Education's Ecology

Why Teaching, Textbooks, Testing & Technology are Not Enough.

Chapter III

It is dangerous to be right in the matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Voltaire

Our Social Contract

The Social Contract is about governance and the inherent or natural rights of those governed. It recognizes conflict and balance. It is my stance that schools have overwhelmed natural rights. Freedom is a natural right. The structure of schools overwhelms balance in favor of governmental mandates. These structures begin with buildings to house sources of instruction that is only minimally responsive to those forced to attend regularly. Hardly a condition of freedom. The structure is hierarchical and assumes children are objects to be filled with knowledge needed to fulfill expectations of social entities and support commercial, economic interests ranging from family to nations without deference to a more natural path for human development. The enlightenment is not an historical artifact but remains an invitation for everyone to be respected for worth and dignity. A right of respect is Our Social Contract.

Regrettably, the current operation of schooling falls far short of respect at nearly all levels. Children are victims of mandated instruction when they could and should be architects of their own development. Schools too often stand in the way of natural development by imposing schedules and standards of behavior for which a child, or an adult, may be ill prepared to accommodate successfully. That is to say they are unable to direct their own expectations about developmental progress.

In this chapter I will attempt to draw together thoughts on what may be called a sociology of education, but consisting of a look on schooling from an historical perspective … .

Human History

The human species is biologically distinct but has evolved across at least the past 200,000 years, along the way forming a diverse range of species with diverse characteristics but thriving today as a single species. Migration has energized and exploited this diversity providing adaptations that meet conditions of diverse environments across planetary continents and the great oceans of earth. Aided by at least two common capacities, human migration was enabled through many solutions to local challenges as well as multiple conditions of global climate and local vicissitudes of weather. These solutions required or were greatly facilitated by and through cooperation. It is not my intent to recount the full evolution of humans. However, it is not possible to place human society into a modern or contemporary perspective without acknowledgment of human evolutionary history.

The building blocks for survival of all forms of life are adaptations that are possible when genetic endowments are changed through mutation to yield new forms or variations. Human survival did not follow an extraordinary or new set of rules. Our survival as living entities undoubtedly crossed many barriers and surmounted many challenges that individual and tribal environments presented. We know that survival occurred but we remain at a profound loss or ignorance as to when and how these solutions prevailed. The stories and speculations are provided in many books and articles in the fields of human anthropology, physical and cultural. Ignorance is only temporary once it is recognized. With recognition comes first questioning and then motivation to explain, test and adopt the ideas, stories, concepts and principles that constitute our understanding of human history on earth. Science is a tool for testing explanation.

Schools are of course, a fairly recent addition to our history. It is entirely likely that before about 4,000 years ago, tribes provided for the delayed developmental needs of youth and passed along among all members the best practices for survival; how to best hunt, gather and store the nutritional requirements for life. The capture of fire and the making of tools has a much less certain time of origin but the impacts led to an age of agriculture beginning around 10,000 years ago that dramatically changed the capacity for survival.

Humans are not the only social animals. Every species forms a population of individuals that occupy a unique habitat and prevail with a niche or way of making a living. This is to say every organism must meet basic biological needs that include water, food, shelter and safety. Several million solutions to meeting these needs have evolved. Many potentially adaptive solutions turned out to be unsuccessful and are now extinct. Socialization was an extraordinary and successful adaptation and has been recognized by biologists in many forms of invertebrates including insects as well as fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. Human socialization is exemplary among animals in many ways not the least of which is tool-making and language. Other species find or make tools and express communication with their form of language. However, the successes of our human socialization have enabled, unlike that of any other species, the extraordinary expansion of the human population across virtually every conceivable habitat found on earth. We have used our language and tool-making skills to do so. The result has been global changes in habitats for which we humans are uniquely responsible.

Social skills come with obligations. Humans have been able to exploit these social skills to control many undesirable tendencies, which seem to be built into our existence. It is abundantly clear that humans are capable of good deeds as well as evil deeds. Balancing good and evil has demanded justice in the application of rules for living together. These rules spell out with language of highly variable clarity what we as humans are permitted to do and what we are prohibited from doing to and with one another.

These rules form an agreement or contract. Nowhere is this contract more important than with the most basic of human interactions—the matters of reproduction. The requirement for mating has always been present for humans just as it has been for almost all other organisms. By adapting rules for sexual behavior, humans have made human life more orderly. Yet we well know that all is not good. Evil lurks around almost every facet of our existence as male and female members of the human species. The drives that enable sex and mating are powerful and poorly controlled. Rules are not only needed but are essential. Without rule there is anarchy.

