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AN ANALYSIS OF PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS III
EDUCATION FOR SELF-IDENTIFICATION:
A STUDY OF STRATEGY AND SUBSTANCE IN
RADICAL EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT _

Thesis for the Degree Of Ph. D.
MIOIIIOAII STATE UNIVERSITY
HENRY IOIIII PRINCE
1971

 

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AN ANALYSIS OF PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS IN
EDUCATION FOR SELF-IDENTIFICATION: A
STUDY OF STRATEGY AND SUBSTANCE IN
RADICAL EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

presented by

Henry John Prince

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph .D . degree in Secondary Education
and Curriculum

 

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ABSTRACT

AN ANALYSIS OF PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS IN
EDUCATION FOR SELF-IDENTIFICATION: A
STUDY OF STRATEGY AND SUBSTANCE IN
RADICAL EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

BY

Henry John Prince

Recently, a modern "radical" movement in education
has emerged. Numerous writers have exposed the harsh
realities of the public school system, and others have
suggested reforms that involve a profound re-evaluation
of the institutional nature and operation of the public
school. A frequent criticism centers on the mutilation
of a child's inherent desire for learning and his subse-
quent substitution of counter-strategies to endure
his school years.

The "radical" critics desire to remake American
education so that the healthy capabilities of children and
adolescents are fostered. However, the "radical" movement
is not unitary but consists of several distinct strains.
Some critics denounce the compulsory attendance laws,
while others question whether a school can possibly edu-

cate unique individuals at all. Some deprecate the

Henry John Prince

demotion of curiosity and ingenuity in classrooms, while
others challenge the school as the sole, legitimate means
of education. These various criticisms coalesce into a
denunciation of the indifference to the needs and feelings
of children and adolescents that the school exhibits.

If the modern "radical" position is to become a
substantive movement of educational practice rather than
of criticism only, a formulation of a coherent alternative
theory of education is imperative. A consideration of
basic strategies of reform implementation also seems
appropriate.

This exploratory study undertook to examine one
recurrent aspect of the "radical" criticisms-self-
identification-—from a perspective of organizational
theory. This examination was used as a starting point
for an analysis of the strategic problem of reform imple-
mentation.

A review of literature substantiated the existence
of inadequate provision for student self-identification in
school settings. The school's relationship to the economic
sector and the culture of our society was delineated, and
the extent of these segments' influence on school function-
ing was indicated. The "radical" proposals were differen-
tiated into three categories, and their potential efficacy
in creating opportunities for student self—identification

was examined.

Henry John Prince

The "radical" critics were differentiated into
three categories: Type I, who seek to change the means for
attaining the goals of the school; Type II, who seek to
alter the goals of the public school; and Type III, who
seek to change the goals and values of the entire societal
environment. Correspondingly different strategies were
identified.

Type II proposals such as those offered by Holt,
Dennison, and others were analyzed as the most acceptable,
effective suggestions. Type I proposals of Silberman and
Bruner were rejected as inadequate and unproductive of
significant opportunities for self-identification. Type
III proposals of Illich and Goodman were rejected as
being incapable of attracting political support.

The investigator recommended a study of the degree
of acceptance of the school as the only culturally certi-
fied means of education. He also recommended a study of
the characteristics of behavior exhibited by students in
Type I and Type II schools to determine whether certain
environments are more conducive to particular types of

students.

AN ANALYSIS OF PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS IN
EDUCATION FOR SELF-IDENTIFICATION: A
STUDY OF STRATEGY AND SUBSTANCE IN

RADICAL EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

BY

Henry John Prince

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Secondary Education
and Curriculum

1971

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writer wishes to acknowledge the support of
the members of his dissertation committee: Dr. Cole
Brembeck, Dr. George Ferree, Dr. Glen Cooper, and
Dr. Marvin Grandstaff, chairman. He expresses his
sincere gratitude to Dr. Grandstaff for his assistance
and encouragement.

The researcher also thanks Dr. John Hanson for
his encouragement during the initial phase of doctoral
work.

Finally, the writer acknowledges the continuous

support and inspiration of his wife and daughter.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . .

Need for the Study . . . .
Purpose. 0 O O O O O 0
Nature of the Study. . . .

REVIEW OF LITERATURE . . . .
Summary. . . . . . . .
ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL

Custodial Function . . . .
Consumership Function . . .
Standardization Function . .
Fragmentation Function. . .
Summary. . . . . . . .

SELF-IDENTIFICATION AND THE SCHOOL

Privacy. . . . . . .
Docility . . . . . .
Passivity . .
Role Behavior. . . . .
Summary. . . . . . .

"RADICAL" REFORM PROPOSALS . .

Type I . . . . . . . .
Type II. . . . . . . .
Type III . . . . . . .
Summary. . . . . . . .

CRITIQUE OF REFORM PROPOSALS. .

Issue I. . . . . . . .
Issue II . . . . . . .
Issue III . . . . . . .
Issue IV . . . . . . .
Summary. . . . . . . .

iii

CULTURE

Page

28
29

30
34
38
41
43

44

45
49
54
57
62

64

64
71
78
84

86

86
92
97
102
107

Chapter Page
VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . 109

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . ll3

BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

iv

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In the last half-century much rhetoric has been
expended on criticisms of the public school establishment
in the United States. Some criticism has been directed
toward problems of school organization; various proposals
have suggested apparently ideal organizational patterns
that have failed. Criticism has also been directed at the
internal operations of the school in the hope that educa-
tional reform of curricula and methodology would improve
the schools and increase the educational achievement of
students. Yet, even with the implementation of new pro-
grams in the sciences and with the beginnings of new
curricula in the humanities, the public school remains a
center of controversy. The most recent target of critics
has been teacher accountability: whether guarantees can
be formulated to insure that students do succeed academ-
ically in schools.

Common to much of the expressed criticism and
proposed reforms has been a neglect of adequate expla-
nations for the noted deficiencies. Frequently, reform

suggestions omit a careful scrutiny of probable causes of

l

identified inadequacies. Seemingly, some reformers
assumed that the school operated in a societal void and
had little contact with or response to other societal
vinstitutions. However, when the school is given a social
mandate, it is usually charged with the awesome responsi-
bility of remedying ills that "plague other sectors of the

society."1

The school's position in the institutional
matrix of our technological society has apparently been
ignored.

In the past fifteen years, a modern "radical" or
progressive movement has emerged. Numerous books and
essays have exposed the terrible realities of public
education, and some writers have suggested remediation
measures.2 Men such as Friedenberg, Henry, Dennison,
Holt, Goodman, and others have questioned the institutional
nature and operation of schools. Many recognize the
mutilation of a child's spirit that often occurs in
schools, especially urban schools. Others admit that

students employ counter-strategies in classrooms to live

through their school years; their energies are Spent in

 

lMarvin Grandstaff, "Schooling, Education, and the
Social Crisis," East Lansing, 1971, p. 2. (Mimeographed.)

2Examples of recent critiques are Herbert Kohl's
Thirty-six Children, George Dennison's The Lives of Chil-
dren, and 3ohn Holt's The Underachieving Sohool. Also,
the New York Review of Books and This Magazine Is About
Schools have published many articles of "radical"_5riticism.

 

 

 

 

beating the system rather than in learning what they
truly wish to know.

These "radical" critics have a profound confidence
in the healthy capabilities of children and seek to mini-
mize school interference. Many denounce the compulsory
attendance laws that force some youngsters to remain in
a detrimental environment. Others wonder whether a school
in its present form or in any form can educate unique
individuals. Some critics denounce the promotion of order
and simplicity and the demotion of curiosity and ingenuity
that occurs in many classrooms. Others question acceptance
of the school as the sole, legitimate means of education;
they call for culturally approved alternatives, such as
the "free schools" that have sprung up in Canada and across
our country. Many of these schools base their programs
on the ideas of the aforementioned critics, while others
are seeking their own solutions to their particular situ-
ations. In general, it can be said that all or nearly all
"radical" critics denounce the indifference to the needs
and feelings of the individual that they find in the public
schools. In view of the number of books and essays written
and the number of "free schools" in operation, it must be
admitted that a "radical" criticism movement is now well-

established.

Need for the Study

 

If the modern "radical" position is to become a
substantive movement of educational practice rather than
of criticism or illusory procedures only, an examination
of some pertinent issues that have, heretofore, been
largely overlooked is imperative. One obvious necessity
is the formulation of a coherent alternative theory of
education. Recognition of similarities and differences
among various "radical" proposals will certainly contribute
to theory building. Also, a need exists for a consid-
eration of basic questions of strategy in the implemen-
tation of an alternative theory of education. Reform
efforts will not be wasted if informed strategies are

employed.

Purpose

This exploratory study undertakes to examine one
recurrent aspect of the radical criticism--that of self-
identification--from a perspective of organizational
theory. Furthermore, this examination will be used as
a starting point for an analysis of the strategic problem
of selecting a reform vehicle that will maximize the

opportunities for self-identification by youngsters.

Nature of the Study

 

To perform the indicated analysis, it will be

necessary (1) to substantiate the existence of a "radical"

critique, (2) to indicate the reasons for lack of oppor-
tunities for self-identification as they are exposed by a
consideration of the functional relationships between the
school, the economic sector, and the culture, and (3)
given a hypothesized explanation for the lack of self-
identification, to examine whether or to what extent the
school can be an adequate reform vehicle.

A review of pertinent literature will be undertaken
in Chapter II to illustrate and substantiate the "radical"
criticism of the school's provision for student self-
identification. In Chapters III and IV a hypothesized
explanation of the school's relationship with the economic
sector and the culture will be formulated. Emphasis will
be on the non—educational functions that the school is
expected to fulfill in its role in the institutional
matrix of our society, and on the attitudes that the
school is expected to promote.

At this point it must be pointed out that I assume
that the institutional nature of the school rather than
activities of individual persons in the school determines
school practice. Persons in authority in schools are
viewed as role players who perform according to institu-
tional expectations. Furthermore, the school is perceived

as a "formalized set of abstract functions."3 These

 

3Grandstaff, "Schooling, Education, and the Social
Crisis," p. 2.

functions are not only educational and are frequently
determined by extra-school institutions.

In Chapters V and VI, some "radical" proposals
are first distinguished into three basic types of edu—
cational reform and then their potential efficacy in
creating opportunities for self-identification and self-
realization is evaluated. Those general conclusions
emerging from the study will be considered in the final
chapter, as will implications for educational practice

and for future research.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Extensive research efforts would be required to
conclusively prove that the school as a major American
institution is detrimental to the majority of children
and adolescents that it serves. A review of recent
research publications indicates few previous investi-
gations of the school's effect on self-identification
and self-realization of its clientele. It seems that
few scholars have considered this area ripe for systematic
investigation and analysis. However, during the past
decade essayists of all types have presented their views.
Though frequently lacking in scientifically objective
data, these writings do contribute to an understanding of
a child's or adolescent's struggle for self-identification.
In this review of significant writings on the issue in
question, essays and a meager list of investigations will
be considered, to substantiate the existence of the dif-
ficulty of achieving a unique self-identity in our techno-
logically advanced society.

Paul Goodman views the problem of school dropouts
as an indication of the difficulty that students have in

7

achieving an identity not pre-determined by the economy
or the culture. Dropouts are escapees from the system,
and Goodman questions the campaigns aimed at luring them
back to the school. "What are the dropouts from? Is the
schooling really good for them, or much good for anybody?"1
Yet we see advertisements calling for young people to
return to school, the machine of mobility in our society.
Goodman very clearly considers the standard response to
dropouts as a verification of the disrespect with which
youth are treated by societal institutions. The dropouts
are "a nuisance and a threat and can't be socialized by
the existing machinery."2
Jacques Ellul views the process of socialization

as central to the problem of self-identification.

One of the most important factors in the child's

education therefore is social adaptation. This means

that--despite all the pretentious talk about the aims

of education-~it is not the child in and for himself

who is being educated, but the child in and for

society.3
Both Goodman and Ellul recognize the school as a sup-

pressive mechanism, encouraging and/or forcing socially

adaptive thought and behavior and discouraging behavior

 

1Paul Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education (New York:
Random House, Inc., 1962), p. 20.

 

21bid., p. 29.

3Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New
York: Random House, Inc., 1964I) p. 348.

 

that may be socially maladaptive but individually functional
for self-identification. "Children are educated to become
precisely what society expects of them."4
Goodman delineates the notion of societal adap-
tation that students encounter by indicating how functional
the school is for society.
It is in the schools . . . that the mass of our citizens
. . . learn that life is inevitably routine, deperson-
alized, venally graded; that it is best to toe the
mark and shut up; that there is no place for spon-
taneity, open sexuality, free spirit.
Though Goodman manifests concern for the students who drop
out and for their self-realization, he seems to have more
concern for those who do conform to schooling as it exists.
Those who drop out internally waste their days, yet are
too terrified "to jeopardize the only pattern of life"
they know.6
Goodman further indicts the school for its neglect
of the "humanness" of each pupil. In most schools there
is very little personal contact between teacher and pupil,
between student and student. "One must be 'deviant' to be
attended to as a human being."7 This is especially true

of junior and senior high schools; adolescents are

"insulated by not being taken seriously."

 

41bid.

 

5Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 23.

 

6 7

Ibid. Ibid., p. 66.

10

The social machine does not require or desire its

youth to find identity or vocation; it is only

interested in aptitude. It does not want new

initiative, but conformity.8

Edgar Friedenberg investigated the influence of

mass society on adolescents, and he discovered the depth
of insecurity that adolescents feel because of their
vague position in our society. Most attempts at self-
realization through work or schooling meet with failure,
because the adolescent usually finds no "real affirmative
support in the culture for the kind of person he wishes

to become."9

"Identifying, as the weak must, with the
more powerful and frustrating of the forces that impinge
upon them, they accept the school as the way life is and
close their minds against the anxiety of perceiving alter-
natives.10
In his research interviews with secondary school
students, Friedenberg discovered that many were wary of
others who possessed a strong self-identity. "Our sub-
jects lacked . . . awareness that the inner self could be
a source of stability. Self-directed people seem to them

11

on the verge of chaos or revolt." When he inquired

about what they value in a human being, he found that

 

81bid., p. 68.

9Edgar Z. Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America
(New York: Random House, Inc., 1965), p. 23.

 

10 11

Ibido’ p. 480 Ibido' p. 670

11

adolescents considered "external judgment as more important
than self-approval and internal coherence."12 It seems
that self-identificationl3 as a process of creating and
manifesting a unique identity depends upon a willingness
to reject society's values in deference to one's own values.

In another instance Friedenberg realized that his
subjects were persuaded to cooperate with the society in
its endeavors. They disliked individuals who resisted
group demands on their time and energy. Such concern for
the group rather than for self undoubtedly leads to sup-
pression of possible manifestations of identity. Ado-
lescents thus perform, perhaps unknowingly, the task of
socialization.

Friedenberg asserted that adolescents apparently
realize that their development must satisfy societal expec-
tations rather than individual desires. "The school is not
there to help John find himself or be himself; its purpose
is to help youngsters 'make something out of themselves.”14
Through consideration of others' research, Friedenberg

noticed that in most cases those students who consistently

trouble the school appear to possess a factor of

 

12Ibid., p. 72.

