[This article by Fred DeArmond appeared in 1953]
John Dewey thought he had found a short cut to a system that would train students to think. It has not worked. Says Canon Bernard Iddings Bell: “The products of our schools, for the most part, are incompetent to think and act intelligently, honestly, and bravely in this difficult era.” Surely no more sweeping indictment of progressive education could be uttered. FULL ARTICLE
{ 28 comments }
How to challenge a “civil libertarian” liberal on freedom of education.
I don’t agree.
There are thousands of critics against education, but not the ones you are tlaking about.
First, schooling, the idea, is absurd. They are different and will be different each in their adult and productive life, they shouldn’t be together in factories.
They should be learning what they want, choosing their path, being giving good examples to follow and EARNING MONEY for what they do, as soon as possible.
Tests and exams are absurd, as soon as they know some usefull skill they should be able to put it into practice in the real world and knowing why it is usefull, because they earn money with it! And if they do not ear money with it, they shouldn’t be wasting precious time with it, and specially not when they aren’t even able to take care of themselfs!
The best example would be hackers, and hack-minded people, curious kids who learn because they want, imagine if they could put it into use!
If a kid learn math and language, he is already able to work in a small shop, he can help with the payments, and later in his education he will be wanting to learn more about the trait so he can make more money, learn and understand more about the products they sell, let it be groceries, shoes, suits or computers.
We have forgotten that kids are vulnerable and unable to take care of themselfs, that’s the problem and that’s what education should be pointed at, helping kids be independent as soon as possible. And today, that should be very, very soon! With the technology and the knowledge we have today, their attachment and servitude towards their parents should be an insult! A kid should be selling groceries a few hours everyday, making and earning his own living, being free and choosing what he wants to do with his own free time.
Som many libertaris fall in the fatal arrogance of thinking they know what their kids want or should do, their are adults! They should be if you didn’t treat them like idiots! Why should they be learning history or Plato with 16years? They chould be working, helping in a shop, be it a wall-mart, a computer-mega-store, or as an on-call computer technician who fixes your computer when you asked and pay him to come to your home! Or as a gardener, who will start saving to make his own plantation outside the city and soon open his own shop, or as a cooker.
Socialists and unionist saw youngsters as a threat to their salaries and enslaved them to 20 years of college, the state saw a chance, future adults grown not as a free, independent individuals but as unionists and government receivers of ‘free and public services’.
Parents have fallen in the trap, how can you say servitude to government is bad when you indirectly force your children to serve you and do as you pleases for lots of years? Isn’t it the same as the government taking 5 months of your salary?
Sorry for the grammar.
A school for the 21st Century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School
http://www.sudval.org/
I am a public school teacher. I am at this very moment at a professional development course at one of the high schools in the system. I am looking at a poster on the wall that says “Vote Smart Vote Democratâ€. Need I say more.
agora – I remember how the teachers in my public high school railed endlessly against no child left behind. Many of them tried to get in two or three digs a week, particularly focusing on how much it inconvenienced them and ultimately made it more difficult for students to learn. The other day it occurred to me that many of these same teachers are vehement supporters of legislation which would apply similar principles to the medical profession.
“The final indictment of education today is that it has produced a generation that is uncritical of easy panaceas and a ready prey to the demagogue.”
I think that sentence sums the present day up quite nicely.
I think it is a mischaracterization of Maria Montessori to put her in the same camp as John Dewey and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For one, John Dewey or at least his followers extensively and often inaccurately criticized her methods for being “individualistic,” “anti-social,” “anti-democratic,” or something to that effect. Montessori, whose ideas as presented in her early works are really rarely practiced, believed her method could accelerate education of students using her curriculum – not those of other so-called “progressive” educators. Now, I do believe that some of Montessori’s criticisms of conventional methods were sometimes taken to excess. Nonetheless, many Austro-libertarians are familiar with Objectivist philosophy (to which I am not an adherent) – I think Ayn Rand said she was “Hugo in literature, Montessori in education, and Mises in economics.” Beyond that, her method of education is quite compatible with home-schooling/private education and its description seems akin to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” applied to education – including the establishment of such rules as private property, responsibility, and human respectability.
I still enjoyed the article, though.
Isn’t the Montessori Method considered the Libertarian and Objectivist approach to Education?
