REAL ART (and politics and culture):
"It's like trying to figure out why your car won't run, when that car is, in reality, a large cardboard box with the word 'car' written on it. "
Ron Reeder on why discussion of how to fix our public schools is off base from the get-go. The premise is that schools aren't for education so much as indoctrination. So as long as you learn to be in your seat when the bell rings the schools are doing their job. I actually remember one of our teachers mentioning this once. Of course she called it "The Secondary Agenda" while what Ron posits here, and I believe is that it is the primary agenda. Maybe not of any individual teacher, but it was the way the system was designed. It's not much good for anything else. The most important things I learned in school were learned in spite of the system, not because of it. That said, I still can't stand being late, so I guess they did their job.
Friday, March 04, 2005
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4 comments:
Mike,
Ever read 'Discipline and Punish' by Foucault?
I don't think so...
read some in college...
general premise is that prisons, mental hospitals and schools are all basically the same right?
institutions of control?
and if we're not in one of those it's because we're healthy or old enough to be in the other system of control...Work...
Yeah. He even makes the point the book that the regimented routine of prison life, with bells telling you when to go on to your next task and strictly controlled meal schedules, are mirrored in the way public schools are operated.
So it's not just a holding pen for ninety percent and college-prep for the other ten, it's a means of acclimating people to social norms.
Pretty depressing/insightful book.
"with bells telling you when to go on to your next task and strictly controlled meal schedules"
sounds like my job.
a cubicle
is
a cell
is
a classroom
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