Author | Paul Goodman |
---|---|
Subject | Education in the United States |
Published | 1964 (Horizon Press) |
Pages | 189 [1] |
ISBN | 978-0-394-70325-1 [2] |
370.1 [2] | |
LC Class | LB1025 [2] |
Compulsory Miseducation is a critique of American public schools written by Paul Goodman and published by Horizon Press in 1964. Already established as a social critic of American society and the role of its youth in his previous book Growing Up Absurd (1960), Goodman argues in Compulsory Miseducation against the necessity of schools for the socialization of youth and recommends their abolition. He suggests that formal education lasts too long, teaches the wrong social class values, and increasingly damages students over time. Goodman writes that the school reflects the misguided and insincere values of its society and thus school reformers should focus on these values before schools. He proposes a variety of alternatives to school including no school, the city or farm as school, apprenticeships, guided travel, and youth organizations. Reviewers complimented Goodman's style and noted his deliberate contrarianism, but were split on the feasibility of his proposals. Goodman's book was a precursor to the work of deschooling advocate Ivan Illich.
Paul Goodman was an American intellectual and cultural critic who rose to prominence after publishing Growing Up Absurd (1960). In the book, Goodman asserts that the structure of American society was not conducive to the needs of youth. [3] Goodman's subsequent book, The Community of Scholars (1962), and his experience in the classroom, informed his criticism of American schooling and the development of Compulsory Miseducation. [4] [5] The book was initially published in 1964 by Horizon Press, [1] and was later republished by Random House in 1966 [2] and by Penguin Books in 1971. [6]
Compulsory Miseducation is a critique of the American public school system. Goodman argues against its social necessity and mandatory attendance requirements. [4] He contends that the only "right education" is "growing up into a worthwhile world", and that adult concern over schooling is indicative of an opposite such world. [1] Goodman thinks education should strengthen children's preexisting drive towards refining their own abilities for usefulness in society [7] while developing community spirit. He claims that school, of which there is too much, instead encourages conformity for the good of private, corporate needs at a cost to the public. [1] Goodman writes that America's schools reflect its misguided and insincere societal values, which need to change before schools can. [1]
Goodman criticizes the structure of academic curriculum, and connects it with "programmed instruction" and schooling that emaciates the mind proportional with time. [8] He regards the "academic establishment" as self-aggrandizing and constituting "an invested intellectual class worse than anything since the time of Henry the Eighth." [1] Accordingly, the scholastically inclined, knowing only lockstep, march unquestioningly into "top management and expert adviser" roles while the rest have little self-worth in their societal roles, [7] pursuing "worthless" degrees that make their schooling appear as "a cruel hoax". [9]
In the upper grades and colleges, they often exude a cynicism that belongs to rotten aristocrats.
Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation [1]
Goodman sees schools as mechanisms for adjusting youth to an automated society increasingly absent "any human values". [9] Goodman disagrees with those who say public schools teach middle class values, as he sees schools as more petit bourgeois than bourgeois, favoring "bureaucratic, time-serving, grade-grind-practical, timid, and nouveau riche climbing" over "independence, initiative, scrupulous honesty, earnestness, utility, [and] respect for thorough scholarship". [1] In this way, schooling is not a good use of student time, and students are right to quit and avoid the psychological and professional damage. [1] More important is the disintegration of social class segregation. [4] Goodman then asserts that lower- and middle-class kids would be better off without public or any schooling altogether. He proposes several alternatives to formal schooling, such as divvying up the high school's public funds directly amongst its students, and advocates for a variety of experimental school alternatives: "no school at all, the real city as school, farm schools, practical apprenticeships, guided travel, work camps, little theaters and local newspapers, [and] community service". [1] Other proposals include making class non-compulsory (such that attendance will reflect student interest without "trapping" children), requiring students to wait two years before applying to the most elite colleges, eliminating grades so the burden of testing for required skills falls on companies, [10] and letting students quit and resume freely. [7] He proposes Danish folk school-style education for those uninterested in academics. [11] Goodman's foremost intention was to stimulate new educational paradigms. He acknowledges that his specific proposals may be unpopular [1] or ignored. [9]
