The Worth of Critical Education

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”-Socrates in Plato's Apology (38a5–6)

“If we are going to develop a politics capable of awakening our critical, imaginative, and historical sensibilities, it is crucial for educators and others to develop a language of critique and possibility.”—Henry Giroux in ‘Pedagogical Terrorism and Hope in the age of Fascist Politics’

“Axios,” (ἄξιος) means in ancient Greek, “worth,” as in “weighing as much.” And speaking of worth, I want to add two new premises to the Nature is a Machine argument. 1.) Some machines are superfluous. 2.) Superfluous things are expendable because they are worthless. I will not write the premises in symbolic form.

In December 16, 1981 a janitor at the University of Portland shot and killed an engineering teacher. There were four more shootings that year at American Universities. In the last 5 months of this year of 2019 there were 15 shooting incidents resulting in four deaths, and 33 injuries. There were 44 gun incidents at schools so far this year alone. Human life does not seem to be worth much. And if humans are machines, they are ultimately expendable. The mechanical paradigm for nature is inherently a nihilistic universe having no intrinsic “worth” including the illusory ethical concepts of the Good, Justice, Democracy, and Human. The mechanical paradigm creates an axiological vacuum in which other ideological paradigms rush in to fill the void. In the case of American education that axiological void has been intentionally filled by fundamentalist market ideology that intensifies the dehumanization of persons and existential meaninglessness. The takeover of public education curriculum is not new in American history. Before the American Revolution public schools taught religion and ethics, but after the Civil War schools taught business ethics. Today’s fundamentalist market paradigm has, in the words of Dr. Henry Giroux, “…defined education in purely instrumental, privatized, and anti-intellectual terms.”

Professor Giroux’s view is becoming more common in American academia. Yale University Historian Dr. Matthew Frye Jacobson, and former president of the American Studies Association, said in a recent interview that students have morphed into consumers, “So instead of having liberal education develop citizens or humanists, it becomes a careerist, consumerist transaction.”  Students are no longer citizens, but consumers with a careerist attitude--a strictly instrumentalist natural-scientific reductionist attitude in which the primary modes of being are domination, competitiveness, exploitation, and materialist accumulation. Education and even the students themselves are commodities—like everything else in the market place. In this social reality only “‘consumer sovereignty’ and shareholder value are the measures of what is good.” Dr. Giroux listed the new scale of virtues and values as “the veneration of war, anti-intellectualism; dehumanization; a populist celebration of ultra-nationalism and racial purity;[15] the suppression of freedom and dissent; a culture of lies; a politics of hierarchy, the spectacularization of emotion over reason, the weaponization of language; a discourse of decline, and state violence in heterogeneous forms.”

Atomistic economic individualism replaces the values of communal democracy, empathy, freedom, equality, and knowledge. The school, “place,” is now the market place. The market place draw flies. Everywhere democracy, the community, and the commons are under attack so that every aspect of life is privatized and monetized thereby destroying the very social forms that make a free society possible. Giroux writes, “In the end, there is no democracy without informed citizens and no justice without a language critical of injustice.”  Language is a public tool to interpret our private life. A private language is a contradiction in terms. Noam Chomsky notes that we use language ninety percent of the time to subjectively talk to ourselves, and the rest for communication with others. When private legal tyrannies such as the corporate form spread sociological propaganda, they enter our private subjective inner world to influence our thinking and behavior.

“If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth. Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology.”—Herbert Marcuse in ‘One Dimensional Man,’pdf., p.129).

A degree from the best American Universities can cost more than a million dollars. But I do not mean “best” as in a place to learn, but “the easiest to bribe.” Why not simply buy a degree since it is essentially only a financial investment transaction. The American University system has turned into a vast speculative market for obtaining fake identities—it is what professor Williams Deresiewicz called “credential laundering.” 

“Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”- Professor Dr. William T. Kelley of marketing for 31 years at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Deresiewicz wrote “Excellent Sheep,” as a critique of elite universities and the inflated egos of the wealthy students with their strong sense of “entitlement.” He gives important insights into higher education “privilege laundering” in an interview with Michael Schulson of Salon:

“But what’s happened in the last 50 years is that the meritocracy has in turn re-created the schools in their own image. They have created a system that took the meritocracy from what it was supposed to be, and made it what I refer to as a “hereditary meritocracy.” If your kid is going to get into one of these schools, with some exceptions, they have to be stuffed full of education resources almost from the moment they’re born, almost from the moment they start school.”

“… the college admission process is the way that we launder privilege in this country. Instead of saying, “You get to go because you’re born,” which is obviously unfair, we say, “You get to go because you have really great scores and grades and you’ve done a million extracurricular activities.” But the only way to get to that point is if you have rich parents. I mean, again, there are exceptions, but there are not a lot of exceptions.”

For the less fortunate education is has a predetermined course just like the student’s life is materially, and socially predetermined. Education becomes an endless series of instructions to be followed to avoid penalties without any holistic vision, or purpose except to complete a particular assignment. The teacher is merely a coercive emissary of a future employer who permanently records the student’s performance. Every activity is regimented including sports; swimming time is athletes of wartime when you attempt to drown your classmate. In short, sending your child to a public school in America is not unlike sending your child to a minimum-security prison. The end result is a well-behaved model prisoner with experience that might be useful in the future. The entire educational system is organized meaninglessness culminating in a disenchanted “withering of experience.” It is enough to make you want to put a bullet in  one's head. Tillich wrote that when the possibility of self-realization is denied, “Creativity is replaced by subjection to law—a characteristic of man in estrangement”(ST. Vol. II, p. 65). This kind of alienating environment is one of constant danger, demoralization, and depression resulting in absolute total blind rage. With such humiliating loss of human agency, it is no wonder the nihilist picks up a firearm and murders the superfluous—including one’s self. Nihilists expend the expendable. In this way the nihilist has created an identity, an immoral identity, but nonetheless a self-identity with meaning. He has beaten the competition, gained agency, and most importantly he won playing by his own goal-directed narcissistic rules. And power cannot do a damn thing about it. Joseph Stalin studied for the priesthood as a young man. The most dangerous people in the world are disillusioned idealists. This is the absurd logic of disenchantment derived from internalizing the Machine-Market paradigm as a life philosophy. 

Brother Pence, Saint Ayn Rand, and Christian Fascist Ideology in the Schoolhouse

“Donald Trump does not need to speak to the ‘Never Trumpers,’ some of my friends — or maybe former friends — who suffer from a terrible case of moral superiority and put their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country,”-- William J. Bennett, Reagan Secretary of Education 1985

Mike Pence is the Judas of this generation of American Christians. Just as Bennett kicked down the school doors to inject Fascist Neoliberal ideology, the Reverend Billy Graham insinuated his way into the fundamentalists churches bringing with him the pus which he presented as New Testament Christianity. The Rev. Graham publicly advocated the corporatization of Christian Churches on April 29, 1985 telling Pat Robertson’s audience on the 700 Club show that “[T]he time has come when evangelicals are going to have to think about getting organized corporately….” The Prosperity Gospel appeared as corporate Mega Churches like running sores on the body of Christ. Their theology was the same “bait and switch” used in reforming national educational policies: parrot arguments that will appeal to progressives for changing school curriculum, but switch to business rights. Instead of teaching Aristotle, they taught psychopathic Ayn Randian anti-ethics with a strong dose of uncritical naive realism.

I remember when as a member of a Pentecostal church the 700 Club program began airing on television. Little did I know this seemingly innocent religious program would become a force that Paul Tillich could described as “… demonry—if this word is to have any special content-occurs only in connection with a positive, sustaining, creative-destructive power...This is true also of the last great demonry of the present, nationalism.... National things receive sacral untouchability and ritual dignity. But just there demonization begins” (The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich, The Demonic).

