Faulty Towers of Education

Further Musings on Our Assumptions About Schooling, Teaching, and Learning

by Jeff Bloom

As in John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers TV series, most of the institution of schooling is characterized by arrogance and ineptness. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so serious. In addition, schooling and the entire context of education is fundamentally a hall of mirrors and an echo chamber, which have produced populations of children and adults that are cloned from generations past.

But, let me pause here to insert a caveat. My absoluteness in the previous paragraph is to make a point with the hope of sparking an emotional reaction in readers. I do want to be clear that what I said in that paragraph is characteristic of our educational system, but there are notable exceptions. The exceptions are generally a small percentage of teachers at all levels of education, a smaller percentage of school programs, and an even smaller percentage of schools. And, this applies not only to the United States, but also to Canada, the United Kingdom, and pretty much everywhere else that schools exist. I also want to make clear that the issues involved are not the fault of teachers. Although many teachers contribute to the problems, they have been subjected to the same forces that have fundamentally brainwashed an entire society. And, these forces are deeply embedded in most of our social systems and social contexts, especially our political systems, our economic systems, our social support systems, our judicial systems, our workforce contexts, our religious or spiritual contexts, and media contexts and systems. All of these contexts or systems, as well as others, are all tightly intertwined and interdependent. One system makes a change and either it resets to the way it was before the change or it sends ripples of shock waves through all of the other systems. The resetting process has occurred over and over again in our educational system. Some “new” approach to “solving” some issue is adopted and schools scramble to “train” teachers in the new approach. Teachers have no say in the matter. But, being good employees, most try the new approach, but have no continuing support to figure out why things don’t work as expected. Then, there are some teachers who smile, nod, and do what they’ve always done while putting on a show for the principal during observations of their teaching. It’s all a bit like herding cats.

So, back to the hall of mirrors and echo chambers of the context of education. This hall and chamber are not just indicative of our institutions of education, but of the whole society. People with no in-depth understanding of learning and cognition, of teaching, of social psychology, and of the wide range of subject matter areas sit down and talk to one another about education and then make decisions that affect the entirety of the educational system. The same patterns occur in the making of policies about healthcare, the economy, various social support systems, and so forth. But, “everyone knows how schools work, how doctors work, the economy works, because we all have experiences in schools, in doctors’ offices, and in shopping and banking.” What is even worse than not having any in-depth knowledge of the things about which decisions and policies are being made, is that none of these decision-makers have any understanding of how one system affects another and how all of them are intertwined and interdependent. They have no knowledge of complex living and social systems, period. So, the assumptions that I’ll be exploring below, pretty much make up the major orientation and view used to make decisions, even though there are now distinct variations in the political “flavor” of decisions. These “flavors” can have a huge impact, but are fundamentally implemented within the existing patterns and frameworks of the assumptions discussed below.

The following assumptions are all embedded in one way or another in mechanistic, reductionistic, and positivistic [add links to Glossary entries] worldviews or paradigms that spread to almost all parts of the world from René Descartes’ work in the 17th Century. It was the 17th Century’s version of “going viral,” and basically transformed everything from the sciences to the “common sense” or “self-evident” types of thinking of ordinary people. And, because of this widespread, self-evident “truth” patterns of thinking and the embeddedness of our assumptions about education in these patterns of thinking, we seem to have been brainwashing ourselves from generation to generation in this sort of thinking and in the acceptance of these and many other assumptions.

The following list contains some of the more significant assumptions that govern our thinking and approaches to education.

1. We assume that schooling prepares our children for adulthood.
   However, what we really mean is that schooling prepares children for getting a job. This was the explicit goal in the 19th Century, so schools were modeled on factories. Obedience to authority, conformity of appearance and behavior, and not questioning the edicts of authorities were the attributes most conducive to working in a factory.
   We do NOT assume that schools help our children, and we should:

• learn how develop and nurture relationships with others;
• learn how to participate in a democracy;
• Learn how to raise and care for children;
• Learn how to handle one’s finances (budgeting, bank accounts, and various kinds of savings and investments);
• Prepare for living and surviving in a rapidly changing world;
• Learn how to empathize with and understand other people from the vast variety of backgrounds and cultures;
• Learn how to assess diverse knowledge claims for their truthfulness, accuracy, and usefulness;
• Learn how to analyze the complexity of new developments and actions and how to anticipate the a variety of unintended potential transcontextual consequences;
• Learn how complex living and social systems work and intertwine, as well as how one lives and works within such complex systems;
• Learn how to recognize and work with the interdependent relationships that are part of the contexts and social systems in which one lives;
• Learn about the commonalities and differences between a large array of belief and interpretive systems;
• Learn how to participate in and negotiate various aspects of society;
• Learn how to work one’s way through various social and government beaurocracies and paper work, such as filing taxes; getting car and home insurance; getting medical, dental, and vision insurance; getting a driver’s license; getting a library card; registering to vote; maintaining a car and home, including simple repairs; etc.);
• Learn how to negotiate the medical system and how to relate to doctors and other healthcare workers;
• Learn how to take care of one’s own health at home;
• Learn how to buy or rent and maintain one’s home, appliances, and car, including at least simple repairs;
• Learn how to handle emergencies and other urgent needs (e.g., birth, death, accidents, urgent. Medical issues, fire. Floods, etc.);
• Learn how to spot and deal with spam, scams, and other types of personal or financial assaults;
• Learn how to spot and investigate potential fake or false news and other claims;
• Learn how to be safe and maintain a safe living and working environments;
• Learn how to spot and deal with one’s own assumptions and biases and those of others.

