EDUCATION VS SCHOOLING: PART 1
Is school getting in the way of your education? Very likely it is, according to Zachary Slayback, the author of The End of School: Reclaiming Education from the Classroom. His point seems to be reinforced by recent news from many universities. We hear about ‘rape culture’ witch hunts which ruin the careers and reputations of innocent men. Crusades against ‘microaggressions’, and student demand for ‘safe spaces’ free of contrary opinion, threaten freedom of speech. Harsh but vaguely defined ‘harassment’ codes are veiled attempts to control speech and publication. The proliferation of transgender studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and other such vacuous fields corrupts and infantilizes the curriculum. Faculty are ideologically unbalanced, and humanities instruction has devolved into political and social polemics.
It often seems that most universities are little more than boot camps for aspiring Stalinists. For anyone seeking genuine scholarship or the free exchange of ideas, the modern university can be a perilous environment. K through 12 education isn’t much better.
Slayback says, though, that the failings of higher education didn’t develop just in the last few decades. The very structure and purpose of the conventional university is at fault.
In the nineteenth century, very few Americans got any formal schooling beyond high school. Most university students were children of the wealthy. Higher education was the primary means of helping them fit into the upper crust in society. The humanities dominated college curricula, because concern for such matters was one of the most important marks of the gentleman.
The twentieth century saw the rapid expansion and rise of the middle class. The rising middle class fostered a skyrocketing market for higher education. Ambitious climbers, and parents concerned for the social and career success of their children, noted that the most successful men in America usually had college degrees. From this, millions assumed that the degree was necessary for success. Generations of politicians, anticipating political profit in treating higher education as an entitlement, were happy to promote the idea.
After World War II, with the G.I. Bill providing public tuition funding for military veterans, millions of new students flooded America’s colleges and universities. Demand for higher education exploded. That it must be indispensable for success was well on its way to becoming settled orthodoxy.
Zachary Slayback says this core assumption is wrong. As scientists often say, correlation is not causation. It’s true that the successful usually had college degrees. Slayback says, though, that family wealth usually led to higher education, not the other way around.
Slayback says that we need to rethink our assumptions about the need for formal schooling, and about how we learn.
In a future post, we will explore several alternatives to conventional colleges and universities.
(For the school of the future, you need the right information technology. You need the right internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)