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by Gea D’Marea Bassett
If you trace history just a few generations back, almost no one went to school. It wasn’t until the 1830’s that public education came into existence (1); it wasn’t until 1956 that education starting shifting out of the hands of parents and the state and into the hands of the federal government (2); it wasn’t until 1965 when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the beginning of what is now know as No Child Left Behind) brought us to the current assumptions about learning (3): that learning and schools are synonymous and that learning occurs through rigid standards and testing. Before the advent of public schooling, learning was decentralized – it happened naturally. But things have changed. Despite the fact that learning and school are two totally different things, mainstream society has turned them into synonymous terms. Many people assume that learning would not happen without school. College and graduate level education courses do not mention life learning and home schooling as learning options, teachers are not taught about them, students know virtually nothing about them, and even liberal education circles rarely mention them. Education journals rarely publish articles on life learning or home schooling, but rather only publish articles referring to work done in school. By the end of summer, you can’t turn on the radio without hearing ads for ‘back to school’ sales nor walk into department stores without seeing isles labeled, ‘back to school supplies.’ When talking with other parents, the question rarely fails to come up, ‘how is she doing in school?’ or, ‘where is she going to school?’ Television programs and movies refer to school – not life learning or home schooling. Children’s books mention being in school or going to school. The media does not depict life learning or home schooling as normal – in fact, it doesn’t depict learning at all: it depicts school – which is assumed to depict learning. The deeper I study education the more I realize that the school system has patented two previously un-owned words – words that shouldn’t be owned to begin with: learning and education. Yet, learning (which results in a education) and school are two totally different things.
Learning happens all of the time and we can ‘get’ an education by embarking on the limitless stimulating and challenging activities that surround us. School, on the other hand, is a supplement to learning and is merely a building, an institution, a power structure with a hierarchal staff and a curriculum. School is not the embodiment of learning nor have schools ever proven to be the best way to learn. So how did school come to define learning?
The moment ideas are taken to be first truths in themselves there ceases to be any reason for scrupulous examination of them. As fixed truths they must be accepted and that is the end of the matter. But as hypotheses, they must be continuously tested and revised, a requirement that demands they be accurately formulated (Dewey, 87).
As a culture, we have stopped questioning whether school is the best place to learn. Rather, we have come take school as a fixed truth, as ‘the way’ to learn. As a result of having placed school on a pedestal, as a result of having accepted school as the norm and the standard of learning, every ‘other’ way of learning, which is other than school, is now considered inferior. Since we have stopped questioning the validity of school, we have, as a result, also displaced all other learning methods and labeled them as less than school. Philosopher and professor, Elizabeth Kamarch Minnich points out some errors which have made it difficult for many of us to rethink what we know. She says, ‘Old assumptions, built into our modes of thought, our standards, our judgement, our institutions and systems, keep inappropriate discrimination functioning long after many have consciously and seriously renounced it, even denounced it’ (18). Even as confident life learners and home schoolers, many of us still have to defend our position and ‘other’ way of learning. Ever get the feeling you are doing something taboo? Do you get a weird silence from people when you tell them that your kids don’t go to school – like you are committing a social sin? Or maybe people make you doubt that life learning and home schooling can provide all the learning your child needs? The outdated assumption that school is the standard through which learning should occur is a discrimination that most life learners deal with everyday.
As life learners we already know that we have vast arrays of learning possibilities open to us everywhere we turn. So, in can be said, that we have defined learning: it is everywhere and it is up for our construction. It happens in the kitchen and backyard, at the table and the airport, at the playground and pet store, in the car and at the museum, with workbooks and without, with instruction and without. School, on the other hand, is a much more complicated philosophy. Complicated because it is shrouded and entangled with errors that have been, for too long, continued, added to, and built into our society. To get to the root of the problem – to expose school for what it is and to eliminate the errors within its current definition - we need to untangle it and take it apart. So let’s try a little exercise. Lets put school back in the hypothesis stage. Let us assume school is not the standard for which learning and education should be judged against, but rather just an idea – one modest option out of the many ways of learning. Once we are lucid about this fact, once we realize that there is no reason for school to be the customary and expected way to obtain a good education, we can begin to be objective about this thing called ‘school.’ As I stated above, school did not always represent learning. School has not been around for a very long time, and learning still happened before the advent of school (just think of all of the great minds that developed before school was invented). But since the advent of school, society (and now the media) has begun to represent school as the only legitimate way to learn. Upon the advent of school, school automatically took the role as the best way to learn. And since this time, society, as a whole, has never questioned this definition. Rather, society has, unquestioningly, left school to define learning. This is a mistake we now must deal with. In her book, Transforming Knowledge, Elizabeth Kamarch Minnich points out four kinds of errors within how we think about and view the world, which perpetuate one way, one method, one style, and one perspective over all other ways, styles, perspectives, and methods. The first error she mentions are faulty generalizations. A faulty generalization is the result of taking one kind of something to be the universal standard. For example, we