The End of Education

by Neil Postman

  Of course, language also has a social dimension. Mrs. Soybel understood this well enough, but only part of it. Her idea was that by abandoning homegrown dialects, her gaggle of Brooklyn ragamuffins could become linguistically indistinguishable from Oxford dons, or at least American corporate executives. What she may have missed is that in changing our speech, we would be changing our politics, our taste, our passions, our sense of beauty, even our loyalties. Perhaps she did know this, but the matter was never explained or discussed, and no choice was offered. Would such changes alienate us from our parents, relatives, and friends? Is there something wrong with being from the “working class”? What new prejudices will become comfortable and what old ones despicable? In seeing the world through the prism of new ways of speaking, would we be better or worse? These are questions of large import, and they need to be raised these days in the context of the effort to have us speak in “politically correct” ways. By changing our names for things, how do we become different? What new social attitudes do we embrace? How powerful are our habitual ways of naming?

  These are matters that ought to be at the heart of education. They are not merely about how we sound to others but about how we are sounding out the world. Of course, they are no more important than how language controls the uses of our intellect—that is to say, how our ideas of ideas are governed by language. Aristotle believed he had uncovered universal laws of thought, when, in fact, all he had done was to explain the logical rules of Greek syntax. Perhaps if the Greeks had been interested in other languages, he would have come to different conclusions. The medieval churchmen thought that if their language contained a word, there must necessarily be something in the world to which it corresponded, which sent them on a fruitless intellectual journey to discover how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The well-known German philosopher Martin Heidegger believed that only the German language could express the subtlest and most profound philosophical notions. Perhaps he meant incomprehensible notions. In any case, his claim is weakened by the fact that he was an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler and a member of the Nazi party. Apparently, he was somewhat unclear about what constitutes subtlety and profundity. But to the extent to which any of us is clear about anything, it will be through an awareness of how we use language, how language uses us, and what measures are available to clarify our knowledge of the world we make.

  All of this is part of the great story of how humans use language to transform the world and then, in turn, are transformed by their own invention. The story, of course, did not end with the invention of speech. In fact, it begins there, which is what Mrs. Soybel may have meant in saying speech made us human. The story continued to unfold with fantastic twists as human beings invented surrogate languages to widen their scope: ideographs, phonetic writing, then printing, then telegraphy, photography, radio, movies, television, and computers, each of which transformed the world—sliced it, framed it, enlarged it, diminished it. To say of all this that we are merely toolmakers is to miss the point of the story. We are the world makers, and the word weavers. That is what makes us smart, and dumb; moral and immoral; tolerant and bigoted. That is what makes us human. Is it possible to tell this story to our young in school, to have them investigate how we advance our humanity by controlling the codes with which we address the world, to have them learn what happens when we lose control of our own inventions? This may be the greatest story untold. In school.

  PART II

  What you have just read in Part I, to paraphrase a famous sage, is the doctrine; what follows in Part II is the commentary. But I hasten to say that I make no claim that the five narratives I have described exhaust the possibilities. They merely exhaust my imagination. That there are still more ideas that can provide respectable, humane, and substantive reasons for schooling, I have no doubt. The purpose of this book is not only to put forward reasons that make sense but to play a role in promoting a serious conversation about reasons. Not about policies, management, assessment, and other engineering matters. These are important, but they ought rightfully to be addressed after decisions are made about what schools are for. Meaning only slight disrespect to some of my colleagues, I have the impression that of all those who have business to conduct with schools—school administrators, classroom teachers, students, parents, politicians, publishers, and professors of education—it is the last who seem least interested in talking about reasons, with the first not far behind. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but, in any case, we cannot fail to improve the lives of our young if all parties could enter the conversation with enthusiasm and resolve.

  Part II intends to make its contribution by providing levels of specificity to the narratives described in Part I. Without such specificity, the narratives may appear abstract, airy, and possibly impractical. In what follows, I wish to show that they are nothing of the sort.

  5 • The Spaceship Earth

  Having just remarked that the narratives described in the last chapter may appear abstract and that I intend here to bring them down to earth, I take a risk in beginning with a fable. What could be more abstract than that? The reader may help to ease my mind by remembering, first, that this is a fable and not a curriculum and, second, that you need not burden it or yourself with doubts about its practicality. There will be time for that in addressing the moral of the fable.

  A Fable

  Once upon a time in the city of New York, civilized life very nearly came to an end. The streets were covered with dirt, and there was no one to tidy them. The air and rivers were polluted, and no one could cleanse them. The schools were rundown, and no one believed in them. Each day brought a new strike, and each strike brought new hardships. Crime and strife and disorder and rudeness were to be found everywhere. The young fought the old. The workers fought the students. The poor fought the rich. The city was bankrupt.

