Employment and Education

Employment and Education

Preface 

This essay is divided into eight sections, A-H (plus an appendix).  These are listed in the Contents, directly below, and can be read sequentially over time.  Section H still needs some work, as the summary expected in a "conclusion" has not yet been provided there. The section on educational reforms (that originally followed the untitled introduction) has been moved to an appendix, "Educational Reforms and the War Against Teachers", which has been divided into three sections.

Contents
  
A) Introduction
B) Employment
C) How Schools Reflect Society
D) School Teachers as Employees--and an Alternative
E) Formal and Informal Education
F) Some Basic Requirements
G) Lifelong Learning--and Learning on the Job
H) Looking Forward--and Conclusion

Appendix I:  Educational Reforms and the War Against Teachers

 - IA) A Religious Analogy
 - IB) Educational Reforms
 - IC) The War Against Teachers and Public Schools

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A) Introduction 

Despite the title, I will not discuss here the purposes of education, including its role in finding employment.  Nor will I delve into the methodologies of formal teaching or the more general aspects of learning.  Those are topics I have discussed in other writings and will try to take up again, later.  I also will not discuss higher education in the colleges and universities, despite having spent many years in that environment.

I will focus here, instead, mainly on two areas in which I had, later, prolonged direct experience--the public schools in the U.S., and the situations of employees there.  However, I will at times venture beyond these narrow domains.  In any case, this essay is not a scholarly one, based on a thorough study of the history of the fields of employment and education.  Scholars will surely find the discussion here to be inadequate in that regard.  It is based mainly on my own experiences in these areas, during my close to three decades of working as a schoolteacher in New York City.

The opinions expressed here are my own and are tentative.  They are of course biased--because of my particular life experiences.  No doubt, others will have different points of view.  In human matters, there are few absolute truths. The full reality has many aspects.  We each are limited by our perspectives on this.  By sharing our views, we may be able to comprehend that full reality a bit better.

At this stage of my life, I do not expect I will live to see any major changes for the better in the public schools here or in the wider world.  Nonetheless, it seems that I should make some effort to spread around, at least to a few people, whatever insights I gained from my labors in the schools, hoping that I might at least plant a few seeds that will influence things in the future, however marginally.
   

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B ) Employment

In the past, I had expressed my views and listed my positive suggestions about educational reform. The discussion here on that topic has now been moved to an appendix.

Moving away from that seemingly perennial circus, I would like to draw attention now to two larger questions that are probably very pertinent to the educational reform business.

1) When will we move towards doing away with the roles of employers and employees? 

2) Should our formal education still be mainly geared towards making us efficient members of these two groups--the first a very small fraction of the second in numbers, but containing an even tinier fraction whose wealth and power greatly exceeds that of the rest of humanity ?

These are two separate, though related, questions.

Regarding the first, those whom fortune or effort have spared from being either employers or employees may perhaps feel that their lives prove that this question has already been answered: This movement has already occurred.

And those who have been relatively untroubled or satisfied or even highly content in these roles may think that such a question is absurd.  To these I ask: how many of the billions of humans currently on this planet are in your fortunate positions?

Regarding the second question, many may again rightfully object to such a question being even asked.  If formal education fails to equip students with the skills needed to survive in our current environment, is it not doing them a great disservice?

I understand the reason for this question and empathize with those who ask it. In our current situation, such training, oriented towards securing employment or otherwise surviving economically and so also physically, surely needs to be part of formal schooling.

Two further questions arise, however.

a) Those who look towards an ever more rapidly changing job situation in the future, as job skills quickly become outdated, may ask how such a preparation is even possible any more. Surely, the employment-oriented training can no longer be purely job-specific, at the school or even after-school stages, but needs to be far more flexible and general, giving students the skills to adapt to this situation of constant flux in the job market.

b) But for me, there is an even more important question, which I will return to in the section on lifelong learning and learning on the job.

And it is this: why should we accept what is purely man-made as inevitable, even when it is clearly not something that promotes human happiness, but rather guarantees ever increasing misery, in multiple ways?

What humans have wrought, collectively, can we not also change, collectively?  Should we be content to be as the fabled lemmings are, unable to halt our stampede towards annihilation? Are there no alternatives to this insanity?

This employer-employee situation is a relatively new one in our evolutionary history. It did not exist for most of our very long prehistory as humans. It only commenced, after the advent of intensive, settled, grain and tuber agriculture, with the brigandry and extortion that led to the creation of the landlord hierarchies and the empires.

However, the employment trap did not directly snare most of us until about two and a half centuries ago, with the spreading of this device or instrument of servitude beginning in earnest with the commencement of the industrial revolution.

Even if we count peasants as employees of landlords, this employer-employee system dates back at most to a few thousand years--and for many of us to just a few centuries.

But this would still be a stretch, as the whole landowning hierarchy, all the way to the emperors, operated more like a huge protection racket, with the actual producers of wealth--the peasants working in the fields--being largely left alone--except at the tax collection times, usually following harvests.

The current, much more closely supervised and dependent relation most of us are now in, as employees, only became widespread over the last two centuries. It has captured most of us (such as those living in China and India) only over the course of far less than a century.

This occurred as wealth, followed by what had become labor, drained from the rural villages to the cities--and from these to the global hubs of finance (which were earlier also the centers of colonial empire).

Of course, earlier, the thugs, tax collectors, soldiers, sailors, servants, construction workers, artisans and others, who had depended on pay from the rural landlords and their masters, or from the big traders, had become employees, to various degrees. But these were still only a small fraction of the population.

I am of course skipping over the sordid, murderous and very economically significant history of physical slavery of various kinds--a history that has still not ended.

Let me end this section with this question, a difficult one that will have to be answered. If indeed we want to do away with the employer-employee paradigm that has arisen fairly recently in our cultural history, what should we replace it with?

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C) How Schools Reflect Society

The assignments of numerical scores and rankings to students can be traced in part to the needs of industry and commerce and in part to the needs of government--perhaps most clearly seen, in the past, in the civil service examinations of the Chinese empire.

The emphasis on speed (and, more generally, "efficiency") can be traced directly to the needs of the factories. The mass production systems of the factories were reflected in the formal schools.

These schools had roots in religious schooling for priests and monks, on the one hand, and in the training needed to get the skills and time-discipline needed to be efficient workers in the factories and in business and government offices, on the other.

The schools for military training also contributed to what emerged later as the model for most of our schools today, the world over.

So we see that the schools have reflected the societies in which they were instituted. It seems to me that those who wish to better the situations of students and teachers in the schools need to bear this fact in mind, while not allowing that to detract from paying attention also to the practical details of the many mundane tasks the schools have been charged with.

There is a tendency, even within the schools, to use the state of society and the weight of our troubled economic and social history as excuses for not addressing these practical details that affect, firstly, the learning and so also the lives of students, and, secondly, the work and morale of those who are trying to teach in the schools.

The reason that the situation in many of our schools is an impossible one is in part because the pathologies prevalent in society enter into the schools and in part because little heed has been paid by those with grand visions to the basic, practical needs of the schools.

I am not talking here merely about the physical resources or the student to teacher ratios, important as these are. I would like to emphasize more the basic, commonsense environment and attitude needed for teaching and learning to proceed.

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D) School Teachers as Employees--and an Alternative

Part of this analysis involves examining the hierarchical structure and the lack of feedback and correction mechanisms that tend to prevail in large institutions, with factory-type production plants. These are based, of course, mainly on the employer-employee relationship, operating in a top-down manner, with managerial or supervisory layers that typically function, among other things, as one-way valves.

Paycheck-and-benefits dependent employees, much like soldiers, are expected to follow directives and orders, no matter how stupid or even lethal, with little room for questioning, feedback and correction.

We might do well by restoring a little bit of respect for teachers, students and parents, rather than treating them as fools.

More generally, what could eventually replace the employer-employee duality that has increasingly plagued us for the last few centuries, with its inherent inequities?

I have no simple answer to this question.

Some may point to the cooperative model. In the case of the schools and colleges, one can envision cooperative enterprises run by educators.

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E) Formal and Informal Education

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A Clarification of Terms Used

Deviating from usual practice, we will often use the words "learning" and "education" interchangeably.

We will, however, try to distinguish between the following two sets of terms:

 1) "formal learning/schooling/education";
 2) "informal learning/education".

