““Enlightenment that only
addresses the enlightened does not deserve to be called
enlightenment” was the widespread conviction of many champions of
the Enlightenment movement” (Horlacher, 2011).
American educators are ironically and
hypocritically being indoctrinated into being obedient undemocratic
sit-down and shut-up students themselves. With their spirits smashed,
now completely fashioned into the soulless and heartless robotic
automatons the system requires them to be, they can reign down the
oppression onto the heads of the naïve, vulnerable, innocent and
unsuspecting young American students. In order to “Teach Like a
Champion, a popular textbook for current and soon-to-be teachers in
American teacher training schools, Doug Lemov advocates 100%
compliance (Lemov, 2010). Even Lemov himself sees his own 100%
compliance as the “draconian” “power-hungry plan” of a
“battle of wills” against the students for precisely what it is.
Nothing else will be tolerated in a properly classroom managed
American classroom but an “obedience-obsessed” classroom with
a “grinding discipline” that's expected for all. Lemov barely
qualifies these expectations by saying that the “culture of
compliance” should be a “positive” one, and “most
importantly, invisible” (Lemov, 2010). Not only does Lemov demand a
sneaky and somehow “positive” 100% compliance, but Doug Lemov's
micromanaging tyranny includes that all students to never have even
their elbows on their desks, and Lemov will even get the teachers of America to complain if an
educator's students only raise their hands up halfway (Lemov, 2010).
For Doug Lemov, only 100% compliance is acceptable behavior. Not even
Adolf Hitler got 100% compliance (August Landmesser). The worst
atrocities in human history—war, slavery, and genocide—have come
about because of blind obedience to authority (Zinn, 1997/2010). Doug
Lemov isn't just advocating being tough and firm: he's talking about
totalitarian fascism.
A totalitarian system is where all of
the people's behavior is being governed in totality, including the
student's thoughts. Lecture is a classroom management technique,
where the educator governs the very thoughts of everybody in the
classroom. When others are speaking, especially dictators, it's
difficult to keep one's thoughts. Dictators hate the sound of other students'
voices for this very reason, but rarely their own. Typically, in American classrooms, only
the autocratic dictator has the microphone, and one has to resort to
just blurting out their questions, or comments, if they want to be
heard. Or by passing notes, which is also strictly forbidden. Or pretending to write down notes on the
lecture, but really, jotting down how oppressed one is, and to dream up
ways that school can be better. Adolf Hitler understood the
importance of the spoken word in order to get compliance, as did Jim
Jones. Fascism is where the behavior expected, if not complied with,
will be met with force and violence, such as being removed from the
class by overweight minimum wage security guards, or sometimes, even,
the State's brutes. If your ideas need violence in order to enforce
them, then your ideas are absolutely worthless. Most of the time,
such measures aren't necessary, even though the institutions are in
place, due to social authority, and the seeming penchant for
humankind towards obedience. In American Schools, autocratic dictator
monarchists run their classrooms as fascist totalitarian
mini-fiefdoms, and democratic structures and processes are wholly
absent.
“To substitute books for all is not
to teach us to reason. It is to teach us to use the reason of others.
It is to teach us to believe much and never to know anything.”
(Rousseau, 1979).
From an unsourced anonymous and
popular Facebook meme: Daughter: “Why do I have to go to school?”
Mother: “So you can be molded into a state approved homogenous
drone that cannot think outside of the prescribed consensus. You will
learn to repeat information instead of how to think for yourself so
that you don't become a threat to the status quo. When you graduate
you will get a job, pay your taxes, in order to perpetuate the
corporate system of indentured servitude.”
Horace Mann, the Father of American
Schools, did not care for Classroom Management, nor Corporal
Punishment. Horace Mann, in his 2nd Annual Report about
American Common Schools, wrote:
“To make a small child sit both dumb and motionless, for three
successive hours, with the exception of a brief recess and two short
lessons, is an infraction of every law which the Creator has
impressed upon both the body and the mind.” … “Its effects upon
the body is to inflict severe pain, to impair health, to check the
free circulations in the system (all which lead to dwarfishness), and
to misdirect the actions of vital organs, which lead to deformity.”
