A few weeks back I was having a conversation with a friend about education. My argument was: sending people to school doesn't make a blind bit of difference in regards how well-educated they are.
He wasn't buying it.
I was stating my case a bit extremely (as I'll no doubt do in the following paragraphs), but essentially I was giving my true opinion. I've made the argument before. That mass literacy is a consequence of the printing press. Not a consequence of the introduction of formal education. I've likened it to mobile phones. Most people in today's society are mobile phone literate, yet no one is having formal lessons in how to use a mobile phone.
People have access to the technology. They want/need to use mobile phones for various reasons. So they learn to the standard required for whatever it is that they want to do. Naturally some people are smarter and more able than others. Likewise, some will be more/less interested in using a mobile phone than others. So there's a natural variation in ability/mobile phone literacy.
I would make the observation that it would be similar with reading and writing. If school was completely abolished tomorrow, people would still learn how to read and write. As they'd just take it upon themselves to do it. As they do with mobile phones. Again, they have access to the technology (books, laptop keyboards, pens, paper, all the written words that surround them from birth, on shop fronts and t-shirts, and so forth). And they would naturally want/need to read, to enjoy all those things, and engage with the world that surrounds them. Again, with some people naturally being more able than others, and some needing more informal help than others. Just as an old person may need a family relative to help them out with their smartphone now and then. I think it's even possible that without formal education getting in the way, society would be even more literate as a whole.
Now this is a hard thing for a person to grasp. My friend definitely wasn't swallowing it. However, it betrays a real lack of faith in human capacity on the part of people who can't grasp it.
Do you really think people wouldn't want to learn how to read a letter or type a text? That they'd happily go through life not knowing how to text a friend, or a member of the opposite sex?
They take it upon themselves to learn how to send one, why wouldn't they take it upon themselves to learn how to read one?
Do you really think people wouldn't want to know how to read the latest news headline, or the names on the shirts of their favourites footballers - or their own name even? And do you really think parents wouldn't want their children to know how to read and write; and that, in the absence of school, they'd simply not bother trying to help them learn?
In fact, even now schools still place responsibility for reading and writing squarely on the parents. "You need to read to little Billy more at home," etc. Parents, in turn, often sit back, thinking, "I send them to school, I do my bit. The teachers know better than me, so I'll leave it to them." A fatal mistake. As the correlation between homelife and success in school is all too apparent. (Or to a parent perhaps you could say.) The kids with pro-active parents doing well; the kids with feckless parents faring badly - and the kids from feckless parents generally remaining feckless themselves, in spite of ten years of schooling.
If you consider what the average person leaves school with you'll see that it's just the basic stuff they would've needed anyway in everyday life. They are able to read and write well enough to read a magazine or send a text. They can do maths well enough to pay for their shopping, or to tell the time. And little more.
For example, people often spend five years learning French. Yet can't actually speak French to any real degree when they leave school. Why is this? It's because they have no need/want to learn it. It's not useful for everyday life, so people don't make the effort to take it on board. Meaning it's all pretty much a pointless going-through-the-motions exercise. I would bet good money that things would be little different were there no formal school at all. That people would still reach adulthood with the same basic levels of maths and English needed in everyday life. As it's everyday life that drives people to learn these things, not school.
Again though, this will be hard to swallow for almost all people. As we're so ingrained with this idea that general literacy is a gift of the education system.
I would say, try this thought experiment:
Imagine you live in a world where everyone has an hour of 'mobile phone lessons' each week, from the moment they enter the school system. Then imagine someone like me coming along and saying, "Y'know, all this is pointless. You could scrap all these lessons and people would still be just as mobile phone literate as they are now."
What would you think?
Would your reaction be, "No, but how would anyone know how to send a text or install an app if we didn't have lessons teaching them!" ?
It Really Is Like Religion
Take praying. Praying is good, and doing it - and encouraging others to do it - is good. However, society/states see this goodness and then try to force everyone to do it. For example, Muslims have to pray five times a day. I would argue that you can't really force people to pray though. Sure, you can force people to turn up at a church or mosque. You can force them to get on their knees and do some of the performative acts associated with praying. But, you can't force their mind (or perhaps soul) to contemplate God. That's something that a person can only do themselves, through choice and desire. It's internal to the person.
It's similar with education. You can force someone into a classroom. You can force them to sit at a desk in front of an open book. But you can't force the mind inside that person to seek that knowledge. Yes, some of the people in the classroom may be choosing to learn whilst they're there, just as some of the people in the church may be choosing to pray. But those people - who are choosing - would be doing it anyway. So they don't need to be forced.
Everyone else is just doing a performative act. It's a counterproductive charade of true learning. A cargo cult false imitation, of what genuine learning (or prayer) actually is. People are so enamoured with the cargo cult charade though that they cannot disassociate actual learning from the appearance of learning. Hence, when someone like me steps up and says, "This is all pointless." The cry comes back, "So you think people should just stop learning?! That it would be better if no one learned anything!"
As if I'm arguing against learning (or praying) itself.
"If we didn't force people, no one would do it!"
Yet none of those people are actually doing it. They're just going through the motions. It's a silly dress-up cargo cult. That educates people in actuality about as much as a straw aeroplane flies.
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