What We Are Supposed to Know…
My parents and I used to watch countless quiz shows during our evenings. It was a chance to spend some family time with a healthy combination of fun and learning.
Though most of the time, this was a pleasant window in my daily schedule, there was one aspect that made me always amused and irritated at the same time.
Whenever a quiz contender missed a question about a popular topic, my father shouted with contempt, “Come on! This guy knows NOTHING!”.
To help you better understand this premise, I’ll show you an example:
- Host: “Which artist sings ‘Rocket Man’?”
- Contender: “Mmm… Was it David Bowie?”
- My father: “Elton John!!! Come on! This guys knows NOTHING!”
The premise is “How come you don’t know something EVERYBODY knows???”
How Come You Don’t Know That?
For years, I got this over and over myself:
- “You’ve never seen Buffy The Vampire? EVERYONE HAS!”
- “You don’t listen to One Direction? EVERY TEENAGER DOES!”
- “You don’t know Kim Kardashian? Impossible! EVERYONE DOES!”
While on the other hand, there are things that you are NOT supposed to know. One evening, when talking on the phone with my father, I happened to tell about my karaoke nights:
- My father: “And what did you sing?”
- Me: “Many things, above all Nirvana…”
- My father (with surprised tone of voice): “And how are you supposed to know Nirvana???”
- Me (annoyed): “Why?”
- My father: “Eh… You just weren’t born yet! How can you know them?”
- Me: “I wasn’t born either when Dante, Shakespeare or Mozart were alive, but I know them! How?”
- My father: “OK, but those are studied in school!”
And here I got an important piece of information about my father’s psyche that is a good blueprint for every Average Joe of this planet. You are supposed to know just what you learn in school or what you learn through popular culture, that cluster of material that many internet surfers call “the media”, that seemingly evil entity that wants to keep us “trapped in the Matrix”.
To be honest, I don’t believe in the Matrix. You can leave this society whenever you want. The planet still offers millions of hectares of free land, far from any “brainwashed sheep”. Yet, how many accept to unplug and start a new life far from anything society offers? 0.001% of those whiners you see on social media daily?
But the point is not about the Matrix and the social media whiners. It is more about how people think. To me, people are the cause of most of the evils swiping this world. Not leaders, not terrorists, not drug dealers, but just normal, common people, that live their lives as if it didn’t matter. Organic robots that never wonder what surrounds them and never feel the minimum curiosity for it.
The Rise of Public Schooling
Some say “But indeed public schooling is a failed experiment! It is just factory schooling to train people to be mindless factory workers! Let’s homeschool our children again!”
You’ve heard of this theory over and over. The truth is way more complex. The modern public school system began to take shape in the 19th century, particularly in the United States. Horace Mann, often credited as the father of the modern public school system, played a pivotal role:
- Reforms: As the Secretary of Education in Massachusetts starting in 1837, Mann advocated for tax-funded public education that was accessible to all children, regardless of their socio-economic status. Mann aimed at bringing children from different social classes together.
- Democratic Ideals: The establishment of public schools was driven by the belief that an educated populace was essential for a functioning democracy. Indeed, the Founding Fathers of the United States emphasized the need for citizens to be informed and capable of participating in civic life.
The idea that public schooling started in the factories comes from the fact that late 19th century industrialists began to offer education as a benefit for their workers’ children. However, this phenomenon was way more limited than many imagine and did not inspire the already present state-funded public school model that arose in those years.
There is also no evidence that the main motive for industrialists to build schools was to create a more compliant, obedient and thus efficient workforce. If they did, the socialist movements of that period would prove these efforts failed anyway.
Public Schooling Is wonderful, but…
I don’t think that homeschooling children on the false belief that public schooling is a “failed experiment of factory schooling” is a good idea. It’s not just about what notions you can learn. I have no doubt that some parents can be better teachers than qualified school teachers, especially when the latter ended up teaching against their will. However, going to a public school allows children to learn the most important thing of all: how to relate to society. Whether you like society or not (and sometimes I despise it with all of my heart), you must learn to live with it, unless you want to dwell in a remote place where you can rely only on your own.
