On Education: Class Warfare
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Sep 3, 2009 in Commentary • 8 commentsLast November, the public schools in my area took a long weekend. The scheduling of that weekend — it ran through election day — was neither accidental nor coincidental. Its obvious purpose was to free up the time of a large number of government employees so that they could be pressed into service in support of the Democratic Party’s candidates and campaigns, having already spent the previous several months talking up Barack Obama to the students.
There’s nothing new about using government employees to sway election outcomes. Lincoln bent over backward to ensure that Union soldiers from iffy states got furloughs to vote in 1864. His re-election was very much in doubt, but he was popular with the troops.
There’s nothing new about using the public schools as political indoctrination centers, either.
When I was a kid, for example, we recited a loyalty oath to the federal government every morning before class. That loyalty oath — it’s called “The Pledge of Allegiance” and is still, I hear, used in some schools to this day — was written by a flag salesman of the socialist persuasion. Whether he wrote it to boost his sales, his ideology, or both is an interesting question, but there’s no doubt what the oath required. It required the person taking it to denounce secession, something the federal government wanted to suppress in people’s minds as it had recently suppressed it on the battlefield (“one nation … indivisible”), attest to a belief in deity (“under God”), and affirm the facticity of a highly debatable description of affairs (“with liberty and justice for all”).
So, I’m not surprised that the President of the United States would take an opportunity to reach the ear of every publicly schooled child in America, nor do I have any doubts as to his purpose in doing so. He has a vested interest in promoting not only his own presidency, policies and re-election prospects, but the system which got those kids into the classrooms and him into the Oval Office in the first place.
I’m not surprised to see some parents drawing a line in the sand versus his planned speechification event. Nor can I say that I disagree with Steve Newton of the Delaware Libertarian blog when he casts those parent’s concerns as making a mountain of a molehill.
Newton and I do part ways a bit on the big picture, though. We both agree that it’s no big deal, but I add “in the scheme of things” to that assessment, and would like to address that scheme.
“Public schools” means “government schools.” And where government goes, politics follows. If your children attend these schools, doubt not: They will be subjected to political indoctrination from the day they walk into kindergarten (or, these days, pre-K) to the moment they’re handed their diploma.
The tone of that indoctrination may change with the political landscape to better reflect the views of the party in power, but its substance will not.
“Public” schools serve two purposes which have long since grown to overshadow the one they’re sold on (teaching kids to read, write and do arithmetic).
The first of those purposes is to produce citizens who support, at least in its broad outlines, the existing political system. From elementary level social studies through high school history and civics, it’s all Pangloss all the time. The aim is to condition students to regard the existing system as a) inevitable and b) superior to all conceivable alternatives, and to prime them for participation in that system rather than for dissent from it.
The second purpose of the public schools is to produce workers whose skills fit the labor requirements of the political class, both the actual governmental elite and its privileged partners in crime.
Even if it were possible to produce a uniformly high level of erudition in public school graduates, there’d be no takers for the method. Some portion of students must emerge from the system ill-educated enough that they’ll be content to flip burgers and mop floors. In fact, it’s a wonder that real education hasn’t been completely outsourced to private academies for children of the elite yet — some students do emerge from the public education system with knowledge and ambition acquired against every effort the state can marshal to prevent them from doing so.
If you don’t want politics in your child’s education — or, to be more precise, if you want your politics rather than someone else’s — then keep them out of the public schools every day, not just next Tuesday.
President Obama’s planned indoctrination may be a mere molehill, but it’s a molehill on the face of a mountain shot through with such molehills.
Thomas L. Knapp is Senior News Analyst and Media Coordinator at the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).
Minor point: I believe "under God" was added later.
If you're looking for anti-school literature to distribute, try Liberating Learning.
http://nj.libertarianleft.org/downloads/liberatin…
As usual, making it voluntary and optional will rid school of all its evils. Today, as a mandatory institution, there has to be obedience, there has to be walls, there cannot be discussion, there cannot be interest. It's all dead, in a way.
Hey, I survived Catholic schools, so we were doubly indoctrinated. You would not believe what the nuns told the poor primary school kids about abortion at election time. Actually, you probably would believe it.
There is a fine line between teaching people to navigate "the system" and making them love the thing. A good teacher will grasp and teach the difference. The fact that some of us are here is probably due to such teachers.
