Education and Paul Goodman

1968

Today’s educational system is not concerned with educating, but with processing students into the organization society. It is not particularly interested in teaching a method of thinking; it is more concerned with image.  Paul Goodman points this out when he says that school systems are not in the control of students and teachers, but in the hands of administrators, and the school board members come from the establishment.  School boards are more interested in fund raising and public appearance that progressing the student to higher learning.  This is especially true with public school boards, whose members are generally elected to the body.  A person who must depend on public support to keep a position will not be overly willing to encourage experimental programs that may meet with public disapproval.  This situation leaves schools at the mercy of prejudice.  How can a program that denies long accepted public beliefs be introduced if it has to satisfy that very public?  How do you overcome ignorance if you give ignorance the final say?  Who can deny that the public clings to its ignorance?  With this as the prevailing state of society does real education matter?

Goodman finds much waste in the system.  He says it is foolish to believe every child deserves an education.  In this organization society, where technology is so advanced, many children would be better served learning a trade.  What reason is there teaching a child poetic writing f the child’s interest is completely aimed at being an auto mechanic?  Goodman can only think of one reason: to put the child in his place.  Goodman declares that secondary education is designed to break the spirit of the individual, not to actually teach anything.  As bad as this is itself, once the spirit is broken, forces are brought upon the child to attend college; and seldom is it pointed out there is an actual value to attending college.  No one tells the child to go and learn.  Instead, the child is shown charts indicating how much more money a college graduate earns than the non-college graduate.  Often it becomes a matter of having a paper to hang on the wall, not to have any real skill or knowledge.  Therefore, why should the student care what the teacher says?  The motto for the student is “get in and get out”.  If this sometimes requires cheating, it can be justified.  Who needs sociology to build a bridge or run an ad agency?  No wonder schools fall into the hands of administrators and not educators.  One must remember success in the organization society is measured in money-made, not knowledge acquired.

What would Goodman do about this?  He calls for a student revolution.  His hope is youth will see through the mediocrity of the organization society and its educational system.  The only way to effect real change would be student determination to found a new order.  Goodman encourages student control.  It is they who must have the interest to learn, and they must demand that learning.  He calls for breaking down the old system.  The only purpose of school should be education and you cannot educate anyone who doesn’t have an interest in learning.  Why even try?  Let these people fall out of line.  Goodman would measure a student only by the standard of his interest field.  If the student meets that standard, then what difference does it make how he got there?  This way only the interested arrives.  It is, Goodman says, the student’s ability to pursue his wants that should count, not the check-off requirements of administrators.  It may be concluded that Goodman’s hopes for our future rest on a revolution, and he is probably right.  (And we still wait for this revolution, and he is still right. -- Larry E. 1/1/2001,)  

I was into Goodman in the 'sixties and 'seventies, and read several of his books on education  at that time. To learn more about Paul Goodman, click on the title of this post.

Experiment

1970

EXPERIMENT

Of the myriad problems of modern American society, racial disharmony is certainly one of the most dominant.  It has been the boing issue of the last decade, with roots going even further into the past.  And it threatens to remain a complex and perplexing issue for the future.  However, despite the maze of unanswerable questions surrounding every approach to understanding our society’s racial facets, one fact can be stated without too much argument.  The attitude concerning what should be the minority’s relationship to the majority has changed.  In the early sixties, assimilations of the minority into the mainstream of society were felt to be the best answer.  As the seventies begin, there is an emphasis on racial pride and the perpetuation of sub-cultures.  It is as if the melting pot had been turned into a great soup tureen serving out different soups.

Where once the rally cry of minorities was brotherhood with all mankind, there are now cries of black power, red power, yellow power and so on.  Language, clothing style, hair style and other particulars of a given minority, that were once disowned by the minority members who wished to blend into the mainstream of American society, are more and more being adopted by the same as their special identity.  Any attempt at changing such styles is regarded as an attempt to force the majority’s values on the minority.

Whether this development of racial pride is good or bad is not our concern.  We are concerned with such things as style, fashion and taste being regarded as the essence of a given group of people.  Our purpose will be to devise a means to prove that such styles are not inherent differences within different racial strains, but are acquired through various experiences.

HYPOTHESIS AND APPROACH

I propose there is no difference between people caused by race, but that differences are imposed upon people by outside pressures.  I do not intend to deal with those pressures.  I am interested in proving only my basic premise in its purest form.  I have devised an experiment to test my hypothesis to some degree.

My approach is simple.  I have compiled a series of musical groups.  Each group contains seven popular songs performed by singers of different race.  A group can then be played for a selected group of subjects who will be asked to list the songs in order of preference.

Why did I choose popular music for my experiment?  I choose a field of art, because only in art does there seem to be any real conventions of racial tones.  There have been inventions by men of all races, but can any single invention be defined in terms of race?  Such terms as “soul music”, “black experience”, "Jewish school of literature” appear often in art criticisms and attest that racial definitions exist in the field of art.  I feel this is especially true in the area of pop music.

A few years ago I was with friends talking about the Righteous Brothers, who were a white duo singing “black music”.  One of my black friends laughed and said, “If you think that’s soul, well I guess I’ll have to take you out to hear some real soul music.”  In that particular statement is the belief that there is some essential difference in the music of different races; a difference caused by race.

I believe the difference is mostly imaginary.  Therefore, I choose pop music as the perfect media for my experiment.

EXPERIMENT

Subjects are selected.  The main requirement for selection is that a racial mix is maintained.  There should be enough subjects to make the results significant.  The experiment deals with music that is a subjective form at best.  Allowances must be made for individual tastes, hearing differences and possible familiarity with the music being played.  There should be enough subjects to allow for these factors and still give definite patters in the charted results.

