The End of Public Education?
Knowledge is power - so control the knowledge and you control the power. Right from its inception, public education has been the means by which socio-economic agendas have been rolled out; some clandestine and some very obvious.
Having been to university in Cape Town, South Africa in the late 80s, I have had first hand experience of a very overt agenda played out through education. Very few black men and even fewer black women made it to the higher echelons of the university halls. The system was specifically designed to mould them into “the hewers of wood and carriers of water”. “Coloured” (mixed race) people were educated at the next layer up and mostly males entered trades to serve the white community. Although not all “white” people qualified to get into university, they had a direct pathway to do so, if that is what they wanted to do. Although some universities had an anti-racist policy, it was much harder for a black person to qualify for university study, usually going through a church school which followed the white schools’ curriculum. This is a clear example of socio-economic engineering through education. This was an easy system to target and to dismantle as it was out in the open where it could be ,criticised, abhorred and eventually addressed.
All curricula have an agenda, whether we judge it as good or bad. However, not all curricula’s agendas are overt. Remember, knowledge is power. Knowledge is not the same thing as information. Knowledge is the product of thinking. Today information is not an issue. With the advent of the internet we have access to an open highway of information without any real limitations. Information in of itself is simply that - information: data, opinions, theories and stories. It is what we do with said information that creates knowledge. In my experience, Bloom’s taxonomy is a great model on which to base the thinking process from which we create knowledge. The six levels are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating - in that order. Remembering is the lowest level of thinking. How much are students still required to remember and regurgitate in tests and exams today? A significant amount. There isn’t often opportunity in the schooling system in which to create. Exams stop short of creating at evaluating at best.
The creative process is not easily controlled. Creativity has it’s origins in each individual. Although the creative process is sometimes enhanced by collaboration the actual origin of that process is an individual choice. If we were all aware of our natural ability to create there’d be very little holding us back. In fact, we’d be impossible to control at any fundamental level because if you are a creator you by default remember, apply, analyze and evaluate all information given to you.
Imagine if our young people were allowed to create! I use the word “allowed” here purposefully. Young children are continuously creating knowledge, it is what comes naturally. School seems to unteach this natural ability and brings this ability into tow in the name of education. Remember, knowledge is power. If you can minimize the natural ability to create knowledge, you can control the narrative, hence the need for curricula. If school was all about nurturing our natural ability to create and to connect, this world would be an entirely different place. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Collective creativity is evidenced in societies by the stories and cultures created. I have noticed the breakdown of both culture and story-telling as our young people become more disconnected with themselves, their environment and others. Technology has got a lot to answer for in this respect, however, the growing discontent with the school structure and irrelevance of the curriculum plays a significant part as well.
Mass education was born from the industrial revolution from which the origins of socio-economic engineering stem. The late Sir Ken Robinson explained this so well in a YouTube video eleven years ago. Our public education systems remain as archaic and woefully inadequate today. This is evidenced by the enormous amount of disengagement, social ineptitude, unmanageable behavior and mental health problems plaguing our schools at all levels. Learning Support departments cannot keep up with the amount of referrals, and students fall off the boat left and right. Formal education is failing the majority, dismally, and fast becoming redundant. As the System lumbers on, trying to sticky-plaster gaping wounds with platitudes and rhetoric, our future generations become more and more disenfranchised and dysfunctional. To put the boot into the postulate of education being “the great equalizer”, it is our lowest socio-economic families that suffer the most, simply because of their reliance on a state funded education system.
Until public education is released from the grip of politics and economics, this woeful situation will continue. Remember, knowledge is power. If a system is preventing people from creating knowledge, but instead dictates what information is shared and what processes can/ should be implemented, it is controlling the power. At best, public education systems unwittingly have fallen into this, at worst, it is all by design. Whatever the intentions, it is becoming increasingly obvious that public education as it manifests presently is not ethical or sustainable.
Perhaps it’s time to reinvent our public education system? What will it take for this to happen? Is any part of it salvageable? Or is there a need to wipe the slate clean? What would a new system look like? What are the intentions behind public education? These are all fundamental questions that need to be asked as we enter into a new age and leave many of the old ways behind.
Written by Calli Veludos