We will use the first set of terms to refer to learning in a structured environment, usually with designated teachers either present or else playing some active or background role.

Regarding our use of the latter set of terms and the relation between the two sets, let us reproduce here some text from Appendix IB (Educational Reforms).

"Until fairly recently, formal schooling was seen as no more than a topping on the far more important informal education that we all received, via family and community.

This included the acquisition of our first language and our first ethical and philosophical framework, as well as all the acquired physical, mental and social skills needed to survive as members of a social species."

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Those looking at the potential of modern information processing and communication technology, and the advents of AI and machine learning, may have their own answers to some of the questions raised here--or may dismiss most of this discussion as hopelessly outdated.

Some may see the emphasis shifting to students being more active, self-directed learners who utilize educational resources, both those available online and those available in the schools, including teachers.

This sounds good in principle. Does this not reflect how informal learning has always proceeded, including in the acquisition of the first or even second languages?

In practice, we run into difficulties. Humans have their specialized disciplines--those of the priests, scholars, scientists, artisans, artists, engineers, doctors, surgeons and more.

There were reasons why schools were set up to teach Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin, Classical Greek, Classical Arabic, Chinese ideographic writing and more. There were reasons for the military academies. There were reasons for the long apprenticeships in the crafts and arts--including in classical music, dance and the martial arts. These preceded the factory schools--which also had their purposes.

There is a level of understanding and basic proficiency that can be reached by the serial reading and working out of exercises in the chapters of a well written physics textbook--be it on paper or on-line--with help when needed from a caring human being proficient in the subject. This level cannot so easily be attained via bits and pieces read or watched via rapid, self-directed or casually assigned searches on the Internet--however useful these may be at a later stage.

So it is not so simple. Formal education has its place alongside informal education, and formal education has certain commonsense requirements that need to be met. I will discuss some of these in the next section.

Informal learning is in fact even more important, especially in the early years. Formal education is built on informal education and cannot proceed without this as its base. It is merely the icing on the cake.

Yet this essential, early, informal learning, long mainly the province of the family and community, has been disrupted by the increasing demands of employment and by the atomization of our communities.

The Internet, including social media, cannot be a replacement for this. By design, these new media are both far too distracting to allow for quiet, sustained focus, and far too addictive.  Too often, they isolate us even further from our immediate environment--that of humans, other species and the land, water and air around us.

This is the local environment of laughter and tears, of hide-and-seek, hopscotch and kite-flying, of singing and dancing, of learning to cook and clean, of assisting a sibling or a grandparent, of listening to stories from aunts and other elders, of watching the ways of the wild things and tending to the domestic beasts, of climbing trees, scenting leaves and tasting plucked fruits, of seeing the dawn, the sunset and the myriad stars of night…

Many of these things, which children enjoyed and learned from over the ages, are now no longer available to them in the cities, in which more and more of us live very isolated lives.

  

We are, by our biological and cultural evolution, equipped to be members of a local, social species. When we become isolated from this local environment, we tend then to develop all sorts of pathologies.  The schools have acted, among other things, as very imperfect substitutes for our lost communities. They still cannot substitute for parents or their other human equivalents.

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F) Some Basic Requirements

As a teacher with many years in the classroom, I will try to list, but not elaborate on, some old fashioned, commonsense basics that would make teaching and learning in the schools much less stressful and much more likely to be successful.

These do not require huge expenditures, new technology (which is always welcome as a supplement) or any great retraining of teachers.

Learning and creativity take place most readily in a state of relaxed attention, free of distractions and stress. Sadly, for a number of reasons, this ideal situation is a rarity in too many of our schools and homes. We need to publicly acknowledge this and then work to address this.

In a good environment, the human interactions, including the spontaneous births of humor and affection, make the work of learning and teaching much more enjoyable.

For most of us, the learning of subjects such as Calculus, Chemistry or Carpentry (or C.A.D., if you object to the learning of the third craft--ancient but still practical) needs, ideally:

- motivation or purpose;
- physical resources;
- sequence
- time and pacing;
- focus;
- diligence;
- questioning and exploration/play;
- feedback and correction;
- comprehension in various ways;
- small successes and satisfactions;
- persistence and practice, leading to familiarization and habituation;
- application, connection and creative extension.

These things, combined, help make what has been learned part of our seeing, functioning and being.

In practice, we may have to be content with forgoing quite a few of these.  However, for each thing that is lost, there is a great price to be paid.

In many of these things, the guidance of a subject-proficient, caring human--a teacher--is a great help.

The mutual attention and respect that is needed for sustained, satisfactory human interactions should also preferably be present between students and teachers, as also between students and between teachers and others.

What I have listed above should be taken merely as the suggestions, born from experience and reflection, of a sincere, humble practitioner, necessarily limited by his own education and experience. I would hope other teachers would also offer theirs.

Each of the topics listed above does need to be discussed in detail.  However, I will not attempt any further elaboration on these topics here.  I had done that repeatedly, while still teaching, long ago, without achieving much traction.  Let me just note here that many of these elementary yet vital things have been badly neglected over the decades.  They really need to be attended to.

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G) Lifelong Learning--and Learning on the Job

Humans, even more than most child-rearing social mammals and birds, are, by evolutionary nature, very good at learning and teaching.  We may be a pioneer species in our rate of cultural innovation and diversification.  This has, in our case, greatly outstripped the rate of biological evolution.  This has worked to our advantage but has also placed us under increasing stress.

We are now constantly told that we must be lifelong learners.  We always were so, but this was not by demand, but rather by inclination.  We enjoy learning.  However, learning under pressure can be very stressful.  We are much more relaxed and effective doing things with which we are familiar than when doing things which are novel—especially if these are complex.

In the not so distant past, formal schooling, if it at all existed, was a relatively brief affair.  Nowadays, here in the U.S., 13 years in the schools, K-12, may still not be enough.  Further formal schooling must often be completed before one can get a suitable job—or otherwise sustain oneself and one’s family.  So one can easily spend a good or even major fraction of one’s life in the schools and either the colleges or the training and certification programs—and still not be done.

This writer's spouse returned to college in her mid 60's, while still working at her full time job. She cannot quit the job to be a full-time student, owing to certain mundane but vital considerations--such as income, health benefits for herself and her family, and her future pension and social security incomes. So she still has several years of college left to complete, building upon the years she had spent, while also working full time, in her youth.  Such things, if purely voluntary, would be a cause for celebration. Too often, however, they are not.

The amount of material one has to learn keeps increasing in quantity and complexity.  One is also expected to learn much of this at an unnaturally rapid rate.

Again, in that not so distant past, after a certain period of apprenticeship, one could be a skilled worker or professional, utilizing—and hopefully perfecting and extending—what one had learned during that apprenticeship.

Alas!  Those days are gone forever.  Our jobs are increasingly outsourced, off-shored and automated, as employers seek to reduce costs and increase productivity, so as to increase or maintain profits—or just stay in business, as competitors do the same.  Those of us who still have jobs often have to do far more work, for the same or even lower pay, under even more stressful conditions, with less job security.  They also have to adapt to continually changing demands, and to keep pace, especially, with constantly changing technology.  Those who cannot do this often lose their main or only source of income.

It is one thing to learn for the love of learning, to hone a practiced set of skills or to extend these, or to be creative with those skills.  It is quite another thing to be reduced to a perpetual novice, struggling to comprehend and become proficient in things that have been conjured up by distant teams of engineers and marketers.  Too often, these are seemingly magical black boxes, neither transparent in their workings nor locally reproducible from scratch.

If Arjuna, so skilled as an archer, were told that he must set aside his bows and arrows, which to him had become extensions of his limbs, and were forced to then take up musketry, only to be told, a year later, that he must abandon this and compete with the young laser men, we might well imagine his chagrin.  How much more difficult then, it must be for an engineer, in middle age, to “retool” as a lawyer, or something equally remote from his field of expertise.

As wealth drained from the villages to the growing cities, many of our ancestors left their villages to seek sustenance in those cities—or even in faraway, foreign countries.  In doing so, most of them fell into the trap of employment.  Nonetheless, they must have been relieved that they had escaped from having to beg to survive.

It seems that we are now being finally released from that trap!  But we are being released unwillingly, as our learned skills, acquired through our education and experience, become outdated.  Just like the mill-workers and peasants of the past, we are being replaced, more and more, by machines that are not only able to produce, without rest, much faster than we can, but are also, in certain ways, much smarter than we can ever hope to be.