13An existential forging of self through inter-
action with an environment. A more detailed discussion
of Optimal conditions for self-identification occurs in
Chapter VI.

14Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, p. 187.

12

"subjectivity": "the capacity to attend to and respond
to one's inner life and feelings, to the uniquely personal

15 This factor

in experience, to personal relationships."
of inwardness indicates a strong self-identity, one that
has not succumbed to the manipulative techniques of the
school. These youngsters assert themselves on the basis
of their self-identification and usually meet with harsh
consequences.

They want to discover who they are; the school wants

to help them "make something out of themselves." They

want to know where they are; the school wants to help

them get somewhere. They want to learn how to live

with themselves; the school wants to teach them how

to get along with others. They want to learn how to

tell what is right for them; the school wants to teach

them to give the responses that will earn them rewards

in the classroom and in social situations.16

In another analysis of adolescents, Friedenberg

asserted that the school is not the only institution of
our technological society that attempts to channel thought
and energy away from a "subjective" encounter with society.
"All the contemporary institutions that bear on the young,
diverse as they may seem to be, are united in their insis-
tence on cultivating sensitivity and pliability to the

17

demands and expectations of other persons." As one of

the social processes of the school, the process of learning

 

15 16

Ibid., p. 211. Ibid., p. 212.

17Edgar Z. Friedenberg, The Vanishing Adolescent
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 6.

 

13

to be an American is, in actuality, "learning not to let
your individuality become a nuisance."18 Hence, it is in
conflict with the adolescent's struggle "to determine what
does make sense in terms of one's View of oneself and
one's social role."19 Consequently, an adolescent must
renounce those differences from others that he recognizes
in himself. "His basic need is to learn enough about what
he is really like, and what he really wants and needs, to
permit him to make intelligent decisions about how he
wants to act. . . . "20
In a recent book George Dennison discusses an
unconventional school of which he was the director and
he clearly emphasizes the need for self—identification
by young children and pre-adolescents. The children of
this school had absorbed a predetermined identity of
failure and weakness during their public school careers.
In some cases the effect was so severe that months passed
before the child was able to accept himself and to develop
positive relationships with other children and adults at
the First Street School. The lack of opportunity to do so
in a public school apparently caused these children to be

reluctant to open themselves to others, even in the posi-

tive social setting that the First Street School was.

 

18 19

Ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 48.

2orbid., p. 83.

14

It can be stated axiomatically that the schoolchild's
chief expense of energy is self-defense against the
environment. When this culminates in impairment of
growth--and it almost always does--it is quite hOpe-
less to reverse the trend by teaching phonics instead
of Look-Say.21

One of the students, Jose Portillo, experienced
considerable difficulty in learning to read; though he was
thirteen, Jose could not read. He was of normal intelli-
gence and should have been able to read. What was the
problem?

One of them, certainly, is the fact that he cannot
read. But this problem is obviously caused by other,
more fundamental problems; indeed, his failure to
read should not be described as a problem but a
symptom. We need only look at Jose to see what his
problems are: shame, fear, resentment, rejection of
others and of himself, anxiety, self-contempt, lone-
liness.
It is obvious that Jose would be expected to have diffi-
culty in school. "One would not say that he had been
schooled at all, but rather that for five years he had
been indoctrinated in the contempt of persons. . . . "23
During his indoctrination Jose also developed contempt for
himself. How could he do otherwise! The evaluative
mechanism was external; to measure himself in his own

terms was too painful for Jose.

His passage among persons . . . is blocked and made
painful by his sense of his "place," that is, by the

 

21George Dennison, The Lives of Children (New
York: Random House, Inc., 1969), p. 80.

 

22 23

Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., p. 80.

15

measurements through which he must identify himself:

that he has failed all subjects, is last in the class,

is older than his classmates, and has a reading

problem.24
The school as an institution would be concerned with Jose's
reading difficulty rather than with his negative self-
identity. Little attention would be devoted to Jose as
a person whose reading difficulties are quite conceivably
due to his lack of self-esteem.

He could not imagine his own identity waiting to meet

him in books, as it met him on the streets and in his

play with other boys. In fact, he still stumbled

over the word "I." . . . There was something self-

protective concealed within it, for the identity

which did in fact lie in wait for him in the books

that do exist--which is to say, in the society which

does exist--was precisely that of a second-class citi-

zen, shunned where others are welcomes, needy where

others are comfortable, denigrated where others are

praised.25

In his study of the adolescent's relationship to

society, James Coleman identified a key quality that should
be encouraged in school: self-responsibility. In becoming
self-responsible and not merely responsive to school
demands that frequently are antagonistic to self-
realization, an adolescent will be able to accept his
strengths and his weaknesses and in the process create a
viable, positive self-identity. "Yet the school is in

its very essence precisely the wrong environment for

 

24Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 96.

 

25Ibid., p. 167.

l6

encouraging self-responsibility."26

Coleman especially
decries the grading system of most high schools as detri-
mental to development of self-responsibility and to self-
identification. By constantly forcing pupils to compete
with each other for these "rewards," the school stimulates
these adolescents to counter the high-achievers with peer
group pressure. Exclusion from social groups is one
method of rejection; as a result, some high-achievers are
torn between two desires: self-identification or group
affiliation. "The present structure of rewards in high
schools produces a response on the part of the adolescent
social system that effectively impedes the process of edu-

cation."27

Any attempt at deviancy from group expectations
usually meets with social consequences that negatively
affect one's self-identification.

Charles Reich agrees with Coleman concerning the
effect of the school upon the "inmate's" self-identifi-
cation. He asserts that the school in its institutional
form demands that pupils act childishly; personal respon-
sibility and self-respect are discouraged and destroyed

by the hierarchical nature of authority in the school.

The child must submit to school authority; otherwise, he

 

26James Coleman, Adolescents and the Schools (New
York: Basic Books, Inc., 1965), p. 110.

 

27Ibid., p. 87.

17

may feel the school's wrath academically, physically, or
psychologically. "An individual is systematically
stripped of his imagination, his creativity, his heritage,
his dreams, and his personal uniqueness, in order to fit
him to be a productive unit in a mass technological

28 O I O 0
It is a rare lflleldual who can overcome

society."
these obstacles to personal identification and self-
realization.

Charles Brauner and Hobert Burns offer another
outlook on the school's negative influence on a young-
ster's self-identification. They refer to the dropout
problem as expressive of the total adolescent identity-
formation and societal-adaptation situation. Dropouts
are the visible signs of student discontent with the
Opportunities for self-realization that the school offers
them. They find that the adolescent's struggle for self-
identification continually meets with opposition by school
authorities. In order to remain psychologically alive,
the drOpout leaves behind his oppressor in school, only
to find that the culture also seeks to adjuSt him to its
expectations.

Those who stay in school but mentally drop out
have in some ways accepted the inevitability of society's

demands for adjustment to cultural norms. Very few are

 

28Charles Reich, "Reflections," The New Yorker,

September 26, 1970, p. 43.

 

18

able to resist vehemently enough to prevent societal tam-
pering in their struggle for self-identification. "Neither
the academically talented nor the dropout receives much
help in forming, for himself, ideals that will shape him
. "29
into a man.
Bruno Bettelheim agrees with Brauner and Burns
that the dropout, if he is to retain some semblance of
a positive self-identity, must leave school. He asserts
that the school does not meet the needs of most lower
class youth. These youngsters are faced with the alter-
natives of staying in an institution that is detrimental
to their self-identification or leaving and moving into
a society that does not want them as they are.
They [our youth] are expected to develop critical
judgment, to change and improve things, to form
opinions on their own. But then society is down on
them if they take these requests seriously, and wants
them to accept things pretty much as they are.30
In analyzing the adolescent crisis, Bettelheim identifies
two problems. The adolescent must find his place in

society, and at the same time he must decide whether he

will be essentially himself or whether he will sacrifice

 

29Charles Brauner and Hobert Burns, Problems in
Education and Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-
Hall, 1965), p. 89. ‘

 

 

30Bruno Bettelheim, Children of the Dream (New
York: The Macmillan Co., 1969), p. 214.

 

19

part of his self-identity for others.31

Though these two
problems are not mutually exclusive, the school views them
as such and emphasizes the search for a societal position
to the exclusion of self-identification and self-
realization.

Frequently the justification for limitation of
opportunities for self-identification is the immaturity
of children and adolescents. How can one expect such
immature persons to undertake the enormous task of self-
identification? Paul Nash asserts that they are pre-
cisely the ones who should have the opportunity for self-
definition. "Children must be given a measure of free
choice and self-determination before they are fully ready

for it. They are never fully ready. . . ."32

Furthermore,
Nash asserts that a considerable amount of damage has

been done by the grading system used in schools. Perhaps
this external evaluation imposed upon children and adoles-
cents is a critical force. "Children have been compelled

to conform to patterns set by others. . . . The setting

of rigid, traditional, external, and often irrelevant,

 

3lIbid., p. 316.

32Paul Nash, Authority and Freedom (New York:
John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1966), p. 106.

 

20

adult standards has produced inhibition, fear, and lack
of self-confidence."33
Ashley Montagu asserts that perhaps the school is
not the place for self-realization; there, an identity
is often absorbed rather than asserted. School is con-
sidered an institution of instruction rather than a
medium of education whereby children and adolescents have
opportunities for self-identification. It is not a place
of education "in the sense of nourishing and causing to
grow the unique potentialities of the individual."34
Agreeing with Montagu, Ivan Illich believes that
a child's or adolescent's struggle for self-identification
will be hindered in a school setting. Illich even wonders
if a school is a realistic and reasonable place for
instruction. Because school does not distinguish between
learning a skill and getting an education, it "does both

tasks badly."35

Traditionally, the school emphasizes the
learning of skills and ignores the difficult task of self-
identification that young people encounter. Seldom do

schools recognize that "education implies a growth of an

 

331bid., p. 331.

34Ashley Montagu, On Being Human (New York: Haw-

thorn Books, 1966), p. 108.

 

35Ivan Illich, "Why We Must Abolish Schooling,"
New York Review of Books, July 2, 1970, p. 13.

21

independent sense of life."36 The school's increasing

emphasis on uniformity results in decreasing opportuni-
ties for self-identification.

In a study of adolescence, Hans Sebald discovered
that a considerable number of dropouts from high schools
achieved well enough in academic areas to place at or
above the median grade level (C). In fact, 61 per cent
achieved C's or better. He concluded that they departed
because of a rejection of school activities rather than

because of a lack of ability.37

He also observed that
the covert causes of dropping out seemed to occur and
intensify in the eighth grade or earlier. Apparently

the dropout has endured as much as possible until high
school. He then leaves to prevent further destruction

of his identity. Yet Sebald recognizes that those who
remain "institutionalized" in high schools also seek to
defend their identities. "Of the many forms that adoles-
cent rebellion can take, underachievement is probably

the most subtle."38

George Miller also recognized the school child's

ability to subvert the system's intentions, though he

 

36Ivan Illich, The Celebration of Awareness (Gar-
den City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1970), p. 134.

 

37Hans Sebald, AdolescencgijA Sociological Analyé
sis (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968), p. 443.

 

38Ibid., p. 445.

22

does not seem to admit this procedure is necessary or
effective for identity protection. "Too often our chil-
dren's most valuable return for their years in the class-
room is a kind of shrewd skill in coping with a large,
well-intentioned, but often stultifying social insti-
tution."39
In two interesting books, Philip Jackson has
exposed and explained the struggle for self-identification
that school children go through. Jackson warns against a
"mechanistic ideology" taking complete control of the
school. "The gravest threat to man's well-being, now as
in generations past, is not the machine but those persons
and institutions that applaud and support a mechanistic
approach to human affairs."40 He contends that schools
are guilty of treating students in a mechanical manner,
"without giving thought to what is going on inside them."41
The effect of schooling on a person's uniqueness and self-

realization is generally ignored or minimized.

In Life in Classrooms Jackson acknowledges the

 

negative effect a mechanistic approach to children has

 

39George Miller, "Some Psychological Perspectives
on the Year 2000," in Toward the Year 2000: Work in
Pro ress, ed. by Daniel Bell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1968), p. 257.

 

40Philip Jackson, The Teacher and the Machine
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968), p. 66.

 

411bid., p. 69.

23

upon their lives. They learn to abandon their plans and
goals for those of the teacher. However, they often do
so reluctantly once they realize that the teacher's goals
have no meaning or importance for them. "All students
probably learn to employ psychological buffers that pro-
tect them from some of the wear and tear of classroom

life."42

Withdrawal is a familiar response, for it
allows the individual a mental asylum in which he can
be himself without fear of ridicule or punishment.

Jackson affirms that schools resemble total insti-
tutions tjun: have complete control over the involuntarily
committed clientele, in this case the students.43 Stu-
dents are trained to respond in standard fashion and are
thereby stripped of opportunities to respond in "subjec-
tive," personal ways. If a child or adolescent has suf-
ficient strength to demand recognition as a unique person,
and still receives no such response, withdrawal, either
physical or mental, is a frequent result. At least self-
identity is somewhat preserved.

In a recent report the United States Civil Rights

Commission noted that racial isolation adversely affects

the achievement and self-worth of isolated students.

 

42Philip Jackson, Life in Classrooms (New York:
Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1968), p. 27.

 

43Erving Goffman presents an excellent analysis
of total institutions in Asylums.

24

Such isolation tends to "restrict their aspirations, and
impair their sense of being able to affect their own

destiny."44

It is obvious that the opportunity for self-
identification is greatly influenced by the cultural situ-
ation in which a child finds himself. Compulsory atten-
dance laws require that the minority child attend school,
even if it be a racially isolated school. If his parents
lack financial means to send him to a more favorable
learning environment, he has no option but to attend a
school that destroys his self-identity and prevents his
self-realization.

I now turn to two significant studies of young-

sters' opportunities for self-realization in school set-

tings. In Culture Against Man, Jules Henry contended

 

that American society judges learning not on its intrinsic
merits but on its contribution to income and security.
This forces a child to view school as a means to some dis-
tant, economic end. "Even if he is able to perceive a
goal, a child is often not sure that he wants it, or that
his knowledge will, in the long run, ever get him where

he wants to go."45 Consequently, an adolescent is taking

a chance that schooling is the means to achieve what he

 

44U.S., Civil Rights Commission, Racial Isolation
in the Public Schools (Washington, D.C.: Superintendent
of Documents, 1967), p. 114.

 

 

45Jules Henry, Culture Against Man (New York:
Vintage Books, 1965), p. 172.

 

25

seeks. Yet he has no other realistic choice and must sub—
mit to schooling. We must ask whether the high school
allows him to "express the self he wants to be" or demands
that he manifest the self the school desires.46 Is the
adolescent autonomous or helpless? Does he have the oppor-
tunity to determine his self-identity or to give expression
to his humanity? Henry thinks not.

The function of the high school, then, is not so much

to communicate knowledge as to oblige children finally

to accept the grading system as a measure of their

inner excellence. And a function of the self—

destructive process in American children is to make

them willing to accept not their own, but a variety

of other standards, like a grading system, for measur-

ing themselves.47

Henry also suggests that the function of schooling

is not to "free the mind and spirit of man, but to bind
them." Schooling, since it is a culture-defending pro-
cess, must train children "to fit the culture as it is."48
In so doing, schooling forces the surrender of self-
definition and self-evaluation, aspects of self-
identification.

