The End of Education

by Neil Postman

  I have begun this way not because the education experts in New York State are unusual, but because they are typical. In their reluctance to include patriotism as a “value,” they reflect a tendency throughout the country, a certain uneasiness about where patriotism might lead. There is certainly more emphasis, these days, on loving one’s self than on loving one’s country, which means, I suppose, that Philip Rieff was prophetic when he wrote about “the triumph of the therapeutic.” In any case, this uneasiness about patriotism is at least understandable, since the idea of love of country is too easily transmogrified into a mindless, xenophobic nationalism, as in the instance of the patriots in Florida who insist on students’ learning that America is superior to all other countries. I suspect that still another reason for steering clear of patriotism is the recent prominence of “revisionist” history, which has led to increased awareness of the uglier aspects of American history and culture. Teachers are likely to think that self-love or, indeed, love for cultures other than America is a safer and more wholesome route to take. But in steering clear of patriotism, educators miss an opportunity to provide schooling with a profound and transcendent narrative that can educate and inspire students of all ages. I refer, of course, to the story of America as a great experiment and as a center of continuous argument.

  There are many ways to unveil this story, and good teachers, at every level, can think of several if they believe the story is worthwhile. The ideas below should be regarded as possibilities, but I would expect that whatever approach might be taken, every teacher would have read the following documents and books: Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, John Dewey’s Democracy and Education, John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

  If a teacher has not read this material, I would be reluctant to have him or her in close contact with American children. But assuming a teacher knows what these works signify, he or she might proceed by introducing some of the great experiments that characterize American culture, and which the rest of the world has looked upon with wonder. I should say there are four that will cover most of the important arguments Americans have had.

  Like all experiments, each begins with a question. The first is, of course, Is it possible to have a coherent, stable culture that allows the greatest possible freedom of religious and political thought and expression? The origins of this question predate the founding of the United States, and how far back one should go in considering the question would depend on the age and experience of the students. I should think that fifth-grade students ought, at least, to learn about John Peter Zenger and the argument his Philadelphia lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, made on this question. (It might even help to pique student interest if they knew that the man who wanted Zenger put in jail for what he printed was named William—i.e., “Bill”—Cosby.) I should think fifth-, sixth-, and certainly seventh-grade students are capable of understanding some of the arguments made in the eighteenth century over the meanings of such words and terms as freedom, equality, due process, and the divine right of kings. As students advance in years, they may be introduced to less well known but significant arguments about the meanings of key concepts. De Tocqueville’s distinction between egotism and individuality, both of which he thought dangerous, is a somewhat complex argument, but one worth having tenth or eleventh graders consider.

  If it is “mastery” we are shooting for, I would hope no student would be allowed out of the eighth grade unless he or she knew by heart the First Amendment, which is, after all, the binding legal answer to the question concerning the permissible extent of freedom of expression (or perhaps not so much an answer as an hypothesis that is still being tested). I am aware that modern educators disapprove of students’ being asked to memorize anything, classifying such a task under the dreaded rubric of “rote” learning. I stand with those who are against students’ playing the “guess what answer I have in my head” game with teachers, but I do not think that such a stand rules out asking students to know by heart certain fundamental expressions of American ideals. There are, in any case, only forty-five words in the First Amendment, and I can’t imagine that the brains of our students would be damaged by learning them, and in the order in which they are written. (The Gettysburg Address has fewer than 300 words, and I am told by teachers that memorizing them is quite beyond the capacity of many students, although if it were put to music, maybe they could manage it.)

  I am neither qualified to give, nor desirous of giving, a history lesson, and still less a curriculum. I wish only to make three further points: First, and obviously, as students progress from elementary school to high school to college, the study of the American experiment in freedom of expression must deepen, the arguments considered must increase in complexity, and the documents containing them must be more various. Second, it should at all times be made clear that the arguments are not finished; that today they are pursued with the same passion they once were, especially those arguments that present a distinctly modern problem. Is pornography protected by the First Amendment? Does “freedom of the press” include television? Is prayer in the public schools a violation of the “establishment of religion” clause? These are arguable questions that, I should think, our students must know something about if they are to participate in the Great American Conversation. In fact, if an examination is required for students to show “mastery,” then I suggest the following (let us say, to qualify for graduation from high school): Taking one of the current arguments about the meaning of the First Amendment, write an opinion on it as Thomas Paine (or Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison) might have argued the question. You must, of course, make reference to words they wrote and you may bring to class whatever documents you think you will require.

