3 Difficult-To-Swallow Truths About The History Of Education And The Future Of Technology 1
One
part of the current education reform agenda argues that the internet
has made the world bigger. Or, more accurately, the boundaries of our
everyday experiences have expanded. Therefore, because we are more
connected than ever before, the story goes, we need to think about
education as the practice of cross-cultural tolerance and global
awareness. Folks argue that humans have never before had to deal with so
much difference.
I think this is just plain wrong. The truth is that we’ve never had to deal with so much similarity. That’s the big shift we face. All you have to do is read Plato to realize that education, in its formative years, was already about geo-political conflict, growth and expansion. It was about confronting (and manufacturing) difference.
Plato, in the 4th Century BC, already saw education as a necessity for a global, connected world. Granted, his globe wasn’t as vast or as networked as ours. But still, he saw education as primarily driven by a question about how we deal with our neighbors, how we deal with others.
Plato’s Republic (Πολιτεία) is equal parts education and political theory. For Plato, these things are inseparable. The purpose of an education is to create citizens, to teach humans what they need to know to live and participate in a prosperous city-state, to prepare adults to contribute to society. This is why folks often point to Republic when arguing for civics education. But I suspect Plato would have thought that an explicit civics curriculum is a bit like considering paper making and printing to be a part of learning to read. Either that, or he would have considered it redundant. After all, the reason we teach any subject is to prepare folks for civic engagement.
What’s more, Plato understands that education is an economic necessity. But for him, it is not about how career training increases job readiness. Trades, after all, were learned through apprenticeship in ancient times, just as workplace skills are mostly learned on the job today. It is also not about creating a labor force. Nor is it about how educated citizens are more innovative and/or productive, and therefore work in ways that help to boost GDP.
No, Plato didn’t think the way you’d expect. For him, it is not that formal education leads to economic growth. On the contrary, economic growth creates the need for formal education.
1. Economic Growth Creates The Need For Formal Education
Take a moment to try and follow Plato’s argument: If a prosperous state seeks to provide its citizens with a quality of life beyond simple necessities, it will need to expand—more land, more luxuries, more space for agriculture and manufacturing. Geo-political expansion comes at the expense of neighbors. Therefore, the state needs a military (guardians) both to make the land grabs and to protect citizens from competing invaders. Folks with “spirited” natures make the best guardians. But nobody wants to live next door to aggressive people. Therefore, education, as Plato first describes it in Republic, serves to teach soldiers to turn their aggressive nature toward others, but not towards fellow citizens. “Surely,” Socrates explains, “they must be gentle to their own people and harsh to their enemies.” We must teach them that others are wrong—immoral and unethical—but that we are wise and good. Schooling, on some level, is always about brainwashing and propaganda. It centralizes, standardizes, divides and insulates.
Unless, of course, you belong to the ruling class; then, according to Plato, education serves an altogether different purpose. For the ruling class, education is about problem solving and critical thinking. It’s about autonomy and freedom and choice. For the elite, education is about learning to see past the shadows and the lies and the stories and the beliefs, about getting to the real truth. Because only when you know the real truth can you make the best decisions about how to govern the rest of society. This is where his famous Allegory of the Cave comes from; Plato believed the elite should be unchained from the mediocrity of everyday understanding.
2. Education Creates Socio-Economic Inequality
For Plato, therefore, socio-economic inequity in education was a given. But he would hardly call it unjust. In fact, he claims to be describing the perfectly just state: the Kallipolis (Καλλίπολις), thebeautiful, or ideal city. Class divisions, in Plato’s Republic, guarantee order, peace and collective prosperity.
Keep in mind that Plato is always logical and reasonable and never enslaved to unsupported belief systems. Therefore, he does not think that socio-economic classes are created by the invisible hands of the Immortal Olympian market forces. Instead, he says that they are intentionally organized and maintained by those who govern.
Plato proposes the creation three classes: gold souled, silver souled, and bronze souled people (upper, middle, lower?). Education not only serves to equip people to participate in society in ways appropriate for their class, it also serves to provide a worldview that will make them believe that the class structure is actually a meritocracy managed by the gods. That is, you’re born into your class and likely to stay there (it’s hard wired, part of your soul)—but exceptional individuals, those who prove their merit, those who prove that the immortals have smiled upon their souls, can benefit from upward mobility (Sound familiar?). This is what Plato called a “Noble Lie,” a small good-intentioned fib that elite Philosopher-Kings must tell their citizens in order to maintain the peace and prosperity that comes with a functional stratified class structure.
Remember that schooling, on some level, is and has always been about brainwashing and propaganda. It centralizes, standardizes, divides and insulates. It acculturates through exclusivity. It subtly teaches us to use knowledge in a way that reinforces belonging to one particular social ordering by systematically shunning others. Students, therefore, learn to be gentle towards nations whose economic systems function like ours, and harsh toward those that differ.