We have here to ask ourselves a basic question, which can be formulated in various ways.  Are constant innovation and new technologies truly requirements for human happiness and survival—or are they threats to both of these?  Are we born simply to race to serve the demands of Mammon, amplified by the wizardry of men and machines—or can we choose to opt out of that race and that service?  Are we meant to be slaves to the power of wealth and technology, or can we still be free?

If one has answered that question differently from what appears to be implicit in our collective behavior, then we have next to ask ourselves how we can work, individually as well as collectively, to escape this enslavement and the catastrophes that it leads to, to find again our freedom and ensure the survival of our species, along with the myriad others still left on this planet.

  

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 H) Looking Forward--and Conclusion

The Marxists, anarchists, feminists, primalists and others may have their own takes on the issues I have discussed here, as may the U.S. libertarians, the enthusiasts of free markets and of globalizing capitalism, etc.

However, surely the opinions of students, teachers and parents--the ones affected most directly by educational policies--should be important inputs in the formulation of policies on education and also at all times during the implementation of these policies.

I would like to reiterate that, from the point of view of our human evolutionary history (not only biological but also cultural), both the employer-employee duality and the formal schools are very, very recent developments. To a lesser degree, so is the formalized teacher-student duality.

All of these things may dissolve in part and be retained in part. What occurs will not be by divine decree or by the inevitable workings of natural laws. Nor will the shape of things to come be determined solely by the seemingly almost unstoppable, combined force of industry, commerce and finance, limited only by the constraints of a collapsing biosphere, catastrophic wars and social chaos--unless we allow the first of these to be the main determinant of our future and accept the other three disasters as inevitable corollaries.

To prevent these disasters and to move collectively towards a saner society, we need to question some of the basics of the growth-oriented economic system, which has provided many of us with an increasingly wider range of cheaper goods and services, but at great costs to humans, other species and the physical environment.

In particular, we need to question the need for ever increasing rates of consumption and production, and we need also to try and regain a greater measure of local and economic self sufficiency. All of this means going against and reversing the tide.

This is fine as an academic exercise, but is perilous in practice, given the great momentum of the global economic juggernaut and the complex entanglements that governments, corporations, communities and individuals are caught in.

Arjun Janah 
2018 October 18 
Brooklyn, New York
    
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Appendix I) Educational Reforms and the War Against Teachers

As a former high school science teacher, I look with some skepticism at the directions in which basic formal education, which has always had its strengths and weaknesses, is headed.

Surely, many changes in the schools, instituted over the years, have been beneficial for the students in those schools. However, too many have either distracted from the work at hand or have actively harmed far more than they have helped.

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IA) An Analogy with Religion

Analogies have their uses and their limitations. I will resort to one here, apologizing in advance for any slighting I might seem to give to various religions or other creeds that readers may have allegiance to.

Let me say that (almost) all of the creeds mentioned below have had their clearly benevolent or beneficial aspects, as evident historically.  Unfortunately, all of them have also had clearly malevolent aspects.  I will not discuss the helpful aspects here, but I will touch upon the harmful ones.

It is almost as difficult and perilous for a teacher, even a retired one, to argue against the adverse effects, on students and teachers in the classrooms, of many of the educational reforms that have swept through the schools, as it once was for a formerly tribal person in India to argue against the caste system that had been imposed upon him or her by the advance of Hindu-Aryanism, or for a "pagan", "heathen" or "kafir", converted under duress to Christianity or Islam, to argue against the precepts of those Judaic religions.

The oppressions in both these cases were both physical and psychological.

Setting aside the physical violence and intimidation that usually accompanies subjugations and forced (rather than free) conversions, let us turn to the psychological conditioning.

The Hinduized tribals, absorbed as a menial caste of low social status, became convinced, over generations, of the superiority of the "higher" castes, being content if they could find yet "lower" castes to spit upon in turn.

They had been successfully infected with a "virus of verticality", as it were, and were now active agents of its propagation, ensuring its persistence--and so also the stability of the caste system, the dominance of those at the top, who benefited most from it, and the misery, yet acquiescence, of those at the bottom, who suffered the most.

So also, those converted to Christianity and Islam, freely or by force, became pious and dutiful sons and daughters of Abraham, assured that their ancestors had been under the spells of evil witches and wizards who were in league with an even more evil Satan. So these were seen to have deserved the grisly or fiery fates they had been assigned to by the piety of the enlightened conquerors and/or converters.

These converts too had acquired a virus--that of doctrinal intolerance, with their one superior and highly insecure patriarchal god (who brooked no others) and his purported doctrine (from which there could also be no deviation). Blasphemy and heresy were now the weapons by which the zealots among the converts bludgeoned and dispatched any resistance to this virus.

We see the same conditioning imposed in the name of patriarchy, European colonial rule, fascism, communism, free market and globalizing capitalism, scientific rationalism and materialism, etc.

Past beliefs and practices, along with the believers and practitioners, are demonized and systematically eradicated. There is no provision, usually, for diversity of opinion or practice. This is much more so in the monotheistic faiths and their later political and economic counterparts. Of course, the degree to which this occurs can be moderated or intensified by various factors.

This is also what occurs in the schools, in the name of both established educational practices and in the name of educational reforms.

Many teachers in the schools may privately voice concerns about the directives already long extant or being newly issued in the schools.

Some may be concerned about how things are. However, by adaptation, most teachers have ceased to question that, however irrational or unjust certain things may appear to a newcomer.

Many more may be perturbed about major changes--both because of the discomfiture caused by any change from accustomed routines and practices and because things novel in this way are often looked at more critically--making their flaws more evident.

But most teachers are leery of publicly voicing these concerns, in venues such as school-wide faculty meetings--and even in department meetings.

This can surely be traced in large part to their being employees, who do not want to irk their bosses, and in remaining parts either to apathy, to the herd mentality or wanting to be a "team player".

But there is more.

Practicing teachers are rarely equipped with the tools to argue against the dictates that are handed down to them through their supervisors, and even less with the theoretical grounds for these, which often originate in academia.

The teachers' muted protests are at times shot down by some of their own colleagues, who have expeditiously versed themselves in the latest academic or pseudo-academic verbiage that is flooding the schools and have also adopted the accompanying rationales, without truly questioning the assumptions on which they are based or their ranges of validity.

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IB) Educational Reforms
  
I will not venture here to argue on the specifics of each reform. At the risk of seeming far too vague, I will not try to substantiate the charges I make in this section with anecdotes, examples or numerical data.  Instead, I will only outline here the general situation regarding K-12 educational reforms in this country, as I see it.

At the end of the previous sub-section (An Analogy with Religion) I had pointed out that teachers face certain barriers to public discourse on education. I had explained how these obstructions are set not only by employment but also by psychological conditioning and intimidation. I hope that, by having done this, I have helped set the stage for other teachers who read this to breach those barriers and supply their own particulars. I believe that they can do this in legion.

This is not to say that all of the attempted reforms of K-12 education in this country (the U.S.) have been ill-intentioned or without merit. Some reforms have been based on valid, useful ideas. However, by turning certain good ideas, with some limited utility, into general doctrines or dogmas, the reformers often made these potentially good ideas into very bad ones.

The underlying problem has usually been that these attempts at educational reform lacked in perspective and tolerance what they had in claimed innovation (too often, recycled and repackaged pablum) and in hubris.

As a result, more often than not, the babies were thrown out with the bathwater.

In this regard, these waves of reforms have indeed been like the highly destructive advances of the great proselytizing religions, once these had become organized and had obtained the backings of the kings and emperors.

Until fairly recently, formal schooling was seen as no more than a topping on the far more important informal education that we all received, via family and community.

This included the acquisition of our first language and our first ethical and philosophical framework, as well as all the acquired physical, mental and social skills needed to survive as members of a social species.

We have seen many attempts to reform formal schooling, based on varying ideas of what it should or should not be. Almost invariably, these have been imposed on the schools, and so also on students and teachers, in a top-down fashion.

There has been little provision for input from students, classroom teachers and parents in the formulation of educational policies. Nor has there been much provision for feedback and modification/correction, from these most-affected parties, in the implementation and practice of these policies.

In this regard, this has been as if the occupants in a vehicle had no choice in setting its destination, and were also assigned drivers who were simply given orders and were then fitted with blindfolds and earplugs.  It is little wonder, then, that there were repeated crashes, even lethal ones.