The early schooling process is not successful unless

it has accomplished in the child an acquiescence in

its criteria, unless the child wants to think the

way sch001 has taught him to think. He must have
accepted alienation as a rule of life.49 (Italics mine)

 

School homogenizes its clientele through the imposition of

its evaluative criteria and through uniform processing.

‘

461616. 47Ibid., p. 178.

48 49

Ibid., p. 287. Ibid., p. 291.

26

When the school makes institutional demands, the child
must respond in the approved manner. "School metamor-
phoses the child, giving it the kind of Self the school
can manage, and then proceeds to minister to the Self it
has made."50
The metamorphosis of adolescents was the concept
studied by Carl Nordstrom, Edgar Friedenberg, and Hilary
Gold in their investigation of secondary school students.
They sought to determine whether schools "do something to
students, and in the doing, seriously interfere with the
development of what used to be called a strong and force-

51 They assumed that ressentiment52 in

ful character."
schools transforms adolescents, "young people who are
seriously concerned with self-understanding and the
development of their potentials," into role players or
into residuals who express hostility or eccentricity.53
The result is inauthenticity. These vanishing adolescents

would attempt "to establish themselves in a clear

 

5°Ibid., p. 292.

51Carl Nordstrom, Edgar Friedenberg, and Hilary
Gold, Society's Children (New York: Random House, Inc.,
1967) I p. 10.

 

52A sense of impotence which an angry individual
Cannot imagine overcoming.

53Nordstrom, et al., Society's Children, p. 23.

 

27

relationship with their own feelings as well as with

54 Yet, due to the institutional nature

their society."
of the school, very few adolescents who seek to assert
their identities remain. They have been transformed into
manageable objects that the school can process.
Nordstrom's research verified the hypothesis
about the diminution in numbers of "adolescents" in high
schools. Most students accepted school as a dominating
force in their lives and resigned themselves to that
adjustor of individuals.
If we are correct, he cannot be free of the ressenti-
ment-infected, alienating institution. All that he
can do is try to the best of his ability to avoid
the contaminating influence . . ., and if he succeeds
in this it will probably be only at great cost to
himself.55
Those who choose not to fight for self-identification
have apparently accepted their fate and, in the light of
what they might lose, resigned themselves to it.
Nordstrom and the others assert that the society
in which we live is radically institutionalized. Conse-
quently, the school must be an alienating institution if
it is to be society-functional. "We need radically
56

alienated people for our radically alienated world."

Adolescent vitality and freedom are to be suppressed or

 

541616., p. 19. 551616., p. 144.

561616., p. 133.

28

eliminated. Dress regulations exemplify the school's
meddling in an adolescent's personal life. Standardized
curricula and tests are person-negating mechanisms
employed to direct youth along the proper path. Those
who persist in their attempts at self-identification
usually find themselves in an isolated position. "The
crisis in alienation represents their efforts to will
themselves. . . . But in a world of systems, escape is
impossible, and eventually each must make his peace with

society."57

Summary

This review of pertinent literature substantiates
a developing movement of radical criticism of schools.
It also illustrates the lack of opportunities for self-
identification in school settings. As a result, children
and adolescents are prevented from fully developing their
unique potentialities. They are denied alternatives to
schooling because of compulsory attendance laws, and con-
sequently they must submit themselves to the manipulation
of the school. Before we consider some reform proposals
intended to provide opportunities for self-identification,
the dysfunctional influence of the economic sector of our
society will be discussed in Chapter III and the dys-

functional influence of the culture in Chapter IV.

 

57Ibid., p. 145.

CHAPTER III

ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL

Consideration of possible sources contributing to
the inadequate provision for self-identification in school
settings requires recognition of the prominent position
that the economic sector of our advanced industrial
society commands. The economic sector--recently and
historically--has been influential in charging the school
to perform certain non-educational, economy-supporting
functions.1 In order to perform these functions, changes
in traditional school functions necessarily occur. Mul-
tiplication of functions results in reduction of time
and effort for a particular function. The student is
doubly victimized; he receives inadequate job training
and is prevented from achieving an education, broadly
conceived.

The self-identification of students is greatly

influenced by the economic system's demands on the

 

1See Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, for a
discussion of this aspect. Also, see Galbraith, The New
Industrial State, for an extensive explanation of the
economy of an advanced technological society.

 

29

30

school. To illustrate its influence, several non-
educational functions of the school will be discussed.
Custodial, consumership, standardization, and fragmen-
tation roles of the school will be delineated and their
import on self-identification opportunities of students

explained.

Custodial Function

Most states have compulsory attendance laws that
require youth to attend school from age six to age six-
teen, but with cultural pressures bearing down on them,
most adolescents attend school through age eighteen, and
40 per cent of the age group goes on to college. Through
advertising campaigns, government and industry persuade
adolescents that employment is not available for non-
graduates and thereby keep them off the labor market.
The notion that dropouts have inadequate skills or are
untrainable for the available work is false. Berg's
research into the relationship of educational credentials
and work satisfaction and performance indicates that in
certain manufacturing industries, educational achievement
‘was inversely related to performance. The less schooled
individuals were more productive and had lower rates of
Tabsenteeism and turnover.2 Berg also discovered employ-

Inent personnel who insisted that they hired persons with

¥

2Ivar Berg, Education and Jobs: The Great Training
lRobbery (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 87.

31

more education to maintain worker turnover in clerical
positions. If such workers remained with the firm for
too long a time, they would become wage problems. Dis-
satisfaction is expected and apparently encouraged.3

In another portion of his research, Berg investi-
gated the performance of military men in technical
positions. He discovered that the rate of success in
training programs and the subsequent performance of
duties were not determined by previous educational success
or by possession of credentials. New Standards men, those
who were inducted under a program of reduced mental
requirements, performed as well as men who possessed
high school credentials or who had some college experience.
Many New Standards men were dropouts, and yet they per-
formed their duties very capably. In the Army, "when con—
vential screening standards are lowered, even substantially,
no dire implications for performance ensue."4

A remarkable indication of the economic sector's
influence on schooling is the attitude of men responsible
for hiring personnel in industry. Perhaps unwittingly,
they promote the school's custodial function. "Like col-
lege alumni, high-school graduates, by virtue of their
staying in school rather than by virtue of their partic-

ular learning experiences or skills, were considered

3 4

Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 158.

32

simply 'better' and more likely, more able, and more intel-

5 In View of such attitudes and the

ligent prospectsl'
advertising of school attendance benefits, Berg asserts
that the school "functions to an important, indeed depres-
sing, extent as a licensing agency."6

Drucker has also identified the school as a custo-
dial institution. He contends that there is not much
correlation between ability for work performance and
ability for school performance. "There is no reason to
believe that the diploma certifies too much more than that
the holder has sat a long time."7 He recognizes that,
although labor statistics include anyone above the age of
fourteen, "no one under eighteen or nineteen in this
country is really considered employable."8 School is
the only legitimate place for them.

The diploma, Drucker asserts, has replaced per-
formance as the culturally accepted path to opportunity
and promotion. Attendance now substitutes for achieve-
ment. As a result, both the individual and the society

suffer. The individual, denied an opportunity for exper-

ience and performance with adults, succumbs to the economic

 

5 6

Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., p. 104.

7Peter F. Drucker, The Age of Discontinuity (New
York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 331.

8Ibid., p. 329.

33

pressure and the cultural concern and remains in school.
Whether he overcomes this extension of adolescence is
uncertain. The society loses the potential productivity
of energetic adolescents and gains the social problems
of delinquency, hasty marriage and divorce.

Goodman also contends that the custodial function-
ing of the school has little relation to economic employa-
bility of the captive clientele. Large industrial firms
can train persons for a skilled position in a matter of

9

weeks or months. "The long schooling is for most a way

of keeping the young on ice."10

By limiting their oppor-
tunities for participation in the economic system other
than as consumers, the industrial system obstructs the

process of maturation.11

"If there is to be equality of
opportunity for all young people from middle adolescence
on, job experience is required as an alternative to
classroom experience."12 The school's preoccupation with
and performance of its custodial function "educates" its

clientele in the reality of its restriction of

 

9Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 67.

10Paul Goodman, Like A Conquered Province (New

York: Random House, Inc., 1967), p. 14.

11George Pettitt, Prisoners of Culture (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), p. 119.

121616., p. 131.

34

opportunities for self-identification. Youth are denied
alternatives to the school's custodial care.

Once the school absorbed the custodial function
into its repertoire, a means to guarantee its performance
of this duty had to be found. Compulsory attendance laws
were passed to insure that all youth are processed by the
school. A direct consequence was the standardization of
Operations within the schools. A large mass of students
required standard procedures, since the school would have
had difficulty in treating them as unique individuals.

The school, through its performance of the custo-
dial function, assists the economy by releasing women
from their children-tending duties. These women are then
able to work and contribute to the further consumption of
manufactured products. Goodman asserts that the "chief
purpose of the elementary schools is to relieve the home,

13

to baby-sit." Clearly, the school contributes to the

economy's operation, even if we do not consider that the

school "has become society's major employer."l4

Consumership Function
Since a highly industrial and technological

economy requires uniformity and consensus for efficient

 

l3Goodman, Compulsory Mia-education, p. 44.

 

14Ivan Illich, "Schooling: The Ritual of Progress,"
New York Review of Books, December 3, 1970, p. 24.

35

operation, consumers must be persuaded that individual-
istic, subjective desires are inappropriate and indeed
harmful to the well-being of the society. Of course,

one must have an income to be able to purchase items that
have been promoted as absolutely necessary for existence.
By performing the custodial function, the school allows
many women to obtain such an income. Yet, by keeping
adolescents off the labor market, the school prevents
them from satisfying those desires created by companies
through advertising. Those who attempt to get a piece
of the economic pie by dropping out are discouraged by
the lack of employment opportunities.

However, in a subtle way, the economy, through use
of advertising techniques, seeks to convince youngsters
that they can obtain these desired items of consumption by
completing schooling and becoming a producer. "In its
efforts to direct youth along the proper path, the school
offers its students first, a carrot--future success in the
job world--and second, for encouragement, it whacks them
with a stick--it keeps a file in which it systematically
records their achievements and their failures."15 The
school and the economic sector mutually reinforce each
other; the school convinces its clientele that they will

not obtain those items of consumption unless they obtain

 

15Nordstrom, et al., Society's Children, p. 137.

 

36

a diploma, and the economy convinces youth that they will
be unable to perform well in industry unless they have a
diploma.

An effective method of instilling consumership in
adolescents involves the dissolution of primary identity
and the manufacture of a substitute identity that is
dependent upon externals for support. The school effec-
tively eliminates internal solidarity and self—identifi-
cation through its grading system. Though external verif-
ication of one's worth is undoubtedly necessary for mental
health, total elimination of internal judgment of success
and meaning is detrimental to self-realization. The
child or adolescent accepts external evaluation because
he has no alternative; his parents and the larger society
demand such extrinsic substantiation of worth. "Only one
of several mechanisms--the most notable other being the
family--the school is especially important for an industrial

bureaucratic society."16

If an adolescent has opportuni-
ties for self-identification, there is no guarantee that
the economic system will continue to operate on the basis
of contrived consumption. The economy cannot accept such

a possibility.

The corresponding educational technique, as a con-
‘sequence, takes a completely determinate direction.

 

lGIbid., p. 131.

37

Social conformism must be impressed upon the child:
he must be adapted to his society; he must not
impair its development.17

The influence of the school in consumership train-
ing is particularly effective in lower-class school set-
tings. The struggle for community control of schools may
be in part motivated by the desire for the goods of the
"Great Society." School is seen as a vehicle that will
transport the poor into the middle-class and give them
the opportunity for consumption. Visible worth is the
expression of internal worth, according to the society,
and so one must become a consumer.

Along with other social institutions, the school
defines success in material terms--grades, honors, money,
goods--rather than in terms of self-identification. The
students are told "what sort of self and world they are
to accept for themselves."18

Anxiety that an adolescent may experience in his
struggle for self-identification in the face of insti-
tutional pressures is sometimes relieved by a compulsive
buying spree. Such consumption compensates for the

19

anguish that the adolescent endures. It also reduces

 

17Ellul, The Technological Society, p. 347.

 

18Erving Goffman, As lums (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday and Co., 1961), p. 304.

19Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a
Humanized Technology_(New York: Harper and Row, 1968),
p. 119.

 

 

38

the difficulty in specifying who one will be. It is
easier to buy items than to involve oneself in a process
of self-identification. "The automobile, the television,
the gadgets . . . produced in accordance with the require-
ments of profitable exchange, have become part and parcel
of the peOple's own existence, own 'actualization.'"20

Frequently an adolescent's identity may be purchased; both

the economy and the adolescent are grateful.

Standardization Function

Standardization of knowledge, of outlook, and of
response are indispensable to the industrial state. Just
as manufacturing plants produce standardized products,
schools produce standardized graduates as much as possible.
"They want to learn how to tell what is right for them;
the school wants to teach them to give the responses that
will earn them rewards in the classroom and in social

situations."21

Conformity is emphasized as a means to
:material success and as a support for contrived needs.
"By controlling how you are brought up and what your

exPeriences are," the school can effectively standardize

20Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1969), p. 12.

 

21Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, p. 212.

 

39

aspects of one's identity.22 Through involvement with an
institution that has a fairly standardized ritual wherever
it is located, children and adolescents are manipulated;
they cannot perceive alternatives to the prevalent form or
manner of schooling and education.

In the school system's view, most adolescents and
children are similar in outlook and response, and there-
fore the school can apply efficient, uniform methods of
control and instruction. Adolescents are particularly
susceptible to standardization. "The process of becoming
an American, as it goes on in high school, tends to be a
process of renunciation of differences. This conflicts
directly, of course, with the adolescent's need for self-
definition."23

The economy in its industrial form requires
workers who are capable of immediate replacement, that
is, standardized employees. Idiosyncratic workers could
hamper efficiency, an immediate goal of technological
production. By suppressing the expression of individ-
uality, the school guarantees that the economic sector
will receive packaged workers who are fairly well-rounded,

uniform products. "Standardization creates

 

22Victor Ferkiss, Technological Man: The Myth
and the Reality (New York: George Braziller, 1969), p. 22.

 

23Friedenberg, The Vanishing Adolescent, p. 55.

 

40

impersonality";24 "the ends of production are taken as
given and the worker is to be 'adjusted' to his job so
that the human equation matches the industrial equation."25
Furthermore, as Friedenberg asserts, "the last thing man-
agement needs, at almost any level, is a self-generating
enthusiast."26
The school has been quite effective in standard-
izing outlook and response, as Nordstrom and others
indicate. Youngsters who were interviewed displayed
"hostility to personal autonomy" exhibited by other stu-
dents. "As most respondents see it, self-directed people
are untrustworthy, because they are unpredictable; you

can't tell what they are going to do next."27

Industry
can hardly afford large groups of unpredictable workers.
Friedenberg explicitly describes the purpose of standardi-

zation: "to protect society from "subjectivity"; from

people with an excessively personal style or approach to

 

24Ellul, The Technological Society, p. 12.

