“If that were true, the school would be responsible for keeping things as they are — not for venturing into the new and unknown!”
“Exactly,” said Nagle. “An educational system forms a homeostatic control over the natural adventuresomeness of the individual human mind to keep it in line with established patterns. It preserves the cultural ideal at all costs through widespread indoctrination with the particular mass of data currently accepted as ‘truth.’ This is its only function ”
“I should think that would be extremely difficult to prove.”
“On the contrary, it is so obvious it requires nothing more than calling attention to it. It is more than amply demonstrated by the fact that no educational system has ever been able to concern itself with the basic object of its ministrations: the individual human brain. The enormous range of variation in human minds has been taken into account only as something to be flattened out so that whatever curriculum is in vogue can be injected with minimum effort. No effective program to investigate these variations and harness their usefulness has ever been established. Earnest people have thought upon the problem from time to time, but they seemed unaware that the educational system is basically unable to do anything but what it is doing.”
“This sounds rather rough on the educators.”
“Not at all! They’re fulfilling the function assigned by society long ago when the first half dozen families gathered outside the communal cave and decided little Joe Neanderthal was getting too big for his britches and somebody was going to have to teach him a thing or two. They’ve been teaching him ever since this first school was set up. There are many social homeostats outside the family now, but the school was the first — and the function of a homeostat is to flatten variations.”
Montgomery laughed. “I suppose everyone has that kind of feeling about his education at times — although I’m not yet convinced your description is wholly accurate. I do remember seeing at one time, however, a picture of an ingenious machine to stamp walnuts with a brand name. Regardless of the shape or size of the nut it came through the machine with the same brand as all the rest. I thought then that schools had also been stamping the nuts with identical brands for a long time.”
Nagle smiled broadly and nodded. “They deal in terms of classes, not individuals, of materials to be taught, of obtaining agreement from the pupils, not of inviting them to original thought. We laugh now at little Joe Genius being held down by the backwardness of the Little Red School-house on the prairie, and exult in his eventual triumph over it. We fail to recognize that the Little Red School-house is still with us — even though it now has air-conditioning, glass bricks, and cantilevered roofs. We fail to recognize that discovery and invention are culture-smashing activities, and education is a culture-preserving mechanism. By its very nature, then, education cannot sponsor any vital, new departures in any facet of our culture. It can only appear to do so, to preserve the sustaining illusion of progress while at the same time maintaining the homeostasis of the culture.”
“And all this leads to what?” said Montgomery.
“To the question of what happens to a working system when the setting of its homeostatic control is pushed down too low!”