Some Thoughts on Being an Agent of Oppression

My strange sort of fanaticism towards education reform has likely irritated my friends over the years. On one of my phases in this process I pestered everyone with the question, “What do you think should be the goals of our education system?” This was during a time when it occurred to me that one of the great problems in our education system is the fact that governmental institutions and much of the public want to burden schools with accomplishing a huge range of tasks. Frankly it was a range of things that goes way beyond what ought to be expected of any organization as small as a school is. Consider the task of trying to provide a “free and reasonable” education that will prepare every student within a certain geographic region, regardless of SES, native intelligence, linguistic and cultural background, or disability status to go to college, enter the vocational workforce, and participate in a democratic society. Muse upon accomplishing this under the constraints of arbitrary state mandated curricula, a variety of standardized testing regimens, students’ capacities and inclinations as human beings, and parental expectations. Do not fail to remember the fact that there is nothing in the universe that guarantees overlap between any of these factors let alone consensus. Add to this the requirements placed on schools that they provide not only mere academic curricula but opportunities for sporting, social activities, and counseling. When I think on it, I conclude that it is actually quite natural for schools to have become something that many people feel are garbage. Who could possibly orchestrate this sort of mess successfully? Some authors have claimed that compared to other organizations and cultural institutions schools have undergone surprisingly inadequate reforms appearing in form and function much as they might have fifty or even a hundred years ago. This horrid lack of vision and clarity of direction is perhaps first among a range of factors resulting in this retardation.

Whether or not this is so, the resulting product is a form of oppression inflicted upon the students in these schools and ultimately upon the great community that is released from their smothering socialization. You may ask what oppression I may be referring to when speaking of institutions that facilitate learning and climbing of the social ladder. Part of my answer would be that the so-called learning provided by schools is more illusory than real. Furthermore the career advancement achieved this way, rather than truly qualifying people for the work they do, creates in our society an addiction to the system and reinforces the indoctrination and oppression created thereby. The end results are self-perceived excellence in a reality of incompetence. (I'll talk about this more later when I post a rant about my recent experience with special educators in an on-line class.) People walk away with a belief that they understand their fields and are capable critical thinkers when in reality they've swallowed whole every bit of rhetoric and dogma that has been forced down their throats.

Lately my work with my students, my study for my special education licensure, and my reading from a little theorist called “Paulo Freire” have led me to the conclusion that I am in fact an agent of oppression for my students and consequently for society as a whole. Huzzah!

Part of what has underscored this for me has been working with the IEPs I referred to in my last post. One of the major components of an IEP is a set of goals determined to be appropriate for the given student and his suite of special needs. The goals deal with academic performance, socio-behavioral issues, and reference long term education and career goals. Two things about this process really stuck out for me. First, and perhaps most important in terms of my becoming an instrument of oppression, is the fact that the student almost never has any input regarding these goals. And when they do, it is frequently overridden by the various “agents of interest” who write these plans. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about the second grade here. I’m talking about 17-year-old kids on the brink of legal majority. I’m not only talking about kids too old to be sensibly left out of the process of making their life decisions, I’m talking about kids for whom this system didn’t work. Whether they are disabled or not there is something about them that doesn’t fit the mold and if our objective was to try and help them attain whatever kind of success we can considering their challenges we ought to be more vigilant in consulting with them on what that success should mean. Instead we almost invariably create programs that will try to force them back into the mold as best we can. What this tends to mean is that instead of helping or even letting them develop talents where they are able, we cut off a limb here and a digit there and shave off some of that part over there. And all of this is done under the pretense of what’s in the student’s best interest and providing a “fair” chance.

There’s a principle in this aspect of the IEP that cuts both ways. Just as its nominal function is to provide a mode of education suited to the individual student but in reality attempts to force a conformity, the fact that it is only provided for students with special needs reveals the oppressive nature of the education system. How can it be argued that only one small class of students deserve or can be benefited by an individualized program? Philosophically it is clear that the expectation is for the majority of students to willingly conform to a system simply because they are able. It ought to be reasonable to assume that all students are unique and educational resources should be equally in place to help them meet goals, build on strengths, compensate or overcome weaknesses. But the reality is that the students themselves are not the source of our established learning goals. The political battles for control of their minds is, the battles between business interests, parents, colleges, and government bodies. The debate over teaching intelligent design in schools is an example of this. Though everyone will claim they want children to learn critical thinking skills, when it comes down to it atheists and creationists alike will tend to choose indoctrination to their own paradigm before taking the risk that students may come to believe something else if allowed to study the issue out for themselves. The task of schools is not to develop diversity of talent but to enforce a narrow range and capacity for thinking.

The last bit of oppression I wish to discuss deals with what I see as an issue of human nature. Yes we are forcing all kids to become the same. But there is a reason that it must be seen as forcing in many cases if not most. It is because of the kinds of things we are trying to teach them. Frankly, how many of you in your professional lives have had to solve a system of inequalities lately? No one? Didn’t think so. And yet, one of my students has been working on doing that very thing all week. Can you imagine any reason for it? I can only vaguely imagine certain contexts where it could be used and they are contexts that a very diminished minority of students will ever end up in. So why does everyone have to learn it? Is it because if they spend more time learning algebra they will have less time to study things that would actually make them productive? Or is it to prevent them from developing disciplines of thought that would make them aware of their oppression and move them towards producing social revolution? I recently read in one of the Dune novels an idea about governments investing in learning and discovery. The gist was that governments must always curtail how much they invest in these things in order to maintain a stable society. If they did not, then people would discover or invent things of such magnitude and at such a rate that the government would be unable to maintain control of everything. Is there some unconscious fear residing in our society of letting our kids get too smart and learn too much?

The other component of this "forcing" we do to kids by the things we teach them has to do with their development. Taking myself for an example, in my high school days I felt much the same as my students in many ways about the type of things we were supposed to be studying in school. Using math as a most salient example, in high school I hated it. I believe that I was developmentally unprepared for it. It was not until I was about half-way through college that I reached a point that I could find doing math enjoyable unto itself, and even later that I found its usefulness sufficient to motivate me to study it of my own volition. We do not in our system listen very much if at all to what students are telling us about what kind of learning they can and need to accomplish most during their given stage of development. I hypothesize that the kind of learning high school students need is more about social life, developing independence, and morality than it is about factoring polynomials or identifying the organelles of a cell. That is not to say that there is no value in learning these sorts of things. I merely question the timeliness of it and its emphasis in what a kid is supposed to accomplish to get through school.

So there you have it. I’m an oppressor. I force kids to sit in a classroom and learn a bunch of stuff they have neither the interest nor inclination for. In many cases they lack the ability for it. And to make it all worthwhile, it is stuff they will never use in their lives after they leave my classroom. I’ve successfully created a lower class of individuals whose potential for contribution to society, however limited to begin with, has been completely squandered. And just so you know I did it all correctly, my students suffered through the whole thing. Huzzah!