An article at the privacy rights website Pogo Was Right (“U.S. Schools: Grooming Students for a Surveillance State,” August 28) argues that schools are “grooming youth to passively accept a surveillance state where they have no expectation of privacy anywhere.” Privacy violations include “surveilling students in their bedrooms via webcam … random drug or locker searches, strip-searching … lowering the standard for searching students to ‘reasonable suspicion’ from ‘probable cause,’ [and] disciplining students for conduct outside of school hours …”
“No expectation of privacy anywhere” is becoming literally true. The schools are grooming kids not only for the public surveillance state, but also for the private surveillance states of their employers. By the time the human resources graduate from twelve years of factory processing, they will accept it as normal to be kept under constant surveillance — “for your own safety,” of course — by authority figures. But they won’t just accept it from Homeland Security (“if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear”). They’ll also accept as “normal” a work situation in which an employer can make them pee in cups at any time, without notice, or track their online behavior even when they’re away from work.
This is just part of what rogue educator John Taylor Gatto calls the “real curriculum” of public education (“The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” 1992). The real curriculum includes the lesson that the way to advancement, in any area of life, is to find out what will please the authority figure behind the desk, then do it. It includes the lesson that the important tasks in life are those assigned to us by authority figures — the schoolteacher, the college instructor, the boss — and that self-assigned tasks in pursuit of our own goals are to be trivialized as “hobbies” or “recreation.”
“Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. … Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned.”
Or as Ivan Illich put it in “Deschooling Society,” learning is a commodity properly dispensed by qualified professionals in bureaucratic institutions called “schools.”
The real curriculum includes the lesson that everything we say or do will go on a “permanent record,” which — if we display insufficient deference to authority today — will follow us like the mark of Cain for the rest of our lives and cause us to be blacklisted from opportunities for advancement by the authority figures we encounter in the future.
The public schools teach the lesson that tasks do not carry their own internal logic or rhythm. People are not more productive when they can organize their own time around the tasks they’re performing, and pursue the task without interruption until they reach a natural stopping place. Rather, the work day is most efficiently broken up into time blocks of an hour or so, punctuated by meetings and interruptions. This carries with it the lesson of indifference:
“I teach children not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they do. … I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons. … But when the bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we’ve been working on and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. … Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do.”
In short, the public schools are charged with the task of producing human resources who are docile, obedient and compliant, ready to be used as inputs by the dominant institutions in our society. Their purpose is to condition human beings to the kinds of behavior that the major centers of power in our society require to function.
The good news is, they’re not very good at it. The quality control department wasn’t working too well in my case, obviously. The people tasked with churning out uncritical and obedient human resources, in most cases, are about as competent as the people running all the other large bureaucratic hierarchies — i.e., not very. The contradiction between what they tell us and what our own lying eyes tell us, between what they tell us this week and next week, is enough to produce endless glitches in the Matrix.
A system built on lies is self-contradictory.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, The Real Curriculum of “Public” Education, Alexandria, Louisiana Town Talk, 12 Sep 2010
- Kevin Carson, The Real Curriculum of “Public” Education, Des Moines Free Press, 6 Sep 2010
As <a href="//www.lvrj.com/opinion/16724916.html" rel="nofollow">Judge H. Walter Croskey explained in the ruling that made most of California's home-schoolers into outlaws: A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.
The comment system replaced the quotes in my comment with foward-slashes. The link should be: http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/16724916.html
My children were fortunate enough to spend their early educational lives in a constructivist school that attempted the opposite of John Taylor Gatto's 7-Lessons. They didn't do it perfectly, but I have found my kids asking questions as young adults that I couldn't even begin to phrase until I was in my 30s. An integrated curriculum where all endeavors relate, have purpose, and where the passionate interests stirred up in the students leads them to rev the curriculum up, is wonderful! At times, the teachers were doing more than paying lip service to that overused phrase "co-learners." The most important skill that my kids picked up during those few years was that learning is inherently interesting–if it's boring, that's because they're being failed.
Since then, they haven't been the easiest students for mediocre teachers to get along with.