Sadly, but perhaps predictably, these disasters were usually addressed, if at all, by yet more "reforms" of the same type.  Too often, the truly vital issues and hard problems were not publicly acknowledged, let alone effectively addressed.  Precious time and energy were diverted, instead, into issues far less vital.

The old, underlying problems continued to fester, as newer layers of problems were created and overlaid on top of these. So the confusion, chaos and dysfunction were further compounded. This in turn was used to justify further accusations made by both the political right and left against the public schools and to call for yet more educational and structural reforms (including privatization) to further their agendas.

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IC) The War Against Teachers and Public Schools

Over the past few decades, here in the U.S. and apparently also elsewhere, there has been a lethal emphasis on incessant standardized tests administered to students, as well as, more lately, on the even more incessant and pernicious evaluations of teachers based on certain standardized "rubrics".

There is a place for standardized examinations and for evaluations of teachers. It is far more important, however, to provide help and support, as needed and asked for, to both students and teachers. They also need to be left in peace to do their respective jobs, which are far from easy.

This misguided emphasis on testing of students and evaluations of teachers have helped kill much of what remained of the enjoyment of teaching and learning in the schools. Sincere students have been put under unnecessary, debilitating stress. Sincere teachers, often also under such stress, have been increasingly robbed of whatever independence they had, being deprived also of the chance to develop and practice their individual teaching styles.

This is a repeat of what happened to artisans, with the advent of the factories.

At that time and repeatedly after that, there had been financial considerations driving the changes.  So also, the destruction of the teaching profession (already underway through things such as the misapplication of precepts lifted from educational psychology) has been greatly accelerated by financial forces.

In the U.S., "school reforms" are being used to drive out the teachers with seniority, with these being replaced by those who cost less. In the "right to work" states, unionized teachers have been replaced by others. This is, of course, part of a wider, anti-labor agenda.

This is playing out in different ways in the Republican and Democratic states.  In some Republican states, the teachers' unions have basically been busted. In some areas, the public schools have effectively been privatized. Throughout the country, the drive for privatization, led by the Republicans, has taken over the charter school movement. This has also received active support from many Democratic politicians at the federal and state levels.

Meanwhile, the longstanding and still remnant strengths and successes of the public schools have been ignored or dismissed.

These continuing strengths and successes have been truly remarkable, given the continuing deterioration in the working conditions in the public schools. They have been based mainly on the focused labor, perseverance and humanity of sincere students and teachers, often working in very difficult conditions.

If one has served as a school teacher in a typical urban public school for a while, the chances are that one has learned, perforce, the virtues and perils of humility. Sadly, this quality has been too often lacking in those who criticize the public schools or push for doctrinaire reforms, without bothering to directly experience and so to better understand the realities that exist in these schools and in the surrounding society.

--------------------- The End ----------------------

Two Modes of Thought

Two Modes of Thought

I will describe here, at some length, what will appear to most readers to be rather obvious: that we, and probably many other animals, have at least two easily recognizable modes of thought.

The two modes are not mutually exclusive. They are, nevertheless, complementary. Each mode has its strengths and its limitations, and we normally call upon each as needed.

I will give several examples of each of these two modes of thought. Mainly towards the end, I will briefly touch upon how the existence (and so also the properties and importance) of these two modes is increasingly ignored or neglected in our schools, and on how this affects the education of our students.

Readers who are interested might also want to read the discussion between Peter Isackson, Sherman Pridham and myself in the comments section of one of Peter's Facebook posts, the one at:

https://www.facebook.com/pisackson/posts/10155537957769481 

-- Arjun
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We can walk and chew gum at the same time. And some of us may even be able to juggle balls while doing so. But most of us cannot thread a needle while riding on a galloping horse, or learn the calculus while playing ping pong.

There are  modes of thought that are in some ways analogous to ways of seeing. As we walk or drive, our vision takes in many perceived objects and movements around us at the same time. We are aware of all of these simultaneously. This is as "non-sequential" as we get, perhaps, in our perceiving. In the language used for computers, our eyes and brain are "parallel processing".

However, this is a relatively diffuse awareness, very sensitive to movements in the periphery, but without sharp focus on any one object or movement.

If we wish to thread a needle, or shoot an arrow at a target, or avoid hitting the person crossing the street in front of us, we switch to a different kind of vision--that of central focus. The rest of the field becomes more of a blur, which we ignore in relation to the object of our attention, which stands out in sharp, precise detail.

It is the same with thought.

When we first learned to drive a car, especially a stick-shift (manual transmission) car, as some of us will remember, we needed to put our full, conscious attention on each action--including (for stick-shift vehicles) steppping on the clutch pedal while releasing the gasoline (accelerator) pedal, and going through the complex spatial arm-motions of manually changing gears.

We also had to focus on controlling our speed by using the gas and brake pedals, while steering and avoiding other cars, etc. Many of us probably found it difficult to do all of these things at once; we tended, instead, to focus on each immediate or primary task, while losing partial sight of, and so also full control over, the others.

The whole thing was rather daunting, though surely also exhilarating in its way. Adrenalin levels were high, we clutched the steering wheel tightly, and we could only do this for a while before being exhausted.

If we had already watched our parents or others driving, or had driven toy vehicles as children, this first experience of driving an automobile on the roads might have been less stressful and more successful.

But after we had driven for a few months, definitely a year, we might have climbed into our car after work and then thought freely about this and that as we drove, seemingly effortlessly.  We might then have found ourselves, almost miraculously, home, with little conscious memory of how we got there.

As we were driving, we might have been thinking about other things that concerned us, looking at the things we were passing by on our route or otherwise occupied. Yet we took all the correct turns and did all the other things needed to get from our workplaces to our homes--doing all of this without much conscious effort--unmindfully, as it were.

What had happened was that we had been able, by practice, to delegate all the main sub-tasks involved in the task of driving a car to parts or modes of our body-mind that did these in parallel, with speed, and without need of fully conscious monitoring and correction. So our conscious focus gave the "top-level" command, so to speak, "Go home.", and the "mechanical" parts of what was needed were carried out smoothly and rapidly at "lower levels".

This left the conscious focus free to attend to other things, including vital ones--such as noticing that there was someone (nowadays, perhaps with a cell phone in hand) stepping into the street ahead of us.  We could then take appropriate action.

In the absence of such urgent demands on it, the conscious focus was able to dwell on other things, including on past events and future plans, or simply on the experience of observing and being.

We can see the same shifts occurring, over time, when we learn to play a ball game--and go from being a complete novice, trying to get the bat to connect to the ball, and then, once that is mastered, trying to direct the ball. It is only much later that most of us reach the stage where we swiftly notice a weakness or opening, and seemingly "will" the ball towards it.

All that is needed for what follows is, at this stage of experience, carried out smoothly and subconsciously at speed, with the conscious focus left free to observe and strategize.

It is as if the bat and the ball have become extensions of our limbs and so of ourselves. It is of course the same with a car and with musical and other instruments. One seems to become aware, also, of a sort of "life" in each of these things that are inanimate.  We learn to recognize and pay attention to minute signals from these entities--and to respond, consciously or subconsciously. So there is a sort of expansion of self that goes beyond mere control.

So we see that there are parts or functions of the mind that can be likened to a well-designed set of computer subroutines, or to parallel processing. This mode of functioning can do a lot of things simultaneously, and at great speed. We may call this the "subconscious parallel processor" mode.

Then there is another mode of thought that is more like the linear flow of the main program. By necessity, this is a serial (sequential) process. This is because it can only attend to one thing (or a very small set of things) at a time.

But it can focus on detail; it can fuss over things, ponder, correct, etc.

It is usually very slow, compared to the mode described earlier. It can coexist with that other mode, and may perhaps be a special part of it--a vital one, accompanied by full awareness.

We may call this the "conscious focus" mode (as we have been doing).

Each era has had its analogies for mental function. I have fallen into the computer and programming metaphors, complementing a visual one. We should of course understand that these are just metaphors. We do not really know how minds work.

We do not even know what minds are--or what mind is.

Can the knower know itself?

These two modes of thought are evident also in language. Most of us listen to and speak our first and (practiced) second languages without any conscious awareness of the tremendous amount of mental processing that must be going on. We hear someone speaking, and we know what is meant by it. We think a thought and, even as we are thinking it, that thought might emerge as speech.

