Views On American Education Pt. 2

School is a tool used to build conformity. Simply put, this explains it in its entirety.

To the question, what brought enforced schooling about, the simple answer is industrialization. It is cheaper to build square holes than round ones, but some people are round, and some square, so the solution is to create a system to build square people, and at the same time put it under the auspices of "bettering" said people, so that no one can abolish the system, though they may criticize its particulars.

To those who are under the impression that school was created, or is perpetuated as a means to better people, to educate them, and that creating conformity is merely a pleasant side effect, this is a flawed view of the situation. The intended order is reversed. School was created as a means of building conformity and any "education," (whatever that arbitrary word might mean) that goes on is a side effect.

Industrialization needs conformity and compulsory schooling fills that role. Secondary schooling plays the role of weeding out those who are not dedicated to the system, or competent enough to fill the command positions. This has always been the case, but in the last century we have seen the construction of the consumerist system, which drove the extension of schooling over the lifetime. Children were continuously pulled into school at younger and younger ages and kept in school later and later in life, so that they may continue to be consumers while staying off of the job market.

Now, instead of a system teaching rudimentary education and religious ideas for a few winters in a child's life, we have a monstrosity that takes up to 14 years from a human being's development. And for what? In the words of Daniel Quinn,

“In societies you consider primitive, youngsters ‘graduate’ from childhood at age thirteen or fourteen, and by this age have basically learned all they need in order to function as adults in their community. They’ve learned so much, in fact, that if the rest of the community were simply to vanish overnight, they’d be able to survive without the least difficulty. They’d know how to make the tools needed for hunting and fishing. They’d know how to shelter and clothe themselves. At age thirteen or fourteen, their survival value is one hundred percent.”

The differences between this idea and that of modern schooling are glaringly obvious, and disturbing. Further to those who argue that school develops humans socially, the rates of substance abuse, depression, insanity, suicide, and murder in this country should serve as ample evidence to the contrary.

All this being said, it is not that all those working within this system are bad people, nor are they mindless automatons helping to churn out more mindless automatons. They are genuinely striving to do good as they see it, and since they are products of this same system their ideas of good tend to coincide with that system.

There are good and helpful teachers who help children grow socially and intellectually, but for every one who comforts a child from a broken home, or suggests a book like "A People's History of the United States," there is one who further traumatizes a child by making him feel inferior, or suggests students to to church on Sunday.

The American system of compulsory, standardized schooling serves a purpose, that of creating conformity. This was its original impetus for being, and it has been its driving force forever after, though it is portrayed in varying lights. At this point the system is a type of ogre which will probably never be brought down, but one which does have its advantages to all sides concerned. To say that "school" is inherently bad would be to grossly over simplify the issue, but it must be pointed out that it is rife with flaws in its very basic principles and has been since its beginning.