Oppression and the purposes of school

Purpose and the failure of schools

My strange sort of fanaticism towards education reform has likely irritated my friends over the years. On one of my phases in this process I pestered everyone with the question, “What do you think should be the goals of our education system?” This was during a time when it occurred to me that one of the great problems in our education system is that, as a society we want schools to accomplish a huge range of tasks. An introductory teacher education textbook offered the following list:

1. Teach basic academic skills
2. Build student self-esteem
3. Promote critical thinking skills
4. Teach cooperative prosocial behaviors
5. Promote equality of opportunity
6. Prepare students for college
7. Prepare students for the world of work
8. Transmit our cultural heritage
9. Preserve our cultural richness and diversity
10. Promote national unity and patriotism
11. Build and maintain a strong economy
12. Promote social justice
13. Promote global understanding
14. Combat social problems (discrimination, AIDS, drugs, etc.)
15. Provide social services (child care, health services, etc.)

(Arends, Wnitzky, & Tannenbaum, 2001)

 

You might think of others to add to this list such as cultivate moral virtues, prepare students to participate in a democracy, or provide technology access and training.  Either way, this is a great deal of responsibility, unrealistic to be expected of any organization as small as a school is. Consider the legal requirement to provide this “free and reasonable” education for every student in your area, regardless of family finances, natural intelligence, native language, cultural background, and disability status. In addition to meeting all these objectives for students of diverse abilities and inclinations, schools have to work under the constraints of arbitrary state-mandated curricula, federally required testing, local policies, constrained budgets, community values, and parental expectations. If the magnitude and constraints weren’t enough, notice that many of the proposed functions of school arguably contradict each other (e.g. transmit cultural heritage vs. combat social problems) and that between federal, state, district, community and individual levels there is no real consensus on what the list should include.   Add to this the things schools do outside of the classroom such as sports, dances, lunch, and busing. When I think on it, it is actually quite natural for schools to become garbage. Who could possibly orchestrate this sort of mess successfully? 

Some authors have claimed that compared to other organizations and cultural institutions schools have undergone surprisingly little change, appearing in form and function much as they might have fifty or even a hundred years ago. This is in spite of numerous major attempts at reform.  The lack of a clear and realistic purpose is a key reason why improvement is so slow and school approval ratings are so low. (Jones, 2012)

The numerous, competing, contradicting, and externally imposed purposes result in a form of oppression inflicted upon the students in these schools and ultimately upon the greater community that they are released into.  It may seem strange to say that something as important and beneficial as school is a form of oppression.   Lately, reflecting on my work with my students, and in studying for my special education license, have come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, an agent of oppression.  Huzzah!

The IEP as evidence of oppression

The experience of working with IEP[1]s has helped me to see one way this oppression works. One of the major components of an IEP is a set of goals determined to be appropriate for the given student and his suite of special needs. The goals deal with academic performance, socio-behavioral issues, and reference long term education and career goals. Two things about this process really stuck out for me. First, and perhaps most important in terms of my becoming an instrument of oppression, is the fact that the student almost never has any input regarding these goals. And when they do, it is frequently overridden by the various “agents of interest” who write these plans. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about the second grade here. I’m talking about 17-year-olds on the brink of legal majority. I’m not only talking about students too old to be sensibly left out of the process of making their life decisions, I’m talking about those for whom this system didn’t work. Whether they are disabled or not there is something about them that doesn’t fit the mold and if our objective was to try and help them attain whatever kind of success we can, we ought to be more interested in consulting with them on what that success should mean. Instead we almost invariably create programs that will try to force them back into the mold as best we can. In other words, we choose to impose the schizophrenically unresolved purposes of school on the student rather than let him discover and articulate his own.  What this tends to mean is that instead of letting students develop talents where they are able, we stunt their growth under the pretense of what’s in the student’s best interest and providing a “fair” chance.

The very existence of the IEP demonstrates that the system is oppressive.  On the one hand, it is supposed to provide an education suited to the individual student but is actually used to enforce conformity.  On the other hand it is only provided for students who have specific types of struggles with school. Does it make sense that only a few students need an individualized program? Aren’t all students different?  Don’t they all deserve their own programs? But most students are expected to willingly conform to the system simply because they can.

The reality is that the students themselves are not the source of our established learning goals.  They are stuck with an education that’s determined by political battles between business interests, parents, colleges, and government bodies.   The debate over teaching intelligent design in schools is an example of this. Although all parties claim they want children to learn critical thinking skills, when it comes down to it, atheists and creationists alike will choose indoctrination to their own paradigm before taking the risk of allowing students to search out the issues for themselves. If the young people are encouraged to critically make up their own minds, they might come up with the “wrong” answer.  And hence, policy is made.

Aside from the problem of coercing all students to be the same, the dysfunctional goals of school are the basis for other forms of oppression as well.  These forms include contradictions to human nature, misalignment with student development, as well as an old-fashioned wasting of time, issues that I will discuss in a later post.  But there you have it. I’m an oppressor. I force kids to sit in a classroom and learn a bunch of stuff they have neither the interest nor inclination for. In many cases they lack the ability.  And just so you know I did it all correctly, my students were suffering the whole time. Huzzah!

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[1] An IEP is an “individualized education program” that is developed for students who receive special education services.  The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), requires that all students who are diagnosed with a learning disability receive an IEP.

Works Cited

Arends, R. I., Wnitzky, N. E., & Tannenbaum, M. D. (2001). Exploring Teaching: An introduction to education. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Jones, J. M. (2012, June 20). Confidence in U.S. public schools at new low. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from Gallup Politics: http://www.gallup.com/poll/155258/Confidence-Public-Schools-New-Low.aspx