But if we we were to study language in detail, as we might do when formally learning a second language, we would see the tremendous complexity of it, at many levels. The conscious focus cannot deal with this complexity.  The subconscious parallel processor can.  This can occur without even a conscious thought, without our conscious awareness of all the work that the mind is doing.

So when do we use which of these two parts or modes of our minds--which may be just two out of many more?

Well, when we are learning something for the first time, or when we are checking a mathematical proof, or otherwise making sure of logical consistency, or threading a needle, or making sure that a carpentered joint is fitted correctly, or when we are listening, with care, to someone describing the difficulties they are facing, or listening with attention to a lecture on a subject that is new or difficult for us, we need then our full conscious focus. We would not succeed without it.

When we are walking, running, driving, playing a competitive game, and even in the acts of speaking and listening, we need also the speed and the breadth of the subconscious parallel processor to complement the sharp (but slow and sequential) attention provided by the conscious focus.  This is of course also true of practiced writing, reading, typing, etc.--indeed, all activities that require practice and habituation.

We could not live without the subconscious parallel processor. But we would be very limited without having also the conscious focus to call upon.

This duality of mental functioning is unlikely to be confined to humans. As we observe domesticated animals, such as cats and dogs, go about their lives, or watch the interactions between lions or eagles and their prey on our screens, we can infer that very similar abilities must be present and functioning in these and other animals.

The subconscious parallel processor mimics, to a degree, the largely unconscious functioning of the rest of our body-mind, from our breathing and our heartbeat (over which we do have some conscious control), "down" to the cellular and molecular levels. However, unlike some processes that we are born with, the processes it deals with have to be learned.  Habits and skills of observation and action, and more, have to be formed and honed.

  

The point of this long description, of things that should be quite obvious, is that we are animals with minds having certain abilities and limitations, and this should at least be taken into account, even as we should also admit that we are faced with mysteries that cannot be reduced to the crude metaphors of our or other eras.

So you would find it hard to thread a needle if I were to constantly jog your elbow, or if you were riding on a galloping horse. And most of us might find it hard to read a book or an article on a subject that was new or difficult for us, when surrounded by others speaking loudly in a language that we understand.

The conscious focus is not being allowed to form and sustain itself, being distracted and diffused instead.  We might feel frustrated and acutely aware that we cannot succeed in these circumstances. This, by the way, is similar to the situations that prevail, too often, in the classrooms in many of our schools--especially nowadays.  Is it any surprise that many students and teachers become discouraged and lose confidence?

So also, without much practice, most of us would not be able to play a game or a musical instrument or speak or understand a language, in a way that others might find passable or bearable.  This is because the subconscious parallel processor has not yet been able to learn, assimilate and automate the required set of skills--or even been able to learn to recognize the elemental set of objects to operate upon.

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As we should also surely understand, facts and skills are also needed. The modes of mind described before cannot operate on vacuities or on general abstractions alone.

A language has words and relations between words. Carpentry has tools and materials and their uses. Theoretical physicists may use logic and mathematics, but they also try to test both their assumptions and the validity of the logical chains they have used by comparing the results they obtain with experimental data.  A musician has to learn to use an instrument or his/her voice and also has to learn pieces passed down through the years.

For several decades, and continuing even till the present, the learning of the multiplication tables was de-emphasized, indeed discouraged, in the schools. Then the mathematics teachers in later grades would complain that their students, except for a few exceptional ones, or those coming from schools or countries that operated more traditionally, could not handle the topics being taught and lacked even in basic number sense, seemingly lacking in mathematical ability and so also in confidence in that field.

Part of what was and still is occurring is that a student learning algebra cannot as easily fall back on a mastery of arithmetic to make sense of algebra. So also, a student learning physics is bogged down in the mechanics of solving equations and so is not free to focus on the other things of importance.

The subconscious parallel processor has not built up its powers in this field. The conscious focus has to try to do its work instead, slowly and painfully. It is not free to learn; it is not at ease to respond to questions or even to formulate questions. The student is therefore likely to be dismissed as being "dumb".

Indeed, he or she has been, perhaps unwittingly, but nonetheless successfully, dumbfounded--struck dumb.

Such a student might lapse into diffidence and apathy or might vent his/her frustration in other ways.

We normally expect that both the span and the depth of a child's attention will increase with age. But this can only happen in circumstances where a certain degree of diligence is expected and the intrinsic reward of successful accomplishment--such as one gets from persevering at a difficult mathematics problem and finally solving it on one's own--is routinely experienced.

Some might in fact still argue that that traditional academic practices, such as the learning of the times-tables, are surely a waste of time and a turn-off in the age of calculators, which have now been with us for decades, and of computers, which already are listening and speaking to us.

I will not try to argue with them here. I will only say that vehicles have been with us for a long time. But should we then forego our legs?

What explains the acquiescence, even the support, of many of our citizens to policies and actions made by a government--on the social, economic and foreign policy fronts--that harm their own long term interests, not to speak of others within the country and, especially, in far away places, in ways that are often of life-and-death importance?

One may argue that this acquiescence and wrongheaded support is due, in large part, not to any lack of intelligence or critical faculties on the part of the citizens, but rather to a lack of acquaintance with the basic facts of geography, history, politics and economics.

Some might argue there are no such facts--only conditioned perceptions. Again, I will not try to argue with them here, except to say that they are, in my opinion, seeing only part of the whole truth in this matter.

Reflections—on teaching, learning and more

Reflections—on teaching, learning and more

The following was an e-mail I had sent to colleagues at my school this summer.

I have removed last names to protect privacy.

I have also added quite a few things, increasing the length, but hopefully not the comprehensibility, of these reflections.

I have, however,  inserted headings, hoping to create a semblance of sectioning, so as to guide the reader through my meanders.  The headings are as follows:

A) My father's website and the last two books he authored

B) People at the school

C) The public schools, the transmission of culture—and cultural diversity

D) Informal learning, the acquisition of the first language—and the nature of learning 

E) Changes in learning ability with age, the need for formal learning—and more on the schools

F) Information and technology

G) The acquisition of ethics—and our socioeconomic malaise
 H) Some final thoughts on hierarchical command structures such as those in our school systems

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A) My father's website and the last two books he authored

My father's website is at http://suniljanah.org .  Being a teacher, I conceived of it as an educational resource, of use not only to photographers, historians, anthropologists and others with specialized interests, but also to the public in general and to students in the schools and colleges.

That link came out garbled, for some reason, in the earlier sending.

I had worked on the website from 1998-2004, beginning with my father's exhibition in 1998 in New York City, curated by Ram Rahman, and finally also incorporating, after my sister Monua's passing in 2004,  my father's last exhibition while alive—in the year 2000, in San Francisco.  Monua had made that final exhibition possible and had aided her father with it, in every way.

I had also worked on the website, briefly, in the summer of 2012, to include my father's obituaries from the New York Times, etc.  Sadly, there were none for my mother, who had preceded him, by about a month, that same year.

My mother (born Sobha Dutt) had helped my father (Sunil Janah) in ways that are too many to recount here, not only in his physical survival, but also in his work.  His last two books, The Tribals of India and Photographing India (both published by Oxford University Press) would not have taken form, let alone seen publication, without her long and arduous involvement in them.  This was especially true for his final, sadly posthumous, epic work.

Members of my mother's extended family, my parents' longtime English friend, Dr. Brian Watson, my father's attendants and others were of great help to my parents, in many ways, in their final years in California.

Many more years of effort need to be put into the website and, more importantly, into my father's life's work.  This is needed, so that his documentation, carried out through decades of labor, is more widely available to current and future generations, especially in the subcontinent but also elsewhere.  Hopefully, they will be wiser from this and will also use it with wisdom and caring.

My mother had not wanted me to put large, good quality images on the website, so these are scarce (though present) there.

B) People at the school

How is Sandra doing?  Hopefully, Diane is fully recovered from her own ordeal.

I was most saddened to hear of Louie's passing. He always had time to be of assistance and to crack a joke.

If I had been my old self, after returning (in 2009) from many rather stressful years of leave, mostly in California, I would have sat in Louie's classes and learned the many wonderful things he taught, including hardware-related matters.