could say that lemons are the best fruit. Once we claim this, every fruit other than lemons would be not as good as lemons. All other kinds of fruit would constantly be compared to lemons and qualities of other fruit would be ignored (or shunned) if they were not the same or very similar to the qualities lemons. Obviously, school (and our claim about lemons) are not the only faulty generalizations that exist. Midwives will point out that it is faulty generalization to claim that hospitals are the best place to birth a child; feminists and cultural minorities will point out that it is a faulty generalization to assume that women are second best to men or that people of color are inferior to white people. When one way, one method, one style, and one perspective become the standard (when a faulty generalization occurs), circular reasoning, mystified concepts, and partial knowledge also begin to breed. Circular reasoning is the result of a faulty generalization and also uses poor logic to defend its case. Once something is taken to be the standard – like the lemon – this happens: the lemon is the better than the pear because the pear is not oval like the lemon. Sounds silly, but this ‘logic’ is used all of the time. It happens when we pretend that we are doing a neutral comparison, but what we are really doing is a biased comparison. Think about this home schooling scenario which comes up all of the time: the law says that all home schooled children must file yearly progress reports to their local school district to show that they are making progress and meeting standards. What does ‘making progress’ and ‘meeting standards’ mean? Well, quite simply, it means that what home schooled children do is compared to what the school does to its children; home schooled children are compared to school children. The home schooler is the pear (the other) and the school is the lemon (the standard). This is not a neutral comparison, nor a neutral situation. Even as home schoolers, we are by no means free from school, nor is our learning considered to be as good as school learning. When the school system ‘approves’ our children to continue learning at home, we have essentially gone through a loop of circular reasoning: although we may feel like we are free to teach our own, we are still being held inferior to school and are being held up in comparison to school – to the school standard. Another error in the way we think are mystified concepts.
Mystified concepts arise, in part, as a result of the first two errors I explained above. They ‘hold up’ the standard that they mystify. They are ideas, notions, and categories that are so deeply familiar that they are rarely questioned (i.e. school is the best way to learn). Lets go back to our standard of all fruit, the lemon. With the lemon as the standard of all fruit come concepts or ideas about lemons such as: lemons are the best fruit for making drinks, and lemons represent sunshine and warm climates. These qualities and ‘facts’ about lemons are used to show that lemons are better than all other fruit. These ‘facts’ about lemons support the definition of lemons as the best fruit. Even though they are not facts at all, but rather, they are subjective opinions about lemons. Once these subjective opinions start circulating, once society starts talking about them as if they were true and factual, more and more people keep them in circulation and less and less people question them. Minnich says, ‘That which has already been judged to be excellent within the dominant tradition is taken to express – to embody, as it were – the standards for anything else that might claim such high status’ (98). Think about some typical questions and comments that life learner parents are asked: ‘how do you know she is learning? Does the school check on the work she does?’ or ‘so you use the school’s curriculum?’ These questions, comments, and assumptions mystify the concept of school because they so deeply assume and perpetuate the belief that schools are the standard by which all learning must be compared; they perpetuate the faulty generalization that schools know more about learning than people and families know about learning.
As a result of these three errors in our thinking, partial knowledge occurs. Once lemons are claimed to be the best fruit it is unlikely that other fruits will be explored and learned about. Since schools are assumed to be the standard for learning, it is unlikely that other ways of learning will be explored and learned about. As a result of the errors in our thinking, which I have outlined above, many people have very partial knowledge about learning outside of schools; and, as a result, do not realize that schools are NOT necessary for a quality education.
I find it very interesting how easily we can slip into perpetuating faulty generalizations and doubting our own abilities and understanding. Since we are already comparing schools to lemons, I will stick to the food similes and suggest we recall this metaphor when we need to revive our ability to decipher the difference between school and learning: instead of thinking of school as the meat, potatoes, and salad of a meal, it is more accurate to think of school as the cranberry sauce: a decent condiment, but we would have a great meal without it. School isn’t the whole of learning, nor even a necessary facet in learning, rather it is merely a tool we can use to get a different perspective on learning. As life learners and home schoolers, it is our responsibility to be clear on the difference between school and learning and to help others to see the difference. Hopefully, though correcting the faulty generalization of school, we will be able to set learning free and embrace an accurate understanding of learning and education which supports and promotes learning outside of school.
Notes:
Miller, Ron. (1997). What are schools for? Holistic education in American
culture. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press.
Sarason, Seymour B. (1982). The culture of the school and the problem of
change. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
Miller, Ron. (2007, Spring). Reauthorization of “No Child Left Behind” raises fundamental questions about education in America. Education Revolution, pp 6-8.
References:
Dewey, John. (1970). Experience & Education. Toronto: Collier-Macmillan Canada Ltd.
Minnich, Elizabeth K. (1990). Transforming Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
About the author:
Gea D’Marea Bassett was home schooled from birth until college. She currently lives in Oregon with her partner, Doug and her home schooling son, Zizi. Her favorite ways of learning are through travel, reading, writing, cooking, permaculture, and her family. She is currently working on her MA in Education at Goddard College toward the goal of educating society out of school.
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