“Certainly, one of its major aims is to produce an adequate corps of creative engineers!”
Nagle shook his head. “No. But in order to understand the failure of any mechanism it is best to inquire if the mechanism was designed to perform the failed function in the first place.
“The school is a peculiar institution. Even its personnel are regarded as public property. The control imposed by a community upon its school-teachers has long been a stock source of humor, but there’s nothing funny in it to anyone who’s ever experimented with making the school anything but the strict, literal voice of the community.
“Educational systems have always been a source of public pride, whether in Rome of the fourteenth century, or Paris, or London, or Podunk Corners, U.S.A. New advances in education are announced with great fanfare. In reality, however, the school never changes. Its basic purpose today is the same as it was when Egyptian boys studied the Book of the Dead to learn how departed souls must act to obtain happiness.
“It existed in the ancient synagogues, the military barracks of Sparta, the gymnasiums of Athens, the harsh discipline of Roman schools. It was in the church schools and universities of the Middle Ages, as well as in Napoleonic France where the system was geared to reverence for the new emperor, ‘given by God.’ It’s painful to attempt an evaluation of our own current system, but the basic purpose is there.
“In all ages the educational system has existed to enable the individual to become an integral part of his cultural life — whatever form that culture might have.”
“That doesn’t sound extremely ominous,” said Montgomery.
“I haven’t said that it is. Judgment on that point will be left up to you. But let us consider the system in engineering terms:
“A culture demands a certain minimum degree of stability for its existence. Uniformity of customs, thoughts, and habits contributes to this stability. Likewise, there is demanded a heavy checkrein on excursions too far away from the cultural norm. Both of these items, the uniformity and the restraint, can be very adequately provided by indoctrination in the Traditions of the Elders, by dispensing All That is Known of the Universe and Man in the sixteenth century, or by wrapping up the results of much data collection in a Handbook of Wing Design for aeronautical engineers.
“This represents a homeostatic process. The school is the instrument designed to carry it out. It’s the thermostat on the stove to keep the pot from boiling over.”