I remember attending, many years ago at another school, Ramin's skillfully woven after-school college-level C++ programming classes, taking notes, doing the assigned homework and taking exams along with the other students, many of whom were also my own students during the school-day.

C) The public schools, the transmission of culture—and cultural diversity

One does not perhaps realize this, but the public schools had, by default, become the depositories and transmitters of much of the cultural traditions, including the academic and vocational knowledge, that make us what we are.  This had occurred as our communities were being atomized.

Those cultural traditions are best passed on in an atmosphere that is not pressured, and where respect prevails between and among teachers, students and parents—as well as for the subjects being taught, some of which appear to be new but still have roots going back thousands of years.

If our species is at all special, it is largely because of these cultural continuities.  We do not face the world newly hatched and alone, but, hopefully, much more than most other species do, informed by the experience and thought of many generations that preceded us.

This was and still is true among tribal folk, whom we wrongly regard as "primitive".  We have much to learn from them. Sadly, our own smaller human cultures are vanishing at a rate almost matching the extinctions of the biological species.

We learn in ecology that biological diversity is essential for the survival of an ecosystem and so also for the biosphere. Information is transmitted both genetically and culturally—especially for birds and mammals, and even more so for primates, including humans. Should we let ourselves be complacent, then, about the loss of cultural diversity that is occurring all over the globe? When a language dies, it takes with it almost as much as when a species dies.
 
D) Informal learning, the acquisition of the first language—and the nature of learning
 
There is a difference between wisdom and knowledge, although in certain matters they do go hand in hand.

The basis of both is the informal learning that takes place within the family and, in earlier times, within the village or extended clan. The learning of the first language, always locally pitch-perfect, miraculously so, is the basis on which all later abstraction is built. It is perhaps the greatest intellectual accomplishment of our lifetimes, yet it is mostly completed within the first few years of our lives.

Parents and others do not have to get teaching certificates or degrees to teach this great body of abstraction, that has within it the seeds of all others. Teaching and learning are things that most mammals and birds do instinctively. Humans excel at this.

Of course, one cannot teach what one does not know, and one cannot teach if one does not have the desire to do this. Similarly, one cannot learn when one does not want to. One can be tricked or forced into doing some learning—but that won't get us far.

The mechanics of mind and brain are too complex, mysterious and fluid to admit of rigid prescriptions.  One cannot write on water. There is a flow that takes its time and does what needs to be done.  Conscious, subconscious and unconscious processes are involved. The desire and the will, along with the traditional virtues, are needed.

That central mystery needs to be respected.  Left alone, humans (and many other animals) will find  ways to teach and learn what they need to teach and learn. The process, like all human things, is a messy one—neither for show nor for rating.

Being able to walk, use our hands and fingers and do other physical things, including talk, hear, and truly see, are also wonders—miracles—that we share with many other species.

E) Changes in learning ability with age, the need for formal learning—and more on the schools

The learning of other languages and skills, later in life, often proceeds very differently.  As the ends of our long bones begin to set at puberty, so also do certain aspects of our mental structure. Malleability is sharply decreased.

I came to this country, 41 years ago, at age 23, but still speak (and think and act) much as I did when I got off the plane then.  My late sister came here a bit later, but at a younger age—18.  After a few years, she had little trace of accent left in her speech and was otherwise far more westernized in many things.

However, as certain faculties are lost or reduced, others arise and are developed which can take their place.  Experience, knowledge, the ability to deal with abstractions, the ability to focus deeply and maintain that focus for extended periods, and to persevere despite setbacks—all of these normally increased as a child matures, and this process could be extended into adulthood.

However, current trends seem to be working against this natural maturing process.  So we have not only children, but also adults, with severe attention-deficit syndromes.  This is, I believe, a sort of survival adaptation to the world we live in, and we are also purposely led towards this by socioeconomic pressures and manipulation through the media.

At the same time, the pressures and distractions of samskara—having to deal with survival and all the duties and worries that follow, come in the way of the kind of learning that came naturally to us as children—if we were lucky enough to have had a childhood not plagued with unbearable hardships and conflicts.  This was so, even for past generations.

Almost every culture developed subcultures of formal learning.  This was particularly evident in civilizations that preserved ancient languages for religious or other purposes.  These had also often developed formalized systems of scholarship, statecraft, priesthood and medicine. There were formal disciplines of music and dance and of spiritual, physical and martial training. Formal learning also had its place in apprenticeships in the specialized traditions of the other skilled crafts and arts.
 
All of these formalized systems drew from and supplemented the more informal folk traditions, which remained as the sources.  Formal and informal traditions interacted and evolved.

One might be tempted to think that formal education proceeded only under the tutelage and sponsorship of affluent individuals and of royal courts.  While it is true that teachers and students of the formalized disciplines often became dependent on such sponsors, the larger truth is that some in the ruling elites were either clever enough or enlightened enough, and had resources enough to provide such support, often for their own uses or ends.

The apparent divergence between classical and folk or popular traditions is a superficial one. The emergence of economic classes, often also associated with rule by a foreign or removed elite, was what led to the dichotomy between "high" and "low" cultures.  This was aggravated by urbanization and industrialization, which was accompanied by the destruction of rural communities and their folk traditions.

Schools for formal learning, with or without affluent private or state sponsors, have been around for a long time. The schools and universities of our time are extensions of these.

It is rather unfortunate, however, that the industrial factory model also came to be applied to formal education, especially in the schools. Despite all the touted reforms that have come and gone, often creating more confusion, disruption and havoc than anything else, this, along with the hierarchical organization of the schools, has not changed.

Formal education is a powerful thing.  But one should ask, for what end is this power being used?  And one should also ask why so much of that power is dissipated, even as the lives of teachers and students are consumed and wasted.
 
The many disciplines created by humans have been able to perpetuate themselves through specialized systems of formal learning, even as they have continually evolved.

It is difficult to make generalizations about such systems or give prescriptions for them. They have each developed, over time, through human experience, effort and ingenuity.  What might work for teaching and learning carpentry might not work for mathematics—and vice versa.  Also, what works for little children might not be suitable for teenagers, might be unbearable for older folk, and so on.

F) Information and technology

Methods of communication and storage of information have arisen and evolved and have assisted in learning and teaching—both informal and formal.

Just as in farming and industry, the rise of new technologies has impacted education.  This is nothing new.  But the rate of change that humans can deal with is now an issue worth considering.

Technologies take time to mature and be assimilated.  Technology should serve humans, rather than the other way around.  Technology can be used to liberate but also to enslave.  It is best if a technology is transparent, robust and locally reproducible.

These common-sense observations are just as valid in education as in other areas of human activity.

Vehicles may have their uses, but we should not forget that we have legs, that we need to use these organs, and that these should be used, rather than vehicles, whenever possible.

Black boxes that do magical things may have their place in our lives, but it should not be a central one.  We should not become dependent on them.
 
G) The acquisition of ethics—and our socioeconomic malaise
   
The acquisition of an ethical framework is, I believe, just as important as the acquisition of the first language. This too is usually acquired very early in life, again mostly through informal learning.  It is based on empathy, sharing, equity and the Golden Rule—things that some children come to early, others late or perhaps never.  Without this framework, humans would not have survived in the past. Yet, in the world we have created, full of transient interactions, it appears to be, too often, more of a handicap.

The ethical, reflective person is too often considered a fool and a nuisance.  Cosmetic or superficial considerations are given greater weight.  Personality trumps character.  Speed and efficiency (both desirable qualities) trump diligence and caring (even more desirable ones).  Impatience rules. Patience is devalued. The short term gets precedence over the long term. Self-interest triumphs over collective survival.

The basic trust and respect that is needed for peace within oneself, family, co-workers, friends, a community, a country or the world is lost and replaced by mistrust and hostility.
 
Workers, on whose labor  the wealth of the human world was built and continues to be built, are divided by ethnicity, gender, age, profession, economic stratum and region or nationality.  Adults are reduced to children, artisans to factory workers.

Seeing things in black and white, rather in all the shades of gray, is preferred. This makes life apparently simpler—but also more boorish. Black and white can also change places rapidly, as can love and hate, as we see around us too often, both in personal affairs and in public ones.

Modern, mechanized war, with all its horrors, is perhaps the worst manifestation of this.  Europe seemed to have learned its lesson, especially in its eastern half, after it inflicted on itself, in two world wars in the last century, what it had wrought on the rest of the world. That lesson appears to be wearing off, even there.

