Education

...Walzer commits the very error with which he reproaches the environmentalists: he formulates certain humanist (or socialist) standards of cultural value and demands that the schools live up to them, notwithstanding an industrialized and commercialized environment inimical to those standards, and the absence even of any social movement which could "validate" them...

...Independence—it is worth repeating— is a matter of effort and struggle...

...The school "should" indeed be a humanizing, not a socializing agent...

...is the necessary precondition for a democratic politics" and "The immediate responsibility for cultural democracy falls upon education...

...It requires also that expansion of our educational establishment which I described above: more buildings, teachers, scholarships...

...Here, it seems to me, is a practical, political problem: the elimination of poverty requires an expanding economy and an expanding welfare program, slum clearance, minimum wages, etc...

...Brand desires...

...Some of these jobs —but by no means all—are the inevitable resort of the poor...

...Not to mention what would happen to the already discouraging state of the school retention rate...

...In a class society, you do not have a democratic culture...

...But onward...

...Waizer ignores the liberating element inhering in the possession of wellgrounded skills, given the fact that we have to get on in a class society where the leisure needed for a rounded development is available to only a few...

...But this means precisely that far more serious attention be given to vocational and technical training in a variety of productive skills, so that the graduating student may choose from a broad selection of jobs and can move to other, more suitable and better jobs if he desires...

...He is, of course, correct, but he would do well to look again: in the world we live in "life adjustment" is also a form of vocational training...

...Already there is instruction in how to sell oneself .. I SURELY AGREE with Brand's passionate desire to free the "sixty per cent" from stupid, wasteful jobs and all that goes with them...

...He demands a classless education in a class society...

...Considering the actual state of American education as he describes it, they lack all substance...

...The mass of students—"the sixty per cent"—must first of all see to it that they be not nailed down to some mind-crimping, soul-starving job...

...No, the confrontation of class society with equality and cultural value cannot and should not take place in the school...

...Through political activity we can, perhaps, produce better school buildings...

...Walzer won't settle for that, but let him contemplate the reference he quotes from an article in the Bulletin of the National Association of Secondary School Principals to the "neglected sixty per cent" of American students, who are presumably destined to earn their livelihood at the "large number of jobs . . . requiring no unusual aptitudes or interests...

...But such social improvements will undoubtedly not in themselves produce either economic or cultural independence, for independence is not the concern of the welfare state...

...But I have no doubt that Brand's views are distorted by his having too firm a grip on only one of these ideas...

...I don't know whether these statements are meant as contentions to be proved or as injunctions to be followed...

...In writing my articles I attempted to set up the two ideas of "class" and "mass" as alternative conceptual frames within which different problems had to be examined—probably unsuccessfully since I can't claim to have too firm a grip on either idea right now...

...Much of what I wrote about American education was written out of an acute feeling of danger here...

...When the underprivileged are taught the same body of knowledge as the privileged, he says, there will be "conflict between school and home, and resistance, discouragement, even delinquency on the part of the child...

...Personality is a greater "asset" today...

...Michael Walzer, count me as your comrade-in-arms in making this effort, But let me repeat, it is a political, not an educational effort...

...struggle and discouragement are the immediate price we pay in order to confront class society with equality and cultural value...

...What I believe the American school should be attacked for is that it seeks to adapt the child to society instead of preparing him to make his own way in it...

...The term is not overdramatic...

...So we are back at politics...

...Vocational training such as Brand suggests, on the other hand, might well equip a young man for nothing more than the unemployment lines of Detroit and Pittsburgh...

...The school certainly is not such an arena...

...and on-the-job training, by early overspecialization of the trainee's faculties, has that very effect, thus limiting his mobility, blocking his chances and making him unreceptive, even hostile, to the effort needed to acquire a measure of culture...

...Michael Walzer replies: Politics is no longer a magic word...

...And the issue between teacher and student is always in doubt...

...It is precisely this conservative role which the school is not fulfilling...

...I think that it was for the sake of that same independence which Brand values so highly that I attempted to portray the school as a cultural battleground— and not merely as an agent of social improvement...

...The notion that productive skills can serve as a basis for personal independence seems to me curiously old-fashioned...