The Reagan Administration’s grunting wheezing farting galoot, William Bennett, injected market fundamentalist sociological propaganda into an already nihilistic worldview taught in schools. The Christian fundamentalists whole-heartedly embrace the mechanical paradigm of nature as much as 17^th century science. They engage in a particularly embarrassing and stupid apologetic to “prove” a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible—with religious trinkets made in China, a fragment of Noah’s Ark, a piece of ancient cloth, supernatural creationism, and other cheap money scams. Economic fetishism is transubstantiated into idolatrous religious object fetishism. Pence and Bennett advocate a heretical version of Christianity that the Nazis called “Muscular Christianity,” as opposed to “Feminized Christianity” which portrays Jesus as, in their words, “a lady with a beard.” Muscular Christianity is misogynistic making masculinity the paradigm of all virtues and women of all vices. This form of Christian fascism is a reaction against “perceived excesses in social equality and liberty.” No major fundamentalist church leader objected to the fusion of Ayn Randian anti-ethical system of “Wantism,”(“I want X; therefore, X is good) with the Fascist Neoliberal Prosperity Gospel. All the talk about ethics was designed to begin the privatization of public schools for profit that has lasted for 40 years, and we now know some results. Illiteracy is more profitable than costly education since the illiterate are more obedient employees, and uncritical consumers. The commodity paradigm is the true deity of this sickening historical form of Christian fascism: salvation is ultimately derived from high-level consumption. It’s a damn freak show.

 “Exchange value, not truth value counts. On it centers the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to it.”—Marcuse (ODM, p. 61).

"My worthy friend, gray are all theories, and green alone Life's golden tree."-- Mephistopheles said in Goether's Faust,

Critical theory has many names such as negative dialectics, Kantian transcendental philosophy, Marxian critique of political economy and ideology, critical reason, critical sociology, and “critical pedagogy.” The key term is “critique,” as in oppositional thinking, of unveiling, and debunking. Critical theory means “being puzzled by the obvious,” although, I can attest to the fact such an attitude will get you fired from most jobs. Christian theology is partly responsible for unleashing this vexing force upon the world. Before going into that theological history we should distinguish two objects which philosophical critique has been applied:   

A. Critique as Reconstruction (conditions of possible knowledge):

1.     -Understand anonymous systems of rules (Kant, Wittgenstein).

2.     -Explains rule operation on objective sentences, generative nature of linguistic rules, action, cognitive insight, and conscious operation of human actors.

3.     – Achieving correct knowledge is the goal (Truth).

B. Critique as Criticism (system of constraints):

1.     -Liberation from particular, but not anonymous coercive illusions (Hegel, Freud).

2.     -Objectivity is questioned as having inbuilt deformity masquerading as reality.

3.     –Reveal false, or distorted consciousness (Emancipation).[1]

Critique emerged out of the Age of Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. Humanists and Reformers of all kinds used critique to study the ancient Classics and the Christian Bible. Both Catholics and Protestants applied critical reasoning to settle doctrinal disagreements, but over time this critical tool of reason became a force in itself independent of the churches and even biblical scripture. Truth gradually became defined as “rational thought,” and not what was true by biblical authority:

“The warring churches now found themselves confronted by a common enemy. A new line of demarcation had opened up between reason and revelation, and the word ‘critique’ acquired polemical overtones, which it was never subsequently to lose. ‘Critique’ came to be seen no longer as simply a symptom of the sharpening opposition between reason and revelation. It was viewed as itself the activity which separate the two sphere. It was the essential activity of reason… neither religion nor the legislature was exempt from its test. The process of critique acquired public force” (Ibid, p.16).

[1] This summary of critical reason is abstracted from “Introduction of Critical Sociology: Selected Readings,”edited by Paul Connerton, Penguin Books, 1976.

