|
Abolished Man: by Brooks Alexander This
article first appeared in S.C.P. Journal, vol 16:4, 1992
...the difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds - making them thus or thus for purposes of which the young birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation - men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda (C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)). C.S. Lewis noticed destructive trends in education earlier and critiqued them more cogently than most. He did so specifically in his 1947 book, The Abolition of Man. Lewis chose that title because he recognised that the new educational trends were destructive to our humanity, since they redefined mankind in sub-human terms. Lewis himself believed that The Abolition of Man was his "most significant statement" (Houston, 1988, p13). Lewis chose an existing elementary text-book as his example and focus of concern; he referred to it as The Green Book. As Lewis described The Green Book, it seems to teach an early form of 'value-free' learning that is radically humanistic. Lewis called it the "new education". According to Lewis, The Green Book undermined deity, truth, and value at their source by seeing them all as human creations. By syllogism, if we make them, we can change them. Since they come from man, they can be defined by man. But by which men? No definition prevails without a struggle against its rivals. Thus, humanism 'politicises' everything. Ultimately, there is no 'reality', there is only a contest of powers - which, in the long run, means a contest of wills. Lewis understood that the new education deliberately disconnects its students from the things that define human nature - namely ultimates, absolutes, conscience, values, culture, and tradition. When we are disconnected, we become more subject to manipulation. The reason is simple: when we detach ourselves from the specifically human, we remain connected to the generically living - with all of its urges and desires. When we cast off the cultural and traditional things that define our 'human nature', we remain captive to the biological and instinctual things that drive our 'non-human' nature - i.e. our appetites and our primal emotions.
If Lewis were alive today he would be saddened, but not surprised, by the way in which his predictions have been fulfilled. For ever four decades, we have been subjected to a relentless debunking of our culture, our religion, and our values. We have responded appropriately - by turning ourselves into a nation of alienated, amoral, rootless, self-serving, ego-units. Education and Popular Culture Education is not the only culprit in that regard - entertainment and advertising are both subject to heavy indictment. And both, of course, are uniquely joined in the modern medium of TV. More than one observer has noted that the very nature of TV technology has an alienating effect, regardless of the content being broadcast. Culture-watcher Kenneth Meyers summarizes the criticisms:
Those influences of popular culture reinforce destructive trends in education. The two work together in ways that complement one another. Entertainment, advertising, and television surround us with a disorganised clamor of yearning and alienation, while education systematically turns students into autonomous units of will and ego, of 'empowerment' and 'self-esteem'. That combined influence of education, popular culture, and television, has already produced results in our society. One result is a large pool of people who respond readily to manipulation because they have been cut off from the knowledge (of God, of culture, of right and wrong) that would enable them to sift their experience and evaluate it. Another result is a breed of young people who have learned to feel good about themselves while behaving in ways that are ruthlessly anti-social. The same influences create both the herd, and the psychopath who cuts from the herd. A decade after Lewis, Norman Mailer noticed a similar phenomenon, and hinted that in a fragmenting and anarchic society, the psychopath's lack of conscience gives him a certain competitive edge:
Lewis analysed the new education by going directly to its basic and most destructive assumptions. Those were: first, that all values are creations of man; and second, that man therefore owes no allegiance to any values but those that he makes or chooses for himself. In Lewis' view, that was a metaphysical statement, not an educational one. He pointed out that the new education was thus more than a new method of teaching, it was a new world-view, and a new definition of man. Dangerous Results And he understood the consequences that would flow from those ideas. Lewis foresaw two dangerous results of the new education. One was political, the other cultural. The political danger, briefly put, is that such 'education' really prepares the many to be controlled by the few:
