What is the purpose of school?
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John Taylor Gatto has a suggestion or two:
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As has Andrew Gavin Marshall:
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THE
PURPOSE OF EDUCATION: SOCIAL UPLIFT OR SOCIAL CONTROL?
By:
Andrew Gavin Marshall
04.08.12
The
spread of ‘mass education’ of primary and secondary education
from the Prussian system in the 18th century was designed to
socialize the population into a state-structured ideology (taking the
monopoly of education away from the religious and community
institutions and into the hands of the emerging nation-state). The
aim, therefore, of mass – or public – education was not a
benevolent concept of expanding and sharing knowledge (as is
purported in liberal thought), but rather as a means to foster
patriotism and support the state system in preserving the social
class structures.
In
1807, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the founding philosophers of
this system, explained that educated was the means toward fostering
patriotism, as “universal, state-directed, compulsory education
would teach all Germans to be good Germans and would prepare them to
play whatever role – military, economic, political – fell to them
in helping the state reassert Prussian power.” [1]
As
British philosopher Bertrand Russell explained:
“Fichte
laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so
that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable,
throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise
than as their schoolmasters would have wished.” [2]
In the
19thcentury, the United States remained largely rural and
non-industrial, and thus, “the apparatus of state control was
extremely weak in most communities.” As Meyer et. al. argue: in
the American Journal of Sociology:
“The
spread of schooling in the rural North and West can best be
understood as a social movement implementing a commonly held ideology
of nation-building. It combined the outlook and interests of small
entrepreneurs in a world market, evangelical Protestantism, and an
individualistic conception of the polity.” [3]
In
early 19th century United States, many worried about “a new
industrial feudalism supplanting the old order.” For such
reformers, the complex circumstances in which they found themselves –
of a society in which the old ideas and institutions were
disappearing and new ones were emerging – could best be addressed
by the common school, “serving all citizens, stamping them American
and unifying the nation.” [4]
This
was, in itself, a desire for ‘social control’ in a socially
disruptive circumstance of rapid change in all realms of human
activity. As Robert H. Wiebe explained, “the instruments of control
were themselves the means of improvement,” and schools were viewed
as “assimilating, stabilizing mechanisms.” By the 1830s, school
reformers “were urgently seeking a new national cohesion, a source
of uniquely American wholeness.” The focus on socializing children
was of the utmost concern. As one reformer stated, children “must
be taken at the earliest opportunity, if the seeds of good are to be
planted before the seeds of evil begin to germinate.” Thus, “the
role of the educator was to construct a model environment around the
child.” [5]
...
The
establishment of universities became a core mission of the founders,
as ten key founders also founded academic institutions, including
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James
Madison, George Wythe, Benjamin Rush, William S. Johnson, William R.
Davie, Abraham Baldwin, and Manasseh Cutler. Thus, many of the
schools had inherent within them a ‘nationalizing’ mission, a
mission to serve the nation, though it may not be explicitly the
State.[19]
Thus,
the new modern American universities were to combine the ideals of
research, teaching, and public service, as many believed the schools
should “advance basic knowledge and provide the technical expertise
required by a modern industrial society.” [20] Thus, as Scott
wrote:
“Faculties
in the new applied sciences, emerging social sciences, and even an
important minority in the humanities believed strongly in the social
utility of their disciplines. Professors in the social sciences were
often committed to public service. To this end, schools of political
science were established at Columbia, Michigan, and Wisconsin during
the 1880s and 1890s. At the same time, within departments of
economics and sociology, there were devotees of social utility.