I want to describe an excellent example of a critical pedagogy that can provide a language of critique and new possibilities that will appeal to both educators and students including the religious and non-religious. Professor John Vervaeke of the University Toronto is currently giving a YouTube lecture course entitled  “Ep. 1 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Introduction.” Dr. Vervaeke is now at lecture episode 20 this Friday. I watched all 19 hours of lectures and learned a great deal so in my next post I want to briefly review his key philosophical concepts and language.

Leonard Cohen Recites "Listen To The Hummingbird"

Listen to the hummingbird

Whose wings you cannot see

Listen to the hummingbird

Don’t listen to me.

Listen to the butterfly

Whose days but number three

Listen to the butterfly

Don’t listen to me.

Listen to the mind of God

Which doesn’t need to be

Listen to the mind of God

Don’t listen to me.

The Machine Paradigm of Nature and Human Disenchantment

“3.221 Objects I can only name. Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them. A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is.” –Ludwig Wittgenstein

(∀x)[Px ⊃ (Hx * ~Wx)]

“All Propositions can only say how a thing is, not what it is.”

 At this seemingly odd place I what to bring Wittgenstein into the discussion since his views on the limits of symbolic logic is not unlike Newton’s view of the incoherent machine paradigm of nature and its inability to explain the absurd phenomena of interaction at a distance such as the non-physical interaction of gravity, or magnetic repulsion and attraction. Newton names these phenomena mysteries while Wittgenstein names them mysticism by putting them beyond human understanding. Both philosophers are dealing with what Adorno referred to as the Kantian Block—the very edge of intelligibility and un-intelligibility of experience. The question of whether nature is only a machine has grave consequences for human beings. How can there be values, free will, and moral agency in a wholly deterministic mechanical world? American sociologist Robert Merton made the very important distinction between “the intended, conscious functions of ideas, and the unintended, unconscious ones” (SCR., p. 11). Karl Mannheim warns us that “…in modern times much more depends on the correct thinking through of a situation than was the case in earlier societies”(Ideology and Utopia, 1936). The materialist’s tautology is “Everything is physical; therefore, everything is a machine since everything is physical,” Ad Infinitum. Ignoring fundamental philosophical questions of ethics and epistemology can lead to absolute skepticism, nihilism, narcissistic solipsism, fascism, militarism, apathetic individualism, dehumanization, and disenchantment. When we define the world, we define ourselves.

In his lecture, Professor Noam Chomsky recounts Descartes anchoring modern science on the understanding of the world, nature, or the cosmos as an intelligible physical machine. An animal squealing in pain and a squeaking rusty wheel are ontologically on the same plain—the physical. Isaac Newton comes to the absurd conclusion that there are no machines--nothing works by machine principles. Chomsky points out that we really do not know what “physical” really is—it’s like saying the physical is “really, really real.” The meaning of physical amounts to “Anything we understand.” We do not have a theory of the material or the physical. Atoms are units of measurement. There are no material bodies and cannot be accounted for by mechanical principles. Since Newton, modern science attempts to achieve the lesser goal of developing intelligible theories about the cosmos and not the thing-in-itself.

The Machine Paradigm of Nature could be simply translated into the categorical propositional form “Everything is a Machine,” (∀x)Mx. Sometimes such translations are more radical and linguistically awkward. Let the following categorical proposition express a derived argument of the mechanical thesis of nature as “If all of Nature is a Machine, and all Humans are of nature, then humans are machines.” This proposition can be presented as a two premised argument and a conclusion. Here are the reasons I am presenting this argument in symbolic form: 1.) Show how the Machine Paradigm thesis symbolically appears in a logical argument. I must construct a thesis in order to present an antithesis. 2.) Show how translating an argument into logical notation is diagnostic in itself. 3.) Explain why logical contradictions are a bad thing in an argument. 4.) Follow the logical rule named, “Use it, or lose it,” or practice otherwise one’s reasoning ability will erode.