Public schooling contributed tremendously to transform society and to unleash an unprecedented era of prosperity, progress, and well-being. The power of knowledge passed to the general population allowed humanity to move forward faster than ever. Sure, during this golden age we had also two World Wars, and humanity seriously risked to go into extinction, but overall, the balance of these two last centuries powered by public, accessible education is very positive.
So, what do I criticise public schooling for?
To go back to my father, public schooling has the downside of standardizing knowledge.
You are supposed to study A, B, and C. If you learn and master A, B, C, you will be able to study X, Y, Z. When you graduate in X, Y, Z, you will get a well-paid and respected job, and you will be happy!
How many parents still believe this? How many parents get nuts when their children underperform at ABC because they are studying DFG, or maybe they’re already studying XYZ at a young age, out of genuine passion for the subject? How many parents force their children to study and learn what they don’t want to? Maybe going as far as using psychological or even physical abuse.
“HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND THIS??? YOU LITTLE RETARD!!! NOW AGAIN! I’M NOT GOING TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU ONCE MORE! IF TOMORROW YOU FAIL THE TEST AGAIN, PRAY THE GOOD LORD! I SWEAR!!!”
Typical troglodyte parent the night before their children have a “vital” test, even if it’s just a routine test of 4th grade.
The most tragic part is that parents put this kind of enormous pressure on their children from a very young age, believing that if their kids will underperform in primary school, they will have no chance at university and at work. This is total nonsense! History is full of kids that hated school, underperformed, and once at university or at work, found what they really liked, pulled out an excellent sense of duty and responsibility, and excelled in their field.
While public schools are excellent places to learn social skills (yeah, including how to defend yourself against bullies), it is a horrible place to learn:
- actual skills to use in the real world (they’re either useless or even worse, outdated)
- actual critical thinking (many students and teachers will flock to an idea and ridicule you if you don’t stick with them)
- how to navigate current world affairs
This last point is very relevant to me. As a passionate history lover, I always wondered why at school we spent so much time in the Neolithic, and so little time or nothing in the Cold War. Why we rarely discussed what was happening in Iraq during the 2000s, or how geopolitics work.
And even remaining in ancient history, I’ve always wondered why we have never considered the East Roman empire. My history book was like, “In 476 AC, the West Roman empire collapsed, and only the Eastern part survived, with its capital in Constantinople”, just a couple of paragraphs about Justinian and Theodora, and then Byzantium was forgotten until its complete collapse in 1453. I didn’t accept that, and decided to buy a book about the so-called Byzantine Empire, to study its rich and intense history, on my own. Rome didn’t end in 476 for fuck sake! But that’s not something I was supposed to know… It wasn’t part of the curriculum…
And of course, my father was wondering why I was studying something my teacher didn’t ask me to…
I know, studying the Byzantine Empire in depth might not be so useful, but what’s the utility of knowing about hundreds of wars fought by the German states or the Italian states against each other?
Not all knowledge is supposed to be useful
In the end, what really matters is mental stimulation. If you allow children to stimulate their minds, they will eventually find their way. I was a teacher myself, for just one year, and I can tell you, there is no bigger satisfaction than seeing a child who finds his/her passion and puts all of his/her heart in it. And when your child does, don’t kill that flame with a brutal, “This is not what you are supposed to study! This won’t bring food to the table! Stop it!”
It breaks my heart to think about how many possible great artists, authors, athletes, but even engineers, or programmers (when IT wasn’t cool yet) were killed at birth.
Moral of the Story: Fuck the Curriculum!
If everyone was blind to passively bend to school curricula, we would have a static, ossified society, where everyone knows the same stuff, leaving so many blind spots. Imagine a society where everyone can code, but nobody can cook, cure the sick, design a road, assemble furniture or build a home!
School is there to teach you how to navigate the world. It’s not there to teach you what everybody else knows, nor to tell you what you can and what you cannot do. Never ever allow anyone to do that!