Just for the record, this is not how all mainstream education is. I don't feel that I was given this sort of authoritarian education. I can imagine a number of reasons, but they all basically come down to privilege. First, I was good enough at book-learning that I could get by even if I often ignored the teacher. My teenage rebelliousness also convinced me that if I was getting straight A's, that I was conforming too much. Still, I was able to stay in the "gifted and talented" classes where the teachers had the luxury of dealing with a class of engaged and capable students without the distraction of students who either didn't want to be there or were not able to keep up with the lessons.
I think that a lot of my teachers were really concerned with our intellectual development. I even remember a few who were dismissive of the "teach to the test" mentality and any other rules that the administration placed on them. Of course, they could only get away with this insubordination because our parents recognized that they were outstanding teachers and would back them up in confrontations with the administration. Of course, I lived in one of the "good" (i.e. low crime, high income) parts of the county, so all the good teachers wanted to be assigned to my school.
Finally, there's the fact that I (and many of my classmates) had the luxury of receiving a lot of intellectual and academic stimulation outside of the classroom.
So, under the right circumstances, the factory school model is not that damaging. Though even in an upper-middle class community, I know that plenty of students found school to be torturous.
My experience sounds similar to ricketson's and I just got out of the system 5 years ago. I was capable of not exerting much genuine effort while still maintaining a high GPA. So school was just a waste of time for me. And a lot of time it was — hours spent dwelling on physics when I ended up with my BA in economics. Of course, the rigid regimentation was there; that's unescapable. It wasn't until my second year of college that I became genuinely interested in anything academic: the writings of libertarian theorists. Up until that point, I had been calling myself a libertarian, but it was all stuff I had thought about on my own and generated out of my conservative upbringing. So the system killed my interests until my interests became killing the system. /life story
I submit that ricketson and Chris George don't have enough time spent as independent (sic) functioning adults to see how much inculcation and indoctrination was in their respective "public" schooling experiences.
It takes some time and contemplation in complete separation from the public school years to see what they were about. And even then, some people won't see the truth. They'll see what they remember fondly, or what their present perspective has skewed for them, retrospectively.
@Carson
I get that you're left and all. But I can't understand your hate for bosses. Yes, they profit from the coercion of the state. But so do poor people who receive social security, government health care or otherwise "leech off of the productive class". If you say anyone who profits from a bad system is guilty, the poor are guilty too. They even vote for more welfare! How dare they!
I think not everyone who profits is guilty and a bad person. It's hard NOT to profit from the system as it is so entangled and woven into itself. If you drive on public roads, you benefit. If you eat subsidized corn products, you benefit. This is the big strength of democracy: Everyone is victim and robber at the same time. So everyone is afraid of losing and everyone is opposed to be called a robber, thus legitimizing the system.
I don't think it helps to focus on one group of profiteers repeatedly, even if you really don't like them. That makes you no better than the "welfare is evil! those people are leeches!"-Palinites and Glenn Beck fans.
There's a bit of a catch-22 involved isn't there. Most of the people running these systems are products of the very same system, so aren't very good at thinking for themselves. And that immediately screws their ability to run that system well, or as effectively as it could be run – fortunately for some of us.
The British public sector isn't even the blind leading the blind, it is the blind abusing the blind. And all under the guise of 'help'.
Thoreau had the right idea about the 'helpful' types: run like hell! (I paraphrase.)
PS I 'stole' your article and published it on my blog – that should get you an extra one view per decade.
Oops, missed a question mark out. Perhaps I should have paid less attention at school. I might have been smarter now.
I hardly see it as a violation of privacy if you make information (knowingly) publicly available on say Facebook, and your employer thinks your lying about why you called in sick and goes looking. If your employer decides to open up an account with a private eye to find out what your doing, THAT is an invasion of privacy. If your employer installs video cameras in your house to make sure your actually sick when you call in, THAT is an invasion of privacy. When an employer takes PUBLIC information which you MADE public, and uses it against you because you are a dumb ass, that is NOT an invasion of privacy, that's just called being a idiot.
Don't get me wrong, I despise facebook for constantly changing their privacy policies, I despise every local, state, and federal government that installs security cameras on anything OTHER then government buildings. I hate traffic cameras, I hate street police cameras (like in England), I hate when businesses willingly give up tapes from their cameras to police without a warrant and the police won't give a reason. I HATE the surveillance state (and I'm 22), but checking someones Facebook isn't an invasion of privacy if they made information available KNOWINGLY.