This form of logical reasoning is called “categorical propositional logic,” or sometimes just “baby logic.”

Definitions:

(∀x) = for all x

(∃x) = for some x

v = either, or, inclusive

⊃ = Logical operator for implication: If, then.

* = and, conjunction

~ = Not

N = Nature

M = Machine

H = Human

x = any item

y = as an ‘unknown’ and not a constant

∴ = Therefore; conclusion.

1.) (∀x)(Nx ⊃ Mx)

“All Nature is a machine”

2.) (∀x)(Hx ⊃ Nx)    /∴  (∀x) (Hx ⊃ Mx)

“All Humans are of Nature”  /∴ “All Humans are machines” 

3.) Ny ⊃ My

1, UI to strip away the quantifiers to show sentence form.

4.) Hy ⊃ Ny

2, UI, sentence form

5.) Hy ⊃ My

3,4 Hypothetical Syllogism

6.) (∀x) (Hx ⊃ Mx)

5, UG to get the conclusion “All Humans are machines.”

Newtonian physics posits, “Nothing works by machine principles:”

7.) (∀x)~Mx

Assumed premise that contradicts premise 1.

8.)~My

7,EI where “y” is an “unknown,” not a constant.

If there is something that is a Human being, then we can derive this contradiction:

9.) (∃x)Hx

10.) Hy

9, EI, where “y” is an “unknown,” not a constant.

11.) ~Hy

5, 8, Modus Tollens

12.) Hy * ~Hy

10, 11, Conjunction.

/∴  (∃y)(Hy *~Hy)

12, EG, Indirect proof reductio ad absurdum resulting from injecting premise 7.

Contradictions are bad because they allow any conclusion whatsoever to be derived:

Definitions:

Ay = Any conclusion whatsoever

1.)Hy * ~Hy

Contradiction

2.) Hy

1, Simplification

3.)Hy v Ay

2, Addition

4.) ~Hy

1, Simplification

5.) Ay

3, 4, Hypothetical Syllogism “Any conclusion whatsoever.”

The symbol (∃x)Hx is deceptively simple. What is human? And what does it mean to say humans are a part of Nature, which is different than saying someone is “natural,” or “unnatural.” These definitions are important for translation, but once the translation is made they are irrelevant to logical symbolism. Translating natural language into symbolic notation frequently reveal argument flaws just from pseudo-propositions that are not really propositions at all, but “nonsense,” or in some cases “senseless.” In fact, this is Wittgenstein’s method of language analysis.

The great promise of Deductive Logic is that if the premises are true (using the sign “T”) in an argument, and the inferences are valid (“consistent”), then the conclusion must be true, or “T.” However, once a contradiction is allowed into an argument, that guarantee of certainty is lost. But what is truth? That is another department down the hall called “Philosophy of Language” and Wittgenstein is working on it…something about “picture” theory, and “language games” that theorizes language is like games—which is to say, “patterns of intention,” and meaning is determined in language by use. The communal tool of language constructs social reality and private experience. In fact, we could replace "T" for "1" and "F" for "0".

  

Wittgenstein on the Limits of Symbolic Logic

“4.441 It is clear that to the complex of the signs “F” and “T” no object (or complex of objects) corresponds; any more than to horizontal and vertical lines or to brackets. There are no “logical objects.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein

~(∀x)Lx

 “Nothing is a logical object.”

Philosopher George Pitcher describes Wittgenstein’s conception as the world of meaningful discourse like a city set in the middle of a jungle: the jungle is defined in terms of that which is not the city. The city is well structured, exact and orderly; everything within the city is visible. Tautologies, contradictions, descriptive propositions—all these occupy the world of meaning, although, the first two say nothing. The jungle, on the other hand, is all that cannot be said, the mystical, the metaphysical, religion, ethics, and art have their place outside the city. But again, this is not the end of the matter. Wittgenstein writes—one could say he reveals his attraction for the mystical, “What can be shown cannot be said,”(Tractatus, 4.1212), and “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical”(Tractatus 6.522). What manifests itself? Ethical propositions, theological discourse, and surprisingly, logic itself are all placed in the same transcendental realm, which is to say in today's world, the "metaphysical doghouse." “Logic is transcendental” (Tractatus,6.13).