  When things came to their most desperate moment, the city fathers met to consider the problem. But they could suggest no cures, for their morale was very low and their imaginations dulled by hatred and confusion. There was nothing for the mayor to do but to declare a state of emergency. He had done this before during snowstorms and power failures, but now he felt even more justified.

  “Our city,” he said, “is under siege, like the ancient cities of Jericho and Troy. But our enemies are sloth and poverty and indifference and hatred.”

  As you can see, he was a very wise mayor, but not so wise as to say exactly how these enemies could be dispersed. Thus, though a state of emergency officially existed, neither the mayor nor anyone else could think of anything to do that would make the situation better rather than worse. And then an extraordinary thing happened.

  One of the mayor’s aides, knowing full well what the future held for the city, had decided to flee with his family to the country. In order to prepare himself for his exodus to a strange environment, he began to read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which he had been told was a useful handbook on how to survive in the country. While reading the book, he came upon the following passage: “Students should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?”

  The aide sensed immediately that he was in the presence of an exceedingly good idea. And he sought an audience with the mayor. He showed the passage to the mayor, who was extremely depressed and in no mood to read from books, since he had already scoured books of lore and wisdom in search of help but had found nothing.

  “What does it mean?” asked the mayor angrily.

  “Nothing less,” replied the aide, “than a way to our salvation.”

  He then explained to the mayor that the students in the public schools had heretofore been part of the general problem, whereas, with some imagination and a change of perspective, they might easily become part of the general solution. He pointed out that from junior high school through senior high school, there w
ere approximately 400,000 able-bodied, energetic young men and women who could be used as a resource to make the city livable again.

  “But how can we use them?” asked the mayor. “And what would happen to their education if we did?”

  To this, the aide replied, “They will find their education in the process of saving their city. And as for their lessons in school, we have ample evidence that the young do not exactly appreciate them and are even now turning against their teachers and their schools.” The aide, who had come armed with statistics (as aides are wont to do), pointed out that the city was spending $1 million a year merely replacing broken school windows and that almost one-third of all the students enrolled in the schools did not show up on any given day.

  “Yes, I know,” said the mayor sadly. “Woe unto us.”

  “Wrong,” said the aide brashly. “The boredom and destructiveness and pent-up energy that are an affliction to us can be turned to our advantage.”

  The mayor was not quite convinced, but having no better idea of his own, he appointed his aide chairman of the Emergency Education Committee, and the aide at once made plans to remove almost 400,000 students from their dreary classrooms and their even drearier lessons, so that their energy and talents might be used to repair the desecrated environment.

  When these plans became known, there was a great hue and cry against them, for people in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not. For instance, the teachers complained that their contract contained no provision for such unusual procedures. To this, the aide replied that the spirit of their contract compelled them to help educate our youth, and that education can take many forms and be conducted in many places. “It is not written in any holy book,” he observed, “that an education must occur in a small room with chairs in it.”

  Some parents complained that the plan was un-American and that its compulsory nature was hateful to them. To this, the aide replied that the plan was based on the practices of earlier Americans who required the young to assist in controlling the environment in order to ensure the survival of the group. “Our schools,” he added, “have never hesitated to compel. The question is not, nor has it ever been, to compel or not to compel but, rather, which things ought to be compelled.”

  And even some children complained, although not many. They said that their God-given right to spend twelve years of their lives, at public expense, sitting in a classroom was being trampled. To this complaint, the aide replied that they were confusing a luxury with a right and that, in any case, the community could no longer afford either. “Besides,” he added, “of all the God-given rights man has identified, none takes precedence over his right to survive.”

  And so, the curriculum of the public schools of New York City became known as Operation Survival, and all the children from seventh grade through twelfth grade became part of it. Here are some of the things they were obliged to do:

  On Monday morning of every week, 400,000 children had to help clean up their own neighborhoods. They swept the streets, canned the garbage, removed the litter from empty lots, and hosed the dust and graffiti from the pavements and walls. Wednesday mornings were reserved for beautifying the city. Students planted trees and flowers, tended the grass and shrubs, painted subways and other eyesores, and even repaired broken-down public buildings, starting with their own schools.

  Each day, five thousand students (mostly juniors and seniors in high school) were given responsibility to direct traffic on city streets, so that all the policemen who previously had done this were freed to keep a sharp eye out for criminals. Each day, five thousand students were asked to help deliver the mail, so that it soon became possible to have mail delivered twice a day—as it had been done in days of yore.

  Several thousand students were also used to establish and maintain day-care centers, so that young mothers, many on welfare, were free to find gainful employment. Each student was also assigned to meet with two elementary school students on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to teach them to read, to write, and to do arithmetic. Twenty thousand students were asked to substitute, on one afternoon a week, for certain adults whose jobs the students could perform without injury or loss of efficiency. These adults were then free to attend school or, if they preferred, to assist the students in their efforts to save their city.