2. We still assume young children enter school with very little knowledge and minimal abilities to think.
However, children start learning from the womb and continue from birth. They learn language, a very abstract symbolic system, without instruction. Along with language, they learn complicated categorizations of the things in their world. They learn all sorts of ways of talking and behaving from being in a family. They may even learn a lot about dogs and cats and other pets or the animals outside their home. They start learning all sorts of biases and beliefs. They develop their own what’s referred to as “naive” theories about things and processes in their world. All of this learning is quite sophisticated and abstract.

3. We still assume that teachers and school administrators are the authorities over knowledge and behavior.
This assumption sets the stage for a hierarchical and authoritarian approach to running schools, which also manifests in individual classrooms.

4. We still assume that children need to be controlled in their speech, thinking, and behavior.
Fundamentally, children are not viewed as fully human and are not trusted. Such views in combination with the assumption (#3) of teachers and administrators as authorities leads to an authoritarian approach to teaching and controlling student behavior.

5. We still assume that children have to conform to arbitrary standards of appearance and behavior.
This assumption is associated with assumption #4.

6. We still assume that children must be subservient to authorities and obey their demands.
This assumption is an off-shoot of #3, 4, and 5. All of these assumptions are basically anti-democratic.

7. We still assume that teaching, and therefore learning, must be efficient and cover as much knowledge and skill as possible in any given period of time.
Over the last two centuries of corporatization and four centuries of mechanistic thinking, we have bought into this idea of “efficiency” as being the ultimate characteristics of doing just about anything. As with the wine metaphor, efficiency does not necessarily make good wine. The best, deepest, most meaningful and relevant, and most complex learning happens as a natural process for each individual. We can’t rush it. But, we can support it and enrich the possibilities for learning. And, that support and enrichment is what parents and teachers can do for their children, and it’s what we can do for ourselves at whatever age we happen to be.

8. We still assume that specific knowledge, as determined by teachers and other knowledge authorities, must be “learned.”
Who chooses what needs to be learned? Why are they choosing this material and not other material? Why is this material more significant than other material? We will get a variety of answers to these questions, but most will center around vague notions of being well educated or having a well rounded education. I’m not sure what this means. For most of us, most of what we supposedly learned in grade 5 or 8 or 10, is long forgotten. Some of what we may have learned is outdated. I confronted this situation when I wrote a book covering some of the science material that teachers may encounter in an inquiry-based classroom. A significant portion of what I thought I knew turned out to be erroneous as I went through to re-check every knowledge claim I was making. This was a most sobering experience!
Certainly, children need to learn how to read, but this learning to read should be learning to read for enjoyment, gratification, meaning, and understanding. For far too many children, learning to read is not enjoyable or gratifying. And, this situation has led to a population that doesn’t read. There are a number of reasons, most of which are intertwined with other assumptions listed here. However, a few of the specific factors include: (a) having children read books that are of little interest to them; (b) not enough having adults read interesting books to them; (c) using phonics as the only mode of reading instruction, which is like reading as pulling teeth — it’s an extremely useful tool in decoding most unfamiliar words, but it only produces slow and unmotivated readers when used exclusively; and (d) in the spirit of efficiency, test scores, etc., we force children to learn to read at the same rate and same time. Reading is like drinking fine wine. You can’t rush it. You need to feel it, smell it, and let it swish around you mouth and mind.

9. We still assume that all children learn in the same way and at the same pace.
As with reading… and drinking wine… children, who are always learning whether we like it or not and whether we try to control it or not, learn in a variety of ways and at different rates. This is true of adults, as well. When I first read Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind around 1974, I knew I was reading a very important book, but struggled to really understand it. But, over the years, his ideas kept clicking as I explored different ideas, taught kids, and then taught adults and conducted research on student and teacher learning and talk. Something I was doing would suddenly connect with a Batesonian idea, which often felt like a lightning strike throughout my body and head. And, fifty years later, I’m still learning from those same ideas. But, some of the ways through which we all learn, include: (a) play — with others, with ideas, with “things,” etc.; (b) exploration — through reading, in nature, etc.; (c) breaking the rules — not doing things in the same way as others, not conforming, taking leaps, etc.; (d) inquiring — through observations, experiments, reading, etc.; (e) talking and arguing about ideas with others; (f) drawing and manipulating objects — sketching, painting, building or taking apart things, etc.; and (g) writing — notes (by hand), essays, stories, and whatever makes us explain our ideas in an organized way so that others understand what we’re writing.