… “In regard to the intellect, it suppresses the activity of
every faculty; ....the inevitable consequence is, both to diminish
the number of things they will be competent to do, and to disable
them doing this limited number so well as they might otherwise.” …
“In regard to temper and morals, the results are still more
deplorable. To command a child whose mind is furnished with no other
occupation to sit for a long time silent in regard to speech, and
dead in regard to motion, when every limb and organ aches for
activity; to set a child down in the midst of others, .... And then
to prohibit all recognition of or communication with his fellow is
subjecting him to a temptation to disobedience.” (Mann, 1847).
On corporal punishment, Horace Mann
called it “an evil... none will deny”, and he pointed out that
there's “some excellent teachers who manage schools without
resorting to it”. Horace Mann even points about that bad teachers
who are “destitute of skill and of the divine qualities of love,
patience, sympathy” use non-violent methods of control “which,
though they may bear a milder name, are, in reality, more severe.”
Nick Peim believes that “discipline” is being instituted nowadays
for “composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine” in the hallways, the playground, and the classroom for the Empire (Peim, 2013).
Since knowledge of the uses,
practices, and institutions of democracy are limited, it should come
as no surprise to find out that knowledge of civics in general is
lacking in Americans. A major survey conducted in 2011 found that 38%
could name all 3 branches of the US government; only 13% knew that
the Constitution was signed in 1787; and while only 15% of Americans
could identify our Supreme Court Chief Justice, 27% of Americans knew
that Randy Jackson was a judge on American idol (Reid, 2014;
DeConcini and Kyl, 2014). The Governor of Utah pointed out that in an
American classroom, the vast majority of the students could answer
only about 15 of the 50 questions” from the US Citizenship test
correctly (Herbert, 2014). In another study, in the Xavier Center for
the Study of the American Dream, only 32% of Americans knew what the
supreme law of the land was (i.e. the US Constitution), only 32% knew
the number of US Senators in the Senate, and only 29% knew the length
of a US Senator's term of office (DeConcini and Kyl, 2014). The
abhorrent lack of knowledge on American civics accounts for the low
voter registration and turnout rates across the nation, as many other
perils of our society. Because of these lackluster findings, there's
been a major Civics Education Initiative push in South Dakota, Utah,
Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missouri, and South Carolina (Reid,
2014).
E.D. Hirsch writes in The Chronicle
of Higher Education that speaks about increasing literacy skills
in American schools. Kentucky has a large illiterate adult population
(2 out of 5), but for Hirsch, literacy doesn't just mean knowing how
to read; it's knowing how to exist and function properly in a
democracy. For Hirsch, to be democraticly literate, an American citizen
would need to be able to refer to the right historical folks, to appeal to the
common understanding of how our democratic society is supposed to
work. A common public democratic language would assist us in
establishing communication in civil democratic groupings, such as
townhall meetings, or other similar assemblies. To illustrate his
point, Hirsch quotes James Madison: “A popular Government,” said
Madison, “without popular information, or the means of acquiring
it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy” (Hirsch, 2009). For
Hirsch, it's important for Americans to have that common language,
that common understanding, a common framework, to be able to have
meaningful conversations about the future of our nation. As Hirsch
understands our democracy, the cohesion of the nation would be
brought about by the tempering of private and local interests to the
common good, and that common good could only be obtained through
common schools. Through common schools with a common core, only then,
could we develop that “sense of community and solidarity within the
nation”. Hirsch also references Noah Webster, “our most important
and influential early schoolmaster”, who was the chief maker of
both American dictionaries and schoolbooks. For Webster, having both
a common public language plus a common school curriculum were needed
to sustain a loyalty to the common good (Hirsch, 2009).
“The child is wicked only because he
is weak. Make him strong; he will be good. He who could do everything
would never do harm,” says Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau, 1979).
Because folks do not understand their power in a democracy, combined
with the lack of solidarity, and common understanding of how our
democratic processes are supposed to work, we witness irrationality
and dumb behavior. The dumb behavior comes from a lack of knowledge,
and so therefore, a truly democratic education is called for in order
to rectify this situation. Hirsch says the best way to enable our
young soon-to-be citizens in our American democracy to be able to
effectively participate in the public sphere is to teach them in
elementary schools, and it's “a task that need not take up more
than half of classroom time.” Hirsch concludes his article with:
“If we want to bring all our students out of the linguistic
shadows, we shall need to teach this enabling knowledge
systematically, through a limited but common core curriculum in the
early grades” (Hirsch, 2009).