Lewis warned that the debunking of values favors the rise of dictatorship. In his view, the new education was really a way of training people to be docile and responsive subjects of a power elite that controls public appetites (falsely called public 'opinion') by controlling public information. By coincidence, Lewis published The Abolition of Man the same year that George Orwell was finishing 1984. Lewis also saw an even deeper danger. The new education not only redefines man, it also redefines human society. It is thus inherently subversive and hostile to the forms of society that already exist. Before the new can come, the old must go. Wherever the new education takes root, it begins automatically to work at cross-purposes with established society and social institutions by debunking their basis in shared values. Lewis spoke plainly in that regard: "The practical result of education in the spirit of (the new education) must be the destruction of the society that accepts it" (Lewis, 1947, p39). By disconnecting individuals from shared beliefs and allegiances - from the social fabric - the new education disrupts the transmission of cultural values from one generation to the next. It is the cultural equivalent of nerve-gas, which kills by interrupting the transmission of nervous impulses within the body. There is a third danger in the new education that Lewis did not specifically foresee. It is the danger to the family. The new education's danger to the family comes in two stages. The first stage weakens the family by 'atomising' its members - an effect that is reinforced by popular culture. As the family flounders, the second stage capitalises on its failures. Because the family has been undermined, individual families become disabled - there are some functions they can no longer perform at all, and others they can't perform fully or well. At the personal level, families struggle, and often fail, against the forces that weaken and divide them. Problems increase in number and severity. At some point, state bureaucracies, typically led by education and social welfare, step in - first to oversee, then to take over, the functions that families are unable to exercise, or are willing to abandon. When this process runs its course, the influence of the family will be mostly displaced by the influence of the collective, in the form of the bureaucracy, the schools, and the media. The natural, biological family in general, and parents in particular, will become appendages of the 'omnicompetent state', watchfully regulated by state agencies. The family will be redefined to prevent it from becoming a focus for loyalties apart from the collective. If a form of the 'family' survives at all, it will be as a convenient device for bureaucratic book-keeping, and will be redefined in mostly economic terms. At the time Lewis wrote, the 'abolition' he described was still in its nascent stages. He saw the beginning of the process, not its completion. He viewed the 'abolition' as a potential, not a fact. Today we are fast approaching the fact - the outcome of that process. Today our educational system works to produce 'Abolished Man' in increasing numbers, with increasing efficiency. Education as Propaganda True to Lewis' prediction, modern secondary education (i.e. above sixth grade) is largely becoming an 'attitude factory' that indoctrinates students with a political and social agenda. That fact is becoming so flagrant that even advocates of the new education have ceased to claim that they 'teach' or 'educate' in the traditional sense of that term. Dr. Shirley McCune is director of a federally-funded educational laboratory in Aurora, Colorado. Speaking at a national 'educational summit', she recently acknowledged that "we are no longer teaching facts to children" because "none of us can guess what information they will need in the future." Schools, she said, should just teach students "how to process information." She said that teachers "should be worried about a class that is quiet" because the students "may just be learning facts, but not how to process the information." (Education Reporter, Feb., '91). The modern version of Lewis' 'new education' has two main thrusts. The first is a program of propaganda directed at students, with the purpose of invalidating mainstream culture, values, and institutions, including the family. The propaganda is organised at the level of the curriculum and carried out at the level of the classroom. The second thrust is an active effort to remove the family from its place of pre-eminent influence and replace it with the schools, the media, and the state. This move to displace the family is conceived on a broader scale and is carried out at the level of bureaucratic networking. The educational bureaucracy is a central part of that network. It is important to notice that, without being directly co-ordinated, the two thrusts work together - that is, the propaganda supports the validity of the collective and its displacement of the family, while the displacement in turn makes the propaganda more pervasive and more effective. Three main themes of indoctrination are currently 'hot topics' in curriculum design. They are: 1) Globalism, 2) Environmentalism, and 3) Political Correctness (aka 'diversity' and 'anti-bias'). Curriculum packages that promote one or another of those themes began to appear in the late 1970s; today, versions of all three are in common use. The environment is one of the hottest issues in politics, and it is one of the hottest topics in education. Today, some 317 U.S. colleges and universities offer majors in environmental science (Brough, 1992, p26). At the high school level, environmental courses are ubiquitous.
