There is a beautiful concept in the Hebraic scriptures known as tikkun olam. The translation literally means “to repair the world” and it is held in close kinship to the idea of olam haba (“the world to come”) where justice (mispat –meaning “to save from oppression” and linked to the idea of defending the weak, liberating the oppressed, and doing justice to the poor) and righteousness (sedaqah—the active intervention in social affairs in order to rehabilitate society, to respond to social grievance, and to correct every humanity-diminishing activity) are the continuing refrain of a religio-political, economical, and social way of life that confronts and critiques power here and now. What these ideas point to is a way of living rightly within a world oppressed on all sides by systems of domination, cruelty and injustice, systems that are often replicated in and through the ways in which we educate our young.
Michael Apple (one of my favorite writers in the field of curriculum ideology) writes in his book, Education and Power, that “Our problems are systemic, each building on the other. Each aspect of the social process in the state and politics, in cultural life, in our modes of producing, distributing, and consuming serves to affect the relationships within and among the others. A fundamental problem facing us is the way in which systems of domination and exploitation persist and reproduce themselves without being consciously recognized by the people involved.” What Apple goes on to critique is the way schools act as social reproducers of inequality and injustice by sorting some students into lives where creativity, innovation, and analytical thinking are valued while others are given rote tasks to memorize and regurgitate, trained for meaningless work with no passion or purpose. Apple writes, “Schools are still seen as taking an input (students) and efficiently processing them (through a hidden curriculum) and turning them into agents for an unequal and highly stratified labor force (output). Thus, the school’s major role is in the teaching of an ideological consciousness that helped reproduce the division of labor society.”
That this is so is evident when one spends any amount of time in the many failing schools in the inner city. Bright, eager, loving, wonderful children are educated out of any concept of beauty, passion, purpose and meaning by a system that does not see them as valuable beyond their consumption in the marketplace. Schools for far too many students become places where, at an early age, the message is loud and clear: “We do not value you.” This is a message that is passed on through both the overt curriculum (what we choose to teach) and the hidden curriculum (the messages sent by faculty who give up on “those” students because “they can’t learn” or “don’t need to know this stuff”; by administrators who give up on “troubled” kids because of their behavior problems; by parents who refuse to send their kids to “that” school; by a society that refuses to pay a living wage to its working poor; etc.).
In light of this, what might the olam haba look like if we took seriously the Hebraic mandate to be architects of repair in the world, intent on living out mispat and sedaqah? What if we saw the work of education reform not as holding “higher standards” but as working to liberate the oppressed, defend the weak, and do justice to the poor? What if we reframed the discussion of education reform by seeing the systems that hold progress at bay? What if we started asking deeper, more humane questions of our schooling? What if we intentionally designed every facet of schooling around the question: “What does it mean to live a meaningful life?” What if we asked students to think about meaning and purpose rather than success and consumption? The olam haba–the world to come–might just be one worth fighting for after all.
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Although I have never taught in a public school, recently the same concern about what kind of “repairers of the world” we are creating in private schools has arisen. Teaching children in a private school setting who have the advantages of birth and money and who will most likely be the ones to either perpetuate the injustices or have the power to change them is a daunting task. This was brought to light recently during a discussion with freshmen who kept insisting that the poor are poor because they are lazy, make bad choices, etc., and therefore the thought of someone using their resources to help the poor was deemed ridiculous. Essentially, their 14-year-old line of reasoning went, poor people are getting what they deserve. After four classes of freshmen, I had a group of seniors and the same issue was brought up in a different context: What is our responsibility to society’s problems? I had hoped that since they were older, they might have a better answer to give, but alas, the 18-year-old mindset echoed their younger counterparts. One student said, “I don’t see how someone losing their job or being poor has anything to do with anyone else. It was that person’s fault.” By the end of the day I was frustrated and disheartened with the lack of compassion and social responsibility. And how do I help teach them to think differently about their position of privilege?
Looking forward to your thoughts muse and prose. I would add the inter-personal relationships between students could and mostly likely does play a role in education. Who is in and who is out does depend on other factors as well perceptions…
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Perhaps at least one of the reasons that mainstream education doesn’t look at this – “What does it mean to live a meaningful life?” – as the basis for and core of curriculum is because the powerful world relies on things having an economic value. Success is based on measurable outcomes; measured by their value in today’s or tomorrow’s economy.
It’s difficult as a teacher to have the time to really get to the kids who do disrupt things through behaviour; classes are generally large, support is stretched thin, and it’s an achievement just to get the required curriculum done. Excellent, talented, wise teachers do this and the work of reaching as many students as possible, but it is really difficult.
A really great young adult novel that speaks to some of your concerns – about control, how a society treats its children and what is considered education – that I just finished reading, is “All Good Children”, by Catherine Austen. Really interesting, and entertaining.
One last issue is, what is the responsibility of schools, and the responsibility of other cultural institutions, including churches and families? How much can/should each do, and where are the dividing lines between territory?
Great thoughts! I agree; the road to seeing such a vision fleshed out is fraught with many obstacles and distractions, but that does not mean that we should give up. Our history is replete with examples of those who continued despite the obstacles (the Civil Rights movement, for example). You also raise some interesting questions. I believe that there is a difference between education and schooling. Education is what happens writ large in media, politics, religion, family, etc. and schooling is what happens in the school house. These two things are often at odds with each other, but they should not be. My question is: what would happen if the culture and the schoolhouse both shared the same moral vision? Thank you for your comments!
Your vision for education is excellent; I love it. I think it’s exactly what the world needs. So much does have to change before we can get there – the whole vision of our society, perhaps; changing what is valued by the majority. But you’re right – we can’t give up because it seems improbable, and so much has been done in our history that’s amazing, but which seemed improbable first.