Radical Education (RLE Edu K)

A Critique of Freeschooling and Deschooling

Robin Barrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415751186
• eBook ISBN: 9781136494673
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume is a comprehensive critique of the radical tradition in educational theory. It traces the development of the key ideas in radical literature from Rousseau to the present day. Two opening chapters set Rousseau's educational views and arguments in their political perspective, and subject them to an extended critical treatment. Subsequent chapters provide detailed analyses and examination of the ideas of A S Neill, Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich and Everett Reimer, Charles Weingartner and Neil Postman. Each author is treated separately but certain common themes and ideas are extracted and considered without reference to any particular author. Amongst others, the concepts of nature, learning, hidden curriculum and the relativity of knowledge are examined; at the same time broader arguments about the degree and nature of freedom that should be provided to children, deschooling and assessment are pursued.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In this book I shall examine the arguments and educational ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A. S. Neill, Paul Goodman, Everett Reimer, Ivan Illich, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. It may well be asked what links these superficially very different individuals – a Frenchman, a Scotsman, some Americans; an eighteenth-century philosopher, a nineteenth-century practising teacher, a one-time Catholic priest. In particular, in what sense of the word is it fair to regard them all as radicals?

Our word ‘radical’ derives from the Latin word ‘radix’, meaning a root. What I mean by a radical is one who wants change that involves going to the root of the matter, as opposed to one who wants no change at all, or one who wants superficial change. That is all, and that is precisely what I mean by a radical. For many people the word conveys rather more than that. It is often associated with left-wing political views, and consequently for some people the word has strong emotive overtones, whether favourable or unfavourable. But then the matter is further complicated by the currency of such phrases as ‘the radical Right’, which usage puts all the emphasis on the idea of extreme views of whatever kind. My use of the term involves none of these associations. It is worth repeating that I mean simply one who favours root-and-branch change; a radical proposal is one that strikes to the heart or foundations of the matter. The term, in this usage, is intended to be evaluatively neutral. Striking to the heart of the matter and insisting on a fundamental change is, in itself, neither good nor bad. Much must depend on what we propose should be changed in this way, and when and why we do so.

If I am asked why I insist on using the word ‘radical’, while admitting that it very often carries implications that I want to ignore, the answer is partly that the same is true of any alternative word that I can think of, and partly that the term has already been proudly applied to some of the people I am concerned with by their publishers, themselves and each other. But the only sense in which it is true to say that writers like Goodman and Illich are radical is in the sense that I have outlined. Alternative labels, such as ‘progressive’, ‘revolutionary’ or ‘anarchic’, are equally ambiguous and probably, in most of their senses at least, less appropriate. Besides, if these people want to be called radicals and are called radicals, why shouldn't they be? They are radicals in the specific sense of people who propose fundamental change, which is the sense that the word will consistently have in the remaining pages of this book. These are not educationalists who propose tinkering with the educational system as it is: they propose blowing the system as it is to pieces.

There are a number of more specific affinities between these writers, too. To a greater or lesser extent, they are all romantics in the sense of idealistic and sentimental: they tend to see the past as a Golden Age (Goodman even reverts to precisely the same classical examples as Rousseau had done two hundred years before) and the future as potentially perfect. The notion that individuals might be responsible for evil and misery because they are selfish and nasty is one that they find it difficult to embrace: they prefer to put it all down to circumstances. Towns and industrialisation they hate. They are suspicious of book learning, seeing something more in keeping with human dignity in working with one's hands (outside of industry). Illich's recent interest in the abuses of the medical profession matches Rousseau's interest no less obviously than a match can be made between their views on education (see Illich, 1975). His central thesis, that the medical profession as an institutional body creates rather than cures sickness, is Rousseau's objection to the medical world of his day.

There are also strong stylistic similarities between all these writers. Without exception they overstate, generalise and personalise. They substitute metaphor for argument; they commit elementary logical errors such as interpreting an event as the cause of another simply because it precedes it in time. They use emotive and obscure terms at vital places in their argument; they confuse means and ends, and empirical and evaluative issues. Even those most anxious to stress what is important in the work of the contemporary radicals are forced to admit, as is Lister, that ‘much of [their] evidence is circumstantial or anecdotal: both Goodman and Holt tend to buttress their assertions with the statements of friends who agree with them. When “hard” data ... are presented they have often been selected to support the thesis being argued’ (D p. 11).

