I have finished a rather interesting book written nearly half a century ago by a man who, as a public educator, had quite a right to hold opinions on public education. What follows is an abbreviated quote of what he had to say:
First, as written from his own point of view:
“In my view there is a sense in which education ought to be democratic and another sense in which it ought not. It ought to be democratic in the sense of being available, without distinction of sex, colour, class, race, or religion, to all who can - and will - diligently accept it. But once the young people are inside the school there must be no attempt to establish a factitious egalitarianism between the idlers and dunces on the one hand and the clever and industrious on the other. A modern nation needs a very large class of genuinely educated people and it is the primary function of schools and universities to supply them. To lower standards or disguise inequalities is fatal.”
Then, as written from the view of an enemy of the human race:
“In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has already become something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system . . . The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils . . . At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have - I believe the English already use the phrase - ‘parity of esteem’ . . . The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.
In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers - or should I say, nurses? - will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.”
Perhaps if you have looked very hard into America’s present-day educational system, you have seen something of this very sort going on. Perhaps I also ought to qualify the previous quotations by making several pertinent remarks. First, you might be interested to know that the man who wrote this admitted (even from nearly 50 years ago!) that he was writing specifically about the American educational system. Second, that said man was British (which is why he spelled color with a “u” and added an extra "l" to modeling). Third, that this man happens to be C.S. Lewis. The book, if you haven’t read it, is The Screwtape Letters, and the quotes are taken from an ending addition, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.”