Surprisingly, or maybe not,
peer-reviewed articles about Democracy in American Education, or
Popular Education in America, are virtually absent. To find case
studies and analysis of Democracy in Education, one has to look for
international scholars, such as examples in Brazil (Loflin, 2008),
Latin America, Mexico (Rockwell, 2011), Turkey (Kus and Cetin, 2014)
and South Africa (Endresen, 2013). In many case studies of Popular
Education, Paulo Freire is mentioned numerous times. Unfortunately,
American scholars have seemed to have left the talk about Democracy
in American Schools to John Dewey and Horace Mann, and just assumed
that democratic virtues are being taught in American Schools without
consideration of the truth: there is none. At all. It's a
totalitarian dictatorship which uses the means of social power, and
the threat of violence by security guards, or the police at large, in
order to enforce their ways. The fascism of American classrooms is
clear: do as the autocrat orders: no ifs, ands, or buts.
Unfortunately, the teacher may claim to care, or even love, their
students, but they aren't being sincere. Only 5% of lectures are
retained, but that doesn't stop the dictators from stopping their
oppression, or to initiate the sharing of power. One cannot expect
slaves with a slave mentality being taught in slave settings to
eventually become masters. The “lessons” are quickly forgotten,
and no networking is gained. It's mostly a complete waste of time. Considering how there's absolutely no
democracy in American education, when the “fathers” of American
education were huge advocates for it, the lack of scholarship on this
matter is shockingly appalling.
It doesn't make sense why we see the
lack of democracy in American schools because of the forefathers of
American Education—notably John Dewey and Horace Mann—advocated
vehemently that democracy be taught in American schools, for numerous
reasons. “Educational commentators, including liberal advocates and
radical critics, have persistently aligned schooling with democracy
(Apple 1993; Dewey 1997; Gutmann 1999; Neill 1995)” (Peim, 2013).
In 1916, John Dewey wrote an entire book on the subject matter:
Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Education. In Democracy
and Education, Dewey praises
the virtues of democracy in education, and synthesizes them into one
cohesive idea. “Dewey discussed the importance of individual growth
and its relation to a healthy democratic system” (Sanborn and
Thyne, 2014).
The foremost scholar of education and democracy, John Dewey, made a
long career of arguing for the necessity of creating schools that
produced individuals who respected the rights and opinions of others.
Dewey recognized that to be good citizens, individuals must be placed
in situations where they can interact with others on a repeated
basis. Through experience, students learn that actions have context
and that views and opinions are part of a multitude. Other
individuals have their opinions too, and compromise must be reached
when the preferences of multiple actors are not aligned. Students
also learn that disagreements and conflict can be resolved through
debate, without the threat of violence and instability. As seen
through this lens, democracy is defined by addressing the concerns of
as many individuals as possible and by promoting equality (Sanborn
and Thyne, 2014).
According to John Dewey, “Democracy
is a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human
nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for
intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished...
I am willing to leave to upholders of totalitarian states of the
right and the left the view that faith in the capacities of
intelligence is utopian” (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014). “Covello’s
Franklin High School largely followed the overall trajectory of
progressive
education, which, generally speaking,
began with the innovative ideas of Dewey, found greatest support in
the 1930s, evolved into the life adjustment movement, limped along
through the Cold War, and died a sudden death with the publication of
A Nation at Risk in 1983 (Johanek & Puckett, 2006).” (Loflin,
2008).
Horace Mann adamantly believed in a
democratic society, and that schools should be democratic in method.
Mann wanted “to define a set of values that were essential to
citizenship in a democracy” (Eakin, 2000). Mann was against only
“rote learning of names and riles”, but wanted the children to be "led to discover principles and relationships” (Eakin, 2000).
Like E.D. Hirsch, Mann believed that democratic processes should be
developed in childhood. “The great moral attribute of
self-government can not be born and matured in a day; and if school
children are not trained in it, we only prepare ourselves for
disappointment, if we expect it from grown men” ... “The theory
of our government is—not that all men, however unfit, shall be
voters—but that every man, by the power of reason and the sense of
duty, shall become fit to be a voter. Education must bring the
practice as nearly as possible to the theory” (Eakin, 2000).
“It is strange that the schooling
system which was created to ensure democracy is the most undemocratic
institution in America” (Loflin, 2008).
Nietzsche said that “large states'
public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in
large kitchens the cooking is usually bad” (Nietzsche, 1915).