  If this examination is judged too difficult, here is an alternative: Rewrite the First Amendment to include protections you think are necessary in today’s world. Eliminate those you think are no longer necessary. You may wish neither to add nor subtract provisions, but to clarify words and phrases that are, at present, part of the First Amendment. Explain the reasons for the changes you make; or, if you make none, explain why none are needed.

  If this one is too difficult, we might consider requiring the students to go back a few squares—that is, to do the twelfth grade one more time. It would be too dangerous to let them loose in a country that claims to be in favor of democratic self-government.

  The third point that needs to be made is, of course, that there are nine more amendments comprising the Bill of Rights, most of which—especially the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth—have been the focus of intense argument from the beginning right up to the present. There are those, for example, who read the Second Amendment to mean that the government cannot prohibit citizens from owning weapons. There are others who think it means nothing of the sort. In July 1994, in a case receiving worldwide publicity (the O. J. Simpson double-murder trial), a judge was required to rule on a Fourth Amendment issue—whether or not certain evidence was illegally seized by detectives. There are law-enforcement officials who believe, a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary, that the Fifth Amendment is not violated if upon making an arrest they do not read Miranda rights to the suspect. The arguments go on, and everyone is entitled to participate. Is it too much to say that the arguments are the energy and the glory of the American experiment? Is it too much to hope that our young might learn to honor the tradition and to be inspired by it?

  The second great American experiment began about the middle of the nineteenth century, and raised the following question: Is it possible to have a coherent, stable culture made up of people of different languages, religions, traditions, and races? Henry Adams thought the answer was no. Henry James agreed with him, and T. S. Eliot was so frightened at the thought he moved to Eng
land and stayed there. On the other hand, H. L. Mencken, of German heritage, believed that those who claimed to be white Anglo-Saxon Protestants not only weren’t authentic WASPs but were thoroughly incompetent and no match intellectually for the “ethnics” who came in such numbers to America. But they did not come in equal numbers, in part because immigration laws assigned different values to different groups. And so from the beginning, there were arguments, and they continue to this day. Should America let everyone in? Are some groups better than others? If distinctions are made, on what basis should we make them? (Some of the early IQ tests showed Jews to be mentally deficient, giving support to an argument that restrictions be placed on the numbers of them allowed in.) Should English be the official language of America? And, of course, always, that most troublesome of all questions: What do we do to remedy the persistent effects of the legacy of slavery and discrimination from which an important segment of our population still suffers? Are they to be compensated for what was inflicted on them?

  I do not say that the arguments over these questions are (or were) always rational. Behind many of them, there lurks fear or ignorance or (worse) misinformation. But as long as there is argument, there is the possibility of reducing fear, overcoming ignorance, correcting misinformation. Can anyone doubt that our students should know about the history of these arguments? What was it that made Henry Adams so unhappy? (If our students cannot read The Education of Henry Adams, a good teacher can summarize his argument.) What terrified T. S. Eliot? If students are going to be asked to read him, I would suggest that Christianity and Culture take precedence over his poetry. And if it is poetry we want, would it be too demanding to have Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” committed to memory? (The poem has been made into a song, which might make it as easy to learn as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”) The poem is, after all, an argument of sorts about what America should be. In any case, I have no doubt that teachers can find suitable material that conveys the idea that America as melting pot was, and still is, a vast social experiment about which there have been, and still are, disputes over its advantages and disadvantages. I should be astonished if American students do not have opinions on this matter which may be used to take them back into the past and forward into the future.

  The third great experiment began toward the end of the nineteenth century, made all the more challenging by the reality of the second experiment, which resulted in a multicultural population. I refer to the question, Is it possible to provide a free public education for all citizens? Americans have not always agreed upon the desirability of doing this, although it has been nearly a century since anyone has made a respectable argument against it. Recently, there have emerged arguments in favor of privately run public schools (that is, free, or almost free, for students; profit-making for entrepreneurs). Its most vigorous exponent is Christopher Whittle, whose Edison Project, at this writing, claims to have contracts to manage three schools in Massachusetts, and hopes to have many more. He argues that a free-market approach to schooling will provide better education for the young. He is passionately opposed by the National Education Association, whose current president, Keith Geiger, says that Americans want “community-based, not corporate-imposed, education for their children.”1

  It is an interesting argument, and one whose outcome will have significant social and political implications. But the argument is not nearly as interesting, I think, as that which centers on what is meant, in the first place, by “education.” I believe I am right in saying that teachers have been reluctant to introduce this question to students, although it is well within the intellectual range of high school students to consider. In fact, education as a subject of study is rarely taken seriously even in college, for reasons I find too painful to discuss. It is sufficient to say that many of the world’s most esteemed philosophers have written extensively on education. Confucius and Plato were what we would call today “curriculum specialists.” Cicero, Quintilian, Erasmus, Locke, Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson wrote on the subject, and the great English poet John Milton was so moved by the prospect of writing an essay on education that he called the reforming of education “one of the greatest and noblest designs to be thought on.” In modern times, such formidable intellects as William James, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and, of course, John Dewey concerned themselves with education. Both Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper were elementary school teachers, and would of necessity have thought deeply about the subject.