H) Some final thoughts on hierarchical command structures such as those in our school systems
  
Questioning, verification, examining what we are asked to do in the light of compassion, reason and experience—none of these things are considered to be the right and duty of employees, including teachers in the schools.  There is often little or no provision for input from the public and from practitioners at the policy formulation stage, nor is there adequate provision for feedback and correction from these in the policy implementation stage.

The consequence of this, in wars, in corporate and government factories and offices, and in school systems,  is the compounding of errors, often fatal errors. These occur because the drivers are basically driving blind, and the systems are operating under a hierarchical command paradigm, reinforced by fear and subservience at every level.

The much-ballyhooed "data-driven" structures are also of little use in an atmosphere of fear, which leads to a focus on numerical data and even the manufacture of data so as to please superiors and avoid punishment.

Meanwhile, the nonsense that passes for pedagogy, with its constantly recycled and repackaged focus on "methods of teaching",  "facilitation", (so-called) "higher-order questioning and critical thinking", "application of technology" and much more, continues to muddy and confuse, even as basics, that clearly need attention before any of these things are addressed, continue to be grossly neglected.

Punitive elements in evaluation based on high-stakes testing of students and rigid, superficial and meddlesome forms of teacher observation are helping to make our schools even more hellish for both sincere teachers and sincere students, while the main causes (other than these two afflictions) for the problems that plague so many schools are still not addressed, let alone acknowledged.

I will not go into these causes here, as that would require another essay, based on my own experiences and observations in teaching (and learning) in the schools and universities over the past four decades.
 
Before I discuss the causes of the problems, I should also clarify what I mean by "the basics" in education. That also requires a separate, though related, discussion.
 
Arjun
   

Enslavement and Freedom — a Worker's Personal Perspective

   
Enslavement and Freedom—a Worker's Personal Perspective

Formal education, much like the broader and surely even more important informal education on which it stands, is a means by which humans transmit their cultures across the generations. Just as sexual reproduction transmits genetic information, gathered over eons of biological evolution, so also do teaching and learning transmit the cultural information that has been gathered over the ages.  

This is by no means a passive process.  Teachers and learners continually shift roles.  We learn from one another, albeit different things. Indeed, we often find that adults learn almost as much from children as children do from adults.  And what is learned is a river in flow. Each generation bends it this way and that, adding tributaries and branches, while floating upon its waters the little boats of their own devising, which the generation after marvels at or discards.

Teaching and learning are, for humans as for many other animals, instinctive activities.  Parents do not need formal training to teach their young, nor do children need to be taught how to learn.

That said, one cannot teach what one does not know. And one has to be willing and able to spend the time needed to teach something. Nor can we truly learn something well, unless we are also willing and able to spend the time needed to learn it.

One might be forced to learn, and one might also be forced to teach.  Sadly, this is what prevails in much of compulsory education and even elsewhere, where learning, or at least its semblance or certification, is sought only for very limited ends.  
 
Although teaching and learning of a sort can appear to proceed under such circumstances, they then become part of the process of human enslavement, rather than of liberation. And just as slave labor cannot usually match the labor that is free, so also is learning through compulsion a poor substitute indeed for learning from volition. 

Between a teacher and a learner, there is an interaction that has in it an all-important component that (for lack of a better term that is not species-centric) we might call "human".  It is good if this human interaction is based on mutual respect.  Again, it is possible for students and teachers to learn and to teach while disliking one another, even intensely. But this is a sorry state of affairs, that is difficult to sustain.

Just as sexual relations between those who lack respect and affection for each other cannot endure for long without much psychological detriment, so also will students who disrespect their teacher fail to get the best of what that teacher could offer them, and so also will a teacher who disrespects his/her students fail to get the best from them.

Human cultures have devised means to propagate themselves, just as biological entities have. This holds for our crafts, languages, religions, social mores, arts, music and more.
 
In particular, our formal cultures, such as the formalized counterparts of all of the things previously mentioned, as well as the academic disciplines, especially those of mathematics and the sciences, have developed formal means of education for initiates.  These serve to propagate and further develop the formal structures.  The means by which our human disciplines do this might be called, collectively, "formal education".

Although there may be some common features that these specific systems of formal education share with one another and with informal education, one should beware of making generalizations here, especially prescriptive ones.
 
Given our ignorance of  the nature and workings of sentience, to try to capture the richness of its manifestations and the diversity and specificity of their means of transmission in a set of generalized, prescriptive rules for formal education is a futile endeavor.  To try to enforce such rules is to kill the life that is being transmitted.

This is is as much a sin as it is to prescribe and enforce rigid rules for sexual procreation, including "how to's" for sex that we must follow.  It takes all the fun, all the joy, out of a natural, largely instinctive activity, debasing it and changing it into a thing of dullness and dread.

One should also always remember that formal education, however lauded, is but the thin, sweet icing on the cake of learning. That cake is largely baked, not in our schools or other places of formal education, but rather in our homes and communities.  It is this informal education that is the basis of all else that comes after it.

This includes the miraculous acquisition of the first language, which is probably the greatest intellectual achievement of a human's lifetime, and yet is something that is shared almost equally among all members of our species.

This first language, with all the abstractions that it embodies, contains, within itself, most, if not all, of the concepts and tools needed to master the most formal abstract constructions of our species.

Unlike logic, which is probably inborn ("hard-wired" in computer-analogy), language has to be acquired, although the templates for it are surely also inborn.  It does not have to be a spoken tongue, as the languages used by the deaf demonstrate.  But it does have to have a structure that parallels those of other human languages, which, despite their surface differences, share much in common.

But informal education also includes the basic tactile and other physical skills that most children have acquired by the time they come to first grade.  And it also includes the ethical framework of the child's family and community.  Again, although the templates for morality are probably just as inborn as those for language, the specifics of the moral scheme and outlook depend, in large part, on the child's own background exposure.

All of this assumes that the child who comes to school has had a stable, functioning family and a wider local community to sustain and nurture him/her physically, emotionally and mentally.  But this assumption may be false. This is especially true in our times.

It is still, however, a great mistake to think that formal education in the schools can substitute for the far more essential informal education traditionally provided by the family and community.
 
In particular, removing a child from that familiar environment, severing the ties that have developed or were developing, and substituting for this whatever may be supplied by a (boarding) school and its attendant (often alien) culture does at least two harmful things:  it creates an emotional trauma, and it constitutes a violent break in the continuity of the child's ancestral human culture.

If this cleavage affects not only a few children but most children in the community, and if it lasts--if the wound is deep and broad enough and does not heal--it can succeed in killing that culture.

The death of a human culture is almost as much of a loss as that of the human tribe itself that had developed and was sustained by that culture. Indeed, without the culture, there is no tribe.
 
A cultural annihilation is as real and as tragic as a biological one.  This is true for all social species, including our own.

With all of that said, it would be a mistake to blame the schools alone for the cultural extinctions that are proceeding, much like the biological ones, all around us. The forces of commerce, of empires, of nationalisms and more are the main drivers of the extinctions. Schools may abet this in places. But they can also serve to slow this or at least to ameliorate the effects of these onslaughts.
     
I got the clip at the link below from my niece, Malini, who has also taught, like me, in the schools--but in India rather than here in the U.S.A..  I encourage you to view it, while keeping in mind that the makers of the piece are projecting a particular point of view—an important one, too often overlooked, but one that cannot, like any point of view, encompass the whole reality.

Schooling the World -- Part 1/7 

In the clip, the principal of the Moravian missionary school in Ladakh (Indian Tibet) tries to explain his own perspective, which is by no means a simplistic one.

But as he is speaking, the clip shows Ladakhi children reciting Christian prayers and doing drills (in what appears to be a morning assembly at the school) as if to belie what the principal is saying.

I myself attended Jesuit missionary schools in India.  I do not think I was unduly harmed or brainwashed by that experience--leave alone converted to Christianity.

However, I had other formative experiences  in my childhood, living with my extended family in a city in India, and being in contact also with village folk and so with traditions and cultures other than that to which I was mainly exposed in the schools.

If I had been deprived of those other experiences, that would have been a great loss for me personally. If the same had occurred to the majority of the local populace, there would have been a break in the continuity of those traditions and in those cultures--and what then emerged might not have been better.  This would be true--perhaps even more so--if the schools had been purely secular ones.