Alejandro Ferrer analyzes the term
“Popular Education” as it's been used over the years, and nails
down a solid definition of the word. The term “Popular education”
originates from the reformers during the Enlightenment period. What
was meant by “Popular Education” then was “a large group of the
population composed of craftsmen, manual workers, peasants, farmers,
beggars and vagabonds, thought of as living in ignorance and even
immorality” (Ferrer, 2011). Later on, “Popular Education” got
mixed up with “National Education”, such as Germany's
Volksbildung. Because educational reforms can come from working-class
elements, progressive upper classes, public officials, or churches,
Ferrer says that the how of
public education doesn't matter as much as who it serves. For Ferrer,
the important part of the meaning of “Popular Education” is “the
social origin and position of their publics which make the difference
among diverse types of initiatives” (Ferrer, 2011). While America
has universal education, since social inequality is being maintained,
democratic processes aren't being implemented in the schools systems,
which accounts for the lack of solidarity and dwindling and near
vanquishment of labor unions, America doesn't have “Popular
Education”. Instead, it has a National Educational System, which
serves to maintain the status quo, to build nationalism, and to support the Empire.
Nick Peim says that Education in
America serves mostly as a force for maintaining the status quo of
“The Empire”, “given its intensely normative aspirations, its
hierarchical structure, its ingrained governmental procedures, its
restricted curriculum and its reproductive modus operandi” (Peim,
2013). Francis Fukuyama announced “the end of history” in 1989
after the fall of the Berlin wall, and declared that western liberal
democracy had triumphed in the world (Fukuyama, 1989). For Fukuyama,
history is a dialectical process, where humankind continues to
improve their lot, but even nature through evolution doesn't prove
this, considering cockroaches is one of the oldest species on Earth,
and will continue to live, even after humankind wipes themselves out.
With the wave of popular uprising
during the Arab Spring, and around the world, there was hope
democracy would pour out of that revolutionary wellspring. But that
hasn't happened. “Less than a majority of revolutions end in
democracy”, but “democracies that tend to survive the test of
time are those born in revolution” (Albertus and Menaldo, 2011).
Sanborn and Thyne conducted a thorough analysis between authoritarian
and democratic regimes in relation to their financing of education.
While “education is typically underfunded in authoritarian regimes”
(Feng, 1997), even authoritarian states, such as China and Singapore,
continue to invest in education moreso than their democratic
counterparts. These authoritarian regimes see the long term positive
impact of education on economic development, and so therefore, a more
educated workforce is a more productive workforce, and that gives the
authoritarian leaders to generate more revenue for themselves, and
their State (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014).
With Sanborn and Thyne's study, they
found out that education is “an effective and more universally
palatable tool to promote democratization” (Sanborn and Thyne,
2014). In their highly detailed analysis, they generated 5 Hypotheses
regarding the relationship between democratization and education: 1)
democracy taught in primary schools increases democracy; 2) higher
education increases democratization; 3) gender equality increases
democracy; 4) globalization increases democracy, and; 5) As wealth
increases, the impact of higher education on democratization should
decrease (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014).
Like Hirsch and Mann, Sanborn and
Thyne also see the importance of primary education contributing
towards democratization. “Primary education, with a focus on
individualism and respect for others, such as Uganda’s “child for
the child” policy, can instill and reinforce democratic values
(Sanborn and Thyne, 2014). Sanborn and Thyne also see that “the
number of years of school attended has a positive effect on the onset
of democracy”, while also have the added benefit of preparing
“future leaders and policy makers of the state by cultivating them
into nuanced, analytical thinkers” (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014). While
high performance in school matters, ultimately, how long the masses
have attended school is the best predictor of democratization.
The “relative deprivation” of a country, combined with
educational opportunities, slam together to create a hotbed of
political unrest and dissent. “Higher education imparts the
knowledge, skills, and political familiarity that help in navigating
the political world. Faced with a state allowing few roles for the
educated to pursue their post-graduate goals, the highly educated are
apt to take to the streets to force the government to make meaningful
reforms, as they did in Argentina (1955), Hungary (1956), Japan
(1960), China (1989), and elsewhere.” … before the Egyptian
Revolution of 2011, “more than 43 percent of the unemployed in
Egypt had university degrees.” (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014). The
unemployed highly educated have the capacity “to understand the
failures of their government, recognize other potential avenues of
governance, and evaluate how best to achieve meaningful change”
(Sanborn and Thyne, 2014).