Anarchy is potentially avoided if systems of rule-making are able to emerge. Human groups all across the planet have evolved methods for urle-making that range from the temporary to permanent appointment of an individual who is afforded near absolute powers of a dictator or monarch to systems that provide for consensus about rule-making. Rule-making sytems may hinge on the formation of adopted language and the formation of documents to advance the permanency of language. Writing and the ability to read are critical prerequisites for success of these consensus systems—not so much for dictatorial systems.

With those thoughts in mind, I will advance a few ideas about our social contracts that find expression in our systems of schooling. This will establish a foundation for the assertion of this Part I that Schools Must Go. I do not come to this conclusion lightly and after more than a decade of thinking and reflecting on the problems of schools and the dominating impact of schoolism and schoolists, I intend to examine how our social contract has butchered and bastardized the development of not just children but also adults throughout their lives.

Social contract 01

The construction of the social contract continues. Philosophers such as John Rawls continue to refine and develop the principles established by Voltaire, Rousseau and Hume, among others. The unfolding of the foundations of our democracy continue because the evolution of our society continues, yet schools have not committed to the processes of innovation and change that enable continued unfolding of our thoughts in an open and transparent approach to understanding what it is that education and human development must deliver for the future.

Our democracy was a promise, not only to America, but to the world. Yet social evolution, and even the evolution of consciousness would continue through expansion of education to all with a full flourishing of human potential. However, our contemporary schools have abdicated that role in favor of support for other elements of political expediency that are almost exclusively focused on expansion of commerce. An unfortunate consequence of this growth mentality has been the expansion of inequality. This expansion must recognize if not outrightly castigate the bastardization of schooling. As an avenue for for human development, personal development, schools fail to support critical social values including openness, an open society. Governance with high levels of transparency is too rare.

When we endorse political control of our schools by elected leaders, elected persons who are only focused on their own egos and advancement, the schools and their role in supporting democracy is inevitably diminished.

Schools today have become time-suckers. Seat time is demanded not for learning but to serve administrative convenience. This is in no small part due to the accountability measures demanded by the public and lawmakers. Rigid rules reduce direct, daily involvement of “educator-administrators” with their constituents. This is a very unfortunate condition of schooling, but is nevertheless what now characterizes the operations of our public schools and limits their functional interaction with society. This condition cries out for immediate attention. It is, it seems to me, more than abundantly clear that our social contract and the important benefits it should deliver are no longer delivered by public schooling as it is currently constituted.

Social contract 02

One trouble with Social Contracts is that the term is fuzzy to say the least. The fuzzyness has grown worse rather than improved our focus about our expectations for education and about where and when those expectations should or must be met. Even the works of Voltaire and Rousseau are laden with ambiguity as they attempted to chart new considerations for how societies manage to manage. Two hundred years later, society continues to struggle with what our cocial contract should say.

Time and now the emerging digital technology, have changed our social circumstance so thoroughly, intensely and immensely that it makes no sense any longer to persist with the industrial system of schooling that we now support with such incredible resources. And, we must say, greatly wasted resources. Money is of course, one part of this, but , the biggest loss is human resources—particularly teachers who are not able to teach to their full potential and not only children but too many adults that are not able to reach new levels of creativity, and personal fulfillment.

The idea of a social contract is attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and has many commentators, contributors, apologists and explainers across over two centuries. Consequently, any meaning of a social contract is complex and a stimulus for questioning and dialogue. It may be foolhardy to attempt any definition of a social contract and it is not my intent here to make any such attempt. The very concept of contract is laden with arcane legalities and, of course, society has been studied and described across more than two centuries by sociologists ranging from Max Weber and Emil Durkheim through contemporary professors and students of sociology.

While we may each have a personal vision or idealized model for society and kind of know it when we see it, there is always plenty of room for at least some of us to doubt whether our personal concepts of society are sufficiently mature to express and argue. The concept of society is applied too often without thinking or attempting to elaborate on its dimensions or borders. In fact, it may be argued that society is at once global, regional and local. While that may carry some satisfaction it is not likely to be particularly helpful if or when something as important as freedom or liberty is either dependent upon or related to our meaning when using society in any assertion or question. Yet, it would be painful to extract the term from conversation. Consequently I'll continue to use society with some hope that there is shared meaning and that ambiguity will not unduly poison communication.

A contract can be a simple as a nod and a handshake or described with complex language requiring so many pages that even carrying the boxes of explanatory documents is back-breaking. This is then laden with “fine print” that only lawyers with theiir own tight-knit contract for payment of fees will fully appreciate. Pete Seeger said, education is what you get when you read the fine print, experience is what you get when you don't. Fortunately a nod and handshake agreement will often work and nothing more is needed. Unfortunately when it doesn't work the lawyers get called.