John Keats ( The New York Times Book Review ) described Compulsory Miseducation as "passionate" and "eloquent". [1] He called Goodman's propositions in the absence of formal schooling "startling" and characterized Goodman as "a lonely humanist crying in a Philistine marketplace, where the largest single share of public wealth is devoted to the strategies of overkill, and where another enormous amount is dedicated to putting blinders on the probable victims." [1] Keats recommended the book for parents who put their children's welfare before their own. [1] Eli M. Oboler ( Library Journal ), meanwhile, only recommended Goodman's "polemic onslaught" for those who like "contentious [and] disagreeable" material. [4] He wrote that Goodman's approach was unreasonable and contrarian: for instance, his stances in favor of sexual expression and against the importance of literacy in schools. [4]
Edgar Z. Friedenberg ( The New York Review of Books ) explained the book as a poem by Marianne Moore's definition: "an imaginary garden with real toads in it". [10] By this metaphor, he found Goodman to be a gardener who lacked imagination and forethought but understood growth (the most important trait). Friedenberg compared Goodman with prominent educationist James Conant, whom Friedenberg considered less competent in understanding the conditions of learning. Friedenberg felt that Conant's Shaping Educational Policy complemented Goodman's Compulsory Miseducation, as both shared a common though disparate interest in the distribution of power within schooling structures. While Friedenberg agreed with Goodman's conclusions, he considered them sermon-like in their predetermination, permitting no counter-interpretation. He added that Goodman's "empirical inductive and ... theoretical-deductive" logic was complete and that the work provided little apart from a neat interpretation of the reality within schools and its effect on students' human attributes. [10] Friedenberg wrote that Goodman's proposals are "pertinent, concrete, modest, and inexpensive", practical in their aims, and already implemented on a smaller scale. [10] Furthermore, he concluded that Goodman's argument on how education squandered what it intended to promote was "strong [and] circumstantial". [10]
Nat Hentoff ( The Reporter ) struggled to disagree with Goodman's claim that schools provided little room for "spontaneity" and free spiritedness. [7] However, he felt that Goodman inadequately explained how primary schools could be improved in content and staffing. Hentoff said that the book's key flaw was its position in a "political vacuum", offering no means for society to acknowledge Goodman's expressed unviability of their schooling model. [11]
Donald Barr ( New York Herald Tribune Book Week ) wrote that Goodman seemed like "an itinerant peddler of sedition" who spoke of virtuous "dissonance". [8] Barr considered Goodman "extraordinarily sensitive to children and adolescents" and complimented his "brilliant authenticity" when describing how children learn "defiance and embarrassment". [8] However, Barr found Goodman's "purblind resentment of all authority" to obstruct his points and to leave his readers skeptical. [8] Children, Barr wrote, are lost if they cannot find the limits they serve to test, and "partisan" Goodman was unable to parse the wickedness of continually "yielding, ... tolerating, understanding" children who must feel resistance against their transgressions to develop the respect they seek. [8]
The book influenced the free school movement of the late 1960s. [12] Nigel Melville ( Fortnight ) placed Goodman alongside Herb Kohl, Neil Postman, Jules Henry, and Everett Reimer as part of an education anti-orthodoxy, or new orthodoxy under Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire. [6] Bill Prescott (Instructional Science) said the book was "among the most influential" in education circles in the early 1970s. [13] He wrote that Goodman pioneered advocation for deschooling and the disestablishment of schools, which was later popularized by Illich and Reimer (though Goodman's thoughts were less articulate in comparison). [9] In a 2006 retrospective of Goodman's work for Teachers College Record , James S. Kaminsky said that Goodman's four book-length critiques of American education together made Goodman a prominent intellectual and educationist. [14]
Unschooling is an informal learning method that prioritizes learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschoolers learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Often considered a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling, unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, under the belief that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood, and therefore useful it is to the child. While unschooled students may occasionally take courses, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, fixed times at which learning should take place, conventional grading methods in standardized tests, forced contact with children in their own age group, the compulsion to do homework regardless of whether it helps the learner in their individual situation, the effectiveness of listening to and obeying the orders of one authority figure for several hours each day, and other features of traditional schooling.