Carlos wrote:
“Why should they be learning history or Plato with 16years? ”
I can’t agree with this. Kids will soon enough be thrust into the workaday world. Giving them a merely vocational training may give them a slight edge at first, but it may hurt them in other ways later on, as well as hurt us all politically. Teach a kid how to use the hot computer application of the day, which will be obsolete in 5 years time, and you feed him for five years. Teach a kid how to teach himself, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Besides this, kids should learn something about their history and how the political system works, or they are going to become “useful idiots” for every demagogue who comes along, like Obama. A democracy with universal suffrage and a culturally illiterate electorate, is a disaster waiting to happen.
I’ve never understood the appeal of the Montessori approach to education. Imagine if that were done in engineering. We may not realize it anymore, but the guy who invented the wheel was a freakin’ genius. Imagine if every potential engineer had to literally re-invent the wheel. We’d still be ankle-deep in horse-apples if engineering were taught like that.
And what about math? It took centuries to develop a sane notation for numbers (try doing math in Roman numerals), the idea of the number zero, imaginary numbers, and the calculus. No one person, unless he’s so ingenious he makes Isaac Newton look like a retarded chimp, could possibly re-invent all this stuff.
In short, progressive knowledge is progressive because we can accumulate it. But we can’t accumulate it if we have to wipe the slate clean and start anew with every child.
Whatever he might have said on the subject, the notion that John Dewey was interested in teaching pupils to think is a novel one to me.
Nick Bradley wrote:
“Isn’t the Montessori Method considered the Libertarian and Objectivist approach to Education?”
Rand favored it, so I guess that does make it the Objectivist approach. After all, The Rand could think no wrong.
It is most definitely not *the* libertarian approach. Libertarianism is a political philosophy, and nothing more, not a total life philosophy like Objectivism. I myself am a strong believer in inculcating the basics, especially good reading and writing skills. I also don’t believe that even older children are mature enough to really have a good understanding of what is good for them, so I believe that some transmission of the basics of history, politics, etc. should be done, whether the students appreciate it at the time or not. Enough to make the students be less than completely ignorant voters, at the least.
Why the lumping of Montessori with the progressivists?
Carlos,
“helping kids be independent as soon as possible. ”
Unfortunately, school is designed to keep kids dependent for as long as possible.
Heck, even after I graduated from college, I haven’t learned any marketable skills whatsoever and ended up doing menial jobs and it took me years and years to have a job that is just remotely relevant to my learned “skills” and I have yet to earn a decent salary.
School is a prison system for the kids.
Article distinguishing between Dewey and Montessori:
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/showcontent.aspx?ct=48&h=44
I study computer programming and I found out that the best way to learn is through text-books and reverse engineering many coding examples and source codes.
So teach the kids to read, write and do math and they can learn the rest through text books and reverse engineering.
I must appreciate Russ’ clarification that libertarianism is a political movement that needn’t necessarily endorse any particular educational method (other than non-public or tax-subsidized education) and is not meant as a guide to all activities of one’s life.
My own clarification, however, concerns the difference between the Montessori approach and Constructivist curriculums (especially in Mathematics). “Constructivist” curriculums in, say, mathematics, suggest there is no one proper method of solving a particular problem and not necessarily even one correct solution. Group work is often encouraged in such a way as to socialize the classroom – lazy students do little to nothing, smart students do virtually all. In the Montessori Method, there is considered to be a correct answer and even a proper method to find them. These are taught largely on an individual basis (by the way, Montessori only applied this to young children and mentally disabled children). The teacher is supposed to observe the children closely and intervene when auto-education would be equivalent to “groping about in the dark” or would take far too long.
Essentially, my main concern is merely to de-homogenize Maria Montessori from commonly acknowledged “progressive” education. (David’s link is good place to look for more information.)
Why go to school?
For people who like to think through the important questions in life for themselves, Sudbury Valley stands as a challenge to the accepted answers.
Intellectual basics
The first phrase that pops into everyone’s mind is: “We go to school to learn.” That’s the intellectual goal. It comes before all the others. So much so, that “getting an education” has come to mean “learning” — a bit narrow, to be sure, but it gets the priorities clear.
Then why don’t people learn more in schools today? Why all the complaints? Why the seemingly limitless expenditures just to tread water, let alone to progress?
The answer is embarrassingly simple. Schools today are institutions in which “learning” is taken to mean “being taught.” You want people to learn? Teach them! You want them to learn more? Teach them more! And more! Work them harder. Drill them longer.
But learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you! That is true of everyone. It’s basic.