The best case that Sanborn and Thyne
point out for the combination of high educated and poverty promoting
democracy is in the case of Tunisia. The Tunisian government provided
for education for it's citizens, but higher quality jobs never
materialized. The Tunisian economy relied primarily on
labor-intensive activities, such as factory or farm work, and it's
economic growth was based on the increase of exports, and “not from
an internal expansion of the economy”. The unemployment rate spiked
during the 2008-2009 world financial crisis, which hit the young and
highly educated Tunisians. “Individuals who had completed
university studies had the highest unemployment rate (19.0 percent)
of any educational category, and this figure worsened to over 30
percent by the end of 2011.” Tunisians also had to deal with a
corrupt government enshrined with the spoils system, where bribery
and graft served as a basis for economic advancement. Mohamed
Bouazizi set himself on fire, because of his inability to pay for
these increase of fees, and that's when the boiling point of Tunisia
exploded (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014).
Sanborn and Thyne identify improving
access to education for females is integral in promoting democracy.
Educating females alongside males indeed produces more empowered
females, as well as males who are able to see females beyond their
traditional gender roles... With both the awareness of inequalities
embedded in the status quo and the tools to address these
inequalities, females may take a leading role in agitating for
political change in the country. For example, mothers’ groups in
Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador arose in the 1970–80s to address
human rights violations perpetrated by military regimes. At their
most basic level, schools produce students with analytical and
critical minds who are able to recognize and take action to address
gender inequities. Teachers can act as the agents of change in
classrooms, providing opportunities for students to contest
traditional gender roles in society. Likewise, school leaders are
able to promote gender equality by ensuring that gender is a focus of
enrollment and retention in decision making (Sanborn and Thyne,
2014).
Globalization helps with democracy
because “interconnectedness increases, news about democratic
systems and movements may find its way into a state through these
avenues and destabilize the regime” (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014).
The 5th hypothesis of
Sanborn and Thyne says that democratization will not happen in highly
wealthy societies, even with a large base of highly educated folks,
because “protesting for meaningful political change takes
considerable time and effort... the highly educated in wealthy
societies to be more likely to accept authoritarianism, because they
are likely to expend their time and resources on economic
advancement. In poor states with few opportunities for economic
advancement, however, we expect the highly educated to use their
abilities to agitate for political change” (Sanborn and Thyne,
2014). This may be the reason why democratization hasn't happened in
American schools.
Nick Peim's article, while a bit
rambling with Derrida's postmodern jibberish, trips over many truths.
While it's assumed that American education and democracy go hand in
hand, “any correspondence between schooling and democracy is highly
tenuous” (Peim, 2013).
There is nothing inherent in the school, nor in schools, nor in
schooling, that is democratic. What’s more, there is much inherent
in the school-as-we-know-it that is anti-democratic … rather, it is
built into the genetic constitution of the institution... The school
divides the body of pupils into age-stratified classes, designating
time periods for activities and affirming norms for performance and
competence... The future is thus rendered predictable, programmed and
constrained... the school, operates unarguably, ... according to
several forms of symbolic violence: including age-stratification,
norm-related judgments, the production of negative identities,
especially in terms of race and class, the intensive and absolutist
management of time and more (Peim, 2013).
Flying in the face of Horace Mann,
Nick Peim shows how “education
actually produces and sustains inequality”. Peim references Bowles
and Gintis, who published their famous Schooling in Capitalist
America (1976), which was a book that “explicitly presented the
scandalous thesis that education had not been a mechanism for social
equality in the USA, rather that it had operated to sustain
inequality” … “Not only were inequalities resistant to reform,
they appeared to be ineradicable precisely because they were written
into the institution’s DNA” … “The myth of schooling as
capable of delivering social justice or contributing to it in terms
of the redistribution of cultural capital and in the long run by
implication economic capital. Broadly speaking, the inequalities
remain since they are structurally embedded in the most minute
operations of the institution, its state function, its organization
of knowledge and its pedagogical operations” (Peim, 2013). Horace
Mann believed in education in order to elevate. Horace Mann's vision
for America's common schools was to help elevate the lower classes,
and to foster a more even playing field for the masses. For Mann, the
educated masses would be able to bring themselves up out of poverty,
and therefore, with more knowledge, we could compete on more equal
footing with the educated and financial well to do upper classes
(Eakin, 2000). Pestalozzi believed that the poor children, the
majority, was in greater need of education than rich children, and
that's why he believed that popular education should be the business
of the State (Horlacher, 2011). Pestalozzi, as well as Horace Mann,
wanted to equalize the status of the poor and rich, but Nick Peim
shows that in America, this isn't happening.
