The highest purpose of public education & social cohesion
Part seven in a ten-part series on the topic of public education in a liberal society.
This post is the sixth full exchange between myself and Patrick J. Casey on the role of public education in a liberal society. Read the introduction to learn more about the impetus for this project and our aims for the exchange. Click here to read the first full exchange, click here to read the second full exchange, click here to read the third full exchange, click here to read the fourth full exchange, and click here to read the fifth full exchange.
Our first full exchange focused on the topic of mandatory civic education and defined what we mean when we speak of liberal society; the second exchange outlined some assumptions we have about education; the third exchange dug into areas of agreement and disagreement between Patrick and me, mostly surrounding whether to reform or rebuild our educational system; in the fourth exchange, per Patrick’s request, I lay out my vision for public schooling to which Patrick responds; and in the fifth exchange we share our views on accountability and what ought to be the purpose of public schooling. In this exchange, we go deeper into the question of the highest purpose (telos) of public education and whether schools are an appropriate means to create social cohesion.
Patrick,
I think you would enjoy reading the work of Ashley Berner. She has studied how other countries go about civic education, and her central argument focuses on the necessity of a plurality of schools, along with a national curriculum—see here and here. Her basic argument is that different types of schools (religious, secular, those focused on a specific culture, etc., and even homeschooling) should all operate within the public system, thus receive tax-payer dollars, and teach the same content-rich curriculum, in addition to curriculum related to their unique character (i.e., religious education). She argues that pluralistic societies should embrace their pluralism via the school system but be unified by sharing a common body of knowledge. She argues, for example, that students in religious schools should learn about evolution—the students can poke holes in it all they want but they must understand the theory—and vice versa for religious texts in secular schools. I am definitely sympathetic to her argument. I am hesitant to embrace a national curriculum, but if the underlying goal was to focus on high-quality, primary source texts, I could get on board. Although I cannot envision a scenario in which the entire country could get on board. What are your thoughts?
Regarding the purpose of schooling, of the ones I wrote about, I would choose democratic equality—i.e., preparation for self-government. Basically, I think that civic education should be the basis of public school education. What follows is the article (minus the introduction and conclusion) that I submitted to City Journal, followed by (after the second ****) what school curriculum, pedagogy, etc. might look like if schools prioritize civic education. I have also considered writing a piece arguing, using Plato’s Republic, that schooling ought to be centered around civic education because living in a free society is demanding, and if democracy is not treated with care it can morph into tyranny.
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Schools are both a public good (benefiting the public) and private good (benefiting the individual). And there are many stakeholders pulling the purpose of public schools in different directions. Parents, students, policymakers, employers, and school faculty and staff all have a stake in the outcome of public education, but they don’t always agree on its ultimate purpose. Is it social mobility—preparation for higher social positions? Social efficiency—preparation for the workforce? Civic education—preparation for self-governance in a democratic society? Or social justice—emancipation from various forms of oppression? In some ways, these purposes converge, but when given the same weight of importance, they are ultimately in conflict.
Schools can satisfy the four competing purposes and their adherents, but to do so they must prioritize the one purpose that will accomplish the others. They must settle on one as the highest purpose, the telos. Without a clear vision for the end of an education—to climb the social ladder, to get a job, to understand and participate in a democracy, or emancipation from oppression—developing a coherent path for how to organize the content of public schools becomes impossible. When it comes to choosing a curriculum, establishing cohesive methods of teaching and learning, or setting standards that are distinct and measurable, there can be only one highest purpose of public schools.
Think of public education as mirroring the three sectors of society—market (also referred to as business), government, and civil. Simply defined: The market represents private sector corporations that sell goods and services. The government represents the branches of government and taxpayer-funded institutions that provide services to citizens. And the civil sector represents nonprofit and fraternal organizations, volunteer associations, grassroots initiatives, and religious and familial institutions. These three sectors are distinct, and they overlap. Imagine a Venn Diagram in which the circles of government and market overlap, market and civil overlap, and civil and government overlap. And in the center, all three sectors intersect.
