Public School

``Now children, everyone repeat after me: `Sieg heil!``

There are things the schools should be teaching that they are not. That is, if their purpose is to give children a good start in life.

First, rhetoric. If that sounds too refined for you, call it “salesmanship.” “How to win friends and influence people.” There are techniques, well-known and well-established, honed over two thousand five hundred years. Warren Buffet, for example, says that everything he ever learned in school and college was worth far less to his success than one Dale Carnegie course. And this is obviously not just true in business—any business, which means any job. It is obviously also true in law, and in politics. You don't know rhetoric, you will never be a leader.

Second, how to run a meeting. Parliamentary procedure. Next to giving a good presentation or buttonholing, what on earth could be more important to the life of any organization—which means, again, any job—than being able to run or participate in a meeting fairly and efficiently. I am continually amazed at how rare this ability is, and how much trouble and expense is caused by its lack. And again, knowing how to run a meeting is vital well beyond business. It is essential to being able to organize to promote or protect your or your community's interests.

Third, debate; and specifically, the known logical fallacies. This is essential in order to know how to think in general. Clear thinking is vital in all endeavours, certainly all responsible jobs. Moreover, if you cannot spot a logical fallacy, you will easily be buffaloed by the unscrupulous into things against your interest. Schools and teachers talk about teaching students how to think, and how not to be taken in. But all this tends to amount to is telling them that all advertisements are lies. Which is both unhelpful and untrue. It is teaching students NOT to think.

Fourth, mnemonics. There are, once again, trued and proven techniques developed over two thousand five hundred years for memorizing things relatively painlessly. I am shocked to discover these late in life, realizing that nobody every breathed a word of this in all my years of education, beyond EGBDF. This seems insane, since if you have not remembered something, you have not learned it. Mnemonics is what teaching should be all about.

Why are these things, the most valuable things to know, not taught in the schools? Particularly since, really, giving presentations, debating, running formal meetings, mnemonic tricks, and analyzing logical fallacies are really much more interesting than the dry book work that occupies most school days.

Well, to be fair, they are. They tend to be taught in private schools. My colleagues in college who had gone to Upper Canada College, and my brother who was sent to Loyola for a few years, seem to have had a handle on a lot of this.

I could add one more issue here: when those schools do book work, the books tend to be the classics. Much more useful, and frankly better reading, than the books used in public schools.

So, let's see: we seem to know that there is a better way to educate, and those who can afford it are willing to pay for it. So what the devil is going on in the public schools?

No real mystery. The public schools are not there to educate or to give the kids the best shot at success of any kind in life. Certainly not to give them any power. They are there to keep the mass of kids ignorant, and prevent them from infringing on the power of the ruling classes—who send their kids to the better schools.

This was all pretty open and unconcealed in the development of government schools in Britain, where the rights of the upper class have traditionally been taken for granted. But it was also pretty evident in the development of the “modern” public school in North America in the early years of the 20th century. The school was developed on the model of the factory, and it was meant to pump out cogs for industry: useful but properly subservient employees. Woodrow Wilson, for one, is on record making noises to this effect. After all, you cannot train everyone for leadership, can you? Only a small number of leaders are needed, aren't they?

Fair enough, perhaps, but surely the choice should be on native ability and application, not on parents' income level and commitment. For the greatest benefit to the greatest number, we should be a meritocracy, not a class society.

And the growing call for credentials is not helping to remedy this deficiency in the public schools. For all the expansion at the university level has been in training for industry, never for leadership. In any case, all the important elements for success can easily be taught by the end of high school; there is no need to drag things out. Unless it it to teach subservience.

It is a terrible thing we are doing to our children.