“A teacher who does not study and
work well does not deserve to be called a revolutionary”.
(Rockwell).
“Is the fear justified that
enlightenment will destroy social order and lead inevitably to social
unrest or even revolution?” (Horlacher, 2011).
“Finally, I would stress the importance of thinking in terms of the
various logics of schooling (often found to be in conflict with overt
aims) that in fact articulate the programmes and actions undertaken
in the name of such terms as popular education. These logics cross
through the bounded entities we call schools, to connect what occurs
in society at large with what happens within the classroom. Among
these logics, we might recover one that is often disregarded: the
significant learning that humans always and everywhere engage in. Of
course, such learning also takes place in classrooms, but at times
through peer relations as much as through teacher mediation. Often,
it occurs elsewhere, and belies the claim that the spread of literacy
is always a direct consequence of schooling. More fundamentally, this
logic challenges the presumption that popular education is a
necessary prerequisite to the exercise of citizenship. Beyond the
confines of literacy classes and campaigns appear multiple
alternative paths towards the constitution of both local and national
polities as holders of a sovereignty that is still continually denied
by the State” (Rockwell, 2011).
The Democracy Perception Scale showed
that the democratic perceptions of primary school students of Turkey
differ according to their sex, what grade they are in, the education
and income status of their parents, and where they live.The
perception of democracy scores for students in Turkey was high
compared to the scores of students from the 28 other countries (Kus
and Cetin, 2014). Female students in Turkey perceived democracy more
correctly than male students did. Female students adopt democratic
behavior more readily, and they also had higher perceptions of
democracy (Amadeo, Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Husfeldt, & Nikolova,
2002; Atasoy, 1997; Aycan & Calık, 2003; Başaran, 2006;
Buyukkaragoz, 1989; Cuhadar, 2006; Gurbuz, 2006; Doğanay, 2008;
Doğanay & Sarı, 2009; Genc & Kalafat, 2008; Gomleksiz &
Kan, 2008; Kaldırım, 2003; Karatekin et al., 2010; Sağlam, 2000;
Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001; Ural, 2010;
Yoğurtcu, 2010) (Kus and Cetin, 2014). Perceptions of democracy for
primary school students differ according to their parents’ income
status. Children of parents with
higher incomes had higher perceptions of democracy (Kus and Cetin,
2014).
Paulo Friere believed that education
was for liberation In group settings, absent a crisis, liberty is
democracy. Schools are front and center of most of the communities
they are in, and children can become leaders right now.
“The philosophy in the classroom of
this generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”
~Abraham Lincoln (Loflin, 2008).
Democracy in the
Classroom
Those who seek to be leaders in
America will need a strong robust educational background. John Taylor
Gatto writes in The Underground History of American Education
about how the American education system was initially constructed on
the strict 3-tiered social stratification of the Prussian-Industrial
Education system Horace Mann adopted in America. According to Gatto,
only the top ½% of the students were educated properly, with an open
mind, for them to be introduced to the greatest of ideas, and to
question them all. For the bottom 99.5%, they received lesser
educations. For the top ½% of the population, the best of the
elites, attended the Academy School, “where, as future policy
makers, they learned to think strategically, contextually, in wholes;
they learned complex processes, and useful knowledge, studied
history, wrote copiously, argued often, read deeply, and mastered
tasks of command” (Gatto, 2003). If we seek to truly educate our
students to be effective citizens, we must educate them as the ½% is
educated. Parents, teachers, and students should be discussing
national and international political issues.
There's no democracy in American
schools, homes, or workplaces. The only time we see any democratic
process in America is on a day that's not held sacred with a National
Holiday: Election Day. And since the turnout rates are so low, the
majority aren't even showing up for those. There is no democracy in
America. Since democratic processes won't just magically appear with
our ill-informed and unpracticed and unseasoned young citizens, we
need to start teaching democratic virtues in Elementary School, and
we as Educators can do it by setting a good example. Kindergarten,
Primary, Grade, High, Secondary, and Teacher-training schools should
all been ran democraticly.
