Charles Murray, best known for his controversial book The Bell-Curve, begins an essay criticizing higher education in America with a rather provocative premise.

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch.  One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.” The Wall Street Journal

The system caricatured is obviously our current system.  Ironically, we do have a task force in place re-examining higher education.  And perhaps not so ironically, I’m not sure that its goals (pdf) are that different from Mr. Murray’s.

His “revolutionary” idea?  A system of certification tests, modeled after the test required to become a certified public accountant, which would ensure employers that those who passed had some sort of specific knowledge related to the job and would make the origins of that knowledge (be it Yale or the public library) nearly irrelevant.

I have two fundamental disagreements with his proposition.  First, his argument fails at the outset because he fails to correctly understand the purpose of the Liberal Arts education (which yields the criticized BA).  It is not to impart skills.  It isn’t to prepare employees for the workforce.

From the Online Etymological Dictionary (entry for liberal):

Earliest reference in English is to the liberal arts (L. artes liberales; see art (n.)), the seven attainments directed to intellectual enlargement, not immediate practical purpose, and thus deemed worthy of a free man (the word in this sense was opposed to servile or mechanical).

A Liberal Arts education served no practical purpose then, and it does not now.  It certainly may have a positive effect on such aspirations, but since the system was not founded to deliver employees, it should not be criticized for not delivering employees.

But is that to say that university study is a waste of time, as Murray contends?  Or, put another way, might it be possible that there are higher pursuits attainable with a Liberal Arts education than the efficient transmission of skills in preparation for the workforce?

Earlier this year, I wrote about an “educational pipleline” from Pre-K to college proposed by San Antonio Mayor Hardberger.  In the thoughts of politicians and business leaders, one can clearly see Murray’s streamlined, school-to-work type of education plan.  But there is one lone voice questioning the real purposes of education–a high school student who seemed the only one present who really understood the importance of the Liberal Arts to a free society.

Indeed, true education consists not of memorizing facts, but of seeking the truth. No matter what discipline we study, rather than blindly believe what our textbooks say, we must remember to read between the lines. It is essential for instructors to teach students not what is on some standardized test, but to question authority. In my opinion, if students come out of high school knowing one thing alone, that should be to always ask questions.  My SA News

Thomas Jefferson also looked at the subject of education as one of supreme importance, and nowhere did he mention skills for the workplace.

I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength. 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.  Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810

The highest purpose of education is central to the survival of our republic, and has little to do with the President’s or anyone else’s economic goals.  Its real purpose is to “enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.”  In so far as our universities and institutes of higher learning are failing in this account, we may certainly criticize them profusely.

As to my second criticism of Murray’s argument, I see no reason to delve into it further when Spero Consulting has already done such a fine job of it.

education college university higher education liberal arts

Maybe it is just because I’m supposed to be limiting my caffeine intake, but I’m craving a good cup of coffee right now.  Still, I may have found myself a good person to make my future purchases from eighteen months or so from now when I’m back in the market for highly caffeinated beverages like coffee:  Fatbrain Coffee. 

 A group of Polk County kids took a simple idea, used a basic marketing strategy, picked a favorite commodity and is turning profit. The home-based business called FatBrain Coffee is teaching kids ages 8 to 15 the value of a dollar.  tampabays 10

Homeschooled kids.  With a curriculum designed by a homeschooling mother who found it so successful she has applied some of those lessons to herself and is selling the curriculum from her website.

Just one more thing I like about homeschooling:  the ability to do things truly meaningful and productive with a child’s education.

What an odd thing for a principal to say.

“Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed,” said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester, a tough Boston district prone to crime and poor schools. Reuters

It reminds me of that annoying advertisement for Leap Pad. The scary looking guy in the frog suit is hyping how the tag reading system will develop a lifelong love of reading while comparing the system to a “boring” book. “Why would you want to read this?” He asks.

Indeed. Why bother with books? The principal of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Boston, Massachusetts says as much. At least they have a library. Stocked with novels.

And as the opening of the article states:

From online courses to kid-friendly laptops and virtual teachers, technology is spreading in America’s classrooms, reducing the need for textbooks, notepads, paper and in some cases even the schools themselves. Ibid.