  The students were also assigned to publish a newspaper in every neighborhood of the city, and in it, they were able to include much information that good citizens need to have. Students organized science fairs, block parties, and rock festivals, and they formed, in every neighborhood, both an orchestra and a theater company. Some students assisted in hospitals, helped to register voters, and produced radio and television programs that were aired on city stations. There was still time to hold a year-round City Olympics, in which every child competed in some sport or other.

  It came to pass, as you might expect, that the college students in the city yearned to participate in the general plan, and thus another 100,000 young people became available to serve the community. The college students ran a jitney service from the residential boroughs to Manhattan and back. Using their own cars and partly subsidized by the city, the students quickly established a kind of auxiliary, semipublic transportation system, which reduced the number of cars coming into Manhattan, took some of the load off the subways, and diminished air pollution—in one stroke.

  College students were empowered to give parking and littering tickets, thus freeing policemen more than ever for real detective work. They were permitted to organize seminars, film festivals, and lectures for junior and senior high school students; and on a UHF television channel, set aside for the purpose, they gave advanced courses in a variety of subjects every day from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. They also helped to organize and run drug-addiction rehabilitation centers, and they launched campaigns to inform people of their legal rights, nutritional needs, and available medical facilities.

  Because this is a fable and not a fairy tale, it cannot be said that all the problems of the city were solved. But several extraordinary things did happen. The city began to come alive, and its citizens found new reason to hope that they could save themselves. Young people who had been alienated from their environment assumed a proprietary interest in it. Older people who had regarded the young as unruly and parasitic came to respect them. There followed from this a revival of courtesy and a diminution of crime, for there was less reason than before to be angry at one’s neighbors and wish to assault them.

  Amazingly, most of the students found that while they did not “receive” an education, they were able to create a quite adequate one. They lived, each day, their social studies and geography and communication and biology lessons and many other things that decent and proper people know about, including the belief that everyone must share equally in creating a livable city, no matter what he or she becomes later on. It even came to pass that the older people, being guided by the example of the young, took a renewed interest in restoring their environment and at the very least refused to participate in its destruction.

  Now, it would be foolish to deny that there were not certain problems attending this whole adventure. For instance, thousands of children who would otherwise have known the principal rivers of Uruguay had to live out their lives in ignorance of these facts. Hundreds of teachers felt that their training had been wasted, because they could not educate children unless it were done in a classroom. As you can imagine, it was also exceedingly difficult to grade students on their activities, and after a while, almost all tests ceased. This made many people unhappy, for many reasons, but most of all because no one could tell the dumb children from the smart children anymore.

  But the mayor, who was, after all, a very shrewd politician, promised that as soon as the emergency was over, everything would be restored to normal. Meanwhile, everybody lived happily ever after—in a state of emergency, but quite able to cope with it.

  . . .

  Those who have
read or heard this fable (it has appeared twice in the New York Times Magazine), and were then asked to state its moral, have come up with at least six different ones. Whether this makes it a good fable or not, I do not know. But the moral I prefer is that a sense of responsibility for the planet is born from a sense of responsibility for one’s own neighborhood. It is hard to imagine that anyone who fouls his or her own nest could care very much about the tree in which it is lodged. Thus, the fable suggests that we must begin the story of the Earth as our spaceship by inventing ways to engage students in the care of their own schools, neighborhoods, and towns. Those who claim to be in close touch with what they call “reality” point out that a proposal such as this one poses insurmountable problems in supervision and would require planning of such care that most schools or school systems would be defeated right at the start. They also observe that proposals of this kind have political and legal implications that go far beyond anything the schools have ever had to cope with. I reluctantly but emphatically agree. When one considers that most schools have difficulty in simply providing students with nutritious lunches, the specific activities described in the fable would seem to be a prescription for chaos. But there is an idea here that ought not to be easily dismissed. Yes, it is unrealistic to expect students to direct traffic or deliver the mail. But is it unrealistic to have them clean and paint their own school, plant trees and flowers, produce a community newspaper, create a community theater? Is it unrealistic for older students to teach younger ones? In fact, there are several schools that already allow, if they do not require, students to do such things, and to do them for the right reasons. I would stress the phrase “for the right reasons.” There are, for example, many schools that have enthusiastically developed what are called “work study” or “apprenticeship” programs with a view toward familiarizing the young with the world of work. It is not clear to me why the schools are so interested in such an objective.1 Students will have most of their lives to familiarize themselves with the world of work—work is something they will have to do. Caring for their environment is not something they will have to do, and, one fears, most don’t. The purpose of the activities suggested by the fable is to introduce the young to their responsibilities for the planet, beginning with the buildings and streets that are their portion of the planet. The idea is to show that the environment is not something one is given, take it or leave it. The fact is that we cannot leave it, and neither should we take it. Rather, we must make it. And to make it requires a consciousness of our interdependence, as well as an encouragement and legitimization of the effort.