Recently, one of my good friends wrote this in an e-mail:
I arrived in the US with the misunderstanding, common among Brits, that because the language is the same (similar), the culture would be familiar. It didn't take me long to realize I'd have been more at home in Spain, even though I don't speak the language. What surprised me most was how controlled US society seemed. It fit my image of Soviet Russia more than the (TV) image of Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. It's difficult for me to cite specifics, but in general, Americans simply did what they were told more than Brits.
How did the first nation to deny the authority of its monarchy became populated by compliant zombies? Some would blame the media, but I think it starts sooner than that--in our schools.
Compulsory schooling was deemed necessary to a healthy democracy. The bulk of people must be able to assess their political environment and vote in their own self interest. They must be able to read and reason well enough to see the pitfalls of arguments.
Does schooling provide this service? Would you be an illiterate dolt, if not for your primary school teachers? Do we learn to read because we are taught, or because we are steeped in a society where reading is essential and powerful?
In public school, every effort is made to teach children to read. Although 98% of Americans can read something, only about 50% can read well enough to function in our society:
The US Dept. of Education, Institute of Education Sciences has conducted large scale assessment of adult proficiency in 1992 and 2003 using a common methodology from which trends could be measured. The study measures Prose, Document, and Quantitative skills and 19,000 subjects participated in the 2003 survey. There was no significant change in Prose or Document skills and a slight increase in Quantitative skills. As in 2008, roughly 15% of the sample could function at the highest levels in all three categories. Roughly 40% were at either basic or below basic levels of proficiency in all three categories.[2]. The study dentifies a class of adults who although they do not meet criteria for functional illiteracy, nonetheless face reduced job opportunities and life prospects due to inadequate literacy levels relative to the requirements of contemporary society.
The study, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in April 2002 and reapplied in 2003 giving trend data. It involved lengthy interviews of over 90,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." Further, this study showed that 41% to 44% of U.S. adults in the lowest level on the literacy scale are living in poverty.[2]
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed some upward movement of low end (basic and below to intermediate) in U.S. adult literacy levels and a decline in the full proficiency group.[3]
Thus, if this bottom quantile of the study is equated with the functionally illiterate, and these are then removed from those classified as literate, then the resultant literacy rate for the United States would be at most 65-85% depending on where in the basic, minimal competence quantile one sets the cutoff.
The 15% figure for full literacy, equivalent to a university undergraduate level, is consistent with the notion that the "average" American reads at a 7th or 8th grade level which is also consistent with recommendations, guidelines, and norms of readability for medication directions, product information, and popular fiction.--Wiki
No effort is made to teach children to read in Democratic Free Schools. Yet, they all master it on their own. In fact, they become literate faster and with less effort. This echoes the explosion of touch typing that occurred with the internet and cell phones. Hard to believe people once took classes to learn to type.
It calls into question the relationship between schooling and learning. All learning, after all, is a deeply personal process. Without the will to learn something, you can not be taught.
The very founders of our compulsory school system made it very clear what they needed from a school system. They wanted a large compliant workforce. They needed consumers who would become a reliably homogenous market. They needed people to submit to authority figures so they would change consumption and work habits when needed. A barely literate but docile proletariat was a fringe benefit.
So what, then, is the purpose of school? Are schools more about breaking a pupil's will, than about learning? Are they to create a society of people able to assess information and the condition of their world so democracy can survive? Or is it to dumb down the masses and create a docile workforce so democracy will die?
In this episode of our series on education and schooling, we hear from the one person we most need to take into account in this discussion--the student.
Read More
