Not for education. At least not for education in reading, thinking, problem solving and reading the world with numbers. As far as I can see, school is for learning to stand in line, coping with incredible boredom, competing with others, sitting still, dealing with being the best or not being the best, and developing subterfuges for avoiding or attracting the attention of authority figures.
As I visit classrooms, I see that much less than half, much less than a quarter, of the “instructional” time involves engagement with ideas. Enormous effort is expended in coercing students to sit silently in desks. Students are not allowed to go to the bathroom by themselves—the teacher must take the entire class at a scheduled time, stand in the hall monitoring and enforcing silence, which students quickly become adept at resisting. This procedure takes 15-20 minutes, and makes the teacher not a professional educator but a babysitter. Then the entire class must walk back into the classroom, settle back down, and resume whatever rote task they were engaged in.
Announcements, very loud announcements, regularly interrupt instruction. I watch teacher after teacher stand silent for 2-3 minutes while the office makes some announcement about bus schedules, or asks for so-and-so (student) to please come to the office for some reason or other. I’ve rarely spent a half hour in a classroom that was not interrupted, usually two or three times.
There is no recess, students are not allowed unstructured time to work out social relationships or develop social skills, or develop the sense of self-efficacy that comes with them. There is very little physical education as we concentrate on basics.
So what are students learning? On the plus side, there’s nothing wrong with developing self-control. On the minus side, to be monitored, to quietly resist authority, to deal with boredom. Most students learn that a few kids are very smart but they are not. This smartness remains mysterious to those who are not. Is it surprising that kids are alienated, smoke pot, drink themselves into a stupor during high school, play video games endlessly and…take assault weapons to school and shoot the place up?
“Experimental” schools consistently demonstrate that children and youth can do so very much. These schools can no longer be called experiments—we know they foster engaged, literate and energized citizenry. I am left with the conclusion that the condition of education is intentional.