What makes people learn? Funny anyone should ask. Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle started his most important book with the universally accepted answer: “Human beings are naturally curious.” Descartes put it slightly differently, also at the beginning of his major work: “I think, therefore I am.” Learning, thinking, actively using your mind þ it’s the essence of being human. It’s natural.
More so even than the great drives — hunger, thirst, sex. When you’re engrossed in something — the key word is “engrossed” — you forget about all the other drives until they overwhelm you. Even rats do that, as was shown a long time ago.
Who would think of forcing people to eat, or drink, or have sex? (Of course, I’m not talking about people who have a specific disability that affects their drives; nor is anything I am writing here about education meant to apply to people who have specific mental impairments, which may need to be dealt with in special, clinical ways.) No one sticks people’s faces in bowls of food, every hour on the hour, to be sure they’ll eat; no one closets people with mates, eight periods a day, to make sure they’ll couple.
Does that sound ridiculous? How much more ridiculous is it, then, to try to force people to do that which above all else comes most naturally to them! And everyone knows just how widespread this overpowering curiosity is. All books on child rearing go to great lengths to instruct parents on how to keep their little children out of things — especially once they are mobile. We don’t stand around pushing our one year olds to explore. On the contrary, we tear our hair out as they tear our house apart, we seek ways to harness them, imprison them in play pens. And the older they get, the more “mischief” they get into. Did you ever deal with a ten year old? A teenager?
People go to school to learn. To learn, they must be left alone and given time. When they need help, it should be given, if we want the learning to proceed at its own natural pace. But make no mistake: if a person is determined to learn, they will overcome every obstacle and learn in spite of everything. So you don’t have to help; help just makes the process a little quicker. Overcoming obstacles is one of the main activities of learning. It does no harm to leave a few.
But if you bother the e person, if you insist the person stop his or her own natural learning and do instead what you want, between 9:00 AM and 9:50, and between 10:00 AM and 10:50 and so forth, not only won’t the person learn what s/he has a passion to learn, but s/he will also hate you, hate what you are forcing upon them, and lose all taste for learning, at least temporarily.
Every time you think of a class in one of those schools out there, just imagine the teacher was forcing spinach and milk and carrots and sprouts (all those good things) down each student’s throat with a giant ramrod.
Sudbury Valley leaves its students be. Period. No maybes. No exceptions. We help if we can when we are asked. We never get in the way. People come here primarily to learn. And that’s what they all do, every day, all day.
[ excerpt, "Back to Basics," Daniel Greenberg, The Sudbury Valley School Experience, 1987 - http://www.sudval.com/05_underlyingideas.html#09 ]
“Ayn Rand’s concept of free will is central to her entire philosophy and has widespread significance for education. The acceptance of her view of man as an autonomous individual would bring a dramatic change in the classroom: individual responsibility and self-reliance would replace conformity and social adjustment as educational goals.
Her principle that thinking is volitional is of particular importance for teaching practice. This identification would enable educators to understand: why learning requires cognitive effort, why behavioristic techniques (“behavior modification”) cannot work, why teachers cannot be held solely responsible for the successes or failures of their students, and why it is impossible to instill knowledge or values by teaching methods that bypass the mind. The basis for these insights is one simple, but monumental, lesson from Ayn Rand’s theory of free will: the mind cannot be coerced.”
[ excerpt, "Ayn Rand and Education," Michael S. Berliner, 1982, Ayn Rand and her thoughts on Rational Education,
- http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr005=vqt6kzx6s2.app7a&page=NewsArticle&id=6151&news_iv_ctrl=1069 ]
Raymond T. Walter wrote:
“”Constructivist” curriculums in, say, mathematics, suggest there is no one proper method of solving a particular problem and not necessarily even one correct solution.”
Are you saying there are schools of pedagogy that think there is not necessarily just one correct *answer* to mathematical problems? Yikes!
I apologize if my characteriztion of Montessori methods is wrong. I’m only going by what I’ve read, which may have been “corrupted” by other schools of thought.
2nd Amendment wrote:
“School is a prison system for the kids.”
