The Death of Education in America
Trump! Mueller! Collusion!
I know: who cares about the education of our kids as the redacted Mueller Report dominates the airwaves on CNN, MSNBC, and similar cable “news” networks?
I care. I spent fifteen years as a history professor, teaching mostly undergraduates at technically-oriented colleges (the Air Force Academy; the Pennsylvania College of Technology). What I experienced was the slow death of education in America. The decline of the ideal of fostering creative and critical thinking; the abandonment of the notion of developing and challenging young people to participate intelligently and passionately in the American democratic experiment. Instead, education is often a form of social control, or merely a means to an end, purely instrumental rather than inspirational. Zombie education.
Nowadays, education in America is about training for a vocation, at least for some. It’s about learning for the sake of earning, i.e. developing so-called marketable skills that end (one hopes) in a respectable paycheck. At Penn College, I was encouraged to meet my students “at their point of need.” I was told they were my “customers” and I was their “provider.” Education, in sum, was transactional rather than transformational. Keep students in class (and paying tuition) and pray you can inspire them to see that the humanities are something more than “filler” to their schedules — and their lives.
Education is often a form of social control, or merely a means to an end, purely instrumental rather than inspirational. Zombie education.
Education is often a form of social control, or merely a means to an end, purely instrumental rather than inspirational. Zombie education.
As a college professor, I was lucky. I taught five classes a semester (a typical teaching load at community colleges), often in two or three subjects. Class sizes averaged 25-30 students, so I got to know some of my students; I had the equivalent of tenure, with good pay and decent benefits, unlike the adjunct professors of today who suffer from low pay and few if any benefits. I liked my students and tried to challenge and inspire them to the best of my ability.
All this is a preface to Belle Chesler’s stunning article at TomDispatch.com, “Making American Schools Less Great Again: A Lesson in Educational Nihilism on a Grand Scale.” A high school visual arts teacher, Chesler writes from the heart about the chronic underfunding of education and how it is constricting CONTINUE READING: The Death of Education in America - LA Progressive
