The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

By Neil Postman

Yesterday, I wrote about my love for Neil Postman, so I’ll just go straight to the review.

I absolutely loved this book. I knew I would like it because of who wrote it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it at first because I am neither an educator nor a parent. But I am glad I did not let that deter me. In fact, not necessarily having a vested interest in the subject, it allowed me to view the issue at a distance and perhaps a bit more objectively.

What is the purpose of school?

That really is the central question of this book.

Ask any child or parent and you can assume what they would say: to get into a good college, which would then presumably lead to a high-paying job. Okay, so some parents might use more flowery language, but that’s really what they mean.

I have nothing against wanting a high-paying job. Things are expensive. But is that the only purpose of school or even the most important? Postman would answer in the negative, I think.

He is particularly focused on public school, because he believes in its potential to make good on the founding principles of the Constitution. But as he makes quite plain, we’ve lost our way and have failed our kids.

Writing in 1995, Postman laments how not only school administrators and teachers but also university professors who specialize in education are too focused on the economic incentives for school. It’s not to say those things aren’t important. But by solely focusing on the methods of what to teach (the hard sciences, computer literacy, etc.), we’ve forgotten why we even have school.

According to Postman, one of the main but largely forgotten purposes of public school was to instill some sort of national pride amongst its diverse student body. Readers today might be wary of or even chide this sentiment. Is this a dog whistle for white nationalism? Not at all. Postman even anticipates such a response.

There is certainly more emphasis, these days, on loving one’s self than on loving one’s country, which means, I suppose, that Philip Rieff was prophetic when he wrote about “the triumph of the therapeutic.” In any case, this uneasiness about patriotism is at least understandable, since the idea of love of country is too easily transmogrified into a mindless, xenophobic nationalism… I suspect that still another reason for steering clear of patriotism is recent prominence of “revisionist” history, which has led to increased awareness of the uglier aspect of American history and culture…. But in steering clear of patriotism, educators miss an opportunity to provide schooling with a profound and transcendent narrative that can educate and inspire students of all ages.

Chapter 7, The American Experiment

I really like that idea. It sounds kind of lofty, but then again, whenever I read about the Constitution and that First Amendment, I feel there is still some hope in this country. Not from the government, but from the people, who I hope will open their eyes one day.

This transcendent narrative however has no ending. The idea of America was and remains an experiment. The narrative, as he likes to call it, should explain our past, including our very many mistakes (the great sin of slavery being one of the biggest, but not the only one of course), but also offer hope for the future.

What was lacking in 1995 and likely even more now in many schools is that “hope for the future” part. Postman even foresaw the current anti-racist push within schools, which purportedly seeks to open up the narrative to include diverse viewpoints but in fact actually ends up demonizing an entire group because they happen to belong to a race, in which some members of said race used to be slaveholders many generations ago. Not all of them, of course. I don’t think Irish, German, and Italian Americans were ever slaveholders. But because they are now indistinguishable from the Angl0-Saxons, that point no longer matters, according to the proponents of “multiculturalism” (Postman uses the quotes to distinguish from actual multiculturalism, which he writes about at length).

I want to quote a passage in full, because when I first read it, I got goosebumps:

Of course, all the arguments have a theme that is made manifest in a series of questions: What is freedom? What are its limits? What is a human being? What are the obligations of citizenship? What is meant by democracy? And so on. Happily, Americans are neither the only nor the first people to argue these questions, which means we have found answers, and may continue to find them, in the Analects of Confucius, the commandments of Moses, the dialogues of Plato, the aphorisms of Jesus, the instructions in the [Qur’an], the speeches of Milton, the plays of Shakespeare, the essays of Voltaire, the prophecies of Hegel, the manifestos of Marx, the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., and any other source where such questions have been seriously addressed. But which ones are the right answers? We don’t know. There’s the rub, and the beauty and the value of the story. So we argue and experiment and complain, and grieve, and rejoice, and argue some more, without end. Which means that in this story we need conceal nothing from ourselves; no shame need endure forever; no accomplishment merits excessive pride. All is fluid and subject to change, to better arguments, to the results of future experiments.

Chapter 4, Gods That May Serve

That was Part 1 of the book, which lays out the problem. There are other really great points that I cannot attend to due to time, but y’all should really read the book. I mean it when I said, “Dude was prescient as heck!” Like seriously.

Part 2 offers some solutions. While some of the solutions are admirable, I highly doubt they will ever be adopted — and even Postman acknowledges such — but it does not stop him from imagining the types of values we would be encouraging with these novel ideas.

However, there are some solutions that I do think could be implemented. Instead of focusing only on competitive advantage in the economy, Postman believes that school curricula, starting with elementary, should expand to include: 1) Language 2) Religion 3) Custom and 4) Arts and Artifacts.

I will not go into the last two, but I do want to spend a bit more time with the first two, because all four subjects if taught would seek to expand the repertoire of diverse viewpoints and cultures.

Language should include not just grammar, but also the history of the English language, which takes from many different languages (just like the English did physically, too). If we started off with etymology, grammar would have been much easier to grasp. I know I struggled with it. What is a gerund anyway? I could recognize it, no doubt, but can I define it? But language should also include instruction in at least one foreign language and start at an early age. Not for economic reasons but because studying another language provides entry into a different worldview other than one’s own.

I was particularly heartened to see that Postman believed in the importance of teaching comparative religion in schools. He acknowledges that this can be complicated. But teaching about religion does not necessarily mean advocacy for one particular faith above others.

There are many reasons to teach religion, to me the most compelling is that many religious narratives “are largely concerned to answer the question, Why?”

Is it possible to be an educated person without having considered questions of why we are here and what is expected of us? And is it possible to consider these questions by ignoring the answers provided by religion? I think not, since religion may be defined as our attempt to give a total, integrated response to questions about the meaning of existence.

Chapter 8, The Law of Diversity

And that really is what school is for, according to Postman.

I am not sure if the current landscape of education will change in the way it needs to any time soon. I remain a pessimist in that regard. I also don’t think many private schools are much better. Most are still too focused on “academic excellence” in the form of high SAT scores and GPA. And while my views of home school have changed in the past decade, they tend to occlude some of the higher ideals of public education: learning with people who not only look different from you but also think differently, too. I can certainly understand people of faith wanting to home school their children in today’s environment. But the question of what kind of citizenry we would be building remains unknown.