Ivan Dominic Illich was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticises modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that constrains learning to narrow situations in a fairly short period of the human lifespan. His 1975 book Medical Nemesis, importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, argues that industrialised society widely impairs quality of life by overmedicalising life, pathologizing normal conditions, creating false dependency, and limiting other more healthful solutions. Illich called himself "an errant pilgrim."
Alternative education encompasses many pedagogical approaches differing from mainstream pedagogy. Such alternative learning environments may be found within state, charter, and independent schools as well as home-based learning environments. Many educational alternatives emphasize small class sizes, close relationships between students and teachers and a sense of community.
John Taylor Gatto was an American author and school teacher. After teaching for nearly 30 years he authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. He is best known for his books Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.
Deschooling is a term invented by Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich. Today, the word is mainly used by homeschoolers, especially unschoolers, to refer to the transition process that children and parents go through when they leave the school system in order to start homeschooling. The process is a crucial basis for homeschooling to work. It involves children gradually transitioning away from their schoolday routine and institutional mentality, redeveloping the ability to learn via self-determination, and discovering what they want to learn in their first homeschool days.
Compulsory education refers to a period of education that is required of all people and is imposed by the government. This education may take place at a registered school or at other places.
Anti-schooling activism or radical education reform describes: positions that are critical of school as a learning institution and/or compulsory schooling laws; or, multiple attempts and approaches to fundamentally change the school system. People of this movement usually advocate alternatives to the traditional school system, education independent from school, the absence of the concept of schooling as a whole, or at least the right that people can choose where and how they are educated.
Education Otherwise (EO) is a registered charity based in England, which aims to provide support and information for families whose children are being educated outside school. It is the largest charity organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation derived its name from the 1944 Education Act, which stated that parents are responsible for the education of their children, "either by regular attendance at school or otherwise." This clause has been retained in subsequent Education Acts and remains a clear acceptance of the parity, and validity afforded an education,otherwise than by schooling.
The movement for compulsory public education in the United States began in the early 1920s. It started with the Smith-Towner bill, a bill that would eventually establish the National Education Association and provide federal funds to public schools. Eventually it became the movement to mandate public schooling and dissolve parochial and other private schools. The movement focused on the public's fear of immigrants and the need to Americanize; it had anti-Catholic overtones and found support from groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
Anarchism has had a special interest on the issue of education from the works of William Godwin and Max Stirner onwards.
Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A. S. Neill. It is known for introducing his ideas to the American public. It was published in America on November 7, 1960, by the Hart Publishing Company and later revised as Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood in 1993. Its contents are a repackaged collection from four of Neill's previous works. The foreword was written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who distinguished between authoritarian coercion and Summerhill.
The free school movement, also known as the new schools or alternative schools movement, was an American education reform movement during the 1960s and early 1970s that sought to change the aims of formal schooling through alternative, independent community schools.
Growing Up Absurd is a 1960 book by Paul Goodman on the relationship between American juvenile delinquency and societal opportunities to fulfill natural needs. Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance.
The Community of Scholars is a 1962 book about higher education by Paul Goodman with his observations on its function and proposals for its future.
New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative is a 1970 book of social commentary by Paul Goodman best known as his apologia pro vita sua before his death two years later.
This is a list of works by Paul Goodman (1911–1972), including his nonfiction, novels, short stories, poetry, and plays.
The Lives of Children is a book by George Dennison about the First Street School, a small, alternative mini-school on the Lower East Side of New York City. The school had no administrators, four teachers, and 23 students of integrated racial background. The author establishes a philosophy of education and concept for future schools based on his experiences teaching there.
Edgar Zodaig Friedenberg was an American scholar of education and gender studies best known for The Vanishing Adolescent (1959) and Coming of Age in America (1965). The latter was a finalist for the 1966 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Paul Goodman was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decentralization, democracy, education, media, politics, psychology, technology, urban planning, and war. As a humanist and self-styled man of letters, his works often addressed a common theme of the individual citizen's duties in the larger society, and the responsibility to exercise autonomy, act creatively, and realize one's own human nature.
The Society I Live in Is Mine is a 1963 book by Paul Goodman of his accumulated letters to the editor and other public commentary ephemera.