 

25Daniel Bell, "Notes on Work," in Anatomies of
America, ed. by Amitai Etzioni (New York: THe Macmillan
C——I-o., 969), p. 100.

26

 

Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, p. 176.

 

27Nordstrom, et al., Society's Children, p. 94.

 

41

situations, who threaten or antagonize their co-workers,
fellow citizens, and indeed, in extreme cases, society

itself."28

Fragmentation Function

 

Fragmentation of experience is important to the
economy, for it increases the probability that these
youngsters will be susceptible to consumership promotions.
If the adolescent had a unified outlook, if he had an
integrated approach to work and school and leisure, he
might question the operation of the economic sector and
reject attempts to manipulate his consumption patterns.
The economy cannot afford groups of consumers purchasing
items on the basis of real need only. "Goods that are
related only to elementary physical sensation-~that
merely prevent hunger, protect against cold, provide
shelter, suppress pain--have come to comprise a small

29

and diminishing part of all production." By "psycho-

logizing" goods and services--adding psychic value--the
economy controls the nature and extent of consumer

30

spending. The school, acting for the economy, attempts

to undermine inwardness in adolescents, for such confidence

 

28Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, p. 177.

 

29John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State
(New York: Signet Books, 1967), p. 211.

 

30Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random
House, 1970), p. 196.

 

42

in one's view of the world is a threat to manipulation.
Separation of curricula, separation and non-integration
of studies within curricular tracks, and minimization of
integration of thought and feeling ("objectivity") are
barriers that allow for psychic control by the school and
the economy.31
A fragmented school experience culminating in a
fragmented identity is useful to the economy in its
employment of graduates. Many jobs require a person to
mentally evade the job itself if he is to retain some
semblance of mental health. "For most people their job
was what they had to do rather than what they wanted to
do; that taking a job, therefore, meant giving up part

32 If the school is to fulfill its con-

Of themselves."
sumership function, it must also prepare the adolescent
for this seemingly necessary schizOphrenia. Otherwise,
expecting work to be supportive of the self when it is
frequently not, the worker may become rebellious and
threatening to the system's continuation in its present
form.

Consequently, the school deals with the student in

a manner encouraging fragmentation. Certain aspects of

 

31See Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America,
Chapter IV.

 

32Henry, Culture Against Man, p. 127.

 

43

the child or adolescent are dealt with at seemingly appro-

priate times, but the person gua person is usually ignored.

Summary

The economic sector of our advanced technological
society expects the school to fulfill several non-
educational functions: custodial, consumership, standard-
ization, and fragmentation functions. In meeting these
obligations, schools limit a child's or adolescent's
opportunities for self-identification. Furthermore,
these non-educational duties hamper the school's fulfill-
ment of its prOper educative functions. In the next chap-

ter the culture's influence on schooling will be explored.

CHAPTER IV

SELF-IDENTIFICATION AND THE SCHOOL'S CULTURE

Although schools by their very nature are habit-
formation institutions, they have extended this process
to include the promulgation of a "one-dimensional"
outlook on American society.1 Since persons are very
complex beings, and since the schools could not operate
in their present form or manner if they attempted to
deal with such diversity, the school institutes a sim-
plification procedure: uniquely individual persons are
treated as uniform things to be adjusted to society.
This process is especially demeaning to the "disadvantaged";
for them, socialization "really means inducing them to
abandon their old, developing selves as their price of
admission to the opportunities afforded by the dominant
social system the schools represent."2 Acceptance of
self would be an inappropriate goal for a school, for it

would then foster diversity.

 

le. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man.

 

2Edgar Friedenberg, "Sentimental Education," New
York Review of Books, November 21, 1968, p. 22.

 

44

45

In this chapter the investigator will analyze the
cultural functions which the school intends to fulfill
in its attempt at standardization of product. The study
will focus on the values or orientations that a school
tries to foster in its creation of one-dimensional man.
Special consideration will be given the issues of privacy,

passivity, docility, role behavior, and individuality.

Privacy

Privacy as an individual right tends to be ignored
by the school, for in its custodial functioning the school
demands unwarranted sociality. If children and adolescents
are alone by choice and are also quiet, adults frequently
assume that they are perpetrating some sort of misdeed.3
In this regard, a school merely mimics parents who hold
their children or adolescents in nearly constant surveil-
lance. Even non-school time is so often organized that
moments of solitude are infrequent. It seems that adult
fear of personal loneliness influences the exclusion of
privacy for children.

The school eliminates much concern about children's
activities through its enforcement of state attendance

laws. Adult fear subsides when children are in a super-

vised place; whether anything positive occurs there is

 

3Joanne Reynolds, "Children's Privacy and Com-
pulsory Schooling," Teachers College Record, October,
1968, p. 36.

 

46

not immediately important. The children or adolescents
are compelled to be together. "Compulsory schooling pro-
duces such enforced intimacy, for a body of students is
compelled to come together in a designated place for a
designated time for purposes established by the adult mem-
bers of society."4 A clear example is a typical high
school study hall in which the occupants are there not

for positive advantage but on account of the surveillance
and custodial function of the school.

Another example of the exclusion of physical pri-
vacy that the school practices involves use of the school's
physical facilities.

The organization of the school militates against the
opportunity being provided for children to get off
by themselves for any part of the school day to read,
work, think, or just to be alone. Most of the day

is spent in one room of a box-like shape and crowded
with students.5

Another aspect of physical privacy that should be
considered is enforcement of school dress regulations.
Though they have become more lenient in recent years,
many school systems still maintain strict dress require-
ments, especially on hair style. In the controversy, the
student's right to expression of personal taste tends to
be ignored. Court cases in Michigan and other states indi-

cate the depth of concern for children and adolescent rights

to privacy. Yet schools continue to legislate norms of

 

4 5

Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 36.

47

behavior in this area. If exceptions are made or rights

granted, standardization of product--the high school

graduate--might be impaired.
Consider that young people in the fullness of their
vitality are also at their most beautiful. With
them clothes can readily be an expression of their
persons. That is, the clothes they wear can accen-
tuate the beauty that is theirs. In so doing,
clothes may also help to make them prideful, idio-
syncratic, exciting, selfish, and sexy. Allowed
expression, such attitudes can encourage trouble.

By eliminating privacy and personal judgment in these

matters, the school widens its scope of control over its

clients.

Another area of privacy that bears mention is
psychological solitude, the right to choose what behavior
and which feelings a person will reveal to others.7 In
other words, it is the right to unobserved, unjudged
privacy. Even if behavior is observed, the data col-

lected should be of educational benefit to the student

and his parents, should be accessible to them, and should

 

6Nordstrom, et al., Societyfs Children, p. 134.

7Reynolds, "Children's Privacy and Compulsory

Schooling," p. 37.

48

not be accessible to others, as has been the case
recently in Washington.8

Many schools ignore this right to unjudged pri-
vacy by maintaining dossiers on students; frequently, the
state requires a minimal gathering of information but
school systems gather a surplus. Not only are grades
contained therein, on the supposed basis of assisting
colleges in evaluating candidates, but all sorts of
information ranging from hearing test results to atten—
dance records and disciplinary actions are also gathered.
Much of this data is irrelevant to the educational function
of the school, and much of it is gathered without the
consent of the child or adolescent.

Of course, there is a parallel in the larger
society. Recent revelations of eavesdropping on public
and private officials by the U.S. Army indicate that even
adults are unable to maintain unobserved privacy. Also,
the various psychological tests that companies employ in
investigating and evaluating potential employees involve

disclosure of information that many men and women would

 

8The District of Columbia Committee of the House
of Representatives had decided to publish confidential
school records of students along with the names of their
parents. A court order prevented the distribution. This
situation illustrates the privacy issue clearly; other
aspects are treated by Marvin Grandstaff in "Secrecy,
Sanity, and the Schools," School and Society, March 4,
1967, pp. 142—44.

49

prefer to keep private.9 Hence, it appears that the
school is merely imitating the larger society; it is
performing one of its cultural functions. Hence, one
might characterize education as totalitarian because
"there is no corner of the globe or of inner experience
which we are not eager to subject to scrutiny and
processing."10 A student's opportunity for privacy

must be minimized, for what is kept private cannot be
processed. The prevention of private moments insures
that the school will have more time to dispense an appro-
priate identity to students, an identity that might con-
flict with a self-determined identity. Self-identification
would be enhanced by opportunities for reflectiOn and
thought. If the school is to perform its other non-
educational functions in a successful manner, it can ill

afford students who seek solitude to question what is

taught and what they value.

Docility
Docility as a valuable trait induced by the school

has been confirmed by Jules Henry. In his research he

indicates how dependent children are upon the teacher for

 

9John Holt, The Underachieving School (New York:
Pitman Publishing Co., 1969): p. 133.

10H. Marshall McLuhan, Counter Blast (New York:

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969), p.7I34.

50

survival in the classroom.11 Since children are indoctri-
nated from their early years to do exactly what adults-in-
authority demand, teachers generally have little difficulty
building upon the docility posture already apparent in

many youngsters. By fostering vulnerability in children,
schools guarantee that the majority of youngsters will be
easily persuaded that the school knows best in helping them

12

to assert their created identities. "The student learns

to accept the institution as the dominating force in his

13

life and resigns himself to defending it." He realizes

that he cannot escape the system, and so he resigns himself
to its power over him. In order to avoid psychological

or physical punishment, a student sacrifices portions of
his potentially viable self for the security of a "socially

14

acceptable facade." The student learns "it is better to

live with a self dead within him than not to live at all."15

To assist the child or adolescent in his adaptation to

 

llJules Henry, "Attitude Organization in Elementary
School Classrooms," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry,
January, 1957, 131.

 

12Henry, Culture Against Man, p. 292.

 

13Nordstrom, et al., Society's Children, p. 141.

 

14Jules Henry, Vulnerability in Education (College
Park, Md.: University of Maryland Press, 1966), p. 2.

 

151bid., p. 14.

51

the school, counselors and school psychologists are

available to offer advice about the reasonableness of

such accommodation.16

Docility is also promoted by the school's adherence
to the dictum that "children should be seen and not heard."
By promoting silence, the school apparently feels it is
developing self-discipline in children. This preoccu-
pation with silence and order has a profound effect on
student and teacher.

ITEM: A new suburban elementary school is being
hailed in architectural circles for its 'open
design.‘ The building has no corridors; the six-
teen classrooms Open instead onto 'project areas'
equipped with work tables, sinks, easels, and the
like. What the architects do not know, however, is
that in most classrooms the project areas go unused.
As the principal explains, 'If some children are in
the project area while others are in the regular
classroom, the teacher can't watch every child, and
some of them might start talking.’17

Reputation is more important than self-identification.18

 

16See Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, pp.

73-95, for a discussion of student attitudes toward psy-
chological intervention. '

17Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom
(New York: Random House, 1970), p. 128.

 

18Henry discusses this aspect in Vulnerability
in Education. In my personal teaching experience, I have
fOund the same attitude to be prevalent among elementary
school teachers. Perhaps the teachers are merely ful-
filling the obligation impressed upon them by parents;
parents frequently instruct children to "do exactly what
the teacher says" and to "not cause trouble." Failure
in these two admonitions is likely to lead to difficulty
for both parent and child.

 

52

Reputation becomes the means whereby children are
trained to be docile; this occurs predominantly in subur-
ban schools, for parents there are very concerned with
personal and social reputation. "The pupil's sense of
personal adequacy, or self-respect, becomes the leverage
for sanctioning."19 The students learn to accept certain
principles of conduct as inviolable, even if they are
ultimately destructive of the inner self. Pupils realize
that they are unable to overcome these forces over which
they have no control; the only viable alternative is to
become passive and docile. Unfortunately, this mode of
conduct that produces the least immediate damage has more
profound consequences in the future.

'The main thing is not to take it personal, to
understand that it's just a system and it treats
you the same way it treats everybody else, like
an engine or a machine or something mechanical.
Our names get fed into it-—we get fed into it-—when
we're five years old, and iffwe catch on and watch
our step, it spits us out when we're seventeen or
eighteen, ready for college.’20
This high school student indicates that preservation of
his present position is more important than fulfillment

of his potential. By succumbing to the system and

accepting its demand of docility, a student thereby

19Dreeben, On What Is Learned in School, p. 39.

 

20Kathryn Noyes and Gordon McAndrew, "Is This
What Schools Are For?" Saturday Review, December 21, 1968,
p. 59.

 

53

conforms to cultural specifications. He becomes a uniform,

processed, and processable entity.

. . . there are variations of point of View, of appeal
of objects, and of mode of attack, from person to
person. When these variations are suppressed in the
alleged interests of uniformity, and an attempt is
made to have a single mold of study and recitation,
mental confusion and artificiality inevitably result.
Originality is gradually destroyed, confidence in
one's own quality of mental operation is undermined,
and a docile subjection to the opinion of others is
inculcated, . . . 1

Hence, it can be seen that docility is a very functional
trait to possess in our society, especially with its
decline in personal authority. The hierarchical structure
of our society, similar to the school's structure, demands
docility. Yet, such improvident acquiescence to the
demands of others is harmful to one's own development.
. . . his seeming attention, his docility, his memor-
izings and reproductions, Will partake of intellectual
servility. Such a condition of intellectual sub-
jection is needed for fitting the masses into a
society where the many are not expected to have aims
or ideas of their own, but to take orders from the
few set in authority. It is not adapted to a society
which intends to be democratic.22
In many ways, what the teacher in the past did to insure
docility--persona1 disapprobation, physical punishment,
and others--has been "civilized"; psychological penalties

have all but replaced physical punishments, and the effect

on a child's self-identification has been necessarily

worsened.

 

21John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York:
The Macmillan Co., 1961), p. 303.

221bid., p. 305.

54

Passivity

 

Though passivity and docility are closely inter-
twined, a separate section on passivity seems appropriate
because of its profound effect on self-identification.
Passivity, in my view, is a mental inertia that results
from either lack of Opportunity to exercise one's powers
or impotency to act due to previous constraining situ-
ations. Especially for adolescents, cultural and economic
limitations obstruct movement, conduct and employment.

Infrequent opportunities to express oneself or
to question and investigate what one is taught in school
inevitably influences one's desire to do so. It is
"safer" to accept what is taught rather than dare test
or disbelieve the material presented. Instead, one
relates to it.23 Also, since schools tend to control
rather than respond to pupils, students incline themselves
to passive acceptance of this situation or to active
removal from the institutional press on them. Compulsory
attendance, compulsory attention, predetermined length of
attendance, and predetermined content of encounter pre-

dispose students to a passive role.24

"To the adolescent,
encounters with hostile and manipulative individuals and

social institutions are very personal experiences that

 

23Edgar Z. Friedenberg, The Dignity of Youth and
Other Atavisms (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), p. 159.

 

24Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 253.

 

55

tend toward his disintegration."25 Avoidance of conflict
through passive behavior may be the most prudent response
which adolescents can make, but, unfortunately, it pre-
vents personal growth.

