The 6 Purposes of Modern Schooling or Why Kids Never Grow Up
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What is fundamentally wrong with school? Why is the world such a mess?
John Taylor Gatto answers this question for us. What follows is a short excerpt from his essay, as published in, Education’s Not the Point.
“Theorists from Plato to Rousseau knew well, and explicitly taught, that if children could be kept childish beyond the natural term, if they could be cloistered in a society of children, if they could be stripped of responsibility, if their inner lives could be starved by removing the insights of historians, philosophers, economists, novelists, and religious figures, if the inevitability of suffering and death could be removed from daily consciousness and replaced with the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear—then young people would grow older but they would never grow up.
In this way a great enduring problem of supervision would be decisively minimized, for who can argue against the truth that childish and childlike people are far easier to manage than accomplished critical thinkers.
With this thought in mind, you’re ready to hear the six purposes of modern schooling I found in Dr. Inglis’ book. The principles are his, just as he stated them nearly 100 years ago, some of the interpretive material is my own:
#1 Purpose
The first function of schooling is adjustive. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority.
Fixed habits.
Of course this precludes critical judgement completely. If you were to devise a reliable test of whether someone had achieved fixed habits of reaction to authority, notice that requiring obedience to stupid orders would measure this better than requiring obedience to sensible orders ever could.
You can’t know whether someone is reflexively obedient until you can make them do foolish things.
#2 Purpose
Second is the diagnostic function. School is to determine each student’s proper social role, logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records.
“Boredom and childishness are closely allied with one another; those trapped in both states have no clear idea of what to do with time, no wisdom about priorities.”
#3 Purpose
Third is the sorting function. Schools sort children by training individuals only so far as their likely destination in the social machine and not one step further.
So much for making boys and girls their personal best.
#4 Purpose
The fourth function is conformity. As much as possible, kids are to be made alike. As egalitarian as this sounds, its purpose is to assist market and government research, people who conform are predictable.
#5 Purpose
The fifth function Inglis calls “the hygienic function.” It has nothing to do with bodily health. It concerns what Darwin, Galton, Inglis, and many important names from the past and present would call, “the health of the race.”
Hygiene is a polite way of saying that school is expected to accelerate natural selection by tagging the unfit so clearly they will drop from the reproduction sweepstakes.
That’s what all those little humiliations from first grade onward, and all the posted lists of ranked grades are really about. The unfit will either drop out from anger, despair, or because their likely mates will accept the school’s judgement of their inferiority.
#6 Purpose
And last is the propaedutic function. A fancy Greek term meaning that a small fraction of kids will quietly be taught how to take over management of this continuing project, made guardians of a population deliberately dumbed down and rendered childish in order that government and economic life can be managed with a minimum of hassle.
There you have it. We don’t even need Karl Marx’s conception of a grand warfare between classes to see that it’s in the nature of complex management, economic or political, to require that most people be dumbed down, demoralized, divided from one another and from themselves, deprived of deep relationships, and discarded if they don’t conform.
The motives for the disgusting decisions which have to be made to bring these ends about don’t have to be class-based at all, they can stem purely from greed, or fear, or self-preservation.
All they require to perpetuate themselves across the years is a belief that efficiency is a paramount virtue, an absolute good rather than the virtue of machinery that it is.”
End of Excerpt
The facts John shares about the agenda behind modern schooling are accurate. He was a whistleblower who exposed compulsory schooling for what it is: a multi-purpose machine intended to dumb down your child and deprive him of any real meaning or fulfillment in his life.
This is no grand conspiracy theory; it is fact. I have checked many of the sources myself. Looking back on my own experiences in the public school system, they never made more sense to me than they did after reading John’s essay, The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling.
“When you spend some time watching schools, you gradually become aware of what childish places they are, that kids
and teachers are held prisoners there in a childhood they would willingly have left long ago, if they knew how, and if the institution had encouraged them to escape that dependent condition.”
I entered kindergarten curious, bright, and eager to learn. 18 years later, I barely graduated form high school.
I was not alone.
And that’s why, when you look at the educational choices you have today, public school is not an option for any thinking parent. Homeschooling makes the most sense. Putting children into alternative schools that follow a modern model may be a little better, but not by much.
Children need one-on-one learning, they need a supportive learning environment, and they need the freedom and time to discover who they are.
Parents and teachers who are dedicated to helping the child develop a love of reading, learn how to think for himself, and become his very best could change the course of history.
Get a copy of Liz’s “could not live without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with groundbreaking Essays on educating your kids by John Taylor Gatto, Dorothy Sayers, and Liz herself.
About Elizabeth Y. Hanson
Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a “whole” child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.
Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses, Raise Your Child Well: Preserving Your Child's Natural Genius by Laying a Solid Foundation During the First Seven Years; the Smart Homeschooler Academy, educating children who are brilliant, happy, and well-socialized; and How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.
As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, Liz has 23 years of experience guiding parents through the amazing journey of raising and educating their children.
Liz is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”
—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.