I can’t help but wonder something else. What about socialization? Why do we worry about the social development of kids educated at home by their parents, but not about that of kids educated in front of a monitor? Education is a fundamentally human enterprise and as such, human contact…real, not virtual…is central.

What kind of a future are we preparing our youth for as we replace teachers with videos, books with blogs, community with chat rooms?

Don’t get me wrong. There is also huge potential in virtual education, allowing each student to work at his or her own pace, tailoring a unique educational program to each child and providing instant feedback. It offers wonderful opportunities for homeschool families who feel unqualified to teach a specific subject area. But somehow a room of thirty students each doing their own thing on a laptop seems sterile, allowing us to drift even more into a nation of individuals who scarcely recognize their neighbors and for whom community is almost a foreign concept unless it is organized through Facebook.

And that brings me to a quote I’ve been pondering for awhile. Unfortunately, the odd nature of Internet quote sites allows for quotes to be continually spread without source attribution, and the quote itself seems frightfully like something somebody made up and passed around. But whether Plato or some guy at a computer first penned the words, I think the underlying sentiment is valid and important to consider as we move ever more into this digital age.

Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms – they will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between knowledge and light. Plato 428 BC – 348BC (first read at The Difference Between Light and Knowledge)

Do children raised in such a media saturated environment truly grasp the difference between light and knowledge? Between skills and understanding? Between chat rooms and conversations? Between avatars and people? Between virtual reality and actual reality? Or have the lines become too blurred to draw a clear distinction?

homeschool education virtual schools virtual charters

I was leafing through the Learning Resources catalog when I came across an educational toy I knew my children would really enjoy. I mused for a moment how nice it would be to have the budget I had as a school teacher for extras not part of the standard curriculum before throwing it out. Then I noticed the cardboard box our fruit trees had arrived in. And this:

Became this:

The children dug into our school stuff and found the scale to weigh their pets. My daughter asked how to make an Excel spreadsheet so she could make charts for her patients. We don’t have any clipboards, so they found some binder clips and attached them to a piece of cardboard. My son gathered some pegs from another toy and brought them in to use as shots and my daughter used her little dog notepad for an X-ray. They are planning on painting the office tomorrow. They’ve treated every stuffed animal they own as well as the dog for everything from broken bones to rabies.

This also reminded me a little of the difference I see between traditional schooling and home education. When I was a classroom teacher, everything was professionally produced and we taught the children procedures for everything…how to sharpen a pencil, how to sit at the desk, how to play with the new items in the learning center. Education was more like a product, packaged and delivered, to be handled a certain way. And my students learned the objectives.

At home, my lessons are not nearly as polished as they were in the classroom. I forget things and there are always distractions to draw us away from whatever has been planned. But I am not as worried about the external quality of my children’s education as I am about the internal. My highest goal is to inspire my children so that they might pursue their own education, create their own knowledge, master their own environment. Earlier this week, I shared a quote I found from Arthur Koestler which seems applicable.

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

I want my children’s education to be characterized by this sort of creativity and discovery as they take the tools we have at hand and make something new (at least to them). I want them to have ownership of their own learning.

I am not saying that this never happens in a classroom, or that it cannot happen. But for it to occur regularly, students need something that is in short supply in our schools and in our culture: time. Time to get bored and time to start wondering what all they could do with a cardboard box. Time to pursue interests and time to just ponder and reflect.

I like our makeshift education and I think my children have been learning far more than they would have had I just bought them the toy.

homeschool homeschooling education

Cocking a Snook asks an interesting question that I started to answer in her comment box: What can Homeschooling Learn from Our Present Political Stories? It started with some musing about how Ron Paul seemed to unite extremists on both the left and right behind him over on Spunky’s post NEA endorses Obama. I was never particularly surprised by Ron Paul’s apparent unifying ability at the extremes of both ends of the spectrum, but I’ll get back to that after sharing JJRoss’ quote from “The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics & Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire,” by Matt Taibibi:

The Ron Paul candidacy was an extreme example of outsider politics on the left and right merging…retreats from the mainstream that traveled in opposite directions but were parallel in substance….Both groups were and are defined primarily by an unshakable belief in the inhumanity of their enemies on the other side…

I have not read the book and am only reacting to what was shared. I disagree with the assessment, but I think the surprise that people from seemingly opposite sides of the political spectrum were able to so passionately come behind the same candidate demonstrates something deeply wrong with American politics.

