John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of
Compulsory Schooling
It is a fascinating phenomenon within school education although
on the surface it appears to be about teaching skills to people but it is more about
the undercurrent of making people conform to a way of thinking. I have always
been fascinated about the history of teaching and education and historically the state did not want people to know what was going on, that is why education was
restricted first of all to the rich and ruling classes and only to the males.
The timing of when education expanded to include the less noble classes firstly
the middle classes and then the lower classes and then also to include women is a
thing that fascinates me the most.
This tells us a lot about what education does because the
drive to get the poor into schools was partly driven by the industrial revolution
but mostly driven by what the Germans and the French were doing. As the Germans got all of
their working classes into schools we started to follow suit. This goes to show
a cynical aspect that it is not really about educating people but about training
and keeping up with the competition.
Today what passes as education is box ticking of things set
by government and looks less and less about the old idea of opening the mind
but more like binding it to the doctrine of the government think tanks. I liken it to considering the education system as some form of thinking entity that
overpowers the good intentions of teachers and even pupils. The biggest damage that is caused
by the education system is exactly what is implied in the above quotation, this
idea of limitation, conformity and restriction. It is like the whole system has
cast a spell over people making them feel that they cannot go against what they are being told as if it is some sort of rulebook on how to live your life and how
to think. I am not sure whether we are going to get to the point like the emperor’s
new clothes where we see things as they are and are able to change. It is quite
likely that the system will change because it will fall apart at some point.
That falling apart may happen sooner than we imagine and it
might hit independent schools first because of the rising costs incurred and charged
by them. I have written about this before but there is an interesting
similarity historically to the rise of the internal combustion engine, that when cars were being produced in great numbers the skills of the leather maker, the production of
saddles the breeding of working horses many other skills related to the old transport system became obsolete. In reflection we can look at that and say why
didn’t they see it coming. This could well be the situation in the education
system at the moment. in the near future people will be taught at home or in some sort of electronic cottage
which does not require teachers or staff just somebody to mind the kids and to
some extent. in the US that’s already happening and in the UK if you speak to teachers
much of their time is taken up in social administration and not education.
We should be able to see this coming, a change that will
seem so obvious in the future but not clear to us at the moment, everything is
there in place, everybody can be taught online now I do not necessary think this is a
good idea because this is more of the same, the only to get
out would be home educate your children.
So let’s take this back to the creative musician and teacher, what does that means for us? The psychological benefits of
learning a musical instrument may attract the type of people and parents who see
that this is a way of developing thinking in their children and themselves
and maybe that is our salvation, maybe the above quotation is an expression of the problems with the system generally and that we are beginning to see how much of a house of
cards modernity appears to be.
Vic
come and play in a band see what you really can do, three
days of fun and mischief.