Each of the four purposes of education prepare students to participate in one or more of the three sectors. The social efficiency purpose of public schools is preparing students to take up needed roles in the market. This purpose may also prepare students to work for the government or nonprofit organizations, but the primary aim is preparation for work. The social mobility purpose also prepares students for the workforce, with the specific goal of improving their social position and increasing their economic success. Although this purpose may also stress the importance of participation in civil society, the aim for doing so is to improve students’ social capital to elevate their economic status. The social justice purpose views school itself as emancipatory, but the aim is also to prepare students to engage in the grassroots initiatives of civil society, ultimately, to overturn the power structures that marginalize or oppress certain groups of individuals. These initiatives may be pursued in tandem with the government sector or work against the government by pressuring them to change laws and policies. The civic education purpose lies at the point where all three sectors converge.
Civic education is the proper telos of public schools because it subsumes the other three purposes, thus satisfying both the private and public function of schools and the various stakeholders of public education. Social efficiency is not the proper telos because it emphasizes the market, pushing to the backburner education about the government and the importance of civil society. Social mobility is not the proper telos because it focuses too heavily on economic gain as a means of prosperity in society, with little emphasis on the civic aspects of prosperity, such as community formation and engagement. And social justice is not the proper telos because it rejects the market as a form of oppression, ignoring the potential for emancipation by learning about how the market functions and how to participate in it. For schools to be emancipatory they need to teach, rather than outright reject, how American institutions function.
Civic education teaches students about each sector of society and how to prosper in society as a whole. Education about the government sector is often the domain of social studies. It entails transmitting knowledge about which institutions govern society, how they function, and how they came to be, as well as the importance of elections and how to vote in them. Education about the market sector entails knowledge about our economic system and how it came to be, but also how students can respond to market needs, whether through starting a business or nonprofit organization. Education about civil society requires knowledge of the history of volunteerism in the U.S. and what role associations and nonprofit organizations have played in the formation of modern society. Learning about civil society also requires knowledge of how religion and family structures have shaped society.
Civic education not only teaches about the history of the three sectors and how they function, but it also provides students with the skills to participate in these sectors and prosper. A civic education teaches the bedrock skills of reading and mathematics because without them, full participation in the three sectors of society would not be possible. Strong reading skills in the English language allow students to access knowledge on their own, read historical and modern documents, such as legislation, that guide governance of our society, and differentiate truth from falsehood, among other uses. And strong math skills prepare students for participation in the market and enable an understanding of statistics and other figures described in the news, among other applications.
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There are essentially two schools of thought about how a school might take up the task of centering the purpose of schooling around civic education. Generally speaking, one focuses on transmission of historical and cultural knowledge and the other focuses on student experience and preparation for the production of new knowledge. Crudely defined: the traditional model versus the progressive model, respectively. Considering the telos of civic education, these schools of thought are not mutually exclusive, rather they are mutually reinforcing.
Traditional model
Classical charter schools, which often teach the Great Books of Western Civilization, and public schools that use a core knowledge curriculum exemplify the traditional model of schooling. They offer a liberal arts education—traditionally defined as an education for the free—focused on transmitting and discussing the best of what has been said and thought over the course of recorded history in the West, along with the knowledge that has defined our institutions and culture. Through a common set of texts, they teach about human nature, the factors that have shaped our modern society, and our cultural heritage. John Erskine, Robert Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler brought forth the idea of reading what would become the Great Books, which was paired with Socratic-style seminars. The idea was people—notably, their program was for adults—would engage in the Great Conversation by reading and discussing, in the style of Platonic Dialogues, the Great Books.
The goal of classical schools, and great books programs broadly, is to not only learn about the collective history of the West and how that history manifests today, but also to learn about one’s self by striving toward the good, beautiful, and true as an end to education. Liberal arts education aims to help people cultivate their minds and hearts, as Jenna Silber Storey notes, “to better understand these real if mysterious ends to which we are inclined while remaining humbly aware of the inability of any human being to grasp them in full.” Because no one human can fully grasp the good, beautiful, and true, classical schools and other liberal arts programs employ the Socratic method as their pedagogical approach so that students are grappling together with the texts they read. Thus, knowledge of self and history are both an individual and collective endeavor.