Psychology, which was then a part of philosophy, also developed a
faction devoted to utility (pragmatism). Social scientists served
their society in the capacity of experts, which also involved
research. By 1900, the “useful” university was establishing such
untraditional fields of study as business administration, physical
education, sanitary science, and engineering.” [21]
In
this era of social control, education became increasingly important,
not only in terms of mass schooling, which experienced many reforms,
but also in terms of the university system. As Andrew Carnegie wrote
in 1889, at the top of the list of “charitable deeds” to
undertake was “the founding of a university by men enormously rich,
such men as must necessarily be few in any country.” It was in this
context, of robber barons seeking to remake education, that we see
the founding of several of America’s top universities, many of
which were named after their robber baron founders, such as Stanford
(after Leland Stanford), Cornell (after Ezra Cornell), and Johns
Hopkins, who owned the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. [22] This new
class of industrialists, who emerged out of the Civil War in America,
“challenged the position of the old propertied, pre-industrial
elite. This struggle crystallized in particular around the reform of
the educational system that had legitimated the old elite’s
domination.” [23] The modern university was born out of this
struggle between elites, with the old educational system based upon
religious and moral values, “and the making of gentlemen,” while
the “new education” focused on “the importance of management or
administration” as well as “public service, [and] the advancement
of knowledge through original investigation.” [24]
John
D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago in 1891, and the
President of the University, “initiated a new disciplinary system,
which was enormously influential.” Ultimately, it “led to the
formation of the department structure of the American university,
which was internationally unique,” and was later exported around
the world “with the help of American foundations.”[25] This
disciplinary system consisted of separating politics from economics
(rejecting the notion of ‘political economy’ and its
‘ideologies’), as ideology was “deemed unscientific and
inappropriate in social sciences and political scientists have
increasingly seen their function as service to the powerful, rather
than providing leadership to populist or socialist movements.” [26]
The
Social Sciences and Social Control
The
concept of ‘social control’ emerged from the developing field of
sociology as a discipline in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. As sociologist Morris Janowitz wrote in
the American Journal of Sociology, “in the emergence of
sociology as an intellectual discipline, the idea of social control
was a central concept for analyzing social organization and the
development of industrial society.” [28]
Social
control is largely viewed as forms of control which reduce coercion,
and thus, enhance consent to the system or organizations in question.
Even a society with an effective system of social control would
require a structure of coercion, but depending on how advanced the
social control system is, the less need there would be for coercion.
Hence, the societies which are the most advanced in social control
would also be less dependent upon internal methods of coercion. Thus,
it was within liberal democratic states that both the study and
implementation of social control became most effective. In this
sense, the question was “whether the processes of social control
are able to maintain the social order [hierarchy] while
transformation and social change take place.” [29]
Sociology
largely emerged from the University of Chicago (founded by John D.
Rockefeller), with the world’s first department of sociology
founded in 1892. The sociologists who rose within and out of the
University of Chicago made up what was known as the ‘Chicago School
of Sociology.’ The school developed the most influential
sociologists in the nation, including George Herbert Mead and W.I.
Thomas, two scholars who had profound influence on the development of
the concept of ‘social control,’ and sociologists became
“reform-oriented liberals, not radical revolutionaries or
conservative cynics.” [30]
These
philanthropic foundations, and the many others that appeared in and
around the same time, and thereafter, were largely imbued with the
idea of “science in the service of society” as a goal for the
foundation, basing its actions upon a new rationality brought on by
the scientific revolution, and by the notions of reform pushed
forward in the Progressive Era, based largely upon the concept of
scientific social planning “to problems that educators, the new
sociologists, social workers, and political scientists found
important.” However, as the wealth of the foundations and the
positions of their patrons attracted criticisms, a Congressional
commission was on industrial relations (founded to settle a matter
related to a brutal repression of a mining strike by a
Rockefeller-owned mining company) expanded its scope to deal with the
general issue of the foundations. The Walsh Commission, as it was
known (after its founder, Frank P. Walsh), was formed in 1914, and
Walsh explained the inclusion of the foundations in the commission by
postulating that:
“the
creation of the Rockefeller and other foundations was the beginning
of an effort to perpetuate the present position of predatory wealth
through the corruption of sources of public information… [and] that
if not checked by legislation, these foundations will be used as
instruments to change to form of government of the U.S. at a future
date, and there is even a hint that there is a fear of a monarchy.”
