Cappy

Last weekend a few of us involved with Reason Weekly attended the annual American Atheists Conference and, surrounded by so many that held an assumption about the nature of the universe similar to my own, I was once again reminded of the fact that atheism is just a conclusion. On its own it may represent a step in the right direction for a particular individual, but it is a point reached as the result of a path, a methodology. And it is that methodology that is important. It is that methodology that I hope to share with others.

I have met many atheists who are nihilists. Theirs is not a true disbelief in god or an embrace of reason, but rather a hatred of life. They are defined by the things they are against, the things they despise, the things they destroy. And this one conclusion that I share with them, that there is no god, is as morally and intellectually irrelevant to me as the fact that I share a support with many Christians for homeschooling.

What is atheism, anyway? It is simply the belief that there is no god. In a rational world such a word would have little use, like pointing out that one man is a biped. We’re all bipeds. And the term atheism is not intrinsically a support of anything, conceptual or physical. Exactly the opposite. It is an “anti” word, a word that means you are against something.

But I, and I hope you as well, do not like to think of myself in such a way. I am not someone who has a vendetta against god or the religious, I do not wish to define myself by the things I rally against. And if the entire world was atheistic it would be better, but not necessarily great, or even good.

I am not anti-god. I am pro-reason. I support logic, empiricism, universal principles. I support the Law of Identity and the definition of man as a rational, noble savage. I support philosophy and truth, and the idea that an understanding of each must be earned, tested, reevaluated and employed in daily life. I want a world without the concept of god only because I want a world where people embrace their minds, their capacity to learn, understand, grow and face challenges.

I am an atheist and I support atheism, but only as a outcome of the rational methodology that I use to understand reality. The concept of atheism is an central to my idea of self as is my belief that our senses can be trusted to unravel the world around us. The latter is hardly ever considered, because its proof is so obvious, its efficacy so self-evident, that I would have to assume that it is correct even in the act of questioning it. To me, atheism is the same. So long as I am rational, the existence of god is something I hardly need think about, unless somehow new evidence came to light about such a phenomenon.

Reason is the tool we have to understand reality, morality and ourselves. These are the things that define who I am, not the specific conclusions that I come to. You may call me an atheist if you like. But I would much prefer to be called a scientist, a thinker and a philosopher.

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Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto has a significant place in the canon of school reform literature in that he is the first to propose that when schools create children who can only follow rules and appease authority, they are not doing so as an unfortunate consequence of higher intentions. Rather, this is their clear and conscious goal.

In “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” Mr. Gatto fills us in on what children are really being taught in compulsory school:

1. Confusion:  ”Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending, for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.”
2. Class Position: “My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at least endure it like good sports. If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly policies itself into good marching order. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
3. Indifference: “I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do.”
4. Emotional Dependency
5. Intellectual Dependency
6. Provisional Self-Esteem: “Our world wouldn’t survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that a kid’s self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged… The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials.”
7. One Can’t Hide: “I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance… There are no private spaces… no private time… I assign a type of extending schooling called ‘homework,’ so that the effect os surveillance, if not the surveillance itself, travels into private households.”

In “The Psychopathic School” Gatto points out some of egregious (but ultimately obvious) problems with compulsory education:

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of live and the synergy of variety; indeed, it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you in the sanctuary of your home, demanding that you do its homework.

When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.

In “The Green Monogahela” Gatto describes his first foray into education as a substitute teacher. He soon learns of Milagros, a girl in the class of bad readers despite obvious skill. When he takes his case to the administration, he is not met with excitement and thanks, but rather with indignation:

“You have some nerve, Mr. Gatto. I can’t remember when a substitute ever told me how to run my school before. Have you taken specialized courses in reading?”
“No.”
“Well then, suppose you leave these matters to the experts!”
“But the kid can read!”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you test her, and if she isn’t a dummy, get her out of the class she’s in!”
“I don’t like your tone. None of our children are dummies, Mr. Gatto. And you will find that girls like Milagros have many ways to fool amateurs like yourself. This is a matter of a child having memorized one story. You can see if I had to waste my time arguing with people like you, I’d have no time left to run a school.”