...These are important things, and, quite by themselves, will have much of the effect Mr...

...Brand apparently does not recognize, or admit, this danger—and I hope he is right...

...Says he: "Today a democratic culture...

...The question of education as Walzer, in effect, sees it is a political, not an "educational" question, which can be resolved only in the arena of politics...

...we can raise teachers' salaries and provide more scholarships...

...At a minimum, the school must train and sharpen the usual aptitudes, awaken and heighten the usual interests, so that young people are enabled to stand on their own feet and improve their situation...

...and the schools, class institutions that Walzer shows they are, cannot shoulder the responsibility for cultural democracy...

...But surely the response to such a threat, if it exists, must be an intellectual one...

...How to do so is another question...

...I see no reason why schools, even in a class society, cannot represent something at least of cultural value...

...But he himself indicates how little meaning such knowledge has for their daily lives and their future prospects...

...He expects the schools to resist the pressures of society, to set themselves against society if necessary, and adopt Marx's idea of an education befitting human beings...

...To the "neglected sixty per cent," skills mean what property once meant to the landless peasant: a small but relatively secure area of personal independence, a source of self-respect, a starting point for self-development...

...Yet, with all the thoughtfulness and knowledge he displays, I do not think that he has posed the key problems of American education...

...But one cannot expect it, as a social institution, not to somehow reflect the structure and interests of the society of which it is part...

...For my present purposes the notion of mass society need indicate nothing more than a world in which "common knowledge" of a sort is not only possible, but has already begun to exist...

...What then happens to that "stubborn, persistent effort to make knowledge and culture, or at least access to them, as universal as possible...

...But is America in fact simply a class society...

...I felt that we were losing our sense of cultural value and our concern for its future...

...As for making one's way in the world: Brand would be no happier than I with an education deliberately designed for that...

...That education in the sense of intellectual, emotional and political experience must precede and contribute to the crystallization of the political will is, of course, undeniable...

...Michael Walzer has written a suggestive essay on American education [DISSENT, Spring and Summer 1959...

...But the agencies for that kind of education lie far beyond the narrow precincts of the school...

...Adaptation to mass culture is indeed a mind-crimping process, but it by no means impedes material advance...

...In education this common knowledge takes the form which Brand dismisses as a training in adaptation and adjustment...

...OF THE SCHOOL, however, one must demand that it stick, at a minimum, to its "narrow," "limiting" tasks...

...But cultural democracy is something else...

...It requires a recognized tradition of artistic and intellectual creation, criticism and controversy, and a body of men to carry on this tradition, to respond to it, to be vitally interested in it...

...But Walzer himself demonstrates that in a class society it is inevitably the latter...

...It is time we became wary about the possibilities of politics...

...Those great political events, transforming class society, replacing class culture and education with some better, higher form, still give no sign of occurring...

...One can expose the American school's empty equalitarianism and hypocritical pretensions to democratic education as Walzer does, and does well...

...Mentioning it permits a radical writer neither to solve all problems nor to postpone them...

...But the actual extent to which a particular teacher in a class room compromises with such interests is problematic...

...I frankly doubt his solution, which would turn the schools into training institutes for productive labor...

...Brand believes the task to be hopeless in a class society, and would presumably await that political apocalypse which will usher in classlessness...

...The school can become its vehicle only when there is genuine equality among men...

...It is only on such a battleground that the "usual aptitudes and interests" can be heightened and sharpened...

...it takes a man further...

...Given such a response (and it is problematic enough), can material of cultural significance be taught in the school...

...It is dependent first upon the existence of ideas about culture...

...But, unfortunately, this whole question of the school's not measuring up to the tasks which it can be legitimately required to perform is treated cavalierly by Walzer...

...Let the usual and the unusual alike master the cultural canon (however it is defined), or let them fight it and create outside it a culture of their own...

...They will also, of course, reflect social and political interest...

...He would have them devote themselves to the study of history, literature and science...

...For example: He would not have "children" 14 and 15 years old "waste" time on vocational training...

...But, for lack of a better one, Walzer would have it so, and in consequence gets tangled up in his own logic...

...It is wrong, if not irresponsible, to postpone such training until after the student has had his fling with history, literature and science...