by Daniel Quinn
“What does that mean?”
“This age group pulls an enormous amount of money—two hundred billion dollars a year, it’s estimated—out of their parents’ pockets to be spent on books, clothes, games, novelties, compact discs, and similar things that are designed specifically for them and no one else. Many enormous industries depend on teenage consumers. You must be aware of that.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I just never thought of it in these terms.”
“If these teenagers were suddenly expected to be wage earners and no longer at liberty to pull billions of dollars from their parents’ pockets, these youth-oriented industries would vanish overnight, pitching more millions out onto the job market.”
“I see what you mean. If fourteen-year-olds had to support themselves, they wouldn’t be spending their money on Nike shoes, arcade games, and CDs.”
“Fifty years ago, Julie, teenagers went to movies made for adults and wore clothing designed for adults. The music they listened to was not music written and performed for them, it was music written and performed for adults—by adults like Cole Porter, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman. To be in on the first big postwar clothing fad, teenage girls scavenged their fathers’ white business shirts. Such a thing would never happen today.”
“That’s for sure.”
Ishmael fell silent for a few minutes. Then he said, “A while ago you mentioned listening to a teacher explain how a bill passes Congress. I assume you have in fact studied this in school.”
“That’s right. In civics.”
“Do you actually know how a bill passes Congress?”
“I haven’t a clue, Ishmael.”
“Were you tested on it?”
“I’m sure I was.”
“Did you pass?”
“Of course. I never fail tests.”
“So you supposedly ‘learned’ how a bill passes Congress, passed a test on the subject, and promptly forgot all about it.” “That’s right.”
“Can you divide one fractional number by another?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, let’s see. You’ve got half a pie and you want to divide it into thirds. Each piece will be a sixth.”
“That’s an example of multiplication, Julie. One-half times one-third equals one-sixth.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“You studied division of fractional numbers in the fourth grade, probably.”
“I remember it vaguely.”
“Try again to see if you can think of an example in which you would divide one fractional number by another.”
I gave it a shot and had to admit it was beyond me.
“If you divide half a pie by three, you get a sixth of a pie. That’s clear enough. If you divide half a pie by two, you get a fourth of a pie. If you divide half a pie by one, what do you get?”
I stared at him blankly.
“If you divide half a pie by one, you get half a pie, of course. Any number divided by one is that number.”
“Right.”
“So what do you get if you divide half a pie by a half?”
“Oh wow. One whole pie?”
“Of course. And what do you get if you divide half a pie by a third?”
“Three halves. I think. One and a half pies.”
“That’s right. In the fourth grade, you spent weeks trying to master this concept, but of course it’s far too abstract for fourth graders. But presumably you passed the test.”
“I’m sure I did.”
“So you learned as much as you needed to pass the test, then promptly forgot all about it. Do you know why you forgot about it?”
“I forgot about it because, who cares?”
“Exactly. You forgot about it for the same reason that you forgot how a bill passes Congress, because you had no use for it in your life. In actual fact, people seldom remember things they have no use for.”
“That’s true.”
“How much do you remember from what you learned in school last year?”
“Almost nothing, I’d say.”
“Do you think you’re different from your classmates in this regard?”
“Not at all.”
“So most of you remember almost nothing from what you learn in school from one year to the next.”
“That’s right. Obviously we all know how to read and write and do simple arithmetic—or most of us do.”
“Which pretty well proves the point, doesn’t it. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are things you actually have use for in your lives.”
“Yes, that’s certainly true.”
“Here’s an interesting question for you, Julie. Do your teachers expect you to remember everything you learned last year?”
“No, I don’t think so. They expect you to remember having heard about it. If the teacher says ‘tidal forces,’ she expects everyone to nod and say, ‘Yeah, we studied those last year.’ ”
“Do you understand the operation of tidal forces, Julie?”
“Well, I know what they are. Why the oceans bulge out on both sides of the earth at the same time makes utterly no sense to me.”
“But you didn’t mention this to your teacher.”
“Of course not. I think I got a 97 on the quiz. I remember the grade better than the subject.”
“But now you’re in a position to understand why you spend literally years of your life in school learning things you instantly forget once you’ve passed the test.”
“I am?”
“You are. Give it a shot.”
I gave it a shot. “They have to give us something to do during the years we’re being kept off the job market. And they’ve got to make it look good. It’s got to look like something r-e-e-e-a-l-l-y useful. They can’t just let us smoke dope and rock ‘n’ roll for twelve years.”
“Why not, Julie?”
“Because it wouldn’t look right. The jig would be up. The secret would be out. Everyone would know we were just there to kill time.”
“When you were listing things that people find wrong with your schools, you noted that they do a poor job of preparing people to get jobs. Why do you think they do such a poor job at this?”
“Why? I don’t know. I’m not sure I even understand the question.”
