162. Plasticity: The Underground History of American
Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Plasticity
The
worm lives in our initial conception of human nature. Are human beings to
be trusted? With what reservations? To
what degree? The official answer has lately been "not much," at least since the end
of WWII. Christopher Lasch was able to locate some form of surveillance, apprehension,
confinement, or other security procedure at the
bottom of more than a fifth of the jobs in the United States. Presumably
that's because we don't trust each
other. Where could that
mistrust have been learned?
As we measure each other, we select a
course to follow. A curriculum is a racecourse.
How we lay it out is contingent on assumptions we make about the horses
and spectators. So it is with school.
Are children empty vessels? What do you think? I suspect not many parents look at their offspring as empty
vessels because contradictory evidence
accumulates from birth, but the whole weight of our economy and its job
prospects is built on the outlook that
people are empty, or so plastic it's the same thing.
The
commodification of childhood — making it a product which can be sold — demands
a psychological frame in which kids can
be molded. A handful of philosophers dominates
modern thinking because they argue this idea, and in arguing it they
open up possibilities to guide history
to a conclusion in some perfected society. Are children empty? John Locke said they were in his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding:
Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say,
white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence
comes it by that vast store...? To this I
answer in one word, from Experience; in that all our knowledge is
founded, and from that it ultimately
derives itself.
Are there no innate ideas? Does the mind
lack capacities and powers of its own, being
etched exclusively by sensory inputs? Locke apparently thought so, with
only a few disclaimers so wispy they
were abandoned by his standard bearers almost at once. Are minds blank like white paper, capable of
accepting writing from whoever possesses the
ink? Empty like a gas tank or a sugar bowl to be filled by anyone who
can locate the filler-hole? Was John
Watson right when he said in 1930:
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed,
and my own specified world to bring them
up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to
become any type of specialist I might
select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar- man and thief, regardless of his talents, his
penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
Do
you find something attractive in that presumption of plasticity in human
nature? So did Joseph Stalin and
Chairman Mao, two of the century's foremost applied behaviorists on the grand scale. Taylorism sought to manage
by the control of physical movements and
environments, but the behaviorists wanted more certainty than that, they
wanted control of the inner life, too. A
great many reflective analyses have placed our own two Roosevelt presidencies in the same broad
category.
The trouble in school arises from
disagreement about what life is for. If we believe human beings have no unique personal essence,
this question is meaningless, but even
then you can't get rid of the idea easily. Life commands your answer.
You cannot refuse because your actions
write your answer large for everyone to see, even if you don't see it yourself. As you regard human nature, you
will teach. Or as someone else regards it, you
will teach. There aren't any third ways.
Is human nature empty? If it is, who
claims a right to fill it? In such circumstances, what can "school" mean?
If ever a situation was capable of
revealing the exquisite power of metaphor to control our lives, this must be it. Are children
empty? As helpless infants and dependent youth
we lay exposed to the metaphors of our guardians; they colonize our
spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment