Herbert Spencer
21.07.08
at 02:37
at 02:37
tagged with:
Surely it is a given that we are all different? Size, shape, gender, colour, intelligence, personality, practical ability... So surely the human brain, and mind, are also infinitely variable. So why then do we have clothes, shoes, accessories, food, gadgets, literature, music, art, newspapers, all sorts of media, cars, houses, gardens, holidays, hobbies and pastimes of every conceivable colour, shape, size, sophistication, individuality to suit our needs and tastes and yet, when it comes to nurturing minds, especially young ones, in other words education, the state seems always to want a one size fits all, or nearly all solution we must all be dragooned through?
Scary kids from Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" video, copyright Columbia/CBS. Is this how we see education?
Even the current advocates of increased "choice" in education are generally not calling for the sort of individually tailored schooling that might cater for a near infinite combination of aptitude and need in different subjects. No, squeezed onto the cattle trucks of the "skills agenda" at an increasingly early age, our children's precious formative minds are driven through National Curricula, SATs, Literacy Hour, regurgitated standardized lesson plans and a plethora of targets till they get an OFSTED stamp on their forehead to say they are ready to be part of Britains fast changing economy. Or at least, the fast changing economy that was being predicted by, yes, you guessed it, government, a decade ago when they started.
On Saturday I was having dinner with friends who either have children going through this system or looking to have soon. All of them, I think it would be fair to say, would be termed "left of centre" and would never have considered private education or home-schooling previously but are all actively considering it now or would if they had the money. They feel patronized by the system, and treated with varying degrees of contempt by the school and its staff.
But most of all they feel helpless when they can see that their child needs extra help or a different approach in one subject where they may thrive in a totally different subject with little struggle. Such different approaches may not be available in the one school. And the lesson plans used don't vary a great deal from school to school so there isn't a great deal of choice anyway. If they wanted to change schools - as one is trying to do now as a result of their experience - the bureaucracy is stifling.
Oh, this all sounds incredibly expensive doesn't it? How can we satisfy that nearly infinite combination of needs and aptitudes? Turn it around and ask, if we can satisfy a near infinite appetite for different trainers, baked beans and holidays, why can we not produce individualized education - surely one of the most important human needs, even for those of us who tend towards Herbert Spencer's view that the state should not be dictating or providing education at all.
I think we need to consider how to personalize education, from the earliest age; we're not going to achieve any step change in attainment just by adding a few extra teachers armed with standard lesson plans, just by putting a little extra money in the direction of the least well off - though that will no doubt help, assuming they can actually find the package to suit them.
Localism is certainly a part of the answer, as perhaps are things like "free schools" on the Dutch model and an idea expanded on at Regno del fines blog. Why not return the provision of schools much much closer to the families using them - at parish level or something similar sized. Parents could decide amongst themselves in a mutualist structure whether to get in a teacher who's going to teach the children proper grammar or to learn their times tables.
And we should not be so squeamish about the corporatization of education. By which I don't mean the mish-mash of schemes to get token private money into the current system. I mean that education, or at least the "skills agenda", is already a subsidy to business (or it ought to be if the education system produced people business can use). It is corporate welfare. So why not instead expect business itself to contribute directly to nurturing the skills needed in an area - perhaps paying for particular teachers is specialized subjects related to the local economy? It would be more transparent at least than corporate lobbyists persuading a few politicians far away to spend our money on providing them workers, and probably more reactive to changes in the economy.
A quantum leap in the amount of flexibility and personalization of education is what we need. And for government to butt out as much as possible. For surely, we have pretty well reached the situation Spencer predicted:
"...what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? why should they be educated? what is the education for? Clearly to fit the people for social life—to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this—a government ought to mould children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen; is, and how the child may be moulded into one. It must first form for itself a definite conception of a pattern citizen; and having done this, must elaborate such system of discipline as seems best calculated to produce citizens after that pattern. This system of discipline it is bound to enforce to the uttermost. For if it does otherwise, it allows men to become different from what in its judgment they should become, and therefore fails in that duty it is charged to fulfil. Being thus justified in carrying out rigidly such plans as it thinks best, every government ought to do what the despotic governments of the Continent and of China do. That regulation under which, in France, “private schools cannot be established without a licence from the minister, and can be shut up by a simple ministerial order,” is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough; seeing that the state cannot permit its mission to be undertaken by others, without endangering the due performance of it. The forbidding of all private schools whatever, as until recently in Prussia, is nearer the mark. Austrian legislation, too, realizes with some consistency the state-education theory. By it a tolerably stringent control over the mental culture of the nation is exercised. Much thinking being held at variance with good citizenship, the teaching of metaphysics, political economy, and the like, is discouraged. Some scientific works are prohibited. And a reward is offered for the apprehension of those who circulate bibles—the authorities in the discharge of their function preferring to entrust the interpretation of that book to their employes the Jesuits. But in China alone is the idea carried out with logical completeness. There the government publishes a list of works which may be read; and considering obedience the supreme virtue, authorizes such only as are friendly to despotism. Fearing the unsettling effects of innovation, it allows nothing to be taught but what proceeds from itself. To the end of producing pattern citizens it exerts a stringent discipline over all conduct. There are “rules for sitting, standing, walking, talking, and bowing, laid down with the greatest precision. Scholars are prohibited from chess, football, flying kites, shuttlecock, playing on wind instruments, training beasts, birds, fishes, or insects—all which amusements, it is said, dissipate the mind and debase the heart.”
"Now a minute dictation like this, which extends to every action, and will brook no nay, is the legitimate realization of this state-education theory. Whether the government has got erroneous conceptions of what citizens ought to be, or whether the methods of training it adopts are injudicious, is not the question. According to the hypothesis it is commissioned to discharge a specified function. It finds no ready-prescribed way of doing this. It has no alternative, therefore, but to choose that way which seems to it most fit. And as there exists no higher authority, either to dispute or confirm its judgment, it is justified in the absolute enforcement of its plans, be they what they may. As from the proposition that government ought to teach religion, there springs the other proposition, that government must decide what is religious truth, and how it is to be taught; so, the assertion that government ought to educate, necessitates the further assertion that it must say what education is, and how it shall be conducted. And the same rigid popery, which we found to be a logical consequence in the one case (p. 307), follows in the other also."
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, Chapter XXVI, Section 3.