Of course, the schools are just one part of the "remaking" process by which state or corporate powers refashion human beings to serve their interests.  "Successful" empires have been in this business for a long time.
 
This is a complex issue. As in all things human and cultural-political-economic, the simpleminded answers to questions that arise are often insufficient.

I have been teaching students in the U.S.A for four decades--first, from 1975 to 1983, at the universities and then, from 1987 to now (2015) at the public high schools here in New York City.  That's most of four decades, spent teaching for a living.

Particularly while teaching in the schools, the job has consumed my life, including evenings, weekends and holidays. I have put most of my life energy into it. I have had little time (except for the six years when I was on unpaid leave, being mainly with my ailing parents in California) for anything else, including vital personal things.

However, looking back over the decades, while I do not regret the hard, honest work I put in for my students in the schools, I do believe that I was doing it in the wrong place, under the wrong circumstances.

I also learned from my students over the decades, perhaps more than a typical student might have learned from me, in the daily forty or so minutes, usually for just a term or a year, that he or she spent in my classes (with more daily time, usually at home after school hours, studying and doing the homework I assigned). 

But in somewhat better circumstances, my students and I could have learned from, and been of help to one another, far more than was possible in the factory-schools in the past century--and even more so in the current one.

The schools of men, like their temples, can be doors to liberation or to greater servitude. Just as religion can be used as an arm of the power structure that reinforces its might, so also can the schools be used.

The feeding chains that operated in our feudal villages have been superseded or complemented by even more hierarchical and enslaving power structures in our factories, mines, offices and other workplaces, and also in our schools, churches and of course police and military forces.
  
Schools can help students learn the skills they need to survive in a world where formal education has become a necessity.  Schools can also help to widen and deepen students' perspectives, reinforcing and broadening the respect, tolerance and understanding they should have learned at home and from their communities.

Beyond the literacy and numeracy that have become essential, and not discounting the technical skills (in both traditional crafts and new technologies) that schools might also provide, schools can serve as windows to the broad, yet detailed, views of history, politics, economics, the sciences and more that generations past have labored to discover and elaborate.

Many of the public and the private schools in this country and elsewhere have, to their credit, been all of this and more.  Whether or not this was by design or the through the efforts of dedicated teachers and students, these achievements should be recognized and celebrated.
 
The public schools, in particular, have opened the doors to some of the best offerings of our human cultures to (almost) all, including those who, from lack of means or from longstanding discrimination, had previously been denied this access.  This fact is often obscured or forgotten.  

Over the course of the last century, public schools have been pathways to higher education and to the professions for hundreds of millions in this country and elsewhere. This is an achievement that is perhaps without parallel in human history.

But schools have also served the purposes of empire, of state power and of corporate power. They are used to indoctrinate our young in the ideologies that the ones who fund the schools think fit -- be these theologies, including rabid, intolerant ones, or secular creeds, including those of narrow nationalisms or all-devouring capitalism.

Yet, in our present circumstances, in too many places where the powerful forces of commercialization, industrialization, urbanization, deculturization, homogenization, alienation and atomization have done their jobs, the schools (along with, to some extent the churches or their equivalents) are all that are left of the larger human community. They are all that remain to substitute for the villages in which we used to live.

This is particularly true for migrants--be these to faraway cities in "one's own country" or across national borders, often even to places across the planet, where one might feel as if one has severed all of one's human connections and cultural roots forever.

But those like me who view the schools in this light must do so without voicing this view, and also, to a large degree, without being able to act in accordance with that view.

Like soldiers in the armies, like workers in the factories, like priests in the church hierarchies, they must do as they are told, at least on the surface, or else be punished. Each of us has to earn a living to survive. So we are economic slaves.

I should say that I have never succumbed to this in toto, and indeed perhaps not at all. This was because, by force of will and labor, I was able to make room for what I felt I needed to do--which was often very far indeed from what I was expected to do.

As a high school physics teacher, I tried to focus on what the students needed to learn the subject, one that I had studied and worked in myself for many years before turning to teaching in the high schools. This meant filling in and clearing up many logical gaps and fuzzy areas in the curriculum, while also compensating for the deficiencies the students had in their academic backgrounds.

All of this took years of labor and much ingenuity to figure out. But the population of students, and so also their needs, kept changing, often dramatically, so one had a constantly shifting target audience.
  
There were many years, especially in this century, when I taught only subjects other than physics. It took quite some time to get the overview on these that I had acquired in physics, as well as to understand the deficiencies in the curricula and in the students' backgrounds (including very limited or no knowledge of spoken English) and how to remedy these.

Indeed, I found that, among other things, I had, perforce, entered the authoring and publishing business, steadily having to render complex material in simplified English as well as in translations to other languages.  This had to be done on the run, under the daily pressures of the job, adding to the time spent in reading and correcting student work on evenings, weekends and holidays.

These were just some of the nuts and bolts of teaching that I had to constantly attend to.  I will not go in detail into the practical circumstances that made this difficult--including the lack, too often, of suitable books, and the teaching of several subjects out of license, with my five daily classes being in a number of classrooms and on a number of floors. 

Then there were the pressures from above to conform to what teachers were expected to be doing in the classroom--the constant "how to teach" focus that never seemed to let up and could be a great distraction. 

And there were the human issues in dealing with the children and their needs and behaviors, which would need a separate essay.  Suffice it to say that the factories that the schools have long operated as allow little time and leisure for the kind of personal mentoring many students clearly need.

And then, especially in this century, there was the overemphasis on standardized testing, with teachers not only told "how to teach", but also pressed to cut out any content that a sincere teacher might deem as essential background or breadth, but which was deemed "non-testable" and so not fit to be taught any more.

Finally, there was the extreme time-pressure that increased as budgets were cut and the periods-per-week accordingly shortened, until this became so unbearable that those who tried to teach sincerely, according to conscience, taking due time for review and practice, so students could digest what they had learned, found themselves in deeper and deeper trouble.
    
Teaching and learning are natural, spontaneous human activities that are meant to be done at leisure, with attention and care.  The same can be said about eating, lovemaking and, surely even more so, the care of children, elders and the ailing. 

Factory workers have long been forced to work at unnaturally high speeds in assembly lines, so as to maximize production and profits. When this view of "efficiency" is extended into teaching and learning, a life-and-soul destroying situation is created.  The same might surely be said of high speed, "efficient", factory-style health care.
   
Humans, like other animals, function in several modes or gears. In the survival mode that we go into when we are fighting or racing to survive, we cannot properly attend as we should to the other things, including nurture, that are best carried out in more tranquil, peaceful modes, in slower gears.
   
I had to do to deal with all of this, while shielding my students from the pressures and the "fast-food", smartly-packaged yet junk education that would have resulted if I had given in to these pressures.

One should note also that most of what I felt inwardly compelled to do was done "under the radar", so to speak, as it did not conform to what I was expected to do.
 
On too many occasions, especially of late, when a supervisor discovered what I was doing, I would get in trouble.  This added an increasing element of fear to what may perhaps be termed as "guerrilla teaching" -- the truly hard, unacknowledged,  subsurface work I felt I had to do, and which I should have been able to do openly, without fear of punishment.

Although I might perhaps have been at an extreme end of the teacher spectrum, I am sure many other teachers have found themselves in somewhat similar circumstances, where hard work is not only not rewarded, nor even just ignored, but punished.

But all that quiet work I had to do was more feasible during the times when the schools here were not as regimented and oppressive as they have become in this century, under pressure from both the political parties here (even more, from the federal level, under Barack Obama than under his predecessor, George W. Bush).

That old "marching to one's own drummer", that following of conscience (with all the labor of love that it entailed) is no longer possible. This is why, along with health problems, no doubt caused in part by years of sustained stress, shortage of sleep and overexertion, I am finally almost at the point of giving up this long, but now clearly lost, personal battle in the schools. I will soon be either forced to retire or else be kicked out more violently.

One should remember that humans, throughout the world, taught their children how to speak their ancestral languages (perfectly) as well as to survive and to be humans in the full sense of the word, without help from the formal schools of the state or other organizations.

In this, we were no different from other animals. So also, wolves teach their young, mainly by example, how to communicate, survive and show respect and compassion--to be wolves in the full sense of that word.

I might be considered insane or reactionary, but I think we we were probably far better off when we were, especially in this regard, as the few surviving wolves still hopefully are.