowadays it would take a super-human effort to experience the kind of solitude that used to be an accepted part of life. To live in a rural community as so many of us did, with transportation slow or unavailable altogether, without the means to connect to the outside world that we take for granted, with books and musical instruments one's only diversion -- this is a way of living that we would find intolerable. The self-denial of such a life would be disorienting. The 'affirmation' we all expect nowadays would have been brutally absent.

We are offered wonderful variety and diverse means of fulfillment. But we have also, as a practical matter, made it impossible truly to abnegate the self, and thereby attain true solitude. Such extreme solitude would be unlikely to provide happiness or even long maintain health and sanity. But it used to be more taken for granted that this kind of solitude could either occur naturally or be attained through effort, and out of such solitude we have gotten the benefit some of our finest actions, as well as our most memorable thought.