I was fortunate to have gone to an “exempted village” school system in a very small town, that was not controlled by the state, and where the teachers used traditional methods of teaching (minus the willow switch, although paddling *was* still heard of when I went to elementary school). I have heard stories of big schools that astounded me by their similarity to prisons, though. A friend tells me that his high school had a populace that self-segregated to such an extent that one hallway was considered off-limits to the white students, and a white student took considerable personal risk in entering it during class break while the black students were there. This could not have been unknown to the faculty, but nothing was done. Then of course there are the high schools with metal detectors, that lock the students in all day. I can’t imagine parents sending their kids to schools like these, if there were financially realistic private alternatives. And I can’t imagine private schools operating in any way similar to large public schools. What sane business would do that?
“Heck, even after I graduated from college, I haven’t learned any marketable skills whatsoever…”
I remember having graduated from college and having no idea how things were done in the real world, so I know what you mean. But a piece of paper that says “college degree” is necessary to get certain jobs. My theory of the “higher education” system is that it is not designed to educate at all; it is designed as a giant Darwinian laboratory, where the weak are killed and eaten (or have mental breakdowns, or drop out, at least). When I was in college, it didn’t teach hardly at all; it only filtered out those who hadn’t yet learned to teach themselves. Then at the end, it took credit for the self-teaching abilities of those who managed not to get weeded out.
I note that the progressives didn’t follow their own idea: they merely imposed another top-down curriculum (“a new policy of indoctrination in the classroom”). “Natural impulses” (presumably, some set of actions related to the nature, the characteristics, of each child) wasn’t tried. They just traded kings.
Neither institution resolves the essential contradiction between subjecting a human to an authoritarian environment during the formative years and then expecting him or her to transform into a free individual at graduation. All instincts and habits have grown in a command and control direction: The new adult has little experience with or exposure to “free society” relationships (self-responsibility, mutual aid skills, etc.).
I suspect the separation of education and family may be a fundamental part of the problem (although to some extent this also smacks of “trade the king”).
We had some success with unstructured home (un)schooling. We didn’t “do nothing”: we exposed our kids to a diversity of possible interests, and we watched for and encouraged their interests. We read, let them help at work, helped them make and organize things with friends, etc. We called it child-led learning, not schooling. But I don’t know how to generalize from that to “policy.”
I also see a distinction between the Montessori method and other “progressive” methods described here. I attended a Catholic Montessori pre-school from age 3 to 5, and I was indeed reading proficiently at age 4, and doing multiplication and other mathematics at age 5. Then I went to public school for first grade and my in-class learning came to a near halt. For most of elementary school, my intellectual growth continued through what I learned at home on my own and from my parents, or with books I brought to school to read between lessons. It saddens me to think of the hours squandered during the day listening to boring, repetitive lessons, when I could have spent that time learning more advanced concepts at an earlier age, which then would have freed up more time later to delve into further depth and breadth of topics. It’s especially disheartening when you consider that there is more to explore and learn than one could ever cover in a lifetime.
I think the key point is that like other goods and services, eduction is best left to the market to provide a range of options to the consumer. There is not a singular “best” method for every student; rather it can depend greatly on the student, as well as what the desired end goal of education is for that particular consumer (either the parent as the responsible individual choosing education for a child, or a child who has taken responsibility for himself as described by Rothbard’s concept of self-homesteading.) Rote learning works well for some, while others are more motivated by an analytical approach. Some consumers will choose vocational education and some will choose a more academic path. Some will choose not to purchase formal education at all.
Learning cannot be made homogeneous and remain effective and efficient. One can’t force a person to learn at peak efficiency anymore than one can force a person to produce at peak efficiency. Learning will best occur when it is related to one’s own self-interest, choice and motivation, just as production best occurs when driven by the voluntary associations and self-interest of market participants.
A question that hasn’t been raised is: why should kids be educated from five to fifteen years of age at all? Why can’t the private education market merely consist of courses that anyone can take at any time of their life? Would children be better off if they went straight out into workforce at age five? Maybe children would get a better appreciation of education to secure a better job if they had already done ten years of labouring work for not a great deal of pay? At the very least, the beauty of a private school would that those who don’t want to be there don’t have to stay.
I agree with David. Drilling is not the answer. That is only one, rather inefficient way to get people to learn. The “smart” ones will come through this with their curiosity intact and go on to be lifelong learners, but you loose many along the way.
The real reason for mindless drilling and other “hickory stick” style learning methods is that they are easy for a single teacher to preside over a large group of students with this method. In fact, such methods of teaching lend themselves frightfully well to the teaching of socialistic nonsense.