Specifically these radicals share the following views. They value individual happiness highly, sometimes regarding it as the supreme value. They also claim to value critical autonomy, or thinking for oneself, and (superficially at least) a high degree of social freedom. They tend to value, and to equate in a rather vague way, whatever is natural, spontaneous and sincere in man's behaviour. They are adamant that learning is not dependent on overt teaching, and that more effective learning will take place without overt compulsion. In one way or another they envisage the community or environment as a whole as being educative and thereby inducing, perhaps with the help of adult guidance and inspiration but certainly without naked instruction, the natural and good, moral and intellectual, development of the individual.

On the negative side, all are united in objecting to what they see as the typical pattern of education in their own time, which pattern they are inclined to depict as a somewhat oversimplified stereotype. They are no less hostile to what they see as dominant aspects of society in general. They are particularly vehement against the schools’ tendency to teach what they regard as useless and irrelevant knowledge. They resist any conception of knowledge that sees it as some kind of static commodity or as a collection of packaged and unchanging truths. They strenuously oppose what they see as an artificial separation between school and life, and each in his own way is proposing an alternative that would in his view minimise, if not obliterate, such a distinction. Although Rousseau was not familiar with such terms as ‘hidden curriculum’, ‘grading’ and ‘diploma’, the ideas are none the less grist to his mill; he, no less than A. S. Neill or Neil Postman, is aware of and concerned about the phenomenon of unintended consequences arising from incidental influences on children, not to mention competition and grading. All these authors see standard patterns of education as socialising children into an unequal, insincere and unacceptable form of society. Despite their nominal allegiance to autonomy as an ideal, most of them are at best ambivalent and obscure in their attitude towards rationality, and all of them place more emphasis on a combination of developing feelings and practical skills than on what might be termed academic skills.

Generally they are passionate enemies of hypocrisy, humbug and hate. It is not surprising therefore that their work is imbued with the characteristically Platonic idea that no one willingly does wrong. The real or true inner man, in every case, would be frank, loving and sincere, if only he were not misshaped by upbringing and misled by society. By the same line of thought it can be implied that we would agree with all that is being said if our vision and understanding had not been distorted by the world in which we live. That line of thought is one example of many similar, which together render these theories what I shall call ‘likely stories’. By a ‘likely story’ I mean one that at crucial junctures, and hence as a whole, rests upon assertions that are unfalsifiable and unverifiable. I do not mean assertions the truth or falsity of which we happen not to be sure of; I mean assertions the truth or falsity of which we are in no position to set about establishing. To assert that those who do not agree with one thereby indicate the truth of one's assertion that they have been rendered incapable of seeing the truth by the world in which they live is to place oneself beyond the possibility of rational discourse. Adherence to the dictum becomes a matter of blind faith. At rock-bottom all the educational theories we shall examine appear to be ‘likely stories’ in this sense.

Rousseau, in his Emile, presents a classic statement of the radical thesis: a comprehensive blueprint for uprooting contemporary schooling and building a new kind of society by means of a new kind of education. Although the other authors considered here differ from him in various ways, and do not represent a line of continuous development, they can all be seen to take up and develop ideas that are to be found in his work. The emphasis changes quite considerably from writer to writer, but there is very little of importance in any of the later writers that cannot be found at least embryonically in Rousseau. To him the social setup in the France of his time was insupportable; but the educational system of the day was clearly supporting it. A totally new type of society was needed, a complete revolution in political and social organisation; but all this could be achieved only through a totally new kind of education. What was needed was not improvement within the current practice and procedure, but the annihilation of current practice and procedure. A new conception of education was needed, one founded on a completely new set of principles.

Rousseau roundly challenged the hitherto almost unquestioned assumption that ideally children should be placed in the care of professionals in special settings which thus became institutionalised; he challenged no less the presumption that they should be fed a body of information and socially hallowed maxims, that they should be veneered with knowledge, and that they needed moulding, shaping and directing if they were to become responsible adults. Emile, by contrast, is to have a natural education: the real world will be his classroom and he will learn from experience.