Our social contract requires some precision of language in the form of written documents—constitutions and statutes—to guide the making of administrative frameworks or legally binding statements—aka laws—that work fairly and effectively for all. This “all” means all; majority and minority across many people living in large and small tracts of space and over short and long periods of time. Laws are the very definitions of what people are allowed to do, expected to do, and/or prohibited from doing.

The social enforcement of these laws begin with the definition of penalties. The aversion to writing a social contract was deep and entrenched in multiple authoritarian structures and institutions. Churches made laws and maintained a theocracy through interpretation of holy documents. Monarchs made laws arbitrarily and sometimes capriciously claiming divine right. The magna carte limited monarchs by crafty coalitions between church and state created and ancien regine that ruled in France and continues in new iterations across the depth and breadth of social institutions through authoritarian and hierarchical organization. Schools are one embodiment of a modern form of ancien regime. Parents and community adults are essentiallychurch-like. Superintendents and Principals are monarchs. Corporations in most all of their manifestations are another form, where shareholders are the church and the C-suite houses the court of the monarch.

Enforcement of behavior within institutions can take on many dimensions including loyalty, fealty, favors and reciprocity to mention a few. With fealty, trueness, allegiance and loyalty are related. Trueness includes verity and truth. Allegiance involves commitment, dedication and cooperation. From any old or new ancien regime these enforcements assure some maintenance of hierarchy as they point to and permit authoritarian structure. Democracy be damned!

Fealty, of course, carries a historical legacy of fidelity to a feudal lord by a vassal who seeks use of land in return for rendering homage. The vassal was often required to bear arms in defense of the lords manor, which could also contribute to defense of a kingdom. The contemporary notion of a subject, subordinate, retainer or follower takes on new connotations for fealty. For instance, when a lawyer accepts a retainer, s/he agrees to remain loyal in service to the source of payment, often in amounts of many thousands of dollars for some well defined period of time. Our system of education, for the most part, sets aside land for designated buildings that are exclusively rendered for schooling. The lord-like board and their hired administrators build the buildings with an architecture to embrace and include classrooms for vassal-like teachers to, by contract, do the bidding of administrators; a lord-like arrangement if ever there was one. Does this remind anyone of our contemporary movement to require that teachers carrying guns? Is anyone anticipating the teacher pointing a gun at a recalcitrant student in their classroom. Oh god- and lord-almighty, NO! Not in this social contract.

Equality and equity are logical or mathematical concepts. The equation at its most basic is A = B where A and B have defined qualities, usually a number works reasonably well. When numerical values are assigned or identified, it becomes possible to conduct mathematical analyses to determine whether the resulting equation is either simply true, simply false or an inequality. Complexity is represented through expression of the number of terms used to define or refine the entities A and/or B of the equation. Our social contract calls forth some semblance of equality and/or equity. Unfortunately that is never as simple as A = B.

Democracy, I’ve heard, can be treated through mathematical reasoning as it has been with the 2014 book by Andranik Tangian, a Russian mathematician, political economist and musical theorist. Tangian produced two monographs regarding the mathematical elucidation of the meaning of democracy. How he was able to embrace such elements of democracy as respect, dignity and value or worth will have to await a close reading of these monographs. Meanwhile it may be of some comfort that an attempt to erase some of the fuzziness surrounding the concept of democracy has at least been attempted.

Voltaire (1694-1778, age 84) and Rousseau (1712-1778, age 66) were contemporaries with their active lives overlapping for a about four decades. By the time of Rousseau's birth, Voltaire was just beginning to emerge in French society as an author. As an advocate for free speech, Voltaire also supported separation of church from the governance of states and nations, a position later embedded in the US Constitution. The writing of Voltaire was so prolific that it was inevitable that Rousseau would find it and be influenced.

Arguments about controversial topics and the freedom to engage controversy are important elements of our social contract. The contract is breached when there is censorship. While the presence of censorship is very uncomfortable, there are circumstances where it may also be comforting. For instance, when ideas are grating against opposing ideas, it may be comfortable to ignore or, even better, not to hear contrary ideas.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the dogmas of religions. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion are not fully resolved in spite of 200+ years of Constitutional democracy in the US, which clearly extols separation of the secular and the sacred or ecclesiastical. Yet, our schools and teachers are troubled by an intrusion of religious doctrinal pressures to limit what teachers can teach and what students can read. Unfortunately this is not new, it is only louder now. Democracy is threatened by our modern versions of ancein regime where church and state are too cozy.

I originally called this chapter Social Construction. The implication in relation to the current title, “Our Social Contract,” is that construction is an important theme for education. From the vantage point of of epistemology, there is an important case to be made that all knowledge is “constructed” as a result of our social connections and relationships with an almost infinite array of objects and subjects. Construction builds on foundations. Indeed our trusted beliefs become increasingly justified through experience. Accordingly knowledge—justified true belief—rarely emerges as whole cloth; yet it becomes the fabric of our social contract.