“I’m inviting you to think about this the way I would.”
“Oh,” I said. That was as far as I got for about three minutes. Then I admitted I didn’t have any idea how to go about thinking about this the way he would.
“What do people think about this failure of the schools, Julie? This will give you a clue as to what Mother Culture teaches.”
“People think the schools are incompetent. That’s what I’d guess people think.”
“Try to give me something you feel more confident in than a guess.”
I worked on it for a while and said, “Kids are lazy, and the schools are incompetent and underfunded.”
“Good. This is indeed what Mother Culture teaches. What would the schools do if they had more money?”
“If the schools had more money, they could get better teachers or pay teachers more, and I guess the theory is that the extra money would inspire teachers to do a better job.”
“And what about the lazy kids?”
“Some of the more money would be spent buying new gadgets and better books and prettier wallpaper, and the kids would not be as lazy as before. Something like that.”
“So let’s suppose that these new and improved schools turn out new and improved graduates. What happens then?”
“I don’t know. I guess they have an easier time getting jobs.”
“Why, Julie?”
“Because they’ve got better skills. They know how to do things employers want.”
“Excellent. So Johnny Smith isn’t going to have to go to work as a bagger in a grocery store, is he? He can apply for a job as an assistant manager.”
“That’s right.”
�
��And that’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I’d think so.”
“But you know, Johnny Smith’s older brother graduated from school four years ago, before they were new and improved.”
“So?”
“He too went to work for the grocery store. But of course, having no skills, he had to start as a bagger.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And now, after four years, he too wants to apply for that job as an assistant manager.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“And then there’s Jennie Jones, another of your new and improved graduates. She doesn’t have to take a job as a lowly administrative assistant at the accounting firm. She can go right in as office manager. And that’s terrific, isn’t it?”
“It is so far.”
“But her mother went back into the workforce a few years ago, and having no skills, she had to start as a lowly administrative assistant at that accounting firm. Now she’s ready to be promoted to office manager.”
“Bad.”
“How do you think people are going to like your new and improved schools that prepare graduates for good jobs?”
“They’re not.”
“Now do you know why schools do a poor job of preparing graduates for the workplace?”
“I sure do. Grads have to start at the bottom of the ladder.”
“So you see that your schools are doing just what you actually want them to do. People imagine that they’d like to see their children enter the workplace with really useful business skills, but if they actually did so, they’d immediately begin competing for jobs with their older siblings and their parents, which would be catastrophic. And if graduates came out of school with advanced skills, who would bag the groceries, Julie? Who would do the sweeping up? Who would pump the gas? Who would do the filing? Who would flip the burgers?”
“I suppose it would turn into an age thing.”
“You mean you’d tell Johnny Smith and Jennie Jones that they can’t have the jobs they want, not because others are more qualified but because others are older.”
“That’s right.”
“Then what’s the point of giving Johnny and Jennie skills that would enable them to do these jobs?”
“I guess if they graduate with the skills, then at least they’ll have them when their time comes.”
“Where did their older siblings and parents pick up these skills?”
“On the job, I guess.”
“You mean while bagging the groceries, sweeping up, pumping the gas, doing the filing, and flipping the burgers.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And won’t your improved graduates pick up the same skills their older siblings and parents picked up by doing these jobs?”
“Yes.”
“Then what do they gain by learning them in advance, since they’ll be learning them on the job anyway?”
“I guess there’s no advantage any which way,” I said.
“Now let’s see if you can figure out why your schools turn out graduates with zero survival value.”
“Okay … To begin with, Mother Culture says it would be pointless to turn out graduates with a high survival value.”
“Why is that, Julie?”
“Because they don’t need it. Primitive people need it, sure, but not civilized people. It’d be a waste of time for people to learn how to survive on their own.”
Ishmael told me to continue.
“I guess if you were conducting this conversation, you’d ask what would happen if we turned out a class of new and improved students with a hundred-percent survival value.”
He nodded.
I sat there for a while working it through. “The first thing I thought of is that they’d go for jobs as wilderness guides or something. But that’s completely stupid. The point is, if they had a hundred-percent survival value, they wouldn’t need jobs at all.”
“Go on.”
“Locking up the food wouldn’t keep them in the prison. They’d be out. They’d be free!”
Ishmael nodded again. “Of course a few of them would still elect to stay behind—but that would be a matter of choice. I daresay a Donald Trump or a George Bush or a Steven Spielberg wouldn’t have any inclination to leave the Taker prison behind.”
“I’ll bet it would be more than a few. I’ll bet half would stay.”
“Go on. What would happen then?”
“Even if half stayed, the door would be open. People would come pouring out. A lot would stay in, but a lot would come out.”
“You mean that, for a lot of you, getting a job and working until retirement age doesn’t look like heaven.”