Logic only deals with abstract relationships. If I say “Everybody is related to somebody” (∀x)(∀y)Rxy, the relation is between (x) and (y) not “x” to “R.”

Wittgenstein writes in the Tractatus, “3.1432 We must not say, “The complex sign ‘aRb’ says ‘a stands in relation R to b’”; but we must say, “That ‘a’ stands in a certain relation to ‘b’ says that aRb”.

There is no logical object that is “R.” Relationship is “psychic continuity” (Nature ≡ Machine) and not an object. He is warning against the reification of symbols that represent relationships. Logical objects are idolatrous.

In my thinking, “psychic continuity” is also the answer to the problem of contingent identity statements (A = B), and Saul Kripke’s argument for necessity of self-identity (A = A). Kripke’s argument for the necessity of self-identity makes contingent identity statements impossible; yet, we know there is contingent identity. Identity is not an object which is why the question is not decidable in symbolic logic. But then…that would mean ‘A = B’ would be the foundation of logic, and not ‘A = not non-A’. This principle of logical relationship can be expressed symbolically:

(∀x)(∀y) [(x ≡ y) ⊃ (Fx ⊃ Fy)]

(Given any x)(Given any y)[ If (x is equivalent to y), then (if x is F, then y is F)] 

Like Newton, we can only say how a thing is, not what it is. When a paradigmatic system becomes more real than what it interprets, we then distort being through self deception and deny ourselves unfiltered experience.

Philosopher David Pears wrote that Wittgenstein,

“...was trying to demonstrate not that logic and mathematics do not rest on a realistic basis, but only that that basis cannot provide any independent support for them...the sources of the necessities of logic and mathematics lie within those areas of discourse in actual linguistic practices, and when those necessities seem to point to some independent backing out side the practices, the pointing is deceptive and the idea that the backing is independent is an illusion” (Ludwig Wittgenstein by David Pears, Penguin,1970, p.145).

Early Wittgensteinian scholars failed to make some important distinctions of how Wittgenstein used the words, “senseless” and “nonsensical” (Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy, by K.T. Fann, 1969, p. 25). Wittgenstein claims we can only make sense by saying those things that are within the limits of language. Those things said about the limits of language are “senseless” (sinnlos). Those things said about that which is beyond the limits of language are “nonsense” (unsinning). Many of the English translations do not differentiate between “sinnlos” and “unsinning” so that both are translated as “senseless” (sinnlos). Such translations could be one reason Wittgenstein is thought of as anti-metaphysical. Philosophy attempts to say those things that are beyond the limits of language and is nonsense, “Most propositions and questions, are not false, but nonsense (unsinning)”(Tractatus, 4.003). For Wittgenstein contradictions and tautologies are without ”sense,” (sind sinnlos), but not “senseless.” (nicht unsinnig). The symbol for “0” has no “sense,” but is not “senseless” because it is a symbol of Arithmetic (4.4611). 

“5.1361 The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.”--Wittgenstein

"Riverside" 

Down by the river by the boats 

Where everybody goes to be alone 

Where you won't see any rising sun 

Down to the river we will run 

When by the water we drink to the dregs 

Look at the stones on the river bed 

I can tell from your eyes 

You've never been by the riverside 

Down by the water the river bed 

Somebody calls you somebody says 

"Swim with the current and float away." 

