The Alberta Teachers’ Association

School is about more than achievement

The Curiosity of School: Education and the Dark Side of the Enlightenment

I must admit to a prejudice. I don’t like home-schooling, even though I admit that there are legitimate reasons why some people might choose home-schooling (for example, if a child is being bullied). Nevertheless, generally, parents home-school for one of two reasons: a belief that schools teach bad morals or because they don’t want their delicate genius offspring mixing with the masses. The likes of me, in other words. And if you are reading this article, the likes of you, too.

Zander Sherman, who was home-schooled, writes in the introduction to The Curiosity of School (which he cutely dedicates to his mother, his “alma mater”) that he has no thesis to expound and did not set out to argue that school is bad and home-schooling good. This is hardly believable. All writers have agendas, and, as exemplified by the rotten apple on the book’s cover, Sherman’s is that schools kill curiosity and stress conformity and rote learning. To prove his thesis, he embarks on a chronological examination of the history of schooling; he places a watershed moment in mass education in 19th-century Prussia, where compulsory education, which inculcated conformist behaviour and obedience, became the norm. These attitudes translated nicely from the schools to the army, and the resulting conformist military behaviour helped Prussia develop a formidable army and set the stage for educational systems the world over.

There is much fascinating information in this book. For example, did you know about the warm relationship between the Italian educational reformer Maria Montessori and the fascist dictator Mussolini? In fact, in 1926, Il Duce was made honorary president of the Society of Friends of the Montessori Method. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two later had a falling out over issues of ideological issues, and Montessori left the country. We learn that the SAT (tests for university admittance in the US) began as a tool that states used to justify the sterilization of the unintelligent, technically called imbeciles. Sherman also offers interesting chapters on the much-trumpeted MacLean’s university ratings, which show not what the best universities in Canada are, but, rather, which ones receive the most corporate dough (I always suspected as much).

One can’t disagree with some of Sherman’s observations. We know that standardized testing is deeply flawed, that unplanned play is essential to foster creativity in young children and that too much conformity is stifling. At the same time, one of the great achievements of liberal western democracies is the creation of a public schooling system. The sociologist Max Weber hailed the state’s domination of education as a natural corollary of modernization and, indeed, for the past 150 years or so, compulsory mass education has been the hallmark of a civilized society.

The Curiosity of School contains a number of irritating factual errors. For example, Sherman does not seem to know that Canada has neither a national ministry of education nor a national curriculum. Sherman also states that the majority of private schools in Canada are for the rich; some are, but most are actually institutes for religious and cultural minorities. But beyond this, I contend that Sherman is missing the bigger picture. School is about more than achievement, however one measures that. It is about being with, acknowledging or even confronting “the other.” It is about having disabled kids in the room because they are part of us; it’s about team sports, after-school shinny, gay–straight alliances, chess clubs and band practice.

In the book’s epilogue, Sherman writes, “Imagine a system where the emphasis is on promoting individuality, creativity and compassion.” I suggest that instead of visiting the past (with all its crackpots and demagogues, which are part of every system ever created and always will be), Sherman should visit some actual schools to see how curriculum has adapted as new knowledge, understanding and sensitivities evolve. At the very least, he should read this issue of the ATA Magazine.