The trouble is, we have all fallen into this “unshakable belief in the inhumanity of [our] enemies on the other side.” Conservatives have cast the liberal as public enemy number one. In fact, they aren’t even really liberals any more. They are God-hating secularists trying to push their homosexual agenda. Conservatives, on the other hand…well, we are “seduced by homophobia and a lust for war.” * Or, as Thomas Frank says in What’s the Matter With Kansas (as if voting Republican were some sort of mental illness), we lack the ability to make “certain mental connections about the world.”

Libertarians have long had a difficult time identifying themselves on the Left-Right spectrum of American politics. Because their political views are not so typically defined by the freedom to/freedom from debate that drives so much of the philosophizing against conservatives and liberals. They embrace both, and the libertarian party has long been split by those who vote Republican and those who vote Democrat. For an essentially libertarian candidate to have united these groups is unsurprising. To have attracted a few people who probably have libertarian leanings whether they realized it or not is unsurprising. Realizing that American political views do not really work along a Left-Right spectrum goes along way in quelling the surprise.

To realize that conservatives and liberals have similar goals shouldn’t leave people standing in the grocery store shocked that a single candidate was able to unite despite seemingly polar opposite political beliefs. We all want liberty. Certainly we define it a little differently. Certainly we see differing roles for government. But conservatives do not want to leave children and the elderly starving in the streets and the rest of the nation without health care any more than liberals want to make us all dependent on the welfare state in order to increase their…I don’t know what exactly. I haven’t quite figured it out because I stopped reading that kind of “reporting.”

What has this all to do with homeschooling? Too much, I’m afraid. Julie of Shanan Trail left a comment on my post Homeschoolers Threaten Our Cultural Comfort which rings true to the way we often go about advocating our positions.

Well, I think perhaps some of the defensiveness people feel against homeschoolers is legitimate…I started reading homeschool blogs shortly afterward, there are quite alot of entries that more than imply that the only acceptable educational choice is homeschooling.

And if you need an illustration, here is a nice one from the forum over at OneNewsNow (emphasis and misspelling in original).

My children my choice right? Never will I sacrifice my children upon that alter of mid control and manipulation. I propose bringing against any parent that willing allows thier child to attend a public school up on charges of neglect and abuse. I am raising men and women, not self-centered gender confused diversified evolved sin toleraters.

Is that what we really believe? Charges of neglect and abuse against any parents who let their children attend a public school? No wonder people get a little defensive at the mention of homeschooling. I realize that this is in direct response to the educational anarchy comment by the California Teachers Association, and a few people in the forum were a little insulted by it. But what does this sort of language serve to accomplish?

What certified teacher would read that and be persuaded? What parent of a public schooled child would read that and wonder if homeschooling might be for them? The point of this kind of speech is not to promote understanding, find common ground or really engage the opposition at all. Its sole purpose is to draw a clear distinction between parties and rally supporters behind the “flag.” It is a call to war, not to reason.

All too often, homeschoolers engage the public with the same “unshakable belief in the inhumanity of [our] enemies on the other side” that conservatives and liberals adopted long ago. We engage each other in that fashion, promoting a divide between religious and secular homeschoolers that does not necessarily have to exist. So we are surprised when friendships develop across the divide? As if our views on the origin of life were the dominant theme in our lives?

I am not surprised when I find myself reading secular blogs and agreeing with a lot of what they say. I am not surprised when I find more points of agreement than disagreement with the secular homeschoolers who occasionally participate in the discussion here. We are “polar opposites” to a greater degree than a Republican and a Democrat meeting in a grocery store. But we are parents. With a goal of raising our children in the best way we know how.

What can we learn from the “present political stories?”