It is the idea of education according to nature that provides the main connecting link between Rousseau and A. S. Neill; otherwise the similarities are for the most part negative ones. Despite a popular idea to the effect that Neill's school, Summerhill, is the embodiment of Rousseau's theory, there are very important differences between them: Summerhill children really are to a large extent left to grow up as they will, given the arbitrary constraints of the group as a whole, whereas Emile is certainly not. But Rousseau and Neill do seem to share a belief in some kind of innate human nature which is at odds with the fashions and fancies of respectable society, the latter being preternaturally obnoxious when they are made the basis of the school curriculum. One other point of similarity should be noted here: both men see themselves as pioneering a new kind of education appropriate to a truly democratic society, as opposed to what is called a democratic society. Rousseau imagines that Emile will think and vote in accordance with the terms of what he calls the General Will, which is the basis and safeguard of the truly free and just society. Neill claims that children educated along the lines that he advocates will both gain vital experience of the democratic process and grow up to be hostile to externally imposed authority and well disposed to the interests of fellow citizens.

Paul Goodman clearly felt a lot of sympathy with what he took to be A. S. Neill's views.¹ Both men would agree that by and large the typical school fails even on its own terms. Schools purport to be institutions geared towards promoting proficiency in certain clearly defined areas, but they do not deliver the goods: the majority of children gain little in the way of such things as mathematical ability or a mastery of basic chemistry. Second, they both believe that the traditional school cages and distorts human nature. Third, they believe that learning and compulsion are incompatible. Fourth, both men are hostile to examinations, certification and grading; they regard such labels as ‘clever’ and ‘stupid’ as misleading, if not actually false, because they are the product of preconceived conceptual schemes on the part of adults or the nature of the organisation of the school itself – anything, in fact, except the appropriate name for the actual characteristic of a particular individual; and they both recognise and object to the ‘hidden curriculum’, by which I mean the things that the school teaches without explicitly drawing attention to the fact that it is doing so, perhaps being unaware that it is doing so, although Neill does not actually use the term ‘hidden curriculum’.

Their proposed solutions, however, are different. Whereas Neill thinks that it is possible, and in some respects even advantageous, to operate within something approaching a school situation, Goodman shifts the emphasis to the point of beginning to see the institutionalised setting as itself the cause of all evils. Neill proposes, metaphorically speaking, to build a wall around his children, thus protecting them from the outside world, and to populate their private world with sympathetic adults, thereby giving the children the opportunity to develop as he, like Rousseau, terms, ‘naturally’ (notwithstanding the fact that he and Rousseau are making different proposals). Goodman proposes almost the opposite: to break down the wall and let the children grow up as members of society.

Both Goodman and Rousseau stress the importance of education takingplace in and for the real world, but they have decidedly different views of what constitutes reality. Goodman, very surprisingly, allows the prevailing social conditions to define reality; Rousseau, more consistently with the sort of ideal that both men share but perhaps also more impractically, defines it in terms of the negativisation of social norms. Goodman also departs from Rousseau in rejecting the latter's emphasis on the idea that the child is not a miniature adult but a person who functions in a manner quite distinct from that of the adult. He argues that we should revert to treating young people as precisely that – young people.² The refusal to accept a concept of childhood as something distinctive qualitatively is common also to Reimer and Illich, who, together with Goodman, are usually regarded as the holy trinity of the deschooling movement.

The term ‘deschooling’ is vague and it is used in different senses by different people, sometimes to refer to views that do not involve getting rid of schooling. It was coined accidentally by Illich, to his subsequent regret. And as Lister well puts it, it is less of a concept than a general drift of thinking’ (D p. 93). It involves explicit emphasis on two ideas that are to be found in Rousseau: first, a recognition that education and schooling are not necessarily the same thing or that form and substance, ritual and content should not be confused; second, that the institution of schooling by virtue of being an institutionalised process itself automatically and inevitably causes damage. ‘The mere existence of schools discourages and disables the poor from taking control of their own learning,’ says Illich (D p. 89), partly for economic and organisational reasons, but more significantly because they make us believe that they are the proper and only channel for genuine learning. ‘What goes on in schools is not necessarily education’ (D p. 79), but it is schools that insidiously make us believe the opposite and thereby legitimate their own dubious activity. Nor is it simply that as a matter of fact the schools do not educate. By their nature they cannot, for ‘institutions create certainties which deaden the heart’ (CA p. 13). And so ‘all over the world the school has an anti-educational effect on society’ (DS p. 15). Illich talks of ‘deschooling’ society and of ‘disestablishing’ the schools, for what deschooling implies is being rid of the ritual imprisonment that schools achieve because they are institutions. Institutions are the enemy. We must indeed get rid of schools but if that were all we were to do we should still school people’. To deschool society we must get rid of all institutional and other schooling mechanisms. It betrays a misunderstanding of what deschooling is all about, therefore, to say that the way forward is ‘possible only through deschooled schools’ (Hentig – D p. 37). There is no such thing as a deschooled school: there are, at best, only more or less free schools, and a free school is a school for all that.