“It sure doesn’t,” I said.
“So now you know why your schools turn out graduates with no survival value.”
“That’s right, I do. Since they don’t have any survival value, they’re forced to enter the Taker economy. Even if they’d rather opt out of that economy, they can’t.”
“Once again, the essential point to note is that, for all your complaining, your schools are doing just what you actually want them to do, which is to produce workers who have no choice but to enter your economic system, presorted into various grades. High-school graduates are generally destined for blue-collar jobs. They may be as intelligent and talented as college graduates, but they haven’t demonstrated this by surviving a further four years of studies—studies that, for the most part, are no more useful in life than the studies of the previous twelve. Nonetheless, a college degree wins admittance to white-collar jobs that are generally off-limits to high-school graduates.
“What blue-collar and white-collar workers actually retain of their schooling doesn’t much matter—in either their working lives or their private lives. Very, very few of them will ever be called upon to divide one fractional number by another, parse a sentence, dissect a frog, critique a poem, prove a theorem, discuss the economic policies of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, define the difference between Spenserian and Shakespearean sonnets, describe how a bill passes Congress, or explain why the oceans bulge on opposite sides of the world under the influence of tidal forces. Thus, if they graduate without being able to do these things, it really doesn’t matter in the slightest. Postgraduate work is obviously different. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, scholars, and so on actually have to use in real life what they learn in graduate school, so for this small percentage of the population schooling actually does something besides keep them off the job market.
“Mother Culture’s deception here is that schools exist to serve the needs of people. In fact, they exist to serve the needs of your economy. The schools turn out graduates who can’t live without jobs but who have no job skills, and this suits your economic needs perfectly. What you’re seeing at work in your schools isn’t a system defect, it’s a system requirement, and they meet that requirement with close to one hundred percent efficiency.”
“Ishmael,” I said, and our eyes met. “You worked this out all by yourself?”
“Yes, over several years, Julie. I’m a very slow thinker.”
School Daze II
Ishmael asked if I’d watched any younger siblings grow up from infancy, and I told him no.
“Then you wouldn’t know from experience that small children are the most powerful learning engines in the known universe. They effortlessly learn as many languages as are spoken in their households. No one has to sit them down in a classroom and drill them on grammar and vocabulary. They do no homework, they have no tests, no grades. Learning their native languages is no chore at all, because of course it’s immensely and immediately useful and gratifying to them.
“Everything you learn during these early years is immensely and immediately useful and gratifying, even if it’s only how to crawl or how to build a tower of blocks or how to bang a pot with a spoon or how to make your head buzz with a piercing screech. The learning of small children is limited only by what they’re able to see, hear, smell, and get their hands on. This lea
rning drive continues when they enter kindergarten, at least for a while. Do you remember the sort of things you learned in kindergarten?”
“No, I can’t say that I do.”
“These are things Rachel learned twenty years ago, but I doubt if they’re any different nowadays. She learned the names of primary and secondary colors—red, blue, yellow, green, and so on. She learned the names of basic geometric shapes—square, circle, triangle. She learned how to tell time. She learned the days of the week. She learned to count. She learned the basic units of money—penny, nickel, dime, and so on. She learned the months and the seasons of the year. These are obviously things everyone would learn whether they studied them in school or not, but they’re still somewhat useful and somewhat gratifying to know, so most children have no difficulty learning them in kindergarten. After reviewing all this in grade one, Rachel went on to learn addition and subtraction and to master beginning reading skills (though in fact she’d been reading since she was four years old at least). Again, children generally find these to be useful and gratifying studies. I don’t intend to go through the entire curriculum in this way, however. The point I want to make is that, in grades K through three, most children master the skills that citizens need in order to get along in your culture, commonly characterized as the ‘three R’s’—reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are skills that, even at age seven and eight, children actually use and enjoy using. A hundred and fifty years ago this was the citizen’s basic education. Grades four through twelve were added to the curriculum in order to keep youngsters off the job market, and the skills taught in these grades are the ones most students find to be neither useful in their lives nor gratifying to master. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of fractional numbers exemplify these skills. No children at all (and very, very few adults) ever have occasion to use them, but they’re available to be added to the curriculum, and so they have been. They take up months and months of time, and this is all to the good, since the whole point of the exercise is to take up the students’ time. You’ve mentioned other subjects, like civics and earth sciences, which present plenty of opportunity for time-consuming activities. I remember that Rachel was required to memorize state capitals for some course or other. My favorite example of the tendency came to my notice when she was in the eighth grade. She actually learned to fill out a federal income-tax form, something she wouldn’t need to do in actual life for at least five years, by which time she obviously would have forgotten the form, which would by then be substantially different anyway. And of course every child spends years studying history—national, state, and world, ancient, medieval, and modern—of which they retain about one percent.”
