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While
there are growing global discussions about the role of education in people’s
lives, most ongoing discussions focus on children and schools. In many cases,
the role of adults and the family in education is neglected or marginalized in
these discussions. Part of this problem, perhaps, stems from a general
misunderstanding of education, which is most often equated with merely going to
school. An important first step, therefore, is to make clearer distinctions
between education and schooling.
Parentless
Education
Education
can occur in many forms and at many times. It can be understood as the making of
a whole person, which includes learning life skills, learning a vocation,
learning cultural values, and learning to care for the self and others.
Education occurs in many contexts—social and individual—and it can be a
lifelong process of becoming that is closely related to family and community
activities. Schooling is but a small part of education and is primarily an
institutional experience with a set of standards and assumptions that are
applied to the majority and in which families and communities usual play a
lesser part. Schooling occurs indoors, according to set times and sequences, and
is often geared toward narrow economic and political goals.
Education
has been a human activity for millennia, while schooling was primarily developed
over the past 150 years. Schooling is directed by others, while education is
often self-directed. In terms of methods, schooling often relies on principles
of psychology, rooted in behaviorism and, more recently, cognitive psychology;
while education has a broader variety of methods, including experience and
self-reflection. Education is organic, but schooling is mechanical. While there
is clearly some overlap between schooling and education, to have a constructive
conversation about parents as educators, it is important to recognize and
maintain the above kinds of distinctions.
Schooling,
as presently conceived and practiced in most places around the globe today,
emerged in Europe during the 19th century and arose with the development of the
nation state, industrialization, and the training of a modern army. America and
Japan soon adopted this system, which, through colonialism, spread to the rest
of the globe so that today we find a virtually uniform system of schooling
anywhere we care to look, with only very superficial distinctions in different
locations.
The
prime function of modern schooling was to create a managed society under the eye
of the national government, to provide workers for the industrial system and
soldiers for the national army. The methods and assumptions of modern schooling
are similar to those of factory labor and military service. All rely on ranking
people according to some externally imposed standard, all involve inculcating
obedience to a system of authority, and all involve subsuming the individual to
an overarching institution, either the state or the corporation.
In
other words, schooling emerged as a tool for social control: its intention was
to create the national subject, which includes the national language, allegiance
to the national flag, and developing some narrow, predetermined set of skills
deemed useful for the national development. Parents and communities were not
consulted at all in the development of modern schooling; indeed, in many cases
they resisted sending their children to schools. In the end, modern schooling
prevailed, so most parents and communities today comply.
Breaking
Down Barriers
This
is not to say that there are no variants on this model and that there are no
alternative perspectives, but to understand the variants and alternatives, one
needs to see them, for the most part, as a response to the institution of modern
schooling. Homeschooling is a good example, which largely arose as a movement in
those places where schooling had begun and which was largely a response to the
social experiences that children would have in schools. But home schooling is
still schooling, with the parents playing the same sorts of roles that the state
plays in schooling and in which the same values and standards are implied.
In
many places, the state board of education requires that parents either utilize
the state curriculum or periodically report to state officials. This is because
in its ascendancy, schooling became compulsory, and in some times and places it
could even be considered a crime or a form of child abuse to remove one’s
children from school. Alternatives to schooling include the growing
“walkout” movement, which is gaining in popularity, particularly in the
Third World where schools are often bleak and abysmal places or where
communities have taken education into their own hands after realizing that the
benefits of schooling were accrued only to a select few in the society.
School
officials have sometimes responded to these movements away from school by trying
to dress up schools with the latest educational fads and fashions in order to
keep children confined within their walls, voluntarily rather than by force.
Part of this voluntary complicity also comes from the assumption that the best
way to get ahead in society is through school, that the best way to ascend
within the class structure is through school.
So
where does this leave parents as educators? With many parents occupying
themselves with economic activities, themselves trying to ascend within the
class system of most modern societies, they have little or no time to spend with
their children and they most often welcome those institutions that are willing
to take children off their hands for several hours a day as they themselves try
to get ahead. Some parents, women in particular, have gotten involved with
schools as teachers, monitors, assistants, and babysitters. This volunteerism is
often welcomed by schools, since it is a financially viable way to maintain the
structure of schooling.
