Wounded by education

The old-fashioned classroom appealed to the sense of order felt by many adults.  All those orderly children, facing the teacher and evidently listening.  The New England invention of the public school, where all would learn to read and thereby be able to get the word of God directly from the written source, seems designed to sidestep the invention of writing.  It probably was so designed since books cost money and the whole idea was to transmit knowledge by the voice of the teacher through the pupils' ears into their brains.  Such an arrangement sometimes works well.

But in today's world, we want all or nearly all of the students to learn and grow in skills, confidence and good judgment.  The old way, not that old actually, left too many undeveloped or worse, injured by their education.  The word "iatrogenic" means illness or harm brought about by the doctor or hospital.  We could use a similar word for injuries or limiting beliefs brought about by schools and teachers.  You can find people who were told by teachers they shouldn't try to sing since they didn't have a voice or talent for singing.  It is not unusual to find people who concluded from school experiences that they were especially lacking in some talent or ability, such as drawing or mathematics. 

Language is probably our best tool in life and schools are usually charged with improving the reading and writing skills of the students.  However, schools often damage students ability to speak out or to express themselves in writing.  For some sobering, even saddening examples of such damage, see the marvelous book "Uptaught" by Ken Macrorie.  Those who often misspell are often told that without correct spelling, writing at all is wrong.  If they have enough trouble, they stop writing if they can and life can be lived without writing, although it ought not be, since it is poorer that way.  Similarly, many educated and intelligent adults I have worked with carry internal convictions that they themselves lack merit because they don't read or don't read Shakespeare or other books they have been told are high-level language.

Of course, much depends on the goals you have for an educational system.  If you are trying to instill the idea that there is a right answer to everything and that the teacher or the system knows it, the old idea of "listen to the teacher and remember what that person says" might make more sense.  Not too long ago, that was the model of education.  In many countries, secondary or tertiary education was supplied only to those with high grades who passed an examination.  These days, more people realize that many, if not most, important answers remain unknown and that we need to waste no minds.  We need to develop citizens who have good communication skills, good thinking skills and appropriate critical skills.

Some successful doctoral students seem to have been injured by the education they received, to the point where they can only criticize negatively and offer references and footnotes for every statement they make.  Our secondary schools, third levels of education and beyond negatively affect some students' ability to speak and write for the mass of our citizens to understand them.

(Thanks to Dr. L.S. Kirby for the copy-editing and the comment "another way that doctoral students are damaged is that they had to read so much yukky stuff that they quit reading altogether."