[O]f all the things which I have mentioned that which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution, if the laws are democratical, democratically or oligarchically, if the laws are oligarchical....
Now, to have been educated in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a democracy is made possible. Whereas among ourselves the sons of the ruling class in an oligarchy live in luxury, but the sons of the poor are hardened by exercise and toil, and hence they are both more inclined and better able to make a revolution. And in democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation.
-Aristotle, Politics V.9
In the comments to a post below, I remarked that Tex once said that they want to turn America into the security zone of an airport, but that public schools are run much the same way.
Our public school system is terribly designed for educating a free people. All the rights of citizens are suspended while you are on school grounds. You have no freedom of speech, but may be punished for speaking without permission on any topic. You may certainly not publish and post flyers critical of the government authorities. You have no freedom of movement: you have assigned seats in assigned classes, and to skip school is punishable by law as well as administratively. You certainly have no right to keep and bear arms, nor even to self defense -- our local high school has the policy of having all parties to a fight arrested by the school resource officers, and charged with assault, even if the were clearly defending themselves from a bully with a record of harassing them. There is no freedom from unreasonable search and seizure -- just like at the airport, all bags are subject to search and seizure at any time.
There is no right to a fair trial, or any trial; punishments are meted out by administrative fiat. There is no guarantee the punishment will not be cruel or unusual. Every right an American has by birth and the grace of God is suspended by the schools, and the children are educated that way for a dozen years and more.
A free people needs a different education. Our system is unfit for our purposes. Aristotle said the same thing about his own, and it was in the next generation that democracy was swept away for almost two millennia. One of his students, indeed, was the author of that: someone who'd gotten the education Aristotle thought worthy of a prince rather than a democrat.
It is a powerful thing, education. We allow its corruption at our peril.
School was not always a prison like that- we routinely carried pocket knives to school, played hookie , got in fights, and there was always an interest in the authorities as to who started it, and usually, if they had a bloody nose, it was deemed punishment enough. Of course, that was a different breed of teacher, most of the males were WW2 vets, or at least hardened by life in the 1930's.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. I am 71 and we were required to fold our hands on our desks, do useless extra penmanship lessons, all play the same game at recess, not secretly read in our laps when our work was done, stand in line several times a day, dress in a narrowly prescribed way - a host of strait-jacketing activites. It was at the fringes of their authority that they didn't care, such as whether you had bicycled to school safely or gotten into fights at 3:01pm.
ReplyDeleteDifferent schools in different parts of our nation. At the schools I attended (I'm pushing 75), mostly in Illinois and Iowa, we talked among ourselves during class until our side conversations got too disruptive, with no slack on the tests we took covering what was being taught during our side talks; we did have to learn penmanship and were graded on it, not so much for penmanship's sake--though that was a useful skill; we weren't expected to do any typing on manual typewriters--but as a tool through which to learn a modicum of personal discipline; we did pretty much what we wanted to do during recess, other than fighting--that was formally frowned on, but wrestling/rassling was ignored and scuffling ignored unless there developed a clear winner and that one continued.
ReplyDeleteNo uniforms, but we did have to start the day with combed hair and shirts tucked in. Miniskirts came out during my high school years; the high schools implemented skirt length requirements, and boys had to wear long pants.
Today's discipline strictures, at least in what passes for public schools in K-12, do seem more exercises in power for power's sake, and they seem heavily biased, to the severe detriment of the favored groups as well as those disfavored.
Eric Hines
I did my last year of highschool at Cullowhee HS, also known as Camp Laboratory School. They were once the first buildings of what is now Western Carolina University, after moving out here from San Diego, CA. The principal at the time was Dr. Chuck Stallings. We had a smoking area where teachers mingled with students during breaks. Most students who drove, had some kind of rifle in their vehicle. We'd sharpen our knives in shop class.
ReplyDeleteIf a couple of students got into a scuffle, and got caught, Dr. Stallings would take them to the gym and let them duke it out with a set of boxing gloves.
Even the highschool I left in San Diego had a rifle team. And although we didn't carry guns to school, everyone carried pocket knives. This was in the mid 70's. I graduated from Cullowhee in 1976.