In
general, then, we can say that modern schooling is a function of modern society,
and that as long as the convolution between schooling and education remains, the
structure of schooling will prevail and it will absorb most of these volunteer
efforts. In a very few cases, with heavy parental and community involvement,
some schools have become more akin to community centers that provide a range of
services for both children and adults, which are open all year round, and which
host a variety of social activities. This is a positive development within the
system of modern schooling, since it puts parents and communities more in
control of the vast public financial resources often relegated to schooling.
However, such schools are only exceptions to the general rule of schools as
places detached from community life.
But
if for a moment we move our questions away from the issue of how to make schools
better or more responsive places, we can begin to raise more fundamental
questions that are often neglected in school-dominated discussions. The
technocrats who designed and implemented modern schooling had their own
fundamental questions, and they designed the system to serve their goals, mainly
emanating from needs for social control. However, there are many other questions
that can be asked about learning, and these can proceed from the basic
realization that schooling and education are two distinctly different
activities.
Accepting
that distinction for a moment, and holding onto the meaning of education as
outlined above, one can ask a variety of questions. What does it mean to be
educated? What is the purpose of seeking knowledge? What kinds of knowledge do
people need to lead meaningful lives? How do I know that I am intelligent or
successful? What are my duties to my community and to the biosphere in which I
reside? Schools don’t really ask these questions, since they assume the
answers will be the same: schools are places where we learn skills necessary to
survive in modern society, which most often translates into the singular goal of
finding a job.
But
the standardized goals of modern schooling should not prohibit us from asking
these sorts of searching questions, since such questions are at the core of
understanding the relationship between life and learning. A first step, then,
toward preparing parents as educators is to take the time and make the effort to
have these kinds of conversations and discussions, not only within the family,
but also between families on the community level. Schooling survives on the
inactivity or inability of parents and communities to imagine or conceive of
anything other than what school has to offer. If parents and communities see
things the same way as schools, then they will not see the reason for
questioning the system, and they will simply accede to it.
Learning
Together
Beyond
asking questions and discussing the meaning and purpose of education, parents
can take the time and make the effort to interact with other families in what
may be called “learning gatherings.” Such gatherings can be a good
opportunity for families to share what they may know with each other and to
spend time together doing, singing, dancing, creating, cooking, playing,
digging, hiking, building, exploring, telling stories, and any one of a number
of activities that they find provide meaning in their lives.
Learning
gatherings can also be places for discussing issues that are important to
families and communities but which are often neglected by schools, governments,
and businesses. Learning gatherings can be places to build solidarity for those
who are questioning the system and to build support networks for those who
choose to walk out of the institutionalized structure of modern society. They
can provide a space for people to conceive of and enact their own stories about
what is meaningful in life; to create their own directions for learning and
living and to expand the many learning possibilities for children and adults
alike.
Outside
the confines of schooling, families and communities can share their stories and
experiences about what has inspired them and what resources may be available for
learning. Learning gatherings can be places to share and explore ways to
self-create life experiences, rather than consuming the readymade experiences as
offered by schools and other institutions such as hospitals or the food and
entertainment industries.
What
kinds of resources already exist in communities that can provide learning
opportunities for families? How are families and communities creating their own
learning experiences? How are families and communities finding and nurturing
their own passions and strengths? Learning gatherings can foster communication
and dialogue among families and between generations within immediate and
extended families. They can also be places to share experiences and ideas with
other families who are embarking on their own learning journeys. They can
provide opportunities to share all of our anxieties and difficulties, especially
those that may arise from taking the first steps away from schooling and toward
deeper and more diverse forms of learning. Learning gatherings can be a way to
find meaning in life, and are a necessary first step toward preparing parents as
educators.
Please
join the Education
for Change with
Professor Yusuf Progler on Monday, June 27, 2005 from 06:00 to 08:00 GMT
Read
Also
Join
the discussion forum Education
for What?
**Yusef
Progler is cocreator of the MultiWorld Network (www.multiworld.org),
manager of the Multiversity Group (http://groups.msn.com/multiversity), and
editor of the Radical Essentials Pamphlet Series (www.citizensint.org).
Please join him for a Live Dialogue on Monday, June 27, 2005 from __:00 to __:00
GMT.
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