Many a parent has enthusiastically asked their child “what they had learned today in school” only to see the conversation shut off by a disinterested “nothing”.
“Oh come on! Surely you learned something today. You were gone for 8 hours!”, the parent will answer in feigned disbelief, (vaguely hoping that school had improved since their own time.)
But what if the child was telling the truth? What if no learning whatsoever had happened?
We could return the question to the parent and ask them what they realistically believe the child might have learned. Do you perhaps think your child learned 50 new words of Spanish and 50 more tomorrow? Do you think they learned how to mix up a chemical substance that dissolves glass? Do you think they can offer a comment on the strategic errors of the Napoleonic wars?
(Above: Suzie doesn’t quite understand here mum’s question)
What type of knowledge do you think it could have been possible to pick up in the span of a day, week or month?
Reading and writing, sure. Even though in my experience, even mid-aged teens find it challenging to read a fluid text in native-level English without skipping words, transforming them, and missing much of the punctuation.
Would you trust your 18-year old to write an official letter on your behalf? Or would you be concerned of their writing style or even their spelling?
So what did they learn?
Let’s define knowledge and learning
Knowledge is a somewhat ambiguous term, as is learning. There is firstly a difference between passive knowledge and active knowledge as it comes to facts and skills.
A person might have memorized for a brief while the key dates of the Russian Revolution only to forget them in the hours following the exam. It is not the same skill to tell someone point blank about a topic we actively know about, versus agreeing with the facts saying “Oh yes, I knew that…I saw that in school”
“Tell me about the countries crossed by the Amazon river” is not the same as answering “Dad, did you know the Amazon river crosses three countries??” by a “Yes, dear that sounds about right”.
Realistically, how many kids could we interview straight off the school bus and ask them to dazzle the listeners with all they learned last year. “Tell our listeners all about something you learned.” Chances are, many kids will propose isolated facts such as “Jupiter is the largest planet” without being able to tie it into another fact such the reason it is important to know this fact about Jupiter.
More alarming perhaps is the high probability that they remember nothing of the contents of the academic program just one year prior. We can offer the rebuttal that kids’ minds don’t yet work in such a structured way, which in a sense is as good as saying that school is a big blur. What we did last year has already faded away.
(Above: Jimmy demonstrates a piece of knowledge)
Do they understand the plan?
Another obstacle against picking up true knowledge in school is understanding how this knowledge is embedded within the context. In other words, do schoolchildren understand the context in which they are studying?
Do they know who made the school programs, why they were made, how a teacher corrects tests, why there is homework, why classes last for the same number of minutes each, what the role of a principal is, how a person becomes a teacher, how discipline is thought out?
Do they know anything at all about the structure around their learning and the higher purpose it hopes to achieve?
Going to school in these conditions isn’t too different from moving from workstation to workstation in a factory without understanding what the factory produces or who founded it. Worse still, because of an absence of classes on the skill behind the academic learning, the worker wouldn’t know how to improve their output. “Try to do your best”, they would be told.
This is not to say that individual skills can’t be picked up along the way. Though if this were football, becoming an expert at kicking the ball without understanding the governing body around the game or the structure of the tournaments would seem alarmingly simplistic. “They just told me to play well”, the uninformed footballer would say. As nonsensical as it sounds, is this not what every student is doing every day through the school year? Kicking the ball without knowing why?
If a person doesn’t understand why they are being asked to know something, is it not equivalent to not knowing much at all? Do we not see the irony in saying “I can write the best essays in class but I don’t know why I’m doing it”? When transferred into “the real life”, such a remark would be quite worrying to hear, at the very least.
A limited vision indeed
For most schoolchildren around the world, going to school is an act that doesn’t deserve further explanations. It isn’t taken apart, discussed around the dinner table, questioned or examined as a system. The rare times school is questioned, this is usually interpreted as an act of rebellion and just as soon answered by the classic “Would you prefer to stay home and be stupid? How would you learn to read and write?”
(Picture: A pupil learning to write)
Going to school mostly means “going to school”. Children understand that it is a contract they must honor until they reach the age of 18 and do “whatever they want” afterwards. They understand that they must go to this place every day and be looked after. Naturally, to keep them busy there are classes organized around different themes: a bit of maths here, a touch of geography there. Some will even say that if the level of abstraction wasn’t so high, it would be close to impossible to keep the kids in line. What if one of the classes was on discussing the best practices in UX design based on personal perception? Would it be possible to keep a class subdued for a full semester?