@Bleicke
If it weren't for private (read: personal/insular) control of production (in other words, bosses) there would be no poor. The propertied classes not only profit directly off the work of the dispossessed, they control access to gainful labor.
So it's not simply that they're profiteers (although you'll have to explain, slowly and with small words, how food stamps are an instrument of class war), they're profiteers who stand in everyone's way and who own the world.
Maybe you commented on the wrong article, maybe you are legitimately ignorant of the class structure in the USA, or maybe you're trolling. Either way, there's your answer.
Rolleyes. I'm not a troll, I just have a different opinion.
You say there would be no poor if there was no private control of production. What are you talking about? If there was no private control of production, it would be public control of production. We all saw how that turned out. 60 million dead peasants disagree with you.
Yes, they're profiteers. But so are poor people with food stamps. How? They vote for more food stamps. See, biggest word was 5 letters, not so difficult. In that sense everyone who votes for more government (read Democrats and Republicans) stands in everyone's way.
I don't understand. How is this socialism stuff still alive? Private property isn't the enemy, government is!
Hating the boss for gaming the system is like hating the poor for gaming the system. Yes, the boss is better at it. But it's just stupid to hate on people for gaming the system they live in.
@Bleicke – Left libertarianism is not about outlawing bosses by means of the state, it's simply about eliminating the privilege that any individual or group gains through the coercive power of the state. Your attempt to equate the scraps given the poor (just enough to keep them pacified) to the largesse enjoyed by the elite at the public trough is both facile and misguided. (btw — If you think the poor are allowed any choices in elections that are not bought and paid for by the elite, you're really kidding yourself.) Our entire corporate-socialist system is geared toward eliminating competition for the big boys by means of barriers to capital access, intellectual property monopolies and corporate-captured regulatory structures. The elite are fattened by subsidies and tax policies, allowed to socialize risk while privatizing profit, able to inordinately reap the benefits of public-funded infrastucture and academia, and have their interests defended with the blood of our underclass. Get rid of THAT welfare, freeing the working class to pursue their own self- and mutual-interests, and the welfare state as we know it will wither on the vine.
The state is NO friend of the common person and that is why we oppose it.
Along with the gradual acceptance of no privacy is the gradual acceptance of armed cops at schools. There's also the now near-universal belief that children must be escorted through their lives by a vigilant security detail and that any parent who lets her child walk downtown or to a soccer practice, unsupervised, is guilty of reckless endangerment and should have her parental rights terminated (when will we start calling them "parental privileges", I wonder). As you and Gatto point out (love John Taylor Gatto!) the most disturbing thing is not any particular right of the child that is being infringed (though that's disturbing enough) but the grooming effect that gradually trains the child to accept this as normal.
@Pat:
I totally agree with eliminating the privileges that any individual or group has through the coercive power of the state.
But then why the hate against "bosses"? All of the bosses I know are not "the elite", they're upper middle class. They work hard and make ok money. Probably more in a free society. The people you call "the elite" are really only CEOs and politicians or the likes. The guy who manages me doesn't bribe politicians. He pays enough welfare through his taxes to feed 10-20 poor people. So in effect, the poor are leeching off of him. But I don't blame the poor, as you blame him.
Let's just get rid of the state and lose the Marxist hate speech against bosses and profit for a little.
@Bleicke – "Bosses," per se, are not the problem. State-buttressed hierarchies that work solely for the benefit of those at the top are the problem. I'm glad you like and respect your boss — in my experience (and I've worked in the public, private and non-profit sectors), many (if not most) bosses are narrow-minded bureaucratic mouthpieces who contribute little to the end product but are first in line to accept credit, especially in larger organizations. Now, that's just me…maybe I'm the exception to the rule.
In any case, ultimately, I have no problem with authority, as such. If I'm on a team with a doctor, a lawyer and a ditchdigger, and we need to figure out the best way to dig a ditch…you know whose orders I'm going to follow. Now, does that mean I want the ditchdigger to be my king (any more than I do the doctor or lawyer)? Hierarchies for a limited scope — cooperative, freely-joined and mutually beneficial — are fine. Hierarchies that are exploitive, coercive and open-ended are not. We live under a hierarchy dominated by a fusion of corporate-governmental might. Now, granted, the middle- and lower-level bosses may be victims of the system even as they are victimizing those below them. But that does not absolve them of personal responsibility.