Down by the river everyday 

Oh my God I see how everything is torn in the river deep 

And I don't know why I go the way 

Down by the riverside

When that old river runs past your eyes 

To wash off the dirt on the riverside 

Go to the water so very near 

The river will be your eyes and ears 

I walk to the borders on my own

And fall in the water just like a stone 

Chilled to the marrow in them bones 

Why do I go here all alone 

Down by the riverside

The Axiological Argument for Critical Public Education

“Cognitive dehumanization has produced actual dehumanization.”—Paul Tillich

“If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.”—Immanuel Kant

Robert Munro does not go into detail about Schleiermacher’s educational policy. However, one could speculate on what educational content Schleiermachian theology would be consistent with based on his comments about epistemology, ethics, church, state, and society. “Axiological” is an old-fashioned word meaning the philosophical study of values in ethics and aesthetics. Of the academy Munro only writes:

“The most perfect organic whole of knowledge is the Academy, or the unity composed of the teachers and masters in every branch of science. This organization occupies the place in the sphere of knowing that the State occupies in the sphere of doing; it is the highest development or unity of all that comes under the universal symbolizing activity of reason, even as the State is the highest development or unity of all that is included in the universally organizing activity”(Munro, p.244).

Before discussing possible public school educational approaches for teaching, some historical review of free universal education in America is required which can be found in any modern American sociology textbook. The Greek word “σχολή” (skhole) means “leisure spent in the pursuit of knowledge.” School is not a place, but a time. Free universal education for early white American settlers was established partly because New England Puritans highly valued education as part of their religious beliefs. Also, the French and English ideas of equality and liberty added popular support for universal public education.  Before the American Revolution public schools taught religion and ethics. After the Civil War schools taught business ethics as the curriculum. During the time between the Civil War and WWI educators taught social equality was an impossible goal; business property rights; and labor strikes were bad for American industry. In 1915 only 20% of American youth were attending high school, but in 1973 it was more than 80%.

During the 1960s education equality, or inequality was a big issue just as it is still today. Sociologist James S. Coleman was commissioned by the US Office of Education in 1965 to survey equality of educational opportunity and published his report in “Equality of Educational Opportunity,1966.” Since the American Revolution equal educational opportunity was ideally universal free education to some level with equal resources for every local school. In practice the wealthy upper class students went to private schools while the poor, and minorities received sporadic education with minimum resources, or no education at all. Even common school students of different social classes were treated differently. Students groups bused into common school locations were physically present, but not integrated exemplifying a fundamental misunderstanding of society. But still, free mass education grew for the vast majority until it reached an unheard of span of 16 to 20 years of instruction. Yet, sociological empirical research shows that in general common schools benefited both lower and middle-upper class students.

That education is necessary for success in life is a common assumption behind the concept of universal education and training. However, some argue that education has nothing to do with success and is even harmful to personal development, intellectual spontaneity, curiosity, and creativity. Who should be educated is the classic academic question the sociology of education has explored. Sociologist Lester Ward represented the dominant paradigm which held that education was for the very intelligent so that they could develop their intellect to benefit society as a whole. Sociologist Emile Durkheim understood education as the “cement” that held together Western cultural values for the health of society and transmission to future generations.

During the 1930’s Great Depression sociologists Lloyd Warner, Allison Davis and August Hollingshead studied upward social mobility of poor students in American schools and found that schools failed to represent the ideals of liberty and equality, but rather represented the “dominant values of the upper-middle class.” Students of the lower working class that did not convincingly display commitment to the contradictory values of the status quo, hyper-competition, inherent uncritical conformity, and a careerist advantage-oriented life style did not meet academic achievement standards.

This is the most important point to keep in mind: within the 1940s and 1960s educational training did little to actually change the class structure of American society.

Herbert Hyman (Applications of Methods of Evaluation, 1962) theorized in his studies that the student’s identification and associations with a “reference group” whether social, ethnic, or religious did more to enable learning than from the methodology of instruction. Coleman agreed in “The Adolescent Society (1971)” that didactics was a minor factor in student achievement.