Similarly, too many inquiries and questionings by schoolchildren would have the effect of slowing down the curriculum. If every 12 year old in the country interrupted the Monday morning class by a “I’m sorry miss, I would like to come back to p14 on adverbials. I read an article this weekend that disagrees with this classification…” we could easily see the disruptive element, despite it coming from a genuine place of academic curiosity.
It would seem that the “perfect” class is one that maintains a certain level of abstraction or at least doesn’t come too close to being practical and subjected to personal opinions. (Read: participation)
What type of learning?
School has always been accused of being too far removed from reality or practical life skills. The curriculum acts as a sort of 12 year-long concentration of the main points of knowledge shared by a people. We study Shakespeare because it was decided that he is relevant within a culture. We study pyramids and the inventions of Adam Smith for the same reasons.
As well as the topics it contains, this curriculum defines itself just as much by the knowledge it chooses to leave out. We could name such ones as the chemical causes for depression, the mechanism behind addiction, the forces that govern employment and financial system, the inconsistencies of the electoral system, the hidden strategies behind advertising, the meaning of health, sexual attraction, the hows and whys of success, the search for happiness, and so many others.
(Picture: John and Jane have been trained to recognize the different triangles)
A kid will usually leave school not knowing how the world functions financially or how the human mind guides them on a conscious or subconscious level, despite them being crucial to our well-being. They might not even know how to define their own identity. Instead, the schoolchild will enter the world with hazy recollections of lab experiments and diagrams of frog anatomies. Perhaps even memories of glorious baseball home runs.
The curious design behind it all
Parents and children usually have trust that the curriculum is “taken care of” by benevolent people who have learning down to a science. To justify the level of abstraction of the school program, there are usually two main arguments: the development of the young brain and the requirements of college.
The first is the idea following which the years of schooling act as a sort of development support for the maturation of the brain. A carefully thought out curriculum helps the brain to full maturity through expertly-chosen subjects. It explains why children engage in far-fetched maths problems which adults themselves have no use for. “It is to help the brain develop”, they are told.
(Picture: Joey does not know the square root of 12 despite it being crucial for his future)
As a biological fact, it places humans in a strange category. It opens the question how humans ever achieved anything prior the invention of the school curriculum but also as a species. Do humans have the biological specificity of having to sit through 12 years of mental abstraction day in day out lest they find themselves under-developed and unable to function among their peers?
Not far removed from us are the examples of Charles Dickens who quit school at 12 or Henry Ford at 15. A similar testimony of the human mind can be seen the books by former American slave Frederick Douglass who could not read. The list of all the great thinkers, strategists, politicians, social reformers, architects and engineers as far back as the Egyptians and the Greek philosophers also point towards school not exactly being the necessary place of thinking it fancies itself to be.
If the accomplishments of the greats shows us anything at all, it may be that the human act of thinking is not linked to any sort of organized academic program.
To conclude
Imagining a country without a school system would be utterly ridiculous. Though school is far from perfect, it does at least guarantee some form of learning and plays a role in our social cohesion. Families with less means can see their children claim a high school diploma and open the door towards higher education.
It further acts as a barrier against senseless capitalism as was seen during the age of the Industrial Revolution to name just one. (“No Sir, I will not go down your mine for a 16-hour shift, I have school tomorrow.”)
In its simplest description, school is a wonderful thing: the State takes in charge the education of the children while the parents work. Once the children graduate, they have the assurance of the same level of education as anyone else rich or poor. A very democratic idea indeed.
But despite this, it is still an invention that reaches its highest level as a theoretical model only. Because of its infinite complexity, as soon as it takes physical form the problems come creeping in. How to choose the program? For what purpose? How long? How many days a week? What should children learn? Should there be one grading for everyone regardless of personal circumstances? How do we grade? Should parents be allowed to choose schools? Should teachers be paid much at all?
Without particularly trying, we quickly find countless structural faults that prevent the project of the public school from finding its ideal form. In the meantime, we take what we can and make do with a “better than nothing” kind of deal. Funding is always lacking, teachers are scarce and pupils are bored.
What would you change, if you had to make the ideal school?