E.D. Hirsch too was devoted to the notion that Americans should read a common set of texts, and his life’s work focused on curating what ought to be read in the early grades of school. His mission was to ensure that all citizens were speaking a common language, which he called “cultural literacy.” Certainly, we may all speak English but that doesn’t necessarily mean we understand each other. We must also understand the language of our culture. For instance, one might hear the term “Achilles heel” thrown around, but not know what is meant by the term if they have not read Homer’s the Iliad. Or they might hear someone speak about the problem of “big brother” and stepping “through the looking glass,” but if they have not read 1984 or Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, respectively, they won’t understand these common references.
Whether schools implement a great books program or Hirsch’s core knowledge sequence, an education steeped in the roots of our shared history and culture operates as a “leveling function,” as Roosevelt Montás described in his book Rescuing Socrates. Montás defends a liberal arts education, especially for low-income, first-generation students like himself, because such an education brings all students to an equal level of understanding about our cultural heritage. Hirsch makes a similar argument: “Millions of Americans now inhabit a well-established national culture and public sphere. Those who are proficient in that language and culture are on average the best communicators and the wealthiest citizens. [...] Those who have not mastered it suffer loss of opportunity.” Students who are surrounded by books in their homes, vacation around the country and globe during school breaks, and visit historical sites during their weekends are swimming in cultural knowledge, while students who don’t have access to these opportunities are not. This should be a matter of concern for social justice advocates and those who view social mobility as the purpose of education.
Progressive model
A progressive approach to education is grounded in experience. Rather than transmitting historical knowledge to students, progressive educators focus on student experience. John Dewey had the greatest influence on progressive education, and he thought that schools ought to move away from traditional, liberal arts education, in which knowledge of the past is passed onto students, towards a philosophy of experience, using the scientific method as a means to expand experience and knowledge and develop possibilities for growth. In his book Experience & Education, through which Dewey aimed to clarify his philosophy of education, he asserts that educators should offer enjoyable, educative experiences to promote having desirable future experiences. An educative experience is “both knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas and to a better, more orderly arrangement of them.” An educator in this sort of classroom must be “intelligently aware of the capacities, needs, and past experience of those under instruction,” and use that knowledge to develop plans and projects.
Dewey did not reject the value of learning a body of knowledge, but he saw such an education as a means not an end of education. He acknowledged that “we live from birth to death in a world of persons and things which in large measure is what it is because of what has been done and transmitted from previous human activities. When this fact is ignored, experience is treated as if it were something which goes on exclusively inside an individual’s body and mind.” In Experience & Education, he posed a central question: “How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present?” In this way, his views are not at odds with liberal arts education, they are a complement to them. He picks up where traditional education leaves off: once students have the knowledge of how our democratic society came to be, they can then practice democracy and prepare for how to exercise their freedom and act in a self-governing society. For Dewey, democratic life was not only about civic and economic conduct, it also consisted of habits of problem-solving, compassionate imagination, creative expression, and civic self-governance.
Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy, students of Dewey, hold up discussion-based classrooms as an ideal method for practicing democracy, which is not dissimilar to the Socratic method of classical schools. They stress the importance of deliberating the question—how should we live together—in their book Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion. Hess and McAvoy illustrate how teachers can go about organizing the experience of discussion, and how students can practice democratic decision-making, through, for example, mock legislative sessions and Supreme Court trials. Pairing the traditional and progressive model, students first understand the purpose of democratic institutions and how they function and then practice deliberation for how we should live together.
Human nature
A key consideration when designing a school system aimed at civic education is that, although humans share capacities because we are of the same species and, in the U.S, we are considered equal under the law, humans are not blank slates. Or, as Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein put it, “Humans are not blank slates, but of all organisms on Earth, we are the blankest.” We have hardware—e.g., the capacity to learn languages—but also software—e.g., the capacity to learn the language of our culture. Children naturally learn language, but they must be taught to read and write. We are born with our temperament and talents—these are not molded by teachers or parents—but we can learn how to build upon them and best direct them through experience. The traditional model of education teaches us to read and write, while the progressive model allows us to capitalize on our abilities. Both of which satisfy the aims of social mobility and social efficiency, but above those aims, they are necessary for human flourishing in a self-governing society.