This is not to say that students should not work exercises. Nor am I saying that the direction of parents and teachers should be at the mercy of the student’s every whim. But there is a difference between drilling someone and pushing someone to succeed in a path they have chosen. In higher education, we tend to realize this: college students pick their own majors (from those offered), choose (within guidelines and limits) the classes they will take, and (again, within limits) when they will take them. Choosing within limits dictated by the needs and rights of others is the basis of a free society. Subservience to authority is the opposite.
We need to stop treating primary school students like automaton that we need to force pre-fab knowledge chunks into, and more like individuals that we need to TEACH. A good teacher is someone who takes the time to see what is going on in the mind of the student, in order to help the student learn. We need teachers in our education system. Unfortunately, we have few. In primary education, we have mostly drill sergeants. In higher education, we have walking computers who spew information in logical (to them) order. (There are a number of drill sergeants in higher education too, especially undergraduate education.)
This is why the best thing we could do for education is to let parents/students pick and pay their teachers. Those who truly teach will get business, and others will move into more productive lines of work.
When we finally give up on our wasteful “public” education system and the flawed economic ideas that support it, it will amaze us how great the results are. We think we live in an era of rapid technological innovation and great cultural and artistic literacy. We haven’t seen anything yet.
Another worried parent visited the teacher because her daughter after four years at school couldn’t seem to do the simplest form of addition. “There’s nothing wrong,” she was assured. “Just wait until the child feels the need.”
Sounds good to me. Why teach a child something they don’t want to learn? I am homeschooling my 5-year-old daughter, who essentially taught herself to read about a year ago, and she has no interest in arithmetic so far. Despite being a college math teacher myself, I find that totally acceptable, for however long it continues naturally.
The libertarian approach would be to homeschool.
Out and about in the world, interacting with people of all ages and backgrounds, learning what the real world is like — not some strange world of children exactly the same age.
Dewey was not about a good education. He was more about control, indoctrination, and more control. It has worked exactly as he wanted, I believe.
No, the libertarian approach is to do whatever you want with your children and money (aside from rights infringements, of course), including everything from no formal education whatsoever to Catholic school.
I have, for quite some time, considered the question of rearing children to be a profound personal paradox. I am quite vocal about my opposition to strict central authority when it comes to adults. However, I am pretty authoritarian when it comes to rearing my children. Largely, that behavior is my attempt to maintain an orderly and peaceful home. Also, I am somewhat motivated by the knowledge that they must encounter later in life.
Beyond my personal reflections and concern over my performance as a parent, this paradox makes me consider more deeply the implications of a radical libertarian philosophy. This essay was critical of the notion that we ought to allow a child to ignore learning certain subjects until they are of interest. Yet that is a likely outcome if libertarian principles were applied to children. Some people would never learn.
Perhaps we should not fear this outcome. For sure, on the other end of the spectrum, there are children who are held back by the regimen. Some people would excel far beyond what they accomplish in our current society. My point, though, is to consider how different society would be if libertarianism were adopted for the youngest people.
Another matter of consideration i indoctrination. People like me, we are critical of authority for adults. By allowing our children to come under strict authoritative control, do we not prepare adults accustomed to central authority? I think that schools are very much a microcosim of society whether it is engineered or not.
Speaking of engineering, one of the concerns of libertarians is that authoritative, centralized education gives opportunity to people such as Dewey who want to impose their ideals on society. Yet, without a structured education, I wonder how many people would be able to resist those influences as adults.
As you may see, I groping somewhat here. This has been a concern in my mind regarding how I personally apply libertarian concepts. Anyway, I remain somewhat open to modifying or amending my ideas on these bases. More likely, I think that I am just perceiving the complexity of the real world.
The goal of government schooling is to make everyone dependent, because dependence is slavery. How about that “unschooling” stuff? Worthwhile?
2nd Amendment said:
“I study computer programming and I found out that the best way to learn is through text-books and reverse engineering many coding examples and source codes.”
You mean to say it’s the best way for you. People learn in different ways.
Case in point. A friend of mine works as an Instructional Designer for a software company. This company makes 3D-based training apps for mechanics, etc. During a recent staff meeting, one of the coders said something to this effect: “Why don’t we just skip the 3D modeling and save resources? We can provide the same information through documents.”
Nuh-uh. People who learn “from books” might tend to gravitate toward careers like programming, but some people — apprentice mechanics, for example — need more of a psycho-motor kind of learning environment. Hands on stuff, or the virtual equivalent such as playing around with a 3D model.
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