The subjects are then asked to listen to a series of musical selections and to rank the songs in order of individual preference.  A number will be given each song and they will use the number to list the songs.

SAMPLE GROUP OF SONGS

This performers are racially mixed, but only half of the subjects should be told this.  The half not knowing for certain that there are black and white singers will act as a control group in that no prior prejudice has been given.

1. Try a Little Tenderness   Otis Redding     Black

2. Alabama Song                   Doors                White

3. There She Goes                Bill Medley       White

4. Sudden Stop                     Percy Sledge      Black

5. America 1968                   Animals             White

6. Valentine Song                Tim Buckley      White

7. Always Something There to Remind Me   Dionne Warwick   Black

Fallacy of Higher Education

1970

An old saying states that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Since a little knowledge implies only a superficial understanding, this is possibly true.  But in the United States of the 1970s a great deal of knowledge may be a dangerous thing.  On the surface this may appear contradictory, but we examine the fallacy of this thrust for knowledge through higher education, we will find it is not.

What are these fallacies lurking in the American belief in higher education?  To answer this we must raise several basic questions that must be answered first. What is the common American attitude toward education?  What is the traditional position of a college graduate in American society?  What is the qualitative position of education under the demands of universal education?

There appears to be an ambivalence of thought about education in the American mind.  There are many indications that education is viewed with suspicion.  This especially true in the lower economic classes where survival is often in the physical ability of the man rather than in his mental ability.  Perhaps it is a hangover from the frontier, which has given us a tradition of using action to overcome barriers.  We also can see a mistrusting attitude in much of the arts of recent decades.  How many movies showed a rugged hero outsmarting the college upstart?

But America has filled in its physical frontiers and its people are no longer rural-bound farmers and lower class laborers, but a vast middle-class of mostly urban bent.  The problems have switched from the physical to those of a complex sophisticated nature.  The middle-class man, often frustrated by the pressure to succeed, has developed a concept of education as both a means to this success or an excuse for failure.₁  That is, to have an education will provide a hand up to better status, while a lack of it can take the onus off the failure to gain some prestigious position.  In any case, the belief in the power of education becomes a push on the middle-class child to gain as much as possible.  Everywhere in American society we find an emphasis on getting an education.  The child is assaulted by parent, teacher and even public transit advertising to stay in school, get a good education to get a good job; go to college.  Usually he is lectured in school guidance courses on the monetary benefits of education.  The high school graduate makes X thousand dollars more than the non-graduate.  The college graduate makes X thousand dollars more that the high school graduate.  Here we see an emphasis, not on the intellectual benefits of college, but on the money value.  We shall return to the question of monetary gain later.  But here, let us consider the lack of concern about the job waiting the graduate.  There is no real interest in the demands of the job.  Perhaps it is taken for granted that the job will be worthy of four years, or more, of educational pursuit.  But are the waiting positions enough to satisfy an educated person?  This leads to answering the second question.

In the presidential race of 1968, we saw what was a great influx of college youth into the political arena, both as participants in the established patterns and as demonstrators in the street.  Many questions were put forth asking why the students had become politically oriented.  Public interest was not the average image of what a college student should be pursuing.  The student was in college to listen, not to speak.  But this student involvement led to some examination of the students’ position by such political analysts as Theodore S. White.  The thought provoking analysis he set forth does very well in answering our second question about the traditional position of the college graduate in our society.

Traditionally, according to White, college has been seen as preparatory to leadership.  This is certainly true, since we are told in repeated commencement and political addresses that students are the leaders of tomorrow.  But how many leaders can there be?  Everybody cannot be a leader, some must be followers.  Not everyone can be a planner, or designer, or professor.  Some must be machine operators, technicians, clerks.  To be realistic, we must face the fact that there is a greater need for the latter then of the former.  As White points out, New York needs carpenters and yet young people are not becoming carpenters.  In the same state “scores of thousands of students...study international affairs; yet the state department absorbs only 150 new foreign service officers a year...industry only a few thousands.”  What happens when these “scores of thousands of students” realize there is no place for them when they graduate?  What happens when promise is broken?  “What happens to a dream deferred?”  And yet the push for everybody to go to college continues, and leads to the answer of the third question, how does the growth of college enrollment affect the quality of education?

Lets consider a few dry statistics.  The American Council of Education has issued projections of college enrollment to 1980.  They tell the story graphically.  In 1900 there were 238,000 students.  By 1980 this is expected to reach 12,000,000, a rise of nearly 5,000%.  This is out of proportion with the population growth, for population will be up 228.9% by 1980.  Even faculty rise lags behind student enrollment at about 3,000% by 1980.  What can this mean in terms of education quality?  With overcrowded classes, overburdened teachers and too many students who should not be in college, quality can only suffer.  Every child should not grow up to go to college, yet projections say 90% will go to college by year 2000.  This is not just an issue of mental ability, but one of desire.  Many young people would probably not consider college if external factors did not force them to a college desk.  One such factor, as stated, is financial gain.  But with such an overabundance of college students entering the job market, one wonders how soon the gain in salary will level out.  If a firm needs one engineer and has 100 college graduates applying, it does not need to offer a large salary as a lure.

We must also consider the requirements of college as well, for with a huge demand for college training, it is only natural that a supply will be provided.  Whether the supply is of adequate quality is a different question.

This is only a brief, and thus, a superficial examination of a problem of American society, that has heretofore been generally overlooked.  But the time has come to see the problem of universal education.  Solutions involve changing attitudes, so are difficult, but not impossible if we begin to recognize the need.  We have advised every young person to get an education.  We have emphasized the importance of college.  Now it may be time to consider the actual impact of our advice.

 

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