The passiveness of man in industrial society today

is one of his most characteristic and pathological

features. . . . Being passive, he does not relate

himself to the world actively. . . . He feels power-

less, lonely, and anxious. He has little sense of

integrity or self-identity.26
Of course, our society does not wish to have active,
integral individuals questioning the consumption and pro-
duction assumptions of the modern industrial and techno-
logical state. The dysfunctionality of school for per-
sonal growth and the functionality of school for societal
intactness can be clearly seen in this instance. "It is
difficult, obviously, to get an education from a school
that refuses to educate without requiring that its stu-
dents submit simultaneously to custodial care, sterile

27 It seems that the

competition, and indoctrination."
school employs "surplus repression" in controlling chil-

dren and adolescents, and whatever benefit minimal control

 

25Friedenberg, The Vanishing_Adolescent, p. 134.

26Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward A

Humanized Technology, p. 39.

27Illich, The Celebration of Awareness, p. 133.

56

of activities produces is lost through excessive restriction

28

and coercion. Advocacy of activity in the sense of

functional behavior based on interest is generally ignored
on the basis of numbers of students to be processed.29
Students realize that school usually neglects their pre-
occupation with identity and wholeness and seeks to deal

30 Students fre-

with students on an impersonal basis.
quently respond in an apathetic and passive manner to the
school's mode Of interaction--treatment, if you wish--in
order to preserve intact the inner self.

Active scrutiny of what one is taught Often leads
to rejection on the basis of deception and/or falsity.
To prevent such rejection, schools reduce the importance
of personal authority. A student must refer to some
authority for verification and usually the "authority"
or "expert" is the teacher; what one might feel or think
must be compared with standard interpretations. Hence,
passivity is often a protective barrier shielding one
from dissection because of beliefs or ideas. "It appears

that the majority of young people are, in fact, all too

needy for, trusting in, and conforming to present

 

28Herbert Marcuse, Eros agd Civilization (New
York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 32.

 

_ 29Jean Piaget, Science of Education and the Psyr
chology of the Child (New York: Orion Press, 1970),
p. 163.

 

30See Henry, Culture Against Man.

 

57

institutions, organizations, parties, industrial com—
plexes, super-machineries--and this because true personal
authority is waning."31

The school as a culture-functional institution
attempts to inculcate these characteristics of behavior--
sociality, docility, and passivity--and usually succeeds.
In interaction with each other, these traits, as expressed
in adolescent behavior particularly, contribute to a manu-
factured school role, a manner of conduct that is func-
tional for survival in school and society but which is
dysfunctional for authentic self-identification. Unique-
ness of person is ignored, so adolescents express their
eccentricity outside of school hours. However, such dis-
play is usually expressive of an incidental aspect of the

person rather than a flowering of true identity.

Role Behavior

 

The manufacturing process whereby a youngster is
fitted with a socially viable role involves an initial
period of confinement (grades K-2 usually) during which
Self is subordinated to group. A mechanistic approach
guarantees that all students are to be treated equally

throughout their school career. External behavior is

 

31Erik Erikson, "Memorandum on Youth," Toward
the Year 2000: Work in Prggress, p. 229.

 

58

evaluated constantly, "without giving thought to what is

"32 Likewise, our culture tends to

going on inside them.
reward and censure on the basis of observed behavior;
whether the role performance is a result of psychic manip-
ulation is ignored. A socially acceptable facade is man-
datory for the operation of our society as it is, and,
hence, many students and adults sacrifice inner selves

33 "Instead of function-

for the security of an appearance.
ing actively as an autonomous personality, man will become
a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal whose
proper functions, as technicians now interpret man's role,
will either be fed into the machines or strictly limited
and controlled for the benefit of de-personalized, col-
lective organizations."34 Through its Operating pro-
cedures, the school tends to influence students to "self-
direct themselves in a manageable way."35 Because of its
compulsory nature and ritual procedures, the school effec-

tively communicates to its inmates the role behavior that

will be considered appropriate. Furthermore, the school

 

32Jackson, The Teacher and the Machine, p. 69.

33Henry, Vulnerability in Education, p. 13.

 

34Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), p. 3.

 

35Goffman, Asylums, p. 87.

59

as an institution tends to tell its charges "what sort of
self and world they are to accept for themselves."36
By eliminating alternative viewpoints of the
world and varied expressions of self, the school stimu-
lates, perhaps inadvertantly, a counter-culture phenomenon
that focuses on alternatives in life-style. Whether the
school and the culture permit counter-cultures and youth
cultures to exist as palliatives to a threat of significant
social and educational reform is disputable. Perhaps
"free schools" can be considered as sanctioned alterna-
tives, for they generally do not have much sustained
influence on the traditional school and its Operation.
It may be that they are functional for the continued,
static, uniform operation of public schools.
Schools tend to teach children that, since they
are not adults (and are not-yet-persons, therefore), they
are unable to make meaningful decisions with any clarity
of judgment. Orderliness and compliance are emphasized;
only after these responses are learned may students

express themselves as individuals.37

Yet, whether our
culture values authentic individuals or whether students

will have the readiness and capability to assert

361bid., p. 304.

37Robert Coles, "The Measure of Man--I," New
Yorker, November 7, 1970, p. 76.

60

themselves authentically is questionable in View of the
tight fit which contemporary institutions maintain in
order to assure uniformity. "A child with authoritarian
parents or with frequent meaningful contact with other
authority figures is likely to develop a personality which

can be described as conformist."38

Since young children
tend to see little of their fathers during their ele-
mentary school years, and assuming that the father is

the central figure of most homes, teachers in elementary
schools assume much more influence upon students than
they perhaps realize. Because the school is a compulsory
institution that relies a great deal on authoritarian
procedures, the child, by virtue of his presence and
ignoring his accomplishments in school, is likely to
become conformist. The proper performance of a role is
then one step away. "All the contemporary institutions
that bear on the young, diverse as they may seem to be,1
are united in their insistence on cultivating sensitivity
and pliability to the demands and expectations of other

39

persons." A "proper" relationship of the individual

to society is encouraged in order that society might

 

38Edward L. Walker and Roger W. Heyns, An Anatomy
fgr Conformity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1962), p. 90. '

 

39Friedenberg, The Vanishing Adolescent, p. 6.

 

61

continue in its present form. Individualistic responses
to society might prove destructive of the status quo and
are to be avoided.

It may be argued that role behavior is essential
in our culture because of the extent of physical and job
mobilities. In order to avoid domestic culture shock,
standardized manners of behavior are promoted, most fre-
quently through the communications media. Unfortunately,
such systematization suppresses expressions of uniqueness
and individuality. Dreeben asserts that schools should
teach children and adolescents to manifest maximally
adaptive qualities which will guarantee acceptance by
our culture. "If schooling forms the linkage between the
family life of children and the public life of adults, it
must provide experiences conducive to learning the prin-
ciples of conduct and patterns of behavior appropriate to

adulthood."40

By teaching the norms of achievement, inde-
pendence, universality, and specificity, schools prepare
students for social roles. However, Campbell argues that
most middle-class and middle-class-aspiring families

teach these norms within the home. Hence, schools may

not be necessary for this function of standardization of

role behavior.4l

 

40Dreeben, On What Is Learned in School, p. 4.

 

41"Review Symposium," SOCiOlogY of Education,
Spring, 1970, p. 207-

 

62

Furthermore, Ellul argues that deliberate attempts
to instill certain norms undoubtedly will affect the pro-
vision for self-differentiation that is essential to
personal growth. "Education will no longer be an unpre-
dictable and exciting adventure in human enlightenment,
but an exercise in conformity and an apprenticeship to
whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world."42
Social conformism is cultivated in the child; "he must
be adapted to his society; he must not impair its develop-

ment."43

Social adaptation is promoted as a necessary
function of the school. "Despite all the pretentious talk
about the aims of education-~it is not the child in and
for himself who is being educated but the child in and for

society."44

Summaty

The school as a societal institution tends to pro-
mote ideas and behavior that are adaptive to other insti-
tutions. Culture, as an amalgam of norms, expects the
school to insure acceptance of these norms as the standard
of existence. Consequently, children and adolescents are
required to recognize the right of schools to process them.
Any alternative to such recognition carries harsh penal-

ties, either physical or psychological.

 

42Ellul, The Technological Society, p. 349.

 

43 44

Ibid., p. 347. Ibid., p. 348.

63

In its non-educational, cultural functioning, the
school employs a standardized processing program that
impinges upon the student's inner being. Passivity,
docility, sociality, and role behavior are demanded as
a price for credentialization. By his acquiescence to
such demands, the student negates himself and renounces

his right to self-differentiation and self-identification.

CHAPTER V

"RADICAL" REFORM PROPOSALS

In order to properly evaluate suggested changes in
the role and operation of the school, several types of
"radical" reform proposals will be identified and
explained, and the relationship of these reform pro-
posals to the self—identification and self-realization
of children and adolescents will be delineated. After
making this necessary digression, the investigator will
address himself to the form and thrust of these suggestions,
for short-term and long-term effects must be considered in
a sound critique. A consideration of the major specific
issues involved in a student's quest for self-identification

will comprise the next chapter.

Type I

The initial category of reform proposals involves
the suggestions of critics and experts who consider our-
ricular and methodological changes sufficient alterations
to permit student self-identification in school settings.
The school's position in the institutional framework of

an advanced industrial and technological society is

64

65

usually not questioned. At the present time, the chief
spokesman is Charles E. Silberman, Fortune editor and
occasional educational critic. His massive study of
American education has caused considerable debate among
teachers, administrators, and college faculty.

Crisis in the Classroom1 is a study of the short-

 

comings of the American school system and also a proposal
for certain changes in school operation. In the initial
segment of the book, he decries the same problems that
other writers such as Paul Goodman, John Holt, George
Dennison, and James Herndon have discussed in previous
works. "Because adolescents are harder to 'control' than
younger children, secondary schools tend to be even more
authoritarian and repressive than elementary schools; the
values they transmit are the values of docility, passivity,
conformity and lack of trust."2 Certainly Silberman is at
one with other educational critics when he writes of the
desolation in secondary schools. Yet, he charts his own
course in viewing the societal role of the school. "The
raison d'étre of the school--society's ultimate justifi-
cation for creating a separate, formal, educational insti-
tution, and for making prolonged exposure to it compulsory--

is the conviction (the faith, if you will), that, as

 

1Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom

(New York: Random House, 1970).

 

21bid., p. 324.

66

Bruner also puts it, 'The conduct of life is not indepen-
dent of what it is one knows' nor 'of how it is that one

has learned what one knows.”3

Clearly this indicates
that credentialization is one of the purposes of the
school, for other means of attaining the same proficiency
in skills and knowledge are ignored.

Silberman argues that, despite the recent pub-
licity, freedom is not an area of contention; "freedom"
and "restraint" are not in conflict.4 The major diffi-
culty is the concurrence of individuals, that is, teachers
and students, in the judgment of what is most worth know-
ing. "The conflict need not be resolved: it is not
essential that teachers and students share the same edu-
cational goals, only that they pgyg educational goals--
goals that can be articulated into some coherent struc-

5 Whether teachers and students with dissimilar

ture."
educational goals can have positive, constructive rela-
tionships is Open to question.

Throughout his book Silberman seems concerned with
the creation and maintenance of a humane society. He
appears to view the school as the institution that will

produce the kind of society he desires. By ignoring the

institutional matrix in which the school exists, Silberman

 

3 4

Ibid., p. 325. Ibid., p. 334.

51bid., p. 335.

67

assumes that the school can negate the influences of
other institutions and create the Great Society.

In order to develop this humane society, children
are to learn what they need to learn in a humane manner.
After consideration of various educational reforms, Sil-
berman chOoses the new English primary school as a model
to be adapted to the educational system in the United
States.6 This informal education method resembles pro-
gressive education as it existed in the 1930's, yet Sil-
berman insists that they are not identical. The con-
temporary informal schools affirm the teacher's central
role in schooling.7

'It means regarding them as our responsibility.’

And that responsibility means educating them:

transmitting, creating, and evoking the skills,

values, attitudes, and knowledge that will help

them grow into mature, creative, and happy adults.
In the process of educating children, British informal
schools frequently arrange a special environment for the
children. "The 'formality' of the informal classroom
grows out of the fact that the teacher creates a highly

structured environment, organized around a space rather

than a time framework, and then manages it so that it

 

6See Children and Their Primary Schools for a
detailed explanation of the intent of the new schools.

 

7Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom, p. 209.

 

81bid., p. 210.

68

changes in response to children's interests, activities,
and needs."9 Whether a tightly structured environment
leaves room for individual explorations in other areas is
open to debate. It seems inconceivable that a school
could accommodate very many dissimilar interests.

Silberman also seems to be wary of the possible
flabbiness which the informal approach might bring to
American schools. By concentrating on the affective
realm, which American informal schools tend to do accord-
ing to Silberman, social objectives of education may be
slighted. "Finding the right balance is never easy; there
will always be a certain tension between two groups of edu-
cational objectives--those concerned with individual growth
and fulfillment, and those concerned with the transmission
of specific skills, intellectual disciplines, and bodies
of knowledge--and finding the 'right' balance is neither

. 10
easy nor obv1ous."

It appears that Silberman assumes
that skills and knowledge are separate from individual
growth, that they are in Opposition. The child or ado-
lescent apparently must sacrifice a little of each area
in his education. Yet, individual growth and fulfillment
seems to necessitate success in skill development and
knowledge acquisition.

Silberman's approach to educational reform through

informal classrooms indicates that he assumes that schools

 

9 10

Ibid., p. 238. Ibid., p. 322.

69

are necessary and also that schools are to be a significant
humanizing force in changing society.

Our most pressing educational problem, in short, is

not how to increase the efficiency of the schools;

it is how to create and maintain a humane society.

A society whose schools are inhumane is not likely

to be humane itself.ll
Yet, the informal education approach seconded by Silber-
man, Albert Shanker, and others promotes learning through
more efficient means. What teachers previously did
through discipline and a harsh grading system can now be
done, apparently, through humane classrooms. In the rush
for classroom reform, the ills of society and the child's
life outside the classroom seem to be ignored.

Another major spokesman for Type I change is

Jerome Bruner, director of the Center for Cognitive

Studies at Harvard. Through many articles and books,

most notable of which is The Process of Education, Bruner

 

has promoted the belief that children can learn anything
if it is in an acceptable form for the child's stage of

development. His major concern has been the arrangement
of school environments so as to maximize learning accord-

ing to various criteria.12 Recently he has been

 

11Ibid., p. 203.

12Jerome Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction

(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1966), p. 37.

 

70

conducting experiments with infants to determine how
"learners' own goals can be used as a prime mover for
their self-education."l3

Like Silberman, Bruner is concerned with societal
changes. He recognizes that the school is in an institu-
tional matrix, and he questions the relationship of the
school to other components of that matrix. "Educational
reform confined only to the schools and not to the society
at large is doomed for eventual triviality."14 Through

15 Bruner tries to relate edu-

programs such as MACOS,
cational change to the culture. He realizes that edu-
cational reform has political implications and feels

that proposals for educational change must be cognizant
of these implications. "A theory of instruction is a
political theory in the proper sense that it derives from
consensus concerning the distribution of power within the
society--who shall be educated and to fulfill what

16

roles?" Through his concern for self-motivation of

learners and through his extensive efforts at curricular

 

13Maya Pines, "Infants are Smarter Than Anybody
Thinks," New York Times Magazine, November 29, 1970, p. 32.