10. We still assume that teaching and learning are linear and mechanistic processes.
Although there are instances of needing one bit of understanding before going to the next bit of understanding, these steps occur within a recursive system of learning. Within this system we juggle ideas, muse about ideas, relate one idea to other ideas and prior understandings, and re-align and categorize ideas. Although the steps seem linear, it’s only a minor aspect of a much more complex process.

11. We still assume that knowledge is absolute.
What we consider to be the accepted factual and accepted knowledge is not absolute. We, as humans, are continually revising our understandings. Sometimes we throw out old ideas and replace them with new ideas. Sometimes we just tweak old knowledge to update it to new fit with newly gained information.
As for what we, as individuals, think is the truth can be anything from a craps shoot to a reasonable degree of trust-worthiness. No knowledge is absolute. We just keep trying to get close. But, schooling keeps presenting and portraying knowledge as the absolute truth.

12. We still assume that children cannot handle responsibility or be trusted.
Schooling has failed children in yet another way. For whatever reason, children are objectified and treated with little respect or trust in their abilities and their integrity. And, children pick up on this in an instant. Some comply and play the school game. Others resist and fight for their dignity. And, others just stumble along. When teachers flip this assumption and treat students with respect, love, and trust, they flourish and live up to new visions of themselves. Children need to feel a sense of ownership over what and how things are done. Classrooms and schools can become real democratic communities of learners, inquirers, creators, and much, much more.

13. We still assume that the written curriculum and associated guidelines and materials are of greater importance than children’s curiosity, interests, passions, or questions.
As suggested previously, mandated curricula, which specify what content is to be learned, at what rate, etc., are fundamentally misguided. However, teachers who provide rich learning environments in their classrooms are likely to cover many of the concepts suggested by these curricular documents, but are also likely to go way beyond what other think children need to learn.

14. We assume that testing “measures” learning.
Learning cannot be measured. Learning has no quantity or dimensions. We’ve been duped into thinking that grades and test scores tell us how much we’ve learned or not learned. Much of learning isn’t even observable. It can percolate under the surface for years, such as the learning from my reading of Gregory Bateson, which continues to develop decades later. We can to some extent describe parts of what we and others learn. The way learners write about something, draw or express ideas in some non-written form, and talk about ideas can provide incredible insights. But, even more importantly, learners can assess and share their ideas and feelings about what they’ve learned, what they’ve had difficulty with, and what questions they still have. For this to happen, which is really important for developing confidence their abilities to continue to learn on their own, we need to change the atmosphere of classrooms, where “authorities” (e.g., teachers) are not judging them, where children are seen and treated like co-learners in contexts of inquiry and knowledge creation.

15. We assume that we can “teach” children, or adults, and they will learn exactly what we purport to teach them.
Such an assumption is based on a high degree of arrogance. An arrogance that assumes someone can make someone else learn exactly what is intended to be learned. Such a view is not only arrogant, it is misinformed. Children, as well as all people and all living things, are learning beings. We all learn, all the time. But, learning is idiosyncratic. Thirty people can be in the same context, doing the same thing, and each person’s learning will be different from all the others. Some people can memorize and spew back that information, but that is superficial with a very short half-life. Deep learning and understanding cannot be forced, but it can be supported. The best we can do is provide rich contexts where learning can occur and be nurtured. In such contexts, people need to talk with one another about the ideas, argue, defend positions, and consider possibilities. They need to be questioning, inquiring, testing ideas, making connections, looking for relationships, and so forth. And, they need to write and communicate about what they have been and are learning.

Children’s deeper and more cohesive learning in schools is not what is in the written curriculum, but rather is in the manifestation of the that curriculum, and even what is NOT manifested (i.e., the hidden curriculum) and what is not taught (i.e., the null curriculum). In essence, children learn the unwritten assumptions about schooling, about learning, about authority, about hierarchical roles, and so forth. They learn how to live in an authoritarian society. In fact, this learning continues past K-12 education into colleges and universities, into the full array of occupational contexts, into the way religious organizations manifest, into all sort of other organizations, not to mention the military. It is no wonder that people seem to feel comfortable with the idea of rejecting democracy and accepting authoritarian rule.

I hope that it is obvious that none of these assumptions hold any water, even though these assumptions have been driving most of education and educational institutions for centuries. If you want to change this, as you may have gathered, the task is like trying to civilize a monolithic ogre. Each toe, each finger, each cell in its body is a different, but intertwined and interdependent system. And, all of them, as any good complex system, will try to maintain their present status and all of the interrelationships and interdependencies. In other words, the only way to actually hope to see a sustainable change is realize a change across all of the interdependent systems, or across all of society. This may sound overwhelming and even impossible.

Any hope for change is to start by making changes in your immediate circle of activity. If you’re a teacher, you can start initiating a different set of assumptions, then try to get parents involved in continuing the process at home. Maybe other teachers will join in. But, even affecting the children and letting them experience a different sort of learning environment can have a lasting effect on them. If you’re a parent, you can provide a different environment for your children and their friends. And, then maybe other parents will join in, which could eventually be discussed with the teachers.

© 2024 by Jeffrey W Bloom

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