  The point is that there is a mass of material about what education means and how it should be conducted. And Americans have produced a good deal of it, since it was they who invented the idea of mass education, and they have been especially passionate in arguing about how their young citizens ought to be treated in school. We have here, then, a rich and inspiring set of arguments with which our students should be acquainted. Experienced teachers will know how and when to do this, but the following ideas ought to be kept at the forefront: first, that since these arguments concern them (that is, the students)—what they are capable of understanding, what interests them, how they will change—they are entitled to be heard on the matter. Second, while it is possible to speak wisely about education, no one can speak definitively. Third, there is no intellectual activity more American than quarreling about what education means, especially within the context of school. Americans rely on their schools, even more than on their courts, to express their vision of who they are, which is why they are usually arguing over what happens in school.

  As with two of the other great experiments, the fourth one began in the nineteenth century but has taken on furious force in the twentieth. It raises the following question: Is it possible to preserve the best of American traditions and social institutions while allowing uncontrolled technological development? Some readers will know that I have addressed this question in previous writings and have allied myself with, among others, Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul in answering no. But I am aware that there are many serious and brilliant social critics who say yes. More than that, most Americans seem to say yes, although, if I am not mistaken, there is a creeping uneasiness among them that they may have answered too hastily. In any case, there is an experiment going on in America and it is being monitored carefully by people around the world. Since most industrialized nations are beginning to confront the question in the context of their own institutions and traditions, they look to what is happening in America as a source of guidance. Sometimes they find the experiment chilling, sometimes glorious. That the question generated by the experiment should be introduced to American students is rather obvious. The answers to the question will have a powerful impact on their lives; yet many of our young are not even aware that there is a question here, that there is anything to argue about. One may, then, have to start from the beginning. Let us say, with science fiction. Mary Shelley, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Ray Bradbury are relevant authors who sound warnings about the dangers of an obsession with technology. Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), B. F. Skinner (Walden II), and Arthur Clarke (2001) present a more hopeful outlook. I trust I have not loaded the case against technological optimism. If I have, add to the list of hopefuls almost any of Alvin Toffler’s books, including his classic, Future Shock, which is not intended as science fiction, although it reads as if it is.

  Of course, in one sense, we have here an old argument; people have always worried about whether technology demeans or enriches our humanity. In the nineteenth century, William Blake, for example, wrote about the “dark Satanic mills” that stripped men of their souls. Matthew Arnold warned that “faith in machinery” was humanity’s greatest menace. Carlyle, Ruskin, and William Morris railed against the spiritual degradation brought by industrial progress. On the other hand, Mark Twain thought industrial progress was wonderful, and he once congratulated Walt Whitman on having lived in the age that gave the world the beneficial products of coal tar. More recently, C. P. Snow made what he regarded as a definiti
ve answer to technological pessimists. He remarked that the industrial revolution, made possible by advanced technology, was the only hope for the poor. Their lives were rescued from centuries-old degradation by technology. Can anyone deny it?

  In our own time, the argument has shifted from the effects of machinery to the effects of electronic impulses. Because the argument is relatively new, some of the questions are not yet well formulated. And in one notable case, a question was asked that was falsely assumed by many to be an answer. I refer to the question Marshall McLuhan posed: How does the structure of a medium alter the ways in which people “sense” the world? McLuhan himself offered many speculative answers, some of them wild and crazy, and thus led many to quarrel over his answers rather than to consider his question. But anyone who has carefully read his Understanding Media will know that this is a book of queries, intended to generate an interest in the forms of human communication; will also know that McLuhan believed, as I do, that our young are well suited to address such queries. They are not (to use one of McLuhan’s puns, borrowed, I believe, from James Joyce) as “ABCED-minded” as their teachers are apt to be, and therefore they can see the effects, especially of nonprint media, more clearly than bookish folks. I am assuming here that teachers are bookish. If I am wrong about this, I prefer not to think about its implications.

  In any case, questions raised about the effects of media and the diverse forms in which information is now packaged have relevance to all the other arguments now under way in America. Do television and computer technology limit or expand opportunities for authentic and substantive freedom of expression? Do new media create a global village, or force people to revert to tribal identities? Do new media make schools obsolete, and create new conceptions of education?