14Jerome Bruner, "Culture, Politics, and Pedagogy,"
Saturday Review, May 18, 1968, p. 69.

 

15Man, A Course of Study.

16Bruner, "Culture, Politics, and Pedagogy," p. 69.

71

reform, Bruner seems to attempt detailed manipulation of
school program so that it accords with the desires and
interests of most youngsters. It seems to fit well with
the informal school approach promoted by Silberman. ”What
the school imposes often fails to enlist the natural ener-
gies that sustain spontaneous learning--curiosity, a desire
for competence, aSpiration to emulate a model, and a deep-
sensed commitment to the web of social reciprocity."l7
Bruner and other Type I reformers propose educational
reforms that involve stimulation of children's interest

in what should be learned by them in school. They assume
that manipulation of the school environment and curriculum
to make it more palatable for children is more productive
than reorganizing the school around the interests of

children, which is the program proposed by Type II

reformers.

zype II

Undoubtedly the major position from which Type II
critics thrust their barbs is the uniqueness of the indi-
vidual. Numerous research findings indicate the vast
array of convergent and divergent skills which a child

or adolescent might possess.18 In addition to these

 

l7Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction, p. 127.

18See the research findings of Torrance, Getzels,

and Jackson.

72

skills and styles, individual children may be further
distinguished by the variety of environments which they
encounter prior to school matriculation. Yet, in the
typical elementary classroom and up through the system,
pupils encounter near uniformity of treatment. A col-
league suggested that perhaps the educational system's
approach to children and adolescents has been inverted:
pupils of diverse abilities and interests are narrowed
in their outlook and expression as they progress through
the system. Rather, school environments should foster
further divergence and development of these unique abili-
ties and interests. Type II critics suggest reforms
that will stimulate such variation.

A second assumption involves the child's view of
experience or learning. Some critics assume that an indi-
vidual has no innate desire to learn. In fact, the child
may not seek to learn what pedagogues may demand he learn.
Type II critics such as George Dennison, A. S. Neill, and
John Holt believe that children learn through interaction
with their immediate environment. "I believe in children
learning with our assistance and encouragement the things
they want to learn, when they want to learn them, how they
want to learn them, why they want to learn them."19 By
considering the child to be lazy, averse to new exper-

iences, and lacking motivation, teachers often invoke

 

19Holt, The Underachieving School, p. 180.

 

73

the need for disciplinary action so that the child will
get to work and learn.

Type II critics generally denounce the neglect of
a child's special interest in his immediate environment.
Disregard for a child's interests has a telling effect
on his self-identification and subsequent self-realization.
In view of the school's utilization of extrinsic rewards
to coerce students into approved interests and proper
behavior, it seems that children will recognize that the
school emphasizes performance and not "being" or human-
ness. Type II reformers assert that emphasis should fall
upon the uniqueness of each child. "A person's identity
is made up of those things--qualities, tastes, beliefs--
that are uniquely his, that he found and chose and took
for himself, that cannot be lost or taken from him, that
do not depend on his position or his success or other
people's opinion of him."20 These reformers suggest that
if schools were to concentrate on furthering a child's or
adolescent's self-identification and self-realization, not
only would children and adolescents develop uniquely but
school problems such as motivation and discipline would
also virtually disappear.

Another assumption accepted by most Type II
critics is that schools frequently have a negative

influence on a child's or adolescent's total growth.

 

ZOIbid., p. 39.

74

For years, parents and educators have assumed that schools
by their very nature are instruments of positive effect
upon their clients. Yet, as the experiences of many
children in both inner-city and suburban schools testify,
schools can destroy self-concept, interest, and initiative:
keys to self-realization.
What we do in the school (never mind what nice things
we preach) says in effect to young children, "Your
experience, your concern, your hopes, your fears,
your desires, your interests, they count for nothing.
What counts is what ES are interested in, what HE
care about, and what we have decided you are to
learn."21 —_
As already indicated, John Holt is one of several Type II
critics who have proposed schools that begin with chil-
dren's interests and expand them, schools in which com-
pulsory attendance rules do not exist, and schools which
place great emphasis on relationships between children
and adults.

Another reformer of this breed is A. S. Neill,
headmaster of Summerhill, the controversial English
boarding school. Neill emphasizes the affective domain
of a child's learning and views the school's role as
necessarily providing an environment conducive to learn-
ing and giving the learner free rein of his interests.

He considers the child to be "innately wise and realis-

tic." A key idea of Neill's philosophy of education is

 

211bid., p. 200.

75

the allowance of individual freedom for students. "No
one can have social freedom, for the rights of others
must be respected. But everyone should have individual

freedom."22

Neill does not advocate absolute freedom,
but instead he allows individual freedom to be taken at
will by children. "He [the child] is allowed to do as he
pleases only in things that affect him--and only him."23
Neill asserts that the child is innately good, an indi-
vidual who has a deep inclination to learn. However, he
does see a school as a necessary environment, since
occasionally a child or adolescent needs guidance and
assistance in reaching his Own goals. Freedom of thought
and movement is encouraged, so that a child may fully
develop a well-integrated personality. Coercion can

only have a negative effect on a person's self-
identification and self-realization. Clearly, the
emphasis is on "being" rather than on "doing."

Another Type II critic that has had substantial
publicity in the past few years is George Dennison. He
agrees with Holt and Neill that teachers should recognize
the humanity and uniqueness of each child. He adamantly

defends the child's right to not attend classes; this

lack of compulsion and coercion is the essence of

 

22A. S. Neill, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to
Child Rearipg (New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1960),
p. 356.

 

 

231bid., p. 348.

76

Dennison's educational posture. By helping several dis-
advantaged children to love themselves, he made it pos-
sible for them to learn, an accomplishment which the
public schools had deemed an impossibility for these
children. Dennison and the other teachers at the First
Street School treated the twenty-three students as "whole
children," rather than ministering to segments of their
total selves. "We conceived of ourselves as an environ-
ment for growth, and accepted the relationships between
the children and ourselves as being the very heart of

the school."24

Dennison clearly delineates the Type II
reform proposals when he describes the role of a school:
"The business of a school is not, or should not be, mere
instruction, but the life of the child."25 Once a
school concentrates on the life of the child, it must
come to terms with the notion of authority in the school.
Dennison asserts that children will develOp positive
relationships with adults who are more experienced and
knowledgeable than they are. From these relationships

a natural, organic structuring of the school will occur,
with children seeking out experienced, knowledgeable

adults who can assist them in attaining their own goals.

How much better it is to meander a bit--or a good
bit--letting the free play of minds, adult and child,

 

24Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 28.

 

251bid., p. 27.

77

takes its own very lively course! . . . The children
will feel closer to the adults, more secure, more
assured of concern and individual care. Too, their
own self-interest will lead them into positive
relations with the natural authority of adults, and
this is much to be desired, for natural authority is
a far cry from authority that is merely arbitrary.

. . . When all this takes on a positive instead of

a merely negative character, the children see the
adults as protectors and as sources of certitude,
approval, novelty, skills.26

In his search for identity, the child finds the adult as
an ally and a model who can assist him in his self-
realization.

Dennison asserts that schools have operated as
responses to various myths, the most damaging of which is
that learning is a result of teaching. He denies that the

progress of a child bears "a direct relation to methods

of instruction and internal relationships of curriculum."27

Type II critics can be distinguished from Type I critics
on this point; the latter apparently accept the myth.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Naturally
we want good teachers. Naturally we want a coherent
curriculum (we need not impose it in standardized
forms). But to cite these as the effective causes
of learning is wrong. The causes are in the child.
When we consider the powers of mind of a healthy
eight-year-old--the avidity of the senses, the
finesse and energy of observation, the effortless
concentration, the vivacious memory--we realize
immediately that these powers possess true magnitude
in the general scale of things.28

 

26 27

Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 73.

28Ibid.

 

78

Dennison centered on the relationships between children
and between adults and children, for he believed that by
doing so, learning will naturally occur. By creating a
positive environment--one that is accepting, active,
with definite but flexible demands--Dennison feels that
the formative powers of children and adolescents will be
liberated. In many ways Dennison is Goodmanesque in his
approach to learning, for the First Street School was an
expression of Paul Goodman's mini-school concept. I will
now turn to Type III critics, men who generally reject
the legitimacy of the school as the only culturally cer-

tified means for obtaining an education.

Type III

While Type I critics propose reforms in curricula
and methods, and Type II reformers suggest revisions that
emphasize expression of pupil interests, Type III critics
support societal alternatives to schooling. They reject
schooling as the necessary means of becoming a useful,
social being.29 By considering Paul Goodman's proposals,
we can recognize the major suggestions of Type III
reformers.

Goodman proposes a reconstruction of society that
will permit maximal individual growth with a minimum of

constraints. He criticizes the modern industrial society

 

29Illich, The Celebration of Awareness, p. 123.

 

79

and its educational establishment for its demands upon
people. Irrational conformity to our institutions and
culture is rejected on the grounds that such action is

detrimental to the growth of the individual and the

society.30

He argues that instead of pouring more money into
the present school establishment, alternatives to schooling
should be considered.

Fundamentally, there is no right education except
growing up into a worthwhile world. Indeed, our
excessive concern with problems of education at
present simply means that the grown-ups do not have
such a world. The poor youth of America will apt
become equal by rising through the middle class,
going to middle-class schools. . . . But also the
middle-class youth will not escape their increasing
exploitation and anomie in such schools.31

Goodman asserts that a society inevitably instructs its
youth and consequently we should concentrate our efforts
on preservation of its power to educate rather than
isolating youngsters in schools.
My own bias, however, is that education is going on
spontaneously anyway; it is itself part of the kaleid-

oscope of society. Youngsters are imitating and
identifying, aspiring to grow up, asking why,

 

30Jack Hruska, "An Analysis of Paul Goodman's
Conception of the Nature of Man As a Perspective on His
Educational Proposals" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Michigan State University, 1969).

31Goodman, Compglsory Mis—education, pp. 59-60.

 

 

80

demanding show me how. Adults are demonstrative,
helpful, ideal, or seeking to mold, exploit, or get
a following.

He proposes that formal schooling may be "a deliberate

intervention" upon the incidental learning which occurs

in society. Hence, he recommends abolition of the

present school establishment.33 1

The physical environment and social culture force
themselves on us, and the young are bound to grow

up to them well or badly. They always fundamentally
determine the curriculum in formal schooling; but
even if there is no schooling at all, they are the
focus of children's attention and interest; they

are what is there.

1'
1'4.
#9::- ~

Goodman recognizes that schooling has cloaked
itself with various non-educational functions, and he
sees the dissolution of the school system as a means of
making the entire society educational once again. As
long as society is deluded into thinking that learning
and education occur only in schools, enormous sums will
be misspent on a system "so fundamentally out of touch

that it has ceased to educate at all."35

 

32Goodman, The Community of Scholars, p. 211.

 

33Paul Goodman, "The Present Moment in Education,"
New York Review of Books, April 10, 1969, pp. 19-20.

 

34Ibid., p. 21.

35Paul Goodman, People or Personnel (New York:
Random House, 1963), p. 51.

 

81

Even though he has proposed mini-schools on the
order of Dennison's First Street School, Goodman views
them as alternatives which can be used by children and
adolescents if they wish, rather than being the standard
form for learning. He views these schools as opportun-

ities for youth to develop their "human powers to learn

36

and cope." However, he constantly speaks of the recon-

struction of society into a humane community as most pro-
ductive for education.

My own thinking is that

(l) Incidental education, taking part in the on-going
activities of society, should be the chief means of
learning.

(2) Most high schools should be eliminated, with
other kinds of communities of youth taking over

their sociable functions.

(3) College training should generally follow, not
precede, entry into the professions.

(4) The chief task of educators is to see that the
activities of society provide incidental education,
if necessary inventing new useful activities offering
new educational opportunities.

(5) The purpose of elementary pedagogy, through age
twelve, is to protect children's free growth, since
our community and families both pressure them too
much and do not attend to them enough.37

Goodman's suggestions for educational and societal reform
involve significant modifications of modern institutions,

so that they are responsive to the needs of all. His

 

36Goodman, "The Present Moment in Education,"

p. 19.

37Ibid.

82

convictions are evident in his judgment of a society: it
is bad if it is not educational.38
I shall now turn to another Type III reformer,

Ivan Illich, the director of CIDOC39

in Cuernavaca,
Mexico, and an outspoken critic of modern industrial
society. Illich also denounces the myth that most
learning results from teaching. He asserts that most
learning happens casually and suggests that incidental
education in the Goodmanesque manner is most fruitful.
Illich's desire for de-schooling society develops from
his observation that alternatives to formal schooling

do not exist in industrial societies. He condemns
schooling as a rite of passage which all must follow; the
ancient rites of initiation have been transformed into

a rite of passage, one that is continuous rather than
momentary as in primitive cultures. He views schooling
as an "enforced stay in the company of teachers, which
pays off in the doubtful privilege of more such company."40

Realistically, Illich recognizes the need for

skills in a highly industrialized society. Through his

 

38Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd (New York: Ran-

 

39Center for Intercultural Documentation.

40Ivan Illich, "Why We Must Abolish Schooling,"
New York Review of Books, July 2, 1970, p. 13.

 

‘3‘" “

83

reforms he envisions more opportunities for skill develop-
ment and incidental education.
A radical alternative to a schooled society requires
not only new formal mechanisms for the formal acqui-
sition of skills and their educational use. A de-
schooled society implies a new approach to incidental
or informaleducation.41
As a partial replacement for schools, Illich
recommends a matching of student and a highly skilled
person as a means for helping the student learn a skill
in which he desires proficiency.
Illich states that "neither individual learning
nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of

schooling."42

By discrediting self-education, the school
insures that it will have clients seeking to progress
through its barriers for the credentials necessary for
acceptance in society. "In school we are taught that
valuable learning is the result of attendance; that the
value of learning increases with the amount of input;
and, finally, that this value can be measured and docu-

43

mented by grades and certificates." Once this myth is

accepted, states Illich, the individual allows himself

 

411bid., p. 14.

42Illich, "Schooling: The Ritual of Progress,"

43Ibid.

 

84

to be measured in numerous ways. He conforms to all
manner of ranking, especially the consumer index.
But personal growth is not a measurable entity.
It is growth in disciplined dissidence, which
cannot be measured against any rod, or any cur-
riculum, nor compared to someone else's achievement.
In such learning one can emulate others only in
imaginative endeavor, and follow in their footsteps
rather than mimic their gait. The learning I prize
is immeasurable re-creation.4
Like Goodman, Illich proposes that the "edu-
cational quality of all institutions must increase

. "45
again.

In this manner, the paralyzing control that
the school has upon the legitimate, certified path to
learning will be broken, and the entire institutional
matrix will be responsible for providing opportunities
for learning. "There is no intrinsic reason why the edu-
cation that schools are now failing to provide could not
be acquired more successfully in the setting of the
family, of work and communal activity, in new kinds of
libraries and other centers that would provide the means

of learning."46

Summaty

Proposals for educational reform can be separated

into three categories. Type I reforms, advocated by

 

441516., p. 22.