The fact that Goodman looks with a favourable eye on free schools only goes to show how uneasy is the alliance between the three members of the deschooling triumvirate, for neither of the other two will have any truck with them. To Illich they are more dangerous and unacceptable than the traditional schools, for free schools ‘produce the mirage of freedom. Attendance as the result of seduction inculcates the need for specialised treatment more persuasively than reluctant attendance enforced by truant officers’ (D p. 3). Illich's wording here is characteristically baroque and opaque, but like Reimer his basic objection is that Neill's ‘Summerhill and schools after it... still teach dependence on the school’ (D p. 3). A committed deschooler, for whom a central tenet is that the influence of an institution as such must be avoided, must feel towards the free school rather as a marxist must feel towards any apparently genuine and important class reconciliation – namely, resentful, since such compromises and temporary solutions merely get in the way of momentum towards the real and final confrontation and victory.

Deschooling theory asserts both that we fail to see what schools qua institutions must necessarily do, and that we ask too much of them and thereby invite failure. How can the same individual be judge, jury and executioner? And before the mind has time to question the validity of the analogy we are asked how the same individual can be nanny, prophet, indoctrinator and guide as we expect the teacher to be. Defining the school in terms of compulsory attendance and grading (SD p. 34), ³ they conclude that a school must effectively achieve only ‘the shaping of man's vision of reality’ (D p. 67), in unacceptable form, by means of the hidden curriculum. Hence there must be no such institutions.

Postman and Weingartner share this critical attitude to schooling and society. But they propose to operate within schools, and even within classrooms. Their hope is that, by eliminating school preoccupation with subjects and by means of a curriculum based on open-ended questions, we can develop in each individual the ability to see and condemn the evil and absurdity inherent in the accepted manners and beliefs of contemporary society. Therein lies the link with the other radicals: Postman and Weingartner, too, see in a new kind of education the hope of a new kind of society, one in which sham and superficial conventions are cast aside by individuals who, free of manipulation, indoctrination and docile acceptance, will forge truth anew for themselves.

Finally by way of introduction attention should be drawn to the fact that a considerable part of the work of Reimer and Illich originates in relation to the Third World and is particularly concerned with economic arguments, both matters that are beyond the scope and interest of this book. One of their main complaints is that the Third World has been invaded by a mythology that is irrelevant and disastrous to it. The suggestion is that a particular Western culture and a Western type and system of qualification has been imposed quite inappropriately, at great material and spiritual cost, on alien cultures facing different circumstances.

It seems highly likely, a priori, that the imposition of a schooling pattern evolved in Western industrialised democracies over a long period of time would be inappropriate if transplanted rapidly and wholesale to other contexts. But the deschoolers themselves claim that what they have to say is directly relevant to Western industrialised democracies themselves. It is not therefore the inappropriateness of one type of schooling to some types of society that is really at issue. Theirs is not simply the rather banal (albeit very important for those involved) theory that there is no such thing as the universal pattern of true or correct education; it is ‘the general futility of wo...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–88)
• Chapter 3 A Critical Look at Certain Themes in Rousseau
• Chapter 4 A. S. Neill (1883–1973)
• Chapter 5 Paul Goodman (1911–73)
• Chapter 6 Everett Reimer (b. 1922) and Ivan Illich (b. 1926)
• Chapter 7 Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
• Appendix Bibliographical, Biographical and Stylistic Notes
• Notes to Chapters
• Bibliography
• Index