Public Schools operate with authority of the state holding suasion over the autonomy of an individual. We should ask: How legitimate is that authority and what is its source or sources? Consent by individuals to surrender authority, and consequently some measure of freedom, may be tacit or explicit. Maintaining a sense of order across society is at the cost of relinquishing some amount of freedom or rights that may be legal or natural. Accordingly, the matter of a social contract involves distinguishing what are natural rights and what are legal rights. Supposedly natural rights, like natural laws, cannot be surrendered or changed. Political legitimacy hangs on an explicit agreement or contract with those who are governed—democracy. Accordingly all schools, or at least public schools, should model democracy. But they don’t. Hierarchy and authority dominate, mostly with lip-service, but little pretense at democratic decision-making. Elected local school boards only replicate limitations of representative democracy at other levels.

Political authority has been elucidated differently by theorists. Thomas Hobbs eloquently recognized that in the absence of a modified state of nature, life would be brutal and short. Conflict would be essentially endless and without resolution. Everyone would have a right to everything and property would mean nothing. Violation of another persons body by rape or murder would not be curtailed and plunder of property would be an endless battle of offense and defense. Natural rights, if followed without limits, would lead only to anarchy.

Government was, in Hobbs view, essential to prevent a state of anarchy. Civil rights, differentiated from natural rights, occur when individuals accept an obligation to defend the remaining rights or freedoms of others. Consequently all government requires relinquishing some amount of freedom. Natural rights stand in the way of civil rights, which are only obtained through creation of a human-to-human contract. Where these contracts begin and how far they may extend is a matter of choice; hence, another quasi source of freedom.

The theory of tacit consent is an important driver of social contracts. This may be a result of recognition of basic human needs for water, food and shelter. Being naked in nature is a state of vulnerability and much more so for women than for men. Clothing, of course, hides nakedness and is a form of shelter. Imagine, with me, being forced to be naked as happened to slaves at market. What was the slave's place in the contract that was about to ensue between a buyer and a seller? Clearly there was no willingness of either buyer or seller to yield to the slave any form of dignity or freedom. Slaves were emancipated; school attendees are not. After being picked up by the yellow bus and until dropped off by the yellow bus, emancipation is absent or attenuated. Schools operate on tacit consent that demands uniformity and conformity. Being naked takes on new meaning.

The reach and extent of a social contract cannot be unlimited. Social contracts are never firm or letter tight. In other words social contracts are not like a business contract that can be enforced in a court of law. To Hume they were convenient fictions created to guide human transactions and relationships. Obligations under a social contract are fuzzy and open-ended. Yet across time and many transactions social contracts require some measures of justice—often a matter of knowing when you see it or don’t feel it.

Hume referred to the whole notion of a social contract as a “convenient” fiction. The contract is never as real as a contract related to commerce where there is an offer and an acceptance of the offer, whether in writing or by virtue of a nod and handshake. Transactions are not afforded in anything resembling real time and in a sequence where the elementary components of the transaction can be duly noted by either party to the contract. The result is a tacit agreement or consent. Tacit consent is, of course, subject to ambiguities leading to misinterpretation. Explicit language rendered in constitutions, statutes and laws can lead to a consent that is minimally free of such misinterpretation.

Social contracts must be consensual. Consensus means that parties are willing to engage in some measure of give and take, while recognizing principles of social justice. Yet, social contracts should never be taken lightly. Although there have been numerous attempts by writers to extol the virtues of individualism, it is abundantly clear that our social existence is dependent upon sustaining a pattern of rule-making which makes virtually all of human life possible. And, because human life is much to often focused on evil deeds the imposition of better rule-making seems almost inevitable for our survival, and particularly the capacity to deal with the planetary imperative that will be addressed later in the book.

Unfortunately we are not living with a perfect social contract. Far from it. Progress has been made since the contributions of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume and more lately John Rawls. Yet our political systems have never been able to come to grips with the range of human potential and misery. Education across many centuries has held out hope and many individuals have been able to rise in the tides created by education.

But the hope has been to see a much more universal extension of potential across our human social order and state of our existence. It is time we recognize that what we have been doing in all good faith with education in the form of schools, has simply failed our sociall contract. We cannot, paraphrasing Einstein, keep doing what we have always been doing and expecting better results. That may reflect the deficiency of human mental health. It is time to change. It is also time to recognize that we humans, and we alone, in a universe of ignorance and unknown, have the capacity to redirect our evolution if we only have the courage to use our power.