A function of school, aimed at self-government and human flourishing, then ought to be guiding students to understand what they excel at and how to offer that skill or talent to fellow citizens. Fredrik deBoer, in his book The Cult of the Smart, uses the metaphor of a plant to describe human differences. Seeds, as he puts it, certainly need healthy and well-tended soil to grow, but “[s]ome seeds are meant to spawn taller plants than some others. [...] All plants have their own beauty, and all human beings have something of value to contribute to society. But to act as though every human being has the same potential in academic life is no more sensible than expecting every sapling to grow to the same height.” Schools must recognize and cultivate the abilities unique to individual students.
Civic education necessitates that schools function to both transmit knowledge and aid students in learning about themselves. Both the traditional and progressive models of education recognize that students must spend time in school contemplating the big questions of life: Who am I? What am I going to do about it? What’s worth doing? And how should we live together? These are essential questions for the young to grapple with if they are to be knowledgeable and flourish in a free, self-governing society. And once the telos of civic education is set, we can get to work determining things like a core curriculum. Until then, educators are spinning their wheels and students are not properly prepared for the demands of democratic citizenship or living a good life.
Sam,
This is excellent. I very much enjoyed reading your ideas about the telos of civic education. And as I’ve noted above, I completely agree that we first have to pin down the purpose of civic education—only then can we move onto practical goals of how to achieve that goal. I have to say, I’m pleased with the philosophical tenor of your thought!
So, it seems like you think that the purpose of civic education is to provide students with enough understanding of the world to navigate productively within it—in particular, the private realm with its economic actors, the realm of government, and the realm of civic society. You seem to also think that this would involve introducing students to the great conversation taking place across generations (classical education), to assist them in finding themselves within this tradition, and to identify and develop their own talents such that they can meaningfully contribute to society, thereby taking part in the broader historical drama as it unfolds. Does this seem like a fair statement?
I find myself quite sympathetic to what you’re saying. The philosophical school that I most identify with is philosophical hermeneutics. And one of the great masters of that school, Hans-Georg Gadamer, has put tradition at the center of his thinking. We are born into a conversation which has been going on before us and will continue long after us. The fact that we are historical creatures means that we have a particular standpoint in time and culture. This standpoint, he says, both gives us vision—the language, concepts, and values we absorb growing up allow us to understand the world. But our standpoint invariably limits our view too, since we learn to think in some ways and not others and to value some things and not others. For Gadamer, this means that we need those from other traditions to broaden our horizons by introducing us to other ways of thinking and living than the ones we are familiar with. So, our being inducted into a tradition doesn’t trap us or make us inveterate conservatives. Rather, as historical beings, just because we have a starting place doesn’t mean we have to stay there. We can learn and grow and even critique the tradition which brought us up.
My big question is (to return to a question you yourself raised at the beginning of your post): would there be only one national curriculum? I suppose I find myself being somewhat sympathetic to religious conservatives who are worried about mandated civic education disrupting their way of life if there’s only one form, designed and enforced in a top-down fashion. My thinking is that if the goal of civic education is to give students an understanding of the world so that they can productively navigate within it, different communities should be allowed to pass on their varying ways of doing so, rather than having one, single way of doing so (flowing from one, single curriculum).
And this brings us back almost to where we started our discussion—to pluralism and the stability of the nation. It seems essential to pluralism that we accept different ways of life which result from different understandings of what the world is like (or at least different ways of us orienting ourselves in the world).
Yet, how can we embrace pluralism without having the nation be pulled apart by competing values and ways of living? You mention Ashley Berner as someone who is committed to pluralism but who thinks that we also need a unifying element to the curriculum through a common stock of knowledge. I’m ambivalent about this. I suspect that a common stock of knowledge isn’t sufficient for producing the kinds of bonds that we would need to have pluralism without it resulting in a fractured nation. (And I’m not even entirely sure that a common stock of knowledge is necessary for stability—at least not a very deep stock of common knowledge.)