[35]
In
1916, the Walsh Commission produced its final report, the Manly
Report (after the research director, Basil M. Manly), which concluded
that the foundations were so “grave a menace” to society, that
“it would be desirable to recommend their abolition.” No such
actions were taken.[36]
…
David
Nugent, an anthropologist at Emory University, wrote a rather lengthy
article for the academic journal, Identities, on the role of
foundations in shaping the social sciences. Nugent takes a look at
the development of the social sciences in relation to the
construction of an American Empire... The social sciences then,
presented the world with a form of imperialism focused on the
construction of a new form of knowledge by which to understand,
define, categorize, and change our world. The new missionaries
spreading this new gospel were the dominant American foundations,
most notably, the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, later to be
joined by a plethora of others, including the Ford Foundation. …
As
Nugent noted:
“During
a period when nation-states were the main arbiters of cultural
messages and capital flows, the social science infrastructure that
Rockefeller, Carnegie and the other foundations helped to construct
was largely independent of (though in no way in conflict with)
national controls. In the long run, this infrastructure promoted a
“flexible accumulation of knowledge” on a global scale, and in
the process helped bring into being an international public sphere of
social science knowledge.” [41] ...
Wicliffe
Rose, a professor who was involved in managing several different
Rockefeller philanthropies, wrote in a memorandum for Rockefeller
officials in 1923:
“All
important fields of activity… from the breeding of bees to the
administration of an empire, call for an understanding of the spirit
and technique of modern science… Science is the method of
knowledge. It is the key to such dominion as man may ever exercise
over his physical environment. Appreciation of its spirit and
technique, moreover, determines the mental attitude of a people,
affects the entire system of education, and carried with it the
shaping of a civilization.” [43]
Two
general scientific objectives were established for organizing the
social sciences, the first of which was, “to increase for the
scientist and scholar the possibilities of immediate personal
observation of the social problems or social phenomena which were
under investigation,” and the second objective was to promote
inter-disciplinary research. To undertake this, Ruml set out two
specific programs of action:
“First,
the creation of institutional centers in various parts of the world
that would with Rockefeller money embody scientific teaching and
research. Collaborative research was to be encouraged through the
specific research grants to these institutions. These centers would
therefore not only be creative institutions but would also serve as a
model for the development of the social sciences generally. Second,
Ruml began an extensive fellowship program which was designed to
complement the training provided by the institutional centers and
increase the number of able people working in the field.” [45]
Focusing
on the United States and Europe, the LSRM stated in 1926 that its
main policy was directed at establishing 12 or 15 centers of social
science research around the world, one specific center in each major
European country, (University of Stockholm, Deutsche Hochscule für
in Berlin, and the London School of Economics), and several in the
United States...
History
of alumni support at LSE - About ODAR - ODAR - Services and divisions
- Staff and students - Home (Late 1920s/1930s - LSE received
substantial funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and was described
as 'Rockefellers baby') ...
As the
Rockefeller Foundation prepared to incorporate the LSRM into its
institutional structure, Edmund E. Day took over as director of
the Social Sciences from Ruml in 1928... In 1930, Day wrote that,
“what we have to do is to establish in the social sciences the
scientific tradition and the scientific habit of mind,” and thus,
the Foundation should work to strengthen “certain types of interest
and certain habits of thought.” Naturally, this would be “thought”
which would be in the “interest” of the Foundation, itself. The
aim in doing this was to “coordinate the scientific attack upon
social problems,” as education professor, Donald Fisher, wrote
in Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism. Edmund Day saw the
potential for the social sciences to engage in “human engineering,”
and stated quite bluntly: “the validation of the findings of social
science must be through effective social control.”[47] ...
By
1931, the GEB’s survey of education emphasized three major fields
of concentration:
“1)
the study of the learning process and the mental, physical, and moral
development of the individual; 2) the problem of “preparing the
individual for vocations and leisure”; and 3) the means for
relating education to an evolving society, that is education which
would “insure the active adaptation of the individual to the
changes which may come in his social, physical and aesthetic
environments.”[49]
Day
acknowledged that “prevailing social ideas and ideals in the United
States were seriously out of accord with current social forms and
forces,” however, he argued, the answer did not lie in reforming
the social world to meet the needs of the individual, but in
adjusting the individual to the social world. As Day wrote, “we
must look chiefly to the school for the major efforts toward cultural
adjustment of the individual, since the school is a social
instrumentality with a uniquely flexible adaptability and with a
primary responsibility to meet this need.” Thus, the school could
“set the individual in satisfactory general relation to the world
in which he lived.”[50]
Between
1923 and 1939, the LSRM and the Rockefeller Foundation provided the
LSE with over $2 million, during which time the school expanded
rapidly, becoming “the leading centre of research in the Social
Sciences” in the British Empire... Rockefeller money in particular
ensured the development of anthropology, international relations, and
social biology, and student enrollment also dramatically increased
with large grants from Rockefeller philanthropies for postgraduate
research and teaching. Thus, by the end of the 1930s, the LSE had
“become an international centre training many foreign students.”