I have hopes for the Obama event, since his example and words will likely reach people who the system wants to funnel into the less desireable jobs.
The libertarian way would be to give parents (or even the students after a certain age) more say in the matter, letting them chose the school (public or private) regardless of geography and to have the parents serve on an elect the majority of the school board for that school. The left libertarian piece would be to have employee-owned firms have their own schools, if they are sufficient size – or to allow either the employees at large or the parents designate who gets the funds that would be otherwise given to the state for education taxes.
I think making a mountain out of the Obama indoctrination speech is a great idea. I have used it repeatedly to encourage my conservative (paleo- mostly) friends to pull their children out of school that day, or permanently. I see no reason not to exaggerate the significance of such behavior.
Great essay Tom. What you write on pubic education is right on target.
Jim,
Whatever works for you, roll with it!
To me, the emphasis should be on "or permanently."
I'm not saying you should minimize the Obama speech angle, but rather that it's a stronger angle when put into context as a small, single example of a systemic, continuous problem. "Yeah, so this week it's President Obama, and if that's the straw that breaks the camel's back, fine … but keep in mind that last week it was some congresscritter and next week it will be some governor. They ALL want to get their claws into your kids. Pulling them out of that indoctrination chamber for one day isn't enough."
Learning how to think critically was never part of my Catholic school or public school education as a child and from what I observed during the time my son was in public school (grammar and high school) it was not included in the 80s and early 90s either. Had I not been handed a copy of Anthem by Ayn Rand (by a classmate while in study hall as a high school junior), I'm not sure how or when I'd have started my self-education in critical thinking. I began first by questioning the religious "truths" and later the government "truths". Much later came questioning of ideas that even Rand considered correct – the presence and need for government.
Quite correct, Tom, that the purpose of government schools is to keep those voters coming so that government will continue to be viewed as necessary, if not actually desirable. There is little difference between that and the purpose of religious schools – to produce more believers to continue that particular religion. Both religious and government schools aim to produce acceptors and believers, the more ardent the better. Neither one wants real thinkers, since any such would critically analyze what they were being urged to consider as true and only accept as fact that which they could determine had a very high probability of actually being so. The difference between religious and government schools is that the former are totally voluntary to the parents who send their children to them and others who provide money, whereas the latter exist only because the legal threat of physical force enables the removal of money from residents – taxes.
As for anything different about Obama playing politics to children, this seems to have become a popular practice by Presidents in the past 20-30 years. Kissing babies by politicians goes back much further than that, but if the entry at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_kissing ) stating that this practice is "rare or even discouraged, as expressed by the administrations of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and recently Barack Obama" is true, I think that is only because babies are too young to be influenced. These more recent practices by Presidents to play up to school age children is to awe them at an age when awing is possible. I suspect that additionally the photo opportunities that this speaking and/or reading to school children provides was recognized by some earlier presidential press secretary and every President since then hasn't wanted to miss one.
My recommendation for parents and guardians of children is to encourage their children to listen very carefully to what Obama says and to get a transcript of the speech. Then they can review the speech together and discuss what the words individually and in the speech context actually mean – then relate what has been said to their own (child and parent/guardian) individual values. This of course assumes that the parents/guardians are critical thinkers themselves or at least are attempting to become so. This is not a one time exercise but is needed every time one hears or reads the words a politician utters until one realizes that politicians – including Presidents – will say anything that will get or keep them in power. Additionally, the concept of governments provides them with legitimacy because most people have never considered that societal order can be achieved without the existence of rulers, ie government.
**Kitty Antonik Wakfer
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Here's a piece I wrote on the pledge in 1995. It's more "pro-American" in tone than what i would write today (in the sense of obeisance to the Founders and so forth) but it makes the basic points.
Sorry to add to an old thread, but more food for thought…
I hate to point out the obvious, but regardless of where your child goes to school, doing well in any class requires some degree of compliance and concession with the viewpoint presented by the teacher. The more independently minded your child is, the more difficult it will be to excel in school, unless they keep their opinions and understandings to themselves. Parents need to stop deluding themselves and realize it is not the job of schools to enable their kids to think, but rather it’s the parents’. Parents should also teach their kids to choose their words wisely – especially online.