Posted by
Waski_the_Squirrel on Friday, February 27, 2009 6:50:46 PM
It's rewarding when someone reads my blog and actually thinks enough of it to comment. It's even more rewarding when this person has clearly read the blog and taken the time to respond to what was written. I don't much care if they like what I wrote or hate it. The point is engagement.
A short time ago I wrote an entry called
Teaching Slaves which built up a straw man argument about some of the attitudes that our current form of schooling is teaching to our students. (For those who wonder, a straw man is a logical fallacy in which we create an imaginary opponent and argue against what we claim his views or attitudes are--usually weakening or misrepresenting them. For example, "Liberals want to force all people to accept gay marriage," is a straw man argument. Straw man arguments can be useful to illustrate, but they do not substitute for logic or debate. I chose to illustrate an attitude.)
Anyway, I had a 3-part response, all from the same person! Because my blog has such a tiny readership I was naturally quite excited, even if this person called my entry ignorant and patronizing. Since the space for comments is limited, I chose to respond in a post. I doubt any minds were changed, but the ability to exchange is the fun part anyway.
Below are the comments and my responses. I put the comments in italics, left the places where I was quoted alone, and put my responses in bold.
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"You need to teach your students skills as well as content, the use of slavery throughout this whole post has been entirely patronizing and ignorant."
Actually, I thought it was quite successful. I got a passionate detailed response out of it rather than something innocuous posted by someone who didn't read beyond the first paragraph or else didn't trouble to understand what was written.
“'The system of slavery was on its way to collapse because of industrialization.'”
"Not in the agricultural sector"
Not as quickly as in more mechanized industries of the day I'll agree, but it was on its way out.
"'The rapid growth in factory jobs created "wage slaves." [...]They're desperately grateful for a job and do whatever it takes to keep it.'”
"This is the Southern apologist argument."
“'A slave will work as little as possible.'”
"A slave generally works for nothing – this is not by choice."
I think you missed my point here. I was contrasting working by choice with working under slavery.
“'I bring all this up in an education blog because compulsory schooling is a system of slavery...'”
"By their parents and the state governments’ choice. Parents can choose to home school."
You'll note I wasn't arguing against compulsory schooling. These are children after all. I was simply pointing out that they are in school against their will and the system has encouraged many of them to pick up a helpless attitude. Ideally, part of what we should be teaching them while they are in school is to think for themselves, question, set goals, and, in short, develop the life skills they will need to be free, self-reliant adults. A purely academic focus does not accomplish this and, frankly, the current structure of schools makes this very difficult.
“'A slave needs to learn to be free.'”
"Wow, this is patronizing! No one needs to learn how to be free. We might need to know how to live with freedom so we don’t take others’ freedom away."
Sure it's patronizing. That doesn't mean it's not true. Look at what happens with many high school graduates when they leave for college. Outside the protection of family and the structure of family, many stupid choices are made. Fortunately, many learn from them. I think you are well aware that I'm not a proponent of slavery because of this. Adults should be free to make their own choices, even bad ones. If they haven't had experience making their own choices, they will make a lot of bad ones, but should still be free to do so.
"The “attitude of a slave” is some thing you have made up in your mind to be true."
Call it what you want. Some people call it the poverty attitude. Some call it learned helplessness (normally my favorite). I was attempting to illustrate a concept. You've taken exception to my example.
“'He isn't grateful because he had no choice in his position. He will steal from his master, slough off, put in minimal effort, and will need to be housed and fed. The "wage slave" is actually cheaper and is the reason why slavery was on its way out.'”
"This is bad history. Slavery was on its way out as an international phenomenon, but would have spread to the west if allowed"
Yes it was an international phenomenon, but not because people suddenly became altruistic and good. It became less "necessary" and so people had the luxury to fight it. I put "necessary" in quotes because I don't think it was ever truly necessary, but it was part of human culture and intertwined in most economic systems for thousands of year.
Yes, there were fears that slavery would have moved west. This comes back to states rights. To actually free the slaves wasn't the cause of the Civil War. It was an important result that made the war worth fighting. We could get into a hairsplitting argument over slavery and states rights, but from what you wrote I think we are actually largely in agreement on this, though we're not expressing it the same way or with the same emphasis.
"I have no idea what the difference is between a real student and the others in our classrooms. That said, these are skills most students need to learn over time."
Yes, and schools need to do their part to teach these skills. Unfortunately, in many classrooms we are not. We're fighting human nature (yes, I'd rather read a book and drink a cup of coffee than try to improve my unit on Newton's Law of Motion -- I'm no different from the kids in that respect). However, we're also fighting "learned helplessness" or "slave attitude" or whatever you want to call it. Students have no buy-in. In too many cases education is done to them rather than with them, and it's sometimes difficult to determine whether what we are doing is dictating or because they are children and still require adults in their lives to help them learn to be responsible.
I'd suggest reading some of the books by John Taylor Gatto. While he tends to go overboard, he does have a lot of good ideas and things to think about.
Thank you for actually taking the time to read and respond! I don't get that much.