45Illich, "Why We Must Abolish Schooling," p. 14.

46Illich, The Celebration of Awareness, p. 134.

 

 

85

Bruner and Silberman, involve curricular and method
revisions so that school material will be more easily
learned and the school climate will be more positive.
Type II reforms, proposed by Neill, Dennison, and Holt,
encompass efforts at developing relationships between
children and adults so that adults may facilitate learn-
ing. Children's interests determine the scope of learn-
ing. Type III reforms, suggested by Goodman and Illich,
involve profound changes in society's role in educating
youth. They recommend dismantling Of the present school
establishment and the creation of various alternatives

that would assist youth in their maturation.

CHAPTER VI

CRITIQUE OF REFORM PROPOSALS

In the previous chapter several "radical" reform
proposals were discussed, and the general thrust of each
educational reform was considered. The reforms were
categorized into three types, even though some overlapping
was noticeable. In this chapter, the investigator intends
to assess these clusters of reforms as to efficacy in
creating an environment in which student self-identification
and self-differentiation is possible. The major issues
to be considered, if the individual's opportunity for
self-identification is to increase, are the notions of
activity, privacy, wholeness of being, and individuality

of response.1

Issue I
The first major issue is the individual's right to
an active relationship with learning, knowledge, and

scholarship, and with other people. Although there are

 

lSee Chapters III and IV for a discussion of these
particular issues as they relate to economic and cultural
functioning of the school.

86

87

moments when a passive response is helpful, it is the
position of this analysis that unless one is intensely
involved in a learning situation, the knowledge gained
will be merely fleeting and have a miniscule influence
on one's continuous relationship with an ever-changing
environment and with others. Furthermore, a passive
relationship with others, as so often occurs in role
situations that dominate the interaction between school
personnel and students, contributes little to the matur-
ation and self-identification of those involved.

Bruner clearly envisions the difficulty of demand-
ing excellence in academic endeavors and at the same time
honoring "the diversity of talents we must educate."2 As
a Type I reformer, he seeks to maintain a classroom level
of attention that is neither apathy nor exhuberant fas-
cination or agitation.3 "Frenzied activity fostered by
the competitive project may leave no pause for reflection,
for evaluation, for generalization, while excessive order-
liness, with each student waiting passively for his turn,
produces boredom and ultimate apathy."4 As a remedy for
this situational problem, Bruner advocates an approach
that will stimulate all children to be interested in

learning, specifically learning what Bruner wishes. He

 

2Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education (New
York: Random House, 1960i) P. 70.

 

3 4

Ibid., p. 72. Ibid.

88

admits that "interest in the material to be learned is
the best stimulus to learning, rather than such external
goals as grades or later competitive advantage."5 How-
ever, he rejects self-selected learning objectives as
impractical. Instead, he seeks to find means to stimulate
designated information transferral. Bruner seems to
accept the notion of social engineering as a basis for
his curricular efforts. In other words, students should
be manipulated to entertain interest in subjects deemed
beneficial to them. The passivity issue seems to be
ignored.

Silberman, another Type I reformer, promotes the
informal education approach of English infant schools as
a means for allowing children to take an active role in
their learning. However, once the student is in a later
elementary school, Silberman's approach seems to match
Bruner's social engineering manner. Though he avidly
asserts the right of students to have educational goals
that differ from teacher's goals, he also seems to pre-
scribe goals that all students should achieve. Whether
forcing knowledge and skills upon a student makes them
"second nature" to him or causes him to revile such
efforts and thereby close himself off from whatever
benefits might accrue from possessing those skills or

that knowledge is open to question. In essence, the

 

51bid., p. 14.

89

activity issue involves the degree of manipulation that
one will permit in attempting to educate children and
adolescents. Type I critics opt for a high degree of
social engineering, because they apparently feel social
chaos would result if all youngsters did not have the
cultural absolutes taught to them. Such an approach
seems to lead to a continuation of the degree of pas-
sivity existent in our schools today.
Type II reformers argue that student selection
of learning interests insures greater activity on the
part of each student and also decreases the amount of
boredom that high schoolers frequently experience in
school.6
Schools should be a place where children learn what
they most want to know, instead of what we think
they ought to know. The child who wants to know
something remembers it and uses it once he has it;
the child who learns something to please or appease
someone else forgets it when the need for pleasing
or the danger of not appeasing is past.7

An active eXperience in a learning situation of one's

choice certainly will assist in the development of one's

identity and will make the knowledge or skills gained

that much more meaningful. An analogy might be made to

the doctoral dissertation; a self-selected problem is

 

6During a discussion, some high school students
estimated that many students were bored over half the
school day in Linden.

7John Holt, How Children Fail (New York: Pitman
Publishing Co., 1964), p.4I75.

 

90

chosen, and the student receives appropriate guidance

in the resolution of the problem. Coercion and passivity
are kept to a minimum. Significant learning occurs in
such a situation. Of course, one might argue that such
independent work is dependent upon background knowledge
and that children would not have necessary knowledge.
However, it seems that children learn much prior to
school entry, and therefore they have sufficient back-
ground to begin inquiries into their interests.

Holt contends that the school, as it is typically
constituted, creates an environment of passivity that is
difficult to escape. "School feels like this to chil-
dren: it is a place where ttgmeake you go and where
tpgy tell you to do things and where ttgy_try to make
your life unpleasant if you don't do them or don't do
them right."8 In an environment that emphasizes accep-
tance of others' demands rather than self-selection of
objectives, an aura of passivity seems inevitable.

Dennison also asserts the right of self-selection
of activities by children and adolescents. He argues
that teachers as role figures in schools can "retard his
child learning and complicate his growth."9 They can

"apply physical coercion to his freedom to move, to

 

81bid., p. 24.

9Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 95.

 

91

express his feelings, to act upon his doubts, to give or
refuse his attention--all of which will convince him that
learning is an act of disembodied will or of passive
attention, neither of which he can find within himself."10
Not only is a child's inherent curiosity checked, but
his appetite for learning is unsatisfied. To eliminate
as much as possible such a passive relationship to learn-
ing and to foster an active self-realization, Dennison
proposes small schools that enable children to delve into
their interests and to develop profound relationships
with others. The child's active quest for knowledge
will only be limited by the lack of resourcefulness of
the teacher-counselors with whom he comes into contact
and by any environmental constrictions that may be present.
Type III critics suggest that the notion of a
school in itself limits the child or adolescent in his
self-realization, for the school seeks to decrease rather
than expand the level of differences that exist between
children or adolescents. Consequently, they propose a
program of individualized learning in which a student
would select an interest to be explored with the assis-
tance of a counselor or master in that area. Apprentice-
ships or internships for adolescents would insure that

they had an active relationship in their learning. By

 

loIbid., p. 96.

92

demanding that the entire society be educational, Type III
critics seek to expand the opportunities for self—
realization.

Such critics as Goodman and Illich assert that the
school has had to develop many manipulative techniques
merely to capture the interest of students. If their
suggestions for competitive, pluralistic opportunities
of learning are accepted, social engineering methods
would no longer need be employed. Energy expended on
the passive control of a captive clientele could then
be diverted to eXpansion of Opportunities for learning.

It seems that both teachers and students would then have

increased opportunities for self-realization.

Issue II

The second issue is the degree Of psychological and
physical privacy afforded students by the school. Recent
revelations about military surveillance of civilians
indicate the extent of prying into people's lives that
occurs. The current controversy concerning socio-economic
questionnaires administered to school-age children in
Michigan points out the degree to which the school has
insinuated itself into the lives and thoughts of children.
Besides the aforementioned psychological infringements,
physical privacy is almost non-existent in schools.

Silberman skirts this issue almost entirely. He

does not indicate his attitude toward compulsory attendance

93

rules, a means of eliminating Opportunities for physical
privacy during the day. In most schools, even in many
informal schools, provision for physical solitude is
non-existent. Children and adolescents generally spent
their days in close proximity to others; the only alter-
natives in Silberman's scheme of educational reform would
seem to be skipping school or being ill.

A Type I critic, Silberman suggests that testing
and evaluation of students is absolutely necessary in
order to insure that students do learn in school. How-
ever, he does admit that testing is usually not a diag-

nostic tool but a rating procedure.ll

"What is wrong with
the present system is not the use of grades per se, but
the fact that the awarding of a grade has been divorced
from the larger function of evaluation, thereby preventing
it from fulfilling its proper educational purpose."12
Evaluation is important because it enables a teacher to
determine if he is achieving his objective. Yet, he also
admits that teachers and students may not have the same
educational objectives. Apparently, the teacher's Objec-
tives take precedence over student objectives, to prevent

an anarchical situation. It seems that Silberman views

students as not-yet-persons whose self-evaluations are

 

llSilberman, Crisis in the Classroom, p. 138.

 

lzIbid., p. 347.

94

not meaningful and whose mental states are constantly
open to school investigation.

It is uncertain what position Type I critics
would take concerning information storage about students
in dossiers. It seems that they would continue present
school policies regarding such data collection and
storage.

Type II critics generally reject the notion of
compulsory school attendance. A. S. Neill maintains that
children should have the opportunity to attend or stay
away from classes.

No pupil is compelled to attend lessons. But if
Jimmy comes to English on Monday and does not

make an appearance again until Friday of the follow-
ing week, the others quite rightly object that he

is holding back the work, and they may throw him

out for impeding progress.

Dennison also rejects the requirement of compulsory
attendance. He asserts that the attention focused on
compulsory attendance--the limitation of physical privacy--
neglects the basic issue of relationships with the young.
He believes that children and adolescents would not abandon
their "acquisition of skills and knowledge and the par-
ticipation in large-scale social life with their peers."14

Yet he recognizes that at times they do need assistance

and direction. Adults would be there to assist them in

 

13Ne111, Summerhill, p. 13.

 

14Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 110.

 

95

their self-realization, for "teaching is one of the few
natural functions of adults."15 However, the children
could reject the demands of adults.
Nevertheless, all of the children could refuse.
They needed a good reason to do it, and they had
to stand up to the adults. But they discovered
that good reasons were respected. Boredom, for
instance, is a good reason. The beautiful days of
spring are good reasons. An ardent desire for
something else is a good reason. Anxiety is a good
reason. SO is a headache or a toothache. And
there are many things which if they arise during
the course of a lesson, deserve and must be given
full precedence, such things as considerations of
justice, self-respect, friendship. . . . The 16
essential thing was the absence of compulsion.
Type II critics denounce the frequent testing and
evaluation that occurs in most schools. Children are not
permitted moments of physical and psychological privacy;
they are constantly judged on their behavior and achieve-
ment. Teachers are generally Observed and evaluated only
two or three times a year; children and adolescents are
under constant observation and evaluation. Such con-
ditions would produce anxiety in any person. Hence,
many Type II critics suggest a significant increase in
the opportunities for physical and psychological privacy
within the school setting.
Physical and psychological privacy would reach its
acme if the suggestions of Type III critics are accepted.

Goodman and Illich recommend free access to learning

Opportunities that have been self-selected. Psychological

 

lsIbid. 161616., p. 114.

96

privacy would occur because children and adolescents would
be free to withdraw at any time from their chosen center
of learning.

Illich divides learning into two areas: skill
development and education. The former involves a program
aimed at a specific skill that a student seeks to master;
the latter involves learning for learning's sake. The
former can be stimulated through specific arrangements
with teachers who are masters of a skill (swimming,
drafting, and computer programming are examples of such
skills). The latter would occur through the matching of
people who wish to discuss a film or a recent book

(Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man or Reich's Greening of

 

 

America are examples). In this manner, a person's
physical whereabouts are his responsibility, as is his
psychological state. Evaluation would occur with regards
to skill development so that the individual would know if
he was competent in a particular skill.

Illich believes that the poor would benefit most
from such reforms. They would be able to choose the
skills they wish to develop without subjecting themselves
to the compulsory nature of the school, and they would
probably eliminate "psychological impotence" as an

17

obstacle to overcome in their self-identification. If

they have opportunities for unobserved, unevaluated

 

l7Illich, "Why We Must Abolish Schooling," p. 9.

97

moments, poor children may more readily accept the evalu-
ations that might occur in their skill development situ-

ations. Whether such reforms are possible is uncertain.

Issue III

 

The third issue that must be considered is the
degree to which individuality of response is tolerated
and irrational conformity reduced. The advanced indus-
trial state generally supports standardization of behavior
and thought, even though educational policy statements
consistently promote "doing your own thing" within the
system.

Bruner and Silberman give lip service to indi-
viduality but concentrate on attainment of accepted
competence--which in most cases means a standard that
all must attain.

Ideally, schools should allow students to go ahead
in different subjects as rapidly as they can. But
the administrative problems that are raised when one
makes such an arrangement possible are almost
inevitably beyond the resources that schools have
available for dealing with them.18
Instead of suggesting means that would permit such indi-
vidualization of learning, Bruner asserts that the schools
are not able to permit these responses. Hence, the stu-

dents must conform to the system's inadequacies: they

are to play the role of measured-pace learner.

 

18Bruner, The Process of Education, p. 11.

 

 

98

Silberman suggests that learning will probably be
more effective if it develops from a learner's interests.
Yet, in his promotion of the informal education approach,
he asserts the central role of the teacher. "And that
responsibility means educating them: transmitting,

creating, and evoking the skills, values, attitudes,

“I

and knowledge that will help them grow into mature, 1

19 '

creative, and happy adults." However, what occurs

when the teacher's goals are not the self-selected goals

 

of students? Silberman maintains that "there can be, and i
indeed are, schools in which students have considerable

freedom to set their own goals and follow their own

interests, without the teachers in any way surrendering
tp§t£_responsibility to set external goals of their own."20
It seems inconsistent to maintain that a learner may have
goals that differ from a teacher's goals without any con-
flict occurring. It seems quite logical to assume that a
student will maximize his learning if he and his teacher
perceive the same goals as objectives of the learning
situation. Otherwise, either the teacher will assert

authoritarian control or the learner will relinquish his

goal or both.

 

19Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom, p. 210. I

 

201bid., p. 199. 1

99

Type II critics emphasize that individuality of
response and reduction of standard role behavior are best
accomplished or stimulated in an environment that encourages
"reality of encounter" and a "continuum of experience."21
Most children and adolescents encounter something quite
different in their school life:
We adults destroy most of the intellectual and creative
capacity of children by the things we do to them or
make them do. We destroy this capacity above all by
making them afraid, afraid of not doing what other
people want, of not pleasing, of making mistakes, of
failing, of being wrong.22

To succeed in school a student usually has one path

available to him: high academic achievement, that is,

high grades that frequently result from acceptance of

teachers' goals to the exclusion of one's own goals.

Type II reformers propose small schools that will
enable students to develop relationships with teachers
and other learners to such a degree that they will feel
free to express their feelings without fear.

No teacher is just a teacher, no student just a stu-
dent. The life meaning which joins them is the sine
ua non for the process of education, yet precisely
tEis is destroyed in the public schools because every-

thing is standardized and the persons are made to
vanish into their roles.