[53] ...
As
professor of education Donald Fisher wrote:
“Indeed
Rockefeller philanthropy prepared the way for the post-World War II
developments in Britain not only in terms of the increased spending
by government but also with respect to what was regarded as important
in the social sciences. Rockefeller philanthropy had determined which
subjects should be studied, which research questions should be
answered, and which methods should be utilized to answer these
questions.” [56]
This
era marked the emergence of what has been referred to as
“technocratic liberalism,” whereby social problems were addressed
(in large part by the state, or at least state sanction) through the
technical application of programs of social engineering: “the one
best way,” the most efficient, effective, and “scientific”
approach to understanding and addressing social problems. This was
the task taken up by the “rational reformers” of the era,
emerging out of the Progressive period, in which the techniques of
the social sciences were used to create a system of “social
control.” These social engineers– social scientists, technocratic
reformers, experts, philanthropists, etc. – felt that society could
“control its collective destiny in contrast to drifting with the
tides… even while working toward the management of the many by the
few.” [57]
In
1933, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Max Mason, wrote
that the Foundation’s policies:…
“were
directed to the general problem of human behavior, with the aim of
control through understanding. The Social sciences, for example,
will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control;
the Medical and Natural sciences propose a closely coordinated study
of sciences which underlie personal understanding and personal
control. Many procedures will be explicitly co-operative between
divisions. The Medical and Natural Sciences will, through psychiatry
and psychobiology, have a strong interest in the problems of mental
disease [emphasis added].” [58]
The
influence of the major philanthropic foundations is exerted in a
plethora of ways, including, wrote political scientist Joan Roelofs:
“creating
ideology and the common wisdom; providing positions and status for
intellectuals; controlling access to resources for universities,
social services, and arts organizations; compensating for market
failures; steering protest movements into safe channels; and
supporting those institutions by which policies are initiated and
implemented… [F]oundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford
have a corrosive influence on a democratic society; they represent
relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and
wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in effect, establish an
agenda of what merits society’s attention.” [59] ...
As
foreign policy strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski indicated, the blurring
of boundaries “serves United States world dominance”:
“As
the imitation of American ways gradually pervades the world, it
creates a more congenial setting for the exercise of the indirect and
seemingly consensual American hegemony. And as in the case of the
domestic American system, that hegemony involves a complex structure
of interlocking institutions and procedures, designed to generate
consensus and obscure asymmetries in power and influence.” [61]
In the
early twentieth century, the Walsh Commission warned that, “the
power of wealth could overwhelm democratic culture and politics,”[62]
and the Final Report stated, “that foundations would be more likely
to pursue their own ideology in society than social
objectivity.”[63]
The
next part of this series further takes up the question – what
is the purpose of education? – and adds to it: what is – and
what should be – the role of intellectuals in society? In
particular, the focus will be on the roles of radical versus
technical intellectuals, within educational institutions and the
society as a whole: from the ancient prophets, to Walter Lippmann,
from Zbigniew Brzezinski to Noam Chomsky, this dichotomy of
intellectuals has existed in society for a great deal of human
history.
.
Andrew
Gavin Marshall | The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social
Control?
.
The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control? by Andrew Gavin Marshall – Dandelion Salad
The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control? | Coop média de Montréal
.
See also:
Class War and the College Crisis: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education by Andrew Gavin Marshall – Dandelion Salad
Class War and the College Crisis: The “Crisis of Democracy†and the Attack on Education
and:
The 3 Rs of Education: Respect, Reality, Reason: Yep another Copy/Paste no commentary post...
The 3 Rs of Education: Respect, Reality, Reason: Prussian Education Very American
.
[This blog piece was originally
published 16th April 2014.]
.
Notes:
[1]
Francisco O. Ramirez and John Boli, “The Political Construction of
Mass Schooling: European Origins and Worldwide
Institutionalization,” Sociology of Education (Vol. 60,
January 1987), page 5.