Government Sponsors, Media Allies In fact, the government has long been active in raising the profile of the environmentalist agenda. Eco-consciousness went mainstream on April 22, 1970, when President Nixon, with the approval of Congress, formally declared the first 'Earth Day'. Later that same year, he established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But many think that the government's eco-boosting began in earnest almost a decade earlier. Report From Iron Mountain (1967) describes the deliberations of a government-sponsored think-tank created in the early 1960s, under the Kennedy administration. The author of the Report had taken part in those discussions. For publishing purposes, he called himself 'John Doe', but he later identified himself as none other than the economist and establishment insider, John Kenneth Galbraith. The entire group was sworn to secrecy about their deliberations and their recommendations to the government - in order to encourage a "more frank and open discussion". Galbraith decided to break his promise of silence and reveal the report because he believed that the group should be accountable for its opinions and conclusions. The main task of the group was to consider the possibility that peace would actually break out, and that war as an organising principle in society would have to be replaced by something else that would serve the same functions. Several options were considered, including the contrived threat of extra-terrestrial invasion. High on the list of realistic threats was an environmental crisis. The main drawback of the eco-threat scenario was that pollution would take at least 30-45 years to become threatening enough to demand self-sacrifice for the sake of the 'common good'. The Iron Mountain thinkers thought as follows:
If a 'generation' equals thirty years (Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary), then Report From Iron Mountain's projected time frame would begin to apply right about... now. The Iron Mountain thinkers did not specifically suggest that the concept of an eco-crisis be promoted through the school - or in any other concrete way - they were thinking much too abstractly for that. But other, more practical men have made the obvious connection between schooling and public attitudes. And some have put forth specific suggestions of their own for bringing the eco-crisis/globalism agenda into the public schools. Norman Lear's New Civil Religion Norman Lear is one such practical man. Lear, a highly successful TV producer, is founder of People for the American Way (PAW), an advocacy group that has attacked the presence of (Christian) religion in public life and public [UK - state] schools. Nevertheless, in November, 1989, Lear addressed the American Academy of Religion with an astonishing speech in which he urged educators to open their classrooms to pantheistic spirituality as a new kind of 'civil religion'. As Lear describes his concept, this ancient spirituality would be presented as the cutting edge in human thought; it would be a "spiritual reorientation, a fresh examination of what we regard as sacred in the universe, on earth, and in our daily lives" (Lear, 1990, p10). Lear's astounding thesis is that the media and the schools should join forces to promote a generic, earth-centered morality and spirituality, for the sake of the common good.
If Lear ever sees his hope fulfilled, he will doubtless find curriculum planners ready to help him propagate his new civil religion. In fact, curriculum programs that teach essentially the same thing are already in use.
Earthkeepers: Mystery Cult One example is the 'Earthkeepers' curriculum, designed and offered by 'The Institute for Earth Education' (IEE) in Warrenville, Illinois. The IEE describes itself as "the only organization of its kind dedicated to the development and dissemination of quality, focused environmental education programs." Officials of the IEE readily acknowledge their own political, cultural, and spiritual bias. They also acknowledge that they are trying to pass that bias on to students by indoctrination. An IEE spokesman recently declared "We consider Earth Education to be a part of the Environmental arm of the deep ecology movement. And we do try to stress in all of our activities and programs a biocentric rather than an anthropocentric world view" (Wampler, 1991). The 'Earthkeepers' program is aimed at sixth grade students. Its indoctrination process is structured like an initiatory mystery-religion. It begins with the pseudo-scientific assertion that all things are interconnected, and ends with the mystic revelation that the Self is the center of all things. Along the way, several levels of secrecy are revealed and several levels of initiation are attained:
It is clear that the main purpose of this curriculum is indoctrination. There is very little actual learning about the earth that takes place. What facts there are, serve as support for the ideology that is the point of the exercise. 'Earthkeepers' is an almost pure form of education as indoctrination (rather than instruction). What C.S. Lewis saw as a nightmare of the future now walks among us in the light of day. Education and Activism The politics of environmental crisis requires a certain sense of urgency. If the threat is not strong and immediate, "we will not be moved." Thus, at all grade levels, environmental education tends to speak from a political viewpoint, to speak from a sense of emergency, and to promote political activism as a response.