There's many democratic elements that
are lost in American democracy. From the continuum of having a pure
direct democracy, where everybody votes on all of the issues, with
unanimous consensus, to a pure dictatorship. America from top to
bottom resembles a dictatorship. By learning democratic elements,
we'll instill in our young love and respect for each other,
understanding our oneness, while embracing our differences as a beautiful colorful rainbow, and human rights should be understood in
Elementary school. They can learn how to cooperate with each other, how to treat each other better, and how to build culture. America's so-called democracy consists of having
an election once every other year, more or less, where the masses get
a 12-hour window to choose who they want to rule over them. That's
the absolute bare minimum of democracy. And if the Electoral College
ever voted against the popular, they'd be legal in doing so. The very
presence of the Electoral College shows how the US Constitution was
constructed by anti-democratic aristocratic plutocrats. For John Dewey, “a
democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode
of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The
extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an
interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others,
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to
his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of
class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving
the full import of their activity” (Dewey, 1916).
More democratic elements include
students deciding upon their seating charts, their own curriculum,
the classroom agenda, their own behavior, their own ideas,
understanding the peaceful resolution of disputes, being taught
morals and values, understanding their sacred sovereign autonomous
independence, dismantling illegitimate authority, building critical
thinking skills, accepting different cultures, organizing unions,
finding peaceful solutions to their problems, practicing
socialization skills and building a broad-based foundation of the
language of democracy that's necessary for democratic communities.
Education Doesn't
Always Lead to Democratization
Not everybody agrees that more
education will lead to democratization. If an educational system only
educates the top ½% of their population, that only widens the gap between
the have-nots and the have-mores. “The widespread provision of
education can also create a surplus of highly-educated workers,
driving down wages and employment rates. This is particularly
dangerous if the “excess capacity” exists for a long duration,
without prospects for remedy. Taken together, this debate in the
literature suggests that the effects of education might have little
impact on democratization, work
against democratization, or be
conditional upon a host of factors (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014).
Nick Peim suggests a “monstrous
proposal” of just dismantling the entire education system and
starting over on “the grounds for social, ethical and cultural
redemption” (Peim, 2013). Nick Peim wants to think “beyond
education”. I believe Peim's monstrous proposal is worth
considering, because imagine an America without centralized public
schools. Parents would have to be parents again. Americans would
understand that the only way we'll be free is through our own
actions. We can actually start to value education, and appreciate
intelligence, and educate each other. We'd get educated on the
streets, in our homes, in our neighbor's homes, with loved ones, in
our union halls, civic groups, in our workplaces, and hopefully,
create democratic institutions that will last till the end of time.
America bombs other nations in the name of democracy without have a
true democracy here. Public education may have to be destroyed so we
Americans can see ourselves as individuals, and as people, again.
From Headstart to K-12 to College to
Graduate School, there's absolutely zero democracy. Freedom in groups
can only be expressed using democratic functions, forms, and
practices. This is quite unfortunate, because without freedom, one's
humanity is stifled, and one's soul cannot breathe. If we aren't
learning democracy in our schools, then when and where are Americans
learning democracy? Democracy? In America? Where? Where's the
democracy? For my entire American educational career of 21 years, all
that this author has witnessed—in homes, workplaces, and
classrooms—are autocratic totalitiarian mini-regimes. Francis
Fukayamu decried the “The End of History” because it seemed as if
the world had embraced liberal democracy as it's final endform of
government, and so now, for Fukayamu, there would be no more great
battles, or wars, or Revolutions to happen anymore. The fall of the
Berlin Wall for Fukayamu was the “end of history” because liberal
democracy was victorious. But that's not true. For one, capitalism
and democracy are opposites. Second, America needs liberal democracy
instituted in our own country first before anybody can declare that
liberal democracy won the great cosmic battle of ideas. In American
educational institutions, on all levels, we are provided with an
appointed dictator, who we may or may not know, who we are expected
to follow blindly. Howard Zinn said that the three worst atrocities
in human history—war, genocide, and slavery—have all happened
because of blind obedience to absolute and arbitrary authority (Zinn,
1997/2010). How are Americans supposed to be able to understand how
democratic structures properly operate when they've only been trained
under strict tyrannical monoarchical fascist totalitarian
dictatorships?