 

21Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 97.

 

22Holt, How Children Fail, p. 167.

23Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 113.

. awL-‘Vl‘ 5%!“

 

100

Critics like Holt and Dennison link standardized response
and role behavior with privacy and docility. If a student
has no private moments and is expected to conform to the
requirements of the school, the most logical response is
role behavior. It minimizes the chance of conflict, for
schools generally are unable to deal with uniquely active F
students.

It destroys most of their sense of their own worth,
if they have any; if they don't, it makes it almost
impossible for them to get any. It convinces them
that they, and certainly almost everyone else, are
not fit for reSponsibility or worthy of respect and
trust. By denying them the chance to have, and use,
and enjoy, and value their own freedom, it persuades
them, or makes them easy to persuade, that true
personal freedom is at least valueless and at most
dangerous.24

 

 

{L— ‘0 It ‘-
"

Limitation of uniqueness of response and the cultivation
of role behavior represent two methods of restriction of
student self-realization. Schools offered as substitutes
by Type II critics seem to stimulate self-identification
through provision for individualistic responses to learn-
ing and unique goals.

Type III critics agree with Holt and Dennison that
children and adolescents are limited in the types of
behavior and responses that they may manifest in school,
but they insist that mini-schools cannot provide enough
opportunities for self-realization. They suggest that

only by opening students to the cultural situation and

 

24Holt, The Underachieving School, p. 137.

 

101

freely allowing them to make use of the society as an edu-
cational environment can self-realization for all occur.
Goodman criticizes Type I critics for their attempts
at social manipulation of students.
Social engineering is uneducational in principle.
It pre-structures behavior and can become discrim-
inating, graceful, and energetic only if the organism r
creates its own structures as it goes along.25
Illich further expounds the theme of alternative structures .

for educational endeavors, most notably a matching of

people who seek to discuss a book or an article. Role

 

I
IF

behavior would generally be eliminated; learners would
not be inhibited in their responses, for they would have
chosen their objectives. "There is no intrinsic reason
why the education that schools are now failing to provide
could not be acquired more successfully in the setting of
the family, of work and communal activity, in new kinds of
libraries and other centers that would provide the means
of learning."26
Goodman accepts the reforms of Type II critics who
propose mini-schools in which a reality of encounter
could occur, but he seems to feel that they may not have
enough impact or not be diverse enough to satisfy the

various interests of children and adolescents. By opting

for a cultural revolution in which societal institutions

 

25Goodman, ”The Present Moment in Education," p. 16.

26Illich, The Celebration of Awareness, p. 134.

 

102

would reclaim their educational functions, Goodman seeks

to promote continuous self-identification through one's

life. Though they seem politically unthinkable, these

reform proposals would be educationally effective, for

they would eliminate the destructive aspects of the com-

pulsory school while diffusing the positive aspects r

throughout the society.
If we set up a structure that strictly channels
energy, directs attention, and regulates movement
(which are "good things"), we may temporarily
inhibit impulse, wishing, daydreaming, and random-
ness (which are "bad things"); but we also thereby g
jeopardize initiative, intrinsic motivation, imagi-

nation, invention, self—reliance, freedom from inhi-
bition, and finally even health and common sense.

 

Issue IV

The fourth and final issue to be considered is the
degree of fragmentation of experience that would result
from the implementation of the aforementioned reform pro-
posals. Not only must the proposals be considered for
their negative effect of fragmentation but also for their
possible positive effect Of engendering wholeness of being.

Type I critics concentrate upon curricular and
methodological reform tp_ygggg. Bruner has concentrated
his efforts on the development of educational materials
that are epistemologically sound and that can be taught

in a scholarly manner even to youngsters. His MACOS

 

27

Goodman, "The Present Moment in Education, p. 16.

103

project intends to stimulate inquiry into human existence
by means of a special program in social studies. Yet, he
does not seem to be concerned with the integration of
knowledge from different curricular areas. History is
history, and mathematics is mathematics, and never the
twain shall meet. Silberman likewise ignores the issue; -
he discusses modern advances in physics, mathematics, and
the social sciences without examining the possibilities A

of combination or union of different disciplines. Ignor-

 

1:"- ~ .

ing the relationships between segments of the curriculum
is similar to neglecting the relationships between various
societal institutions as to their educational potential.
By assuming that knowledge can be compartmentalized into
separate and distinct disciplines, one rejects the unity
of environment in which one lives. Consequently, one
expects life to be fragmented and partitionable; what
one does at work need not have any resemblance to or
influence on one's home life. Children in informal
schools would seem to continue this fragmentation of
experience, and hence this approach should be rejected
on these grounds.

Type II critics assert that their proposals for
educational reform take account of this fragmentation
and attempt to remedy the situation. Dennison focuses
on separateness when he writes:

The experience of learning is an experience of
wholeness. The child feels the unity of his own

104

powers and the continuum of persons. His parents,
his friends, his teachers, and the vague human shapes
of his future form one world for him, and he feels
the adequacy and reality of his powers within this
world. Anything short of this wholeness is not true
learning.2

Dennison attacks the notion of fragmentation as it is
usually manifested by a disparate set of subjects that
children must learn. "Now what is so precious about a
curriculum (which no one assimilates anyway), or a
schedule of classes (which piles boredom upon failure

and failure upon boredom) that these things should super-

29

sede the actual needs of the child?" Clearly Dennison

feels that the focus of a school should be the uniqueness
and wholeness of each child. His rejection of the pigeon-
holing of children and of knowledge which occurs in most
schools does not leave a void; he asserts that a natural
order arises, based on certain facts of the human con-
dition:

that the mind does not function separately from the
emotions, but thought partakes of feeling and feel-
ing of thought; that there is no such thing as
knowledge er se, knowledge in a vacuum, but rather
all knowleggg’ig possessed and must be expressed by
individuals; that the human voices preserved in
books belong to the real features of the world, and
that children are so powerfully attracted to this
world that the very motion of their curiosity comes
through to us as a form of love; that an active

 

28Dennison, The Lives of Children, p. 75.

 

291bid., p. 17.

 

105

moral life cannot be evolved except where people

are free to express their feelings and act upon

the insights of conscience.30
Type II critics such as Dennison certainly stress the
interrelationship of feeling and thinking; in this manner
they are reacting to the fragmentation of feeling and
thinking that is commonplace in public schools. Their F
proposals seem to counteract the separation of a child's A a

or adolescent's thought processes from his emotional

outlook on life that generally occurs in school. Con-

 

cern for cognitive achievement obliterates concern for
emotional development in most schools, and Type II
critics present proposals that seem to minimize frag-
mentation of experience.

Type III reformers seem to assume that frag-
mentation of experience and dissection of being occur
as an inevitable result of a school's existence. To
them, the very nature of the school as an institution
demands a fragmented outlook by its students for their
success and survival. Goodman and Illich agree with
Type II critics that the contemporary school seriously
and negatively affects a student's natural unity of
being, feeling, and thinking, but they do not accept a
humanized school as a viable alternative, especially for

adolescents. They assert that a cultural revolution in 1
I

 

3oIbid., p. 9.

106

which societal institutions reclaim their educative
functions will eliminate the need for fragmentation that
the school promotes.
Fundamentally, there is no right education except
growing up into a worthwhile world. Indeed, our
excessive concern with problems of education at
present simply means that the grown-ups do not
have such a world.31 T
They propose a reordering and a revitalization of the
culture and society to make them conducive to the matur-

ation and development of integrated, self-realizing

individuals.

 

Illich suggests that his proposals will eliminate
many of the ills of schooling--especially the fragmen-
tation process that occurs--by dismantling the center of
such power, the school.

School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus
depriving education of reality and work of crea-
tivity. School prepares for the alienating institu-
tionalization of life by teaching the need to be
taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose
their incentive to grow in independence; . . .
School either keeps men and women for life or makes
sure that they will be kept by some institution.32
Illich and Goodman assert that the manipulative power of
institutions such as the school is so great that alter-
natives to them are difficult to envision. "So persua-

sive is the power of the institutions we have created

that they shape not only our preferences, but actually

 

31Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 59.

32Illich, ”Schooling: The Ritual of Progress,"

p. 24.

107

our sense of possibilities."33

They quickly reject the
Type I reforms as mere tinkering with the school estab-
lishment, but Goodman at least accepts some Type II pro-
posals, such as the small school for a limited number of
students, as possible reforms in view of the political
nature of the school.

Type III suggestions are generally so profound
changes that they involve a significant rupture from
existing institutions. Such reforms are politically
unthinkable, even though they seem potentially most

effective in creating opportunities for self-identification

and self-realization.

Summaty

An analysis of the three categories of "radical"
educational reforms indicates that Type II proposals are
realistically the most effective. The pluralistic
school system that would ensue implementation of these
reforms offers the maximal opportunities for self-
identification. These proposals are both politically
feasible and educationally effective.

Type I suggestions are inadequate and unpro-
ductive of opportunities for self-identification. Sil-
berman, Bruner and others concentrate on information

transferral; they intend to educate youngsters in humane

 

33Illich, The Celebration of Awareness, p. 160.

 

 

108

ways, which is admirable, but they do not give youth much
control in their educational endeavors.
Type III proposals are politically unthinkable.

Such reforms seem educationally efficacious, for they
allow for maximal self-determination of learning environ-
ments. However, since the school is a societal insti- F
tution, educational reform of this nature would neces-
sarily require a transformation Of other societal i

institutions, an unlikely event, given present and

 

immediately foreseeable conditions. It is, of course,
conceivable that the future course of events may present
a more favorable political climate for Type III reforms--
one in which problems are perceived as sufficiently

severe to warrant sweeping educational reform measures.

CHAPTER VII

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this exploratory study, a survey of pertinent
literature has substantiated a developing movement of
"radical" educational criticism. Men with divergent
views of education and its potentiality for reform are
in general agreement that the public school has failed
and is failing many students. Most critics recognize the
lack of opportunities for self-identification in school
settings, and they suggest remedies that they feel will
allow the full development of children and adolescents.

Prior to a differentiation of these critics into
three distinct types, the investigator discussed the
influence of the economy and the culture upon school
functioning. The economic sector was shown to expect
schools to fulfill non-educational functions such as
custodial care, standardization and fragmentation of
school experiences, and consumership indoctrination. In
meeting these obligations the school limits a child's or
adolescent's opportunity for self-identification. Since
the school is situated in an institutional matrix, it

promotes and demands behavior that is adaptive to other

109

110

societal institutions. Our culture expects schools to
produce individuals who exhibit such socially adaptive
behavior. Those who deviate from these norms of behavior
can expect physical or psychological penalties.

"Radical" reform proposals were then distinguished

into three distinct types. Type I reforms concentrate

u

attention upon the needs of society for trained manpower
and seek to minimize the harsh effects of external demands

upon the individual. Type II proposals emphasize the

 

mutuality of individual and societal development, and
they seek to provide multiple learning environments so
that students will have available options. Type III sug-
gestions challenge the notion that learning must take
place in a school. They recommend societal reform as
the means to educational reform, and some Type III critics

even suggest abolition of schooling.

Conclusions

 

An initial inference of this study is the diagnosis
of separate and distinct elements within the "radical"
education movement. All three Types of reformers recog-
nize the critical situation of American education today
and call for significant revamping of the institution.
However, there is considerable disagreement as to the
strategies to be employed.

Secondly, in view of the institutional matrix in

which the school is an element, and in view of the

111

political nature of the school as the only legitimate
rite of passage to adulthood, Type II proposals are the
most effective and most acceptable suggestions. They
recognize that children, adolescents, and adults do have
individual rights and unique interests, while at the same
time realizing that individuals exist in a society and
have obligations to it. They respect the worth of each
person in his separateness and uniqueness, and they
attempt to develop autonomy and to encourage curiosity
and authenticity in individuals. Furthermore, these
reformers seek to relate learning to the environment of
the child or adolescent, whether that environment be
local, neighborhood, home, or world society.

Such proposals have been implemented in various
cities and rural areas in the United States and Canada.
Examples are George Dennison's First Street School, the
Children's Community in Ann Arbor, and numerous "free
schools" that emphasize reality of encounter and a con-
tinuum of experience. These schools seek to eliminate
external reinforcements for thinking and acting and to
develop COOperative relationships among individuals.
The intent and operation of these schools is conducive
to student self-identification and eventual self-
realization.

Thirdly, Type I suggestions are inadequate and

unproductive of significant opportunities for

xm' J .M": a ' I

 

. 'i—M‘

112

self-identification. They are ineffective even though
they are a means of creating a less harsh, more enjoyable
school environment. Silberman, Bruner, and others con-
tinue to expect schools to concentrate on information
transferral and skill development; they continue to
support the centrality of the teacher in the classroom
by advocating reforms that do not alter the teacher's
role in the classroom. Though suggested Type I practices
are certainly an improvement over current conduct, they
are not sufficient if the school is to honor the indi-
vidual student's right to and attempt at self-
identification.

Type I proposals have been accepted by various
groups as a most efficacious means of renewal of American
education. However, if one recognizes the status quo
stance of groups, such as the New York City teachers
union, that have endorsed Silberman's suggestions, it
can be admitted that many Type I reforms are merely
tinkerings with the present system.

Bruner's interests are symbolic of other Type I
reformers. He is concerned with improvement of the
schools rather than with ways to educate our youth. Con-
sequently, his suggestions presume the continuation of
the monopolistic system of public education that exists.

Though they seem to have possible maximum long-

term benefits for the education of individuals, Type III

113

proposals are politically untenable in our present
society. They presume a previous transformation of
other contemporary institutions. Illich recognizes
this necessity, for he identifies himself as a cultural
revolutionary who believes reality is the artificial
by-product of present institutions. These institutions
ignore individual desires and pursue their own short-
term ends. To guarantee individual autonomy and self-
identification he proposes an extensive reordering of
priorities and supplanting of institutions. There is
little likelihood that an abrupt change of contemporary
institutions is about to occur, and hence Type III pro-

posals are utopian and politically unrealistic.

Recommendations

 

In view of the school's role in our society, a
study of the degree to which the public school is
accepted as the only culturally approved means Of
achieving adulthood by different groups is recommended.
Such a study may indicate the amount of support "radical"
educational reforms would receive and the crucial pub-
lics that must be influenced or persuaded if such reforms
are to occur.

Second, school reform involves renewal of a
political institution. It is recommended that perti-

nent research findings regarding political reform be

 

114

analyzed for potential transferability to the implemen-
tation of school reforms.

Third, since self-identification and self-
realization of individuals is important for societal
development, a study of psychological and physical
environments conducive to self-identification is imper- r1
ative. Model programs should be then implemented to
evaluate their efficacy and viability.

Fourth, a study of students attending Type I

 

IT

and Type II schools is recommended. It would determine
whether certain characteristics of student behavior
predominate in either Type school. A possible result
is the identification of school environments conducive
to students who exhibit certain behavioral patterns.
Finally, a study of the values inherent in each
type of "radical" reform proposal is suggested. It seems
apparent that these critics have different value systems,
and it is also possible that critics of a certain cate-
gory may differ with others of that same category. Such
a study would be helpful in understanding each category's

position and suggestions for educational reform.

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