This attempt to politically 'activate' students is not restricted to the higher grades. Second-graders at an elementary school in Queens, NY founded the national KIDS Save The Ozone Project (S.T.O.P.). The S.T.O.P. starter kit for teachers and students "includes blamk petitions, personal letters, pledges and a list of suggested projects" (Holt, 1991, p39). Those examples show why many parents are concerned about so-called education that is really an agenda in disguise. The fact is that children are being trained to take sides on an issue that their parents and elders have not been able to settle among themselves. They are being trained as change-agents in ways that their parents probably don't understand, and would probably not agree with if they did. After all, how can second graders conceivably grasp the chloro-fluro-carbon controversy? Its chemical, economic and political components are, for the, beyond even a near approach to understanding. And the S.T.O.P. training will not change that fact - indeed it is not designed to. Like most eco-education, the training is designed to leave the student with two things: 1) a collection of values and attitudes that are derived from an essentially pantheistic world-view, whether or not that world-view is made explicit; and 2) the belief that environmental problems are to be solved by stirring up an essentially confrontational political process. Both of the above are often integrated into an over-all program of debunking that puts black hats on white males, makes bad guys of capitalism, and demonizes Western culture in general. That process of debunking is carried to its greatest length in 'anti-bias' (or 'diversity', or 'multi-cultural') education. Anti-bias curriculum design also includes a thorough form of 'activism training' A good example is the Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children, published by the influential National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) of Washington, D.C. (Derman-Sparks, 1989). Anti-Bias Education The Anti-Bias Curriculum (ABC) brings together several versions of politically correct indoctrination under one label. More important, the ABC claims that its agenda sets the scale of values for the rest of education:
In the Middle Ages, Theology was known as the 'Queen of Sciences'. That title meant the Theology (as the study of God) stood behind and above all other studies to give them context, grounding, structure, and direction. Today, it seems, Political Correctness is making its bid to be the new 'Queen of Sciences'. Like medieval Theology, 'anti-bias' education wants to give context and direction to subsidiary disciplines. Thus Political Correctness endeavours to become the new standard of understanding in all things. But in that way, the ABC sets itself on a collision course with reality. Ideologies inevitably run into stubborn facts that won't line up the way they are 'supposed to'. The ABC approach to Halloween, for example, teaches a feminist-revisionist line on history that is demonstrably false (see SCP Journal, Vol. 16, no. 3, 1991). Here, facts are mangled for the sake of ideology:
The ABC recommends the following Halloween 'activities', originally created for an after-school care program (children 4 to 6 years old). The teacher earnestly instructs the children:
In general, the ABC promotes the ideological line that is known as 'political correctness'. That means, among other things, that it is opposed to the traditional culture, opposed to the traditional family, and opposed to traditional sex and gender roles. It also regards potential parental opposition as an inconvenience to be deflected, humored, or, in extreme cases, simply endured. But the most controversial aspect of the ABC has been its endorsement of activism for children who can have no real concept of its purpose or meaning. The authors of the curriculum make it clear that one of their central purposes is to create miniature protestors who are trained to challenge and disrupt whatever system they are a part in order to achieve whatever goals they can be persuaded are important:
This is pernicious education. The fact is that high-schoolers can barely have a workable concept of 'Justice' and fourth-graders can have almost none at all. Most fourth-graders can't make a meaningful distinction between 'I don't like that' and 'that's not fair'. But fourth-graders can and do have an exaggerated sense of their own wants, needs, and self-importance. The average primary pupil already has more 'self-esteem' than he or she can integrate with the real world. In fact, what most students need is not tips on self-assertion, but ways to deal with the tasks of learning. Like eco-education, anti-bias education is advanced propaganda, pretending to be schooling. The proportion of ideology to information in the ABC qualifies it as an almost pure form of indoctrination - i.e., of attitude-construction. The process of educational deterioration that C.S. Lewis drew attention to at its beginning, seems to be nearing its completion. It seems likely the results he warned of will follow soon as well.
Resources Brough, Holly, (1992) "Environmental Studies: Is It Academic?" World Watch, Jan/Feb 1992. Derman-Sparkes, Louise, and the A.B.C. Task Force, (1989) Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children (Washington, DC, National Association for the Educucation of Young People). 'Doe, John' (aka John Kenneth Galbraith), (1967); Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace (NY, Dial Press). Holt, Thomas Harvey, (1991) "Growing Up Green: The ABCs of Environmental Activism" Reason, Oct. 1991, Vol.23, No. 5. Houston, James, (1988) 'Faith on the Line' (Interview) SCP Journal, Vol. 8, no. 1. IEE (No Author), 1987; Earthkeepers Teacher Preparation Packet (Warrenville IL, Institute for Earth Education). Lear, Norman, (1990) "Nurturing Spirituality and Religion in an Age of Science and Technology" New Oxford Review, April, 1990. Lewis, C.S., (1947) The Abolition of Man (Reprint ed. 1995; NY, Macmillan). Mailer, Norman, (1959) "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" in Advertisements for Myself (NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons). Myers, Kenneth A., (1989) All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Westchester, IL, Crossway Books). Wampler, Dave; Administrative Coordinator, "The Institute for Earth Education"; personal correspondence (letter on file).
~~~~~~
|