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