Some folks argue that since we have
elections, that is what makes America a democracy, but just recently,
in the Senate race for Kentucky between Alison Grimes and Mitch
McConnell, we see how that's not true. By taking those who voted in (Kentucky's November 4, 2014
Senate Election Results) by (Kentucky's Total Registered Voters) we
see that only 46% of Kentucky's registered voters voted. 46% isn't
the majority of Kentuckians. Compare this rate with Denmark, who has
an 89% turnout rate, or with Australia, who makes it a crime
punishable up to a $1,000 fine, if you do not vote. And this Senate
campaign was a high profile race! Plus, all local Kentucky
seats—Judge-Executives, Sheriffs, County Attorneys, City Councils,
Mayors, Magistrates, Soil and Water Conservation District
Supervisors, Coroners, Property Valuation Administrators, and on and
on—were also up for election. Many of Kentucky's local governments
were completely and forever altered. This 46% turnout rate doesn't
include everybody, because those who aren't registered to vote (100s
of 1,000s of people), or those who are disenfranchised because they
are ex-felons (180,000) (Ryan, 2014), weren't counted in this number.
So the 46% turnout rate is really lower than that. Democracy is rule
by the people—the “demos”—but in Kentucky, the demos stayed
home. So, while there's no democracy anywhere in Kentucky workplaces,
schools, or homes, even in the one cherished institution of
democracy, the one day where we get to vote our power away, to those
who will lord over we the people with the power of the State, who has
a monopoly on violence, on Election Day in America, there isn't even
democracy. And the national elections in this Republic—a
representative democracy—are just a tiny flash of democracy. We
need a robust and active civil society, as well as citizens who are
well-versed in dialogue, discussion, and in the sharing of power. If
America is going to be a beacon of freedom to the world, the
exceptional city on the hill, then talking about politics with educated civic minded folks should be
commonplace watercooler talk. Kentucky specific, as well as America
at large, has a major crisis of democracy, and it always has, because
there's no democracy in any of our schools.
Peer-reviewed Articles
Endresen, Kristin. (2013). Popular
education in three organizations in Cape Town, South Africa. Studies
in the Education of Adults. Vol. 45, No. 1.
Feng, Yi. (1997). Democracy, Political
Stability and Economic Growth. British Journal of Political
Science. 27:391–418.
Ferrer, Alejandro Tiana. (2011). The
concept of popular education revisited—or what do we talk about
when we speak of popular education. Paedagogica Historica.
Vol. 47. Nos. 1-2. 15-31.
Fukuyama, Francis. (1989). The End of
History? The National Interest.
Hirsch, Jr., E.D. (2009). How Schools
Fail Democracy. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Horlacher, Rebekka. (2011). Schooling
as a means of popular education: Pestalozzi's method as a popular
education experiment. Paedagogica Historica. Vol. 47, Nos.
1-2, 65-75.
Kus, Zafer and Cetin, Turhan. (2014).
Perceptions of Democracy of Primary School Students. Educational
Sciences. Theory and Practice.
Peim, Nick. (2013). Education,
Schooling, Derrida's Marx and Democracy: Some Fundamental Questions.
Studies in Philosophy and Education. pg. 171-187.
Rockwell, Elsie. (2011). Popular
education and the logics of schooling. Centro de Investigacion y
Estudios Avanzados, Instituto Politecnico Nacional. Mexico City,
Mexico.
Sanborn, Howard and Thyne, Clayton L. (2014). Learning Democracy:
Education and the Fall of Authoritarian Regimes. British Journal
of Political Science. 44.4: 773-797.
Other Resources
Albertus, Mike and Menaldo, Victor.
March 2, 2011. “For enduring democracies, revolutions are the best
bet”. USA Today.
August Landmesser. Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser
Coombs, P. H. and Ahmed, M. (1974).
Attacking Rural Poverty. How non-formal education can help,
Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
DeConcini, Dennis
and Kyl, Jon. (2014, September 18). Arizona bombs civics, but we can
change that. Azcentral. Retrieved from
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Dewey, John. (1916). Democracy and
Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by Dewey.
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http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Mann.html.
Gatto, John Taylor. (2003). The
Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s
Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.
Oxford Village Press.
Herbert, Gary.
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strength of nation.” Desert News. September 17, 2014.
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Hirson, H. (1979).
Bantu Education: 1954-1976.
Year of Fire and Ash. London: Zed Press.
Ryan, Jacob. (2014, November 4) For
Kentucky Felons, Getting to the Polls on Election Day Isn't an
Option. WFPL.
http://wfpl.org/post/kentucky-felons-getting-polls-election-day-isnt-option.
Kentucky's
November 4, 2014 Senate Election Results. (2014). Retrieved from
http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate/kentucky/#.VF8sSPnF87U
Kentucky's Total
Registered Voters. (2014). Retrieved from
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Lemov, Doug. Teach Like a Champion.
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Mann, Horace.
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