Finally, you seem to think that this forum is simply a front for closet marxists and sour-grapes whiners against ambition and profit. No one here (that I've read) supports the collectivization of production, the elimination of profit and property or the extermination of the entrepreneurial spirit. On the contrary, we are looking for a way out of the ossified, lumbering, unresponsive and unsustainable state-supported oligarchy that smothers creativity and ambition. If you believe that bosses are bosses and peons are peons because some have been born with an innate gift that sets them above the rest of us, then you shouldn't be anti-statist, because that's the ultimate manifestation of the "divine right" mindset. I, for one, believe that the vast majority of the elite maintain their position, not by their talent, but by the violent intervention of state mechanisms that they control. End that, and let's see what cream rises to the top.
I completely agree. End the state, see what happens. Whatever it is, it will be more moral than the state. Will I like it? How can I know beforehand.
I'm not saying this site is for closet marxists, I'm saying there's a lot of marxist style anti-boss hate speech going on. When you say the low- and middle-management bosses are not absolved of their responsibility, neither are the poor. As I said, in a democracy, everyone is robber and victim at the same time. It's almost impossible to not be a robber and a victim. That's what makes it so hard to fight, because everybody is heavily invested in it.
All I suggest is to drop the marxist speech. If you're not a closet marxist, why talk like one?
@Bleicke – The statist-Marxists responsible for untold misery over the last century have NOTHING to do with the anarchist movement. insofar as Marx appropriated some tenets of Proudhon's anarcho-socialism, which are the roots of libertarianism, you might identify comments here as "Marxist." However, anarchists broke ranks with state-Marxists early on (and were violently oppressed for it). If you equate commentary on the struggle of the masses against an an entrenched state-elite hegemony as Marxist hate speech, then so be it.
p.s. we are sooo off-topic for this article, I imagine we should ease off.
Glad to hear some people had a relatively easy go of it in the government school system. I suspect that you weren't sufficiently rebellious to feel the full force of the iron fist. I graduated over 30 years ago and I can testify to monthly beatings ('paddlings') and daily verbal abuse. Some of us square pegs refuse to be forced into round holes.
Sorry to be a little late and maybe too late to this discussion about bosses and education but you might google John Taylor Gotto and consider his POV on the connection. He's a former 29 year school teacher (local teacher of the year several times and then NY State TOTY the year he resigned) who resigned out of disgust at taking pay to condition kids. His words not mine. His historical research on American education from the education heirarchy itself is most revealing and worth consideration no matter where you stand on the economics question.
Gotto's research leaves no question IMO that our public educational system is not about educating kids but conditioning them and from these ranks will come the human souls who fill the slots the system requires. If you find that a little too dystopian to accept then you may be shocked at the so-called American educational experts and their institutions over the last 100 years that he quotes from and then make your own conclusions.
As always Kevin, tip of the hat to you sir!
"By the time the human resources graduate from twelve years of factory processing, they will accept it as normal to be kept under constant surveillance — “for your own safety,” of course — by authority figures…"
Sounds to me like preparing them to get used to being spied.
My recent post Find All the Courses in the UK by Category
It's good to know that we are practicing security measures in our environment, even in schools. But with this, I guess, it was too much. They are already manipulating one's privacy and its not good at all.
Kevin, great to see so many responding to your article. Your point is well made, another crack in the Wall, to bring a little Pink Floyd reference in here. It continues to astound me the number of ways that our system of public education fails humanity at a global scale. For those who "got through it" – that's great, but the vast majority of humans are pushed through an impersonal, ill-fitting curriculum that has less and less room for customization as costs continue to rise. We need a new system.
I invite you and the others to visit AllNewPublicEducation.com for a discussion of such a new system. I've been asking the question, "If you could start over from scratch, with no preconceived ideas of who, when, where or how, what would public education look like?" I can't wait to hear your answer!
My recent post Let Our Children Go!