Interpersonal relationships are an even more important factor in student learning and success than teaching method and content. As discussed before sociologists Berger and Luckmann noted that in addition to language, the second essential condition for socially training a child is “emotional attachment to a significant other” without which learning is impossible.

Interpersonal relationships are essential for creating a positive attitude toward learning. Psychological studies by Mildred Gebhard found that a student just being hopeful of success in school increased both effort and interest. Irwin Katz discovered through empirical testing some minority students actually scored higher on tests when told their scores would be compared to students in the same peer reference group. Empirical experiments have repeatedly shown that student “educational aspiration” is affected by changing the group the student is being compared (Wish, Expectation, and Group Performance as Factors Influencing Level of Aspiration,1942, Leon Festinger).

Students are not objects nor abstract categories, but rather evolving self-reflective conscious sentient human beings. 

Coleman concluded that the student’s “non-school” environment is the factor that best predicts school achievement, not teaching method and school quality. Sociologist Christopher Jencks (Inequality,1972) concluded that “socioeconomic factors” was the primary determinate of the student’s fate rather than personal abilities or quality of schools attended. Variables in education do not seem to explain the great differences of income inequality of students in later life. For Jencks, students do not need a social service, but a real increase in family income, and a standard of living to provide the material environment to educate a person. Piecemeal social services are not effective when simultaneously wage income is deliberately suppressed and even reduced.

The question still remains today, “Who should we educate?” The cost of education for the elites is too high to be universal so the choice is either educate the elites only, or find another method for mass education. The decision has already been made by the elites: provide superior education to the upper middle class and privatized vocational education delivered by intentionally de-skilled temporarily contracted multi-discipline instructors for everyone else.

However, the state of education in America is much, much worst than even this narrative suggests because in between reading, writing, and arithmetic mass murder occurs. 

Athletes of War

“The art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural aptitude for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and strong of limb to fight…But these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both qualities. Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers…The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which will make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without education?”—Socrates in Plato’s Republic, Book II, Stephanus pagination 375 b.

Plato is explaining to Glaucon how to build and educate an army in his ideal state. Plato’s “Republic” is translated from the ancient Greek word “politeia” (πολιτεία) meaning “the conditions and rights of the citizen in a city-state." As an expression of great honor to Socrates, Plato uses the Athenian teacher’s persona as a proxy speaker in Republic, and other dialogues, to present both Socratic and Platonic philosophical doctrines. There is no written work authored by Socrates himself in existence today.

Plato believed the guardians must be trained in the gymnasium otherwise they may turn against the citizens and rulers themselves. So from the very beginning of Western Civilization education has been designed to create a certain kind of person that is gentle in civil society, but capable of killing in war. The modern American education system of today and the commercial sports industry essentially perform the same function as the ancient gymnasium for creating controllable soldiers who are not a threat to the State, or civil society.

President Eisenhower first proposed a federal physical fitness program, but it failed until President Kennedy effectively reorganized it to be in the daily school curriculum. I did not like the fitness program because of its extreme regimentation. In our modern times the “gentle” side has been ideologically minimized with tragic consequences. One should note that the most murderous repressive dictatorships in world history were loosely based on the model of Plato’s vision of the Republic. The Nazi Third Reich and the American South slave plantation system were societies that attempted to emulate Plato’s ideal State that is essentially a Lacedaemonian, or Cretan commonwealth such as the military state of Sparta, which by the way, had a constitution. The History of Western Civilization has been the struggle of deciding what kind of government a society should have—Athens, or Sparta?

Mad World

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places, worn out faces

Bright and early for their daily races

Going nowhere, going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses

No expression, no expression

Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow

No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kinda funny

I find it kinda sad

The dreams in which I'm dying

Are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles

It's a very, very mad world, mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

And I feel the way that every child should

Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous

No one knew me, no one knew me

Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson

Look right through me, look right through me

Enlarging your world

Mad world

The Axiological Argument to continue as…

The Machine Paradigm of Nature and Human Disenchantment