I’d be curious what you think about this, but at least provisionally, my claim would be that the body politic can’t be made to cohere simply on a cognitive basis—on the basis of a common stock of knowledge or set of facts. For example, I understand the desire to make sure that every student has a working knowledge of the fundamentals in the sciences. Well, now that I think of it, educators seem to focus on students having a working knowledge of the natural sciences, don’t they? Biology, physics, chemistry, and so on. I’m not aware of arguments that a well-informed citizenry needs knowledge of psychology or sociology. In my high school, these were electives. Do you happen to know why that is? Is it because educators tend to think that the “hard” sciences produce real knowledge and the social sciences don’t?
In any case, I understand wanting students to have basic knowledge of, say, biology. And doing so would require knowledge of evolution. I’m less clear about the justification for such policies. Do we need much knowledge of the theory of biology to navigate the world productively? But more to the point, if the idea is that in order to have a national community, we have to have something shared, something in common, and that that should be a common stock of knowledge, I’m not confident that knowledge really fits the bill. At least, not unless there is a requirement that it is taught in a specific way. I can imagine that if we allow homeschooling and parochial and private schools and mandate that these schools teach evolution, those students may be taught about evolution—they may be able to recite how it works, etc.—but they might be taught it as a target of derision. To caricature for effect: “This (evolution) is the lie that atheists are taught to believe.” If so, a student could understand evolution and that common knowledge could still be a site of division, not unity. If so, while a homeschooled student and the public school student would have a common stock of knowledge, they wouldn’t form any kind of meaningful unity.
I think unity requires more than cognitive material, it has to include affective components as well, and this is why I think civic education is so dangerous to use as a source of national cohesion. In other words, I suspect that in order for there to be social cohesion, facts aren’t enough; we need feelings. We need to feel a common bond and attachment to one another and to the nation.
To sum up, if we’re using civic education to teach students to understand and navigate the world, well, there are different ways of doing this. If we allow pluralism, this will create forces that could pull the nation apart. So we need something in common, something to bond us. But I’m arguing that knowledge isn’t enough. We’d probably have to instill attachments or affections. The question is how we can do this in a legitimate way.
If I’m right that there has to be an affective element to social cohesion, then this presents a very real danger of abuse if we seek such cohesion through civic education which is under direct state control. Governments might simply manufacture consent through instruction. I think it’s fair to say that nearly all political philosophers agree that this would be illegitimate. The most flagrant abuses can be seen in places like North Korea, which tries to produce a cult-like fealty to the leader of the nation. But it need not reach the level of brainwashing to be ethically suspect. I think progressives are right to be alarmed that some forms of “patriotic education” would result in generations of citizens who are insufficiently critical of their own government.
So, we need affective bonds but I’m reluctant to let the state be in charge of producing these. Perhaps the solution is for there to not be a single, unified education that brings us together. Maybe Rawls was right (oh no, I said it!) at least in this regard: we want people to buy into the project of our nation—our national experiment—but to do so for reasons that are distinctive to their own communities and ways of thinking. Honestly, probably the reason I’m most attached to the United States is because I was taught (at home and to some extent at church) that the United States is a place of religious freedom. It was a shelter from religious persecution for my ancestors and continues to be so today. I don’t expect atheists to be attached to the nation for the same reasons (though, in fact, I do feel a bond with atheists who view the US as a haven for their liberty of conscience as atheists). They can have their own reasons for commitment to the national project and their fellow citizens.
I’m feeling my way here, but what if we allowed different communities to have substantial freedom about what they teach, provided that they also—in a way that would be distinctive to their own community—pass on reasons for commitment to the great experiment that is the United States? This wouldn’t be a commitment to how things actually are in the nation, but a commitment to the project and to one another as members of that project. In fact, this might be another argument for allowing for a substantial amount of school choice. Since we need national unity and since there is great danger in this unity being produced in a “top-down” fashion by the government through the public education system, we should rather seek for unity to be grounded in civil society—in the various communities in our society buying into the national project for their own reasons. These communities would then offer these reasons to their young as a basis for commitment to the national project and for affection towards their fellow citizens, uniting them across their differences. This might circumvent the problems for consent and the legitimacy of the state if we try to obtain stability through state-controlled civic education.
Thoughts? I’m especially curious to hear why you were already suspicious of the idea of a nation-wide curriculum.
Patrick