Perhaps that we do our own cause a disservice when we march on the public with the same sort of passion that we march on the capitol. That nothing is gained by boxing those we disagree with into a dehumanizing label even as we react to the stereotypes placed on us. That those who appear to be from opposing “camps” very often have similar goals, just a different means of getting there. That homeschooling would get on a little better if we could more effectively engage fellow parents rather than shallow, materialistic people more interested in their careers than their children. Fellow educators rather than purveyors of mind-control and manipulation. Children rather than mindless automatons raised by the state.

* Recorded in Superior, Nebraska by Denis Boyles, p. 14

Update: Dawn at Day by Day Discoveries adds some thoughts.  Blogger doesn’t do automatic trackbacks, and her post is well-worth reading so I’m adding it to the post.

homeschooling homeschool education Ron+Paul conservative liberal libertarian politics

Well, it is graduation season again as evidenced by the messages on balloons sold at the mall.  And the number of calls to graduates to appreciate their education and strive to bigger and better things.  I wanted to share some thoughts, too, but this is perhaps directed more at parents, particularly those with children who have not yet graduated.

We all worry about our children’s futures and often whether we have done “enough.”  In fact, Renae of Life Nurturing Education summarized this perfectly in her comment on The Educational Industrial Complex:

That change affects us greatly, even as homeschoolers. I’ve been chatting with a couple of friends lately who fear that they haven’t done enough this school year. It has been so ingrained in our culture that public school=education that we have to make a conscience effort to fight against it. Otherwise, we will be carried downstream attempting to copy a system.

That is an issue we as homeschoolers often struggle with, more so than the scheduling issues which arise when we are outside the schedule dictating the plans of most Americans with children.  But what is it that will carry a child through the often tumultuous time of early independence?  That gives them the support they need to face a challenge without backing down, to keep going after a failure and to set out on their own path?

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl shares some thoughts in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning:

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears towards a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work will never be able to throw away life. He knows the “why” for his existence and will be able to bear almost any “how.”  (p. 87-88)

Our children need to know things and aspire toward things which are greater than themselves.  They need time to develop a passion, a commitment to something for which they are willing to suffer as they work toward it.  And security in the knowledge that someone is waiting for them.  That has covered the gaps of countless graduates from public and private schools as they enter into fields for which they were not necessarily well prepared.

It can cover any gaps left by home education as well.

When I think of those things which contributed most to my development, it rarely has anything to do with something I learned from the prepared curriculum in my school.  In fact, if I were to write an essay about “What I learned in school,” I think it would contain very little about diagramming sentences and solving quadratic equations.  Perhaps I shall tackle that for next week, but what are some of the things you learned (in school or out) which have led you to where you are today?

And how can we best encourage our children to take responsibility for their own learning, their own education, their own goals?

Paul Peterson, director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, seems to have a coined a new descriptive term for American education although the concept will not be unfamiliar to those who have read John Taylor Gatto: the education industrial complex.

Before the education-industrial complex was erected, America led the world in its commitment to education. From the earliest days of our Republic, many small towns each heavily invested in the community’s students, more so than any other nation. Teachers and students were held accountable to community expectations. Local investments contributed to a vibrant educational system that expanded rapidly, helping to propel the nation to the world’s pinnacle by World War II. Harvard Kennedy School

This “complex” is of course the interrelationships between unions, local school boards, and increasing state and national control of eduction. But one thing jumped out at me in the very first sentence of this paragraph.

Before the education-industrial complex was erected, America led the world in its commitment to education.

Really what has changed is our definition of what a “commitment” to education is. Peterson talks about communities. Local communities which invested heavily in education and expected certain standards to be met. Local investors. Parents who placed expectations on schools, teachers and their own children. A personal commitment of time and resources.

But today? “Commitment” is defined in dollars. How much teachers are paid. How much we spend per pupil. What kinds of technology is available to students. We have expectations, but we place them on the state rather than on our children and those directly responsible for teaching them.

Rather than holding our own children accountable for learning, and remaining involved in our local schools, we pressure the state to “do something.” We pressure the federal government for “accountability.” But we forget that accountability has always existed in American public schools. Because the school systems we support with our tax dollars are accountable to us and they always have been.

But now the education industrial complex has grown so powerful that it questions those who take responsibility for their children’s education. Because we do not have enough “commitment” to public education.

Hat Tip: WorldMagBlog