[2]
Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (Unwin
Paperbacks, London: 1952), page 62.
[3]
John W. Meyer, et. al., “Public Education as Nation-Building in
America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States,
1870-1930,” American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 85, No.
3, November 1979), page 592.
[4]
Robert H. Wiebe, “The Social Functions of Public
Education,” American
Quarterly (Vol.
21, No. 2, Part 1, Summer 1969), pages 147-148.
[5]
Ibid, pages 149-150.
...
[19]
John C. Scott, “The Mission of the University: Medieval to
Postmodern Transformations,” Journal of Higher Education (Vol.
77, No. 1, January/February 2006), pages 15-16.
[20]
Ibid, pages 23-24.
[21]
Ibid, page 25.
[22]
Nicolas Guilhot, “Reforming the World: George Soros, Global
Capitalism and the Philanthropic Management of the Social
Sciences,” Critical
Sociology,
Vol. 33, 2007, page 448.
[23]
Ibid, page 450.
[24]
Ibid, page 451.
[25]
Erkki Berndtson, “Review Essay: Power of Foundations and the
American Ideology,” Critical
Sociology,
Vol. 33, 2007, page 583.
[26]
Ibid, page 584.
[27]
Nicolas Guilhot, “Reforming the World: George Soros, Global
Capitalism and the Philanthropic Management of the Social
Sciences,” Critical
Sociology,
Vol. 33, 2007, page 452.
[28]
Morris Janowitz, “Sociological Theory and Social Control,” American
Journal of Sociology (Vol.
81, No. 1, July 1975), page 82.
[29]
Ibid, page 85.
[30]
Anthony J. Cortese, “The Rise, Hegemony, and Decline of the Chicago
School of Sociology, 1892-1945,” The
Social Science Journal (Vol.
32, No. 3, 1995), page 237.
[31]
Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy
and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Indiana
University Press, Bloomington: 1982), pages 26-28.
[32]
Ibid, pages 28-29.
[33]
Ibid, pages 30-31.
[34]
Ibid, pages 32-33.
[35]
Ibid, pages 33-35.
[36]
Ibid, pages 46-47.
[37]
David Nugent, “Knowledge and Empire: The Social Sciences and United
States Imperial Expansion,” Identities (Vol.
17, Issue 1, 2010), pages 2-3.
[38]
Ibid, page 3.
[39]
Ibid, page 4.
[40]
Ibid, pages 5-7.
[41]
Ibid, pages 9.
[42]
Ibid, pages 9-10.
[43]
Ibid, pages 10-11.
[44]
Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy
and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Indiana
University Press, Bloomington: 1982), pages 234-235.
[45]
Ibid, page 235.
[46]
Ibid, pages 235-236.
[47]
Ibid, pages 236-237.
[48]
Ibid, page 238-239.
[49
Charles D. Biebel, “Private Foundations and Public Policy: The Case
of Secondary Education During the Great Depression,” History
of Education Quarterly (Vol.
16, No. 1, Spring 1976), pages 6-8.
[50]
Ibid, pages 10-11.
[51]
Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy
and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Indiana
University Press, Bloomington: 1982), pages 239-241.
[52]
Ibid, page 241.
[53]
Ibid, pages 244-245.
[54]
Ibid, pages 245-247.
[55]
Ibid, pages 248-251.
[56]
Ibid, pages 252-253.
[57]
Dennis Bryson, “Technocratic Liberalism and Social
Science,” Radical
History Review (Vol.
64, 1996), pages 119-120.
[58]
Lily E. Kay, “Rethinking Institutions: Philanthropy as an
Historigraphic Problem of Knowledge and Power,” Minerva (Vol.
35, 1997), page 290.
[59]
Joan Roelofs, “Foundations and Collaboration,” Critical
Sociology,
Vol. 33, 2007, page 480
[60]
Ibid.
[61]
Ibid, page 481.
[62]
Ibid, page 483.
[63
Erkki Berndtson, “Review Essay: Power of Foundations and the
American Ideology,” Critical
Sociology,
Vol. 33, 2007, page 580
The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control? by Andrew Gavin Marshall – Dandelion Salad
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