“Of course not, Julie. You can’t just stop teaching them anything. Rather, you must teach them something new. And if you’re going to teach them something new, then of course you must first learn something new yourself. And that’s what you’re here to do.”
“I get it,” I said.
School Daze
I do realize, Julie, that I have to show you how to explore this new continent that I’ve led you to.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I told him.
“Perhaps you’d lik
e to hear how I first began to explore it myself.”
“I’d like that very much.”
“Last Sunday I mentioned the name Rachel Sokolow as the person who made it possible for me to maintain this establishment. You don’t need to know how this came about, but I knew Rachel from infancy—was in communication with her as you and I are in communication. I’d had no experience of your educational system when Rachel started school. Not having any reason to, I’d never given it even a passing thought. Like most five-year-olds, she was thrilled to be going off to school at last, and I was thrilled for her, imagining (as she did) that some truly wonderful experience must be awaiting her. It was only after several months that I began to notice that her excitement was fading—and continued to fade month after month and year after year, until, by the time she was in the third grade she was thoroughly bored and glad for any opportunity to miss a day of school. Does this all come as strange news to you?”
“Yeah,” I said with a bitter laugh. “Only about eighty million kids went to bed last night praying for six feet of snow to fall so the schools would have to close.”
“Through Rachel, I became a student of your educational system. In effect, I went to school with her. Most of the adults in your society seem to have forgotten what went on when they were in school as small children. If, as adults, they were forced to see it all again through the eyes of their children, I think they’d be astounded and horrified.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
“What one sees first is how far short real schooling falls from the ideal of ‘young minds being awakened.’ Teachers for the most part would be delighted to awaken young minds, but the system within which they must work fundamentally frustrates that desire by insisting that all minds must be opened in the same order, using the same tools, and at the same pace, on a certain schedule. The teacher is charged with getting the class as a whole to a certain predetermined point in the curriculum by a certain predetermined time, and the individuals that make up the class soon learn how to help the teacher with this task. This is, in a sense, the first thing they must learn. Some learn it quickly and easily and others learn it slowly and painfully, but all eventually learn it. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
“I think so.”
“What have you personally learned to do to help teachers with their task?”
“Don’t ask questions.”
“Expand on that a bit, Julie.”
“If you raise your hand and say, ‘Gee, Ms. Smith, I haven’t understood a single word you’ve said all day,’ Ms. Smith is going to hate you. If you raise your hand and say, ‘Gee, Ms. Smith, I haven’t understood a single word you’ve said all week,’ Ms. Smith is going to hate you five times as much. And if you raise your hand and say, ‘Gee, Ms. Smith, I haven’t understood a single word you’ve said all year,’ Ms. Smith is going to pull out a gun and shoot you.”
“So the idea is to give the impression that you understand everything, whether you do or not.”
“That’s right. The last thing the teacher wants to hear is that you haven’t understood something.”
“But you began by giving me the rule against asking questions. You haven’t really addressed that.”
“Don’t ask questions means … don’t bring up things just because you wonder about them. I mean, like, suppose you’re studying tidal forces. You don’t raise your hand to ask if it’s true that crazy people tend to be crazier during the full moon. I can imagine doing something like that in kindergarten, but by the time you’re my age, that would be taboo. On the other hand, some teachers like to be distracted by certain kinds of questions. If they’ve got a hobbyhorse, they’ll always accept an invitation to ride it, and kids pick up on that right away.”
“Why would you want to have the teacher riding a hobbyhorse?”
“Because it’s better than listening to him explain how a bill passes Congress.”
“How else do you help teachers with their task?”
“Never disagree. Never point out inconsistencies. Never ask questions that go beyond what’s being taught. Never let on that you’re lost. Always try to look like you’re getting every word. It all comes to pretty much the same thing.”
“I understand,” Ishmael said. “Again, I stress that this is a defect of the system itself and not of the teachers, whose overriding obligation is to ‘get through the material.’ You understand that, in spite of all this, yours is the most advanced educational system in the world. It works very badly, but it’s still the most advanced there is.”
“Yeah, that’s what I understand. I wish you’d smirk or something to show when you’re being ironical.”
“I’m not sure I could even manage such an expression, Julie.… To return to my story, I watched Rachel being marched through the grades (and I should add that she went to a very expensive private school—the most advanced of the advanced). As I did so I began to put what I was seeing together with what I already knew of the workings of your culture and what I already knew of the working of those cultures that you are so far in advance of. At this point, I had developed none of the theories you’ve heard here so far. In societies you consider primitive, youngsters ‘graduate’ from childhood at age thirteen or fourteen, and by this age have basically learned all they need in order to function as adults in their community. They’ve learned so much, in fact, that if the rest of the community were simply to vanish overnight, they’d be able to survive without the least difficulty. They’d know how to make the tools needed for hunting and fishing. They’d know how to shelter and clothe themselves. At age thirteen or fourteen, their survival value is one hundred percent. I assume you know what I mean by that.”
“Of course.”