The administrator not only open criticizes Mr. Gatto’s intelligence, but immediately accuses the girl of fraud rather than having any curiosity whatsoever… And is it surprising? Among the many other horrid conditions of the schools he taught in, Gatto noticed a significant lack of curiosity and interest:

“…the inexplicable absence of conversation about children among the teachers (to this day, after thirty years in the business, I can honestly say I have never once heard an extended conversation about children or about teaching theory in any teachers’ room I’ve been in)”

Dumbing Us Down is an excellent work with many other lessons besides the few I’ve shared here. I would definitely recommend reading it (it’s actually quite short) if you are at all interested in school reform.

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Maria Montessori presents her concept of the absorbent mind - in her book of the same name - as a type of mentality that is particular to children in which they do not attempt to learn, but rather do so with almost no volition, as an act of their nature. This period in a child’s development, while not lasting a predefined amount of time, usually takes place from birth to 6 years old. And it is further evidence to support the argument that children do not need to be taught so much as they need freedom to learn, freedom to do what comes naturally to them. Montessori writes:

Our mind, as it is, would not be able to do what the child’s mind does. To develop a language from nothing needs a different type of mentality. This the child has. His intelligence is not the same kind as ours.

It may be said that we acquire knowledge by using our minds; but the child absorbs knowledge directly into his psychic life. Simply by continuing to live, the child learns to speak his native tongue. A kind of mental chemistry goes on within him. We, by contrast, are recipients. Impressions pour into us and we store them in our minds; but we ourselves remain apart from them, just as a vase keeps separate from the water it contains. Instead, the child undergoes a transformation. Impressions do not merely enter his mind; they form it. They incarnate themselves in him. The child creates his own “mental muscles,” using for this what he finds in the world around him.

This, to me, has two very immediate and very important implications. The first is that currently both parenting and education methods do a great deal to stunt and mar this process. The second is that children who are brought up with this principle in mind will prove that extremely bright, curious, precocious children are not an aberration, but rather the natural, normal state that the child is compelled towards.

Until a handful a decades ago, the most important portion of a student’s development was considered to be university. There he received “higher learning,” there he was prepared for the world. Younger children were all but entirely ignored as curious, learning beings. But now we know better, and vague stabs at applying this knowledge in shown in the form of preschool classes. This, however, is not good enough. A different kind of mind needs a different kind of education. And to Montessori, and myself, this implies a complete abandonment of the educational principles currently supported. Montessori writes of the role of parents and teachers:

The discovery that the child has a mind able to absorb on its own account produces a revolution in education. We can now understand easily why the first period in human development, in which character is formed, is the most important. At no other age has the child greater need of an intelligent help, and any obstacle that impedes his creative work will lessen the chance he has of achieving perfection. We should help the child, therefore, no longer because we think of him as a creature, puny and weak, but because he is endowed with great creative energies, which are of their nature so fragile as to need a loving and intelligent defense. To these energies we want to bring help; not to the child, or to his weakness. When we understand that the energies belong to his unconscious mind, which has to become conscious through work and through an experience of life gained in the world, we realize that the mind of the child in infancy is different from ours, that we cannot reach it by verbal instruction, nor intervene directly in the process of its passion from the unconscious to the conscious - the process of making human faculty - then the whole concept of education changes. It becomes a matter of giving help to the child’s life, to the psychological development of man. No longer is it just as enforced task of retaining our words and ideas.

If that notion doesn’t excite and anger you, then I can only think to blame the French to English translation, because it seems so clear to me that we are missing out on incredible opportunities in the minds of the young, that they are literally being beaten into bored stupidity when they could be raised to such heights of intelligence and freedom that those of us who experienced compulsory school can only imagine.

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Went ahead and updated the blog theme… The other was nice and simple, but really impractical when it came to browsing multiple posts and viewing archives. Hopefully this one will serve better.

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