I think this is just plain wrong. The truth is that we’ve never had to deal with so much similarity. That’s the big shift we face. All you have to do is read Plato to realize that education, in its formative years, was already about geo-political conflict, growth and expansion. It was about confronting (and manufacturing) difference.
Plato, in the 4th Century BC, already saw education as a necessity for a global, connected world. Granted, his globe wasn’t as vast or as networked as ours. But still, he saw education as primarily driven by a question about how we deal with our neighbors, how we deal with others.
Plato’s Republic (Πολιτεία) is equal parts education and political theory. For Plato, these things are inseparable. The purpose of an education is to create citizens, to teach humans what they need to know to live and participate in a prosperous city-state, to prepare adults to contribute to society. This is why folks often point to Republic when arguing for civics education. But I suspect Plato would have thought that an explicit civics curriculum is a bit like considering paper making and printing to be a part of learning to read. Either that, or he would have considered it redundant. After all, the reason we teach any subject is to prepare folks for civic engagement.
What’s more, Plato understands that education is an economic necessity. But for him, it is not about how career training increases job readiness. Trades, after all, were learned through apprenticeship in ancient times, just as workplace skills are mostly learned on the job today. It is also not about creating a labor force. Nor is it about how educated citizens are more innovative and/or productive, and therefore work in ways that help to boost GDP.
No, Plato didn’t think the way you’d expect. For him, it is not that formal education leads to economic growth. On the contrary, economic growth creates the need for formal education.
1. Economic Growth Creates The Need For Formal Education
Take a moment to try and follow Plato’s argument: If a prosperous state seeks to provide its citizens with a quality of life beyond simple necessities, it will need to expand—more land, more luxuries, more space for agriculture and manufacturing. Geo-political expansion comes at the expense of neighbors. Therefore, the state needs a military (guardians) both to make the land grabs and to protect citizens from competing invaders. Folks with “spirited” natures make the best guardians. But nobody wants to live next door to aggressive people. Therefore, education, as Plato first describes it in Republic, serves to teach soldiers to turn their aggressive nature toward others, but not towards fellow citizens. “Surely,” Socrates explains, “they must be gentle to their own people and harsh to their enemies.” We must teach them that others are wrong—immoral and unethical—but that we are wise and good. Schooling, on some level, is always about brainwashing and propaganda. It centralizes, standardizes, divides and insulates.
Unless, of course, you belong to the ruling class; then, according to Plato, education serves an altogether different purpose. For the ruling class, education is about problem solving and critical thinking. It’s about autonomy and freedom and choice. For the elite, education is about learning to see past the shadows and the lies and the stories and the beliefs, about getting to the real truth. Because only when you know the real truth can you make the best decisions about how to govern the rest of society. This is where his famous Allegory of the Cave comes from; Plato believed the elite should be unchained from the mediocrity of everyday understanding.
2. Education Creates Socio-Economic Inequality
For Plato, therefore, socio-economic inequity in education was a given. But he would hardly call it unjust. In fact, he claims to be describing the perfectly just state: the Kallipolis (Καλλίπολις), thebeautiful, or ideal city. Class divisions, in Plato’s Republic, guarantee order, peace and collective prosperity.
Keep in mind that Plato is always logical and reasonable and never enslaved to unsupported belief systems. Therefore, he does not think that socio-economic classes are created by the invisible hands of the Immortal Olympian market forces. Instead, he says that they are intentionally organized and maintained by those who govern.
Plato proposes the creation three classes: gold souled, silver souled, and bronze souled people (upper, middle, lower?). Education not only serves to equip people to participate in society in ways appropriate for their class, it also serves to provide a worldview that will make them believe that the class structure is actually a meritocracy managed by the gods. That is, you’re born into your class and likely to stay there (it’s hard wired, part of your soul)—but exceptional individuals, those who prove their merit, those who prove that the immortals have smiled upon their souls, can benefit from upward mobility (Sound familiar?). This is what Plato called a “Noble Lie,” a small good-intentioned fib that elite Philosopher-Kings must tell their citizens in order to maintain the peace and prosperity that comes with a functional stratified class structure.
Remember that schooling, on some level, is and has always been about brainwashing and propaganda. It centralizes, standardizes, divides and insulates. It acculturates through exclusivity. It subtly teaches us to use knowledge in a way that reinforces belonging to one particular social ordering by systematically shunning others. Students, therefore, learn to be gentle towards nations whose economic systems function like ours, and harsh toward those that differ.
Even today, almost 2500
years after Plato, we continue to teach politically, nationally, or
religiously motivated histories. We also offer a biologically
determinate view of the human body in which particular “hard-wired” or
genetic traits are imagined to be essential, given at birth, and mostly
determinate. We reinforce elitism by telling young people that
achievement correlates “character skills” and that success is,
therefore, the valid result of superior disposition. And we use
standardized testing to maintain the illusion of meritocracy and upward
mobility while we systematically track children into college and career
trajectories that mostly correspond to the socio-economic class into
which they were born—unless, of course, they test out.
