The End of Education

by Neil Postman

  Those who are skeptical about these propositions, who are inclined to take the name of the technology-god in vain, are condemned as reactionary renegades, especially when they speak of gods of a different kind. Among those who have risked heresy was Max Frisch, who remarked, “Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”2 But he and other such heretics have been cast aside and made to bear the damning mark of “Luddite” all of their days. There are also those, like Aldous Huxley, who believed that the great god of Technology might be sufficiently tamed so that its claims were more modest. He once said that if he had rewritten Brave New World, “… he would have included a sane alternative, a society in which ‘science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them.’ ”3

  Although both my words and tone will suggest I believe with Frisch and Huxley that the technology-god is a false one (I do, of course), I will hold that point until later. Here, I wish to stress that all gods are imperfect, even dangerous. A belief too strongly held, one that excludes the possibility of a tolerance for other gods, may result in a psychopathic fanaticism. That is what Jesus meant (and Huxley in referring to it) when he said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” We may recall here a remark made by Niels Bohr that bears on this point. He said: “The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement, but the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”4 He meant to teach us, as have other wise people, that it is better to have access to more than one profound truth. To be able to hold comfortably in one’s mind the validity and usefulness of two contradictory truths is the source of tolerance, openness, and, most important, a sense of humor, which is the greatest enemy of fanaticism. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly better to have one profound truth, one god, one narrative, than to have none.

  What happens to people when they have no gods to serve? Some commit suicide. There is more of this in the United States, particularly among our young, than in most other places in the world. Some envelop themselves in drugs, including alcohol. Some take whatever pleasure is to be found in random violence. Some encase themselves in an impenetrable egoism. Many, apparently, find a momentary and pitiful release from dread in commercial re-creations of once-powerful narratives of the past.

  I have before me an account of the proliferation of “theme parks” in both the United States and Europe. As I write, one of them is about to arise in Poland, where, according to Travel and Leisure magazine, its staff will dress in replica uniforms of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht to inspire nightly dances at “Hitler’s Bunker Disco.” Another, an amusement park near Berlin, will take as its theme “East Germany under Communism.” Its service people will pretend to be agents of the secret police, and will put those making critical remarks about the government into a fake jail. Across the ocean, near Atlanta, Georgia, an amusement park is being developed around the theme “Gone With the Wind Country.” Not to be outdone, the Walt Disney Company, whose prosperity is entirely based on the timely and romantic re-creation of narratives, has drawn up plans for still another amusement park near Manassas, Virginia, with the theme “The Civil War Experience.” Apparently, the exhibits are to include a dramatization of the experience of slavery—whether for it or against is not yet clear (nor indeed, as I write, is the future of this project).5

  Is all of this a mere rehearsal for the mass consumption of “virtual reality,” as Joy Gould Boyum suspects? Are we being readied for a time when we will not require expensive theme parks to re-create the nightmare or fantasy of our choice, but can materialize either with the press of a button? Whether we are or not, what is certainly happening here is, to use Rollo May’s phrase, a “cry for myth.” Nightmare or fantasy, these parks allow one to inhabit a world where some powerful narrative once held sway, a narrative that gave people a reason for living, and in whose absence a kind of psychic trauma ensues. Even if a narrative places one in hell, it is better to be there than to be nowhere. To be nowhere means to live in a barren culture, one that offers no vision of the past or future, no clear voice of authority, no organizing principles. In such a culture, what are schools for? What can they be for?

  There was a time when American culture knew what schools were for because it offered fully functioning multiple narratives for its people to embrace. There was, for example, the great story of democracy, which the American artist Ben Shahn once proclaimed “the most appealing idea that the world has yet known.” Alexis de Tocqueville called it “the principle of civic participation.” Gunnar Myrdal encapsulated the idea in the phrase “The American Creed,” which he judged to be the most explicitly articulated system of general ideals of any country in the West. The first chapter of the story opens with “In the beginning, there was a revolution.” As the story unfolds, there arise sacred words such as “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Because he helped to write the story, Thomas Jefferson, the Moses of the great democracy-god, knew what schools were for—to ensure that citizens would know when and how to protect their liberty. This is a man who produced an essay that could have cost him his life, and that included the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It would not have come easily to the mind of such a man, as it does to political leaders today, that the young should be taught to read exclusively for the purpose of increasing their economic productivity. Jefferson had a more profound god to serve.

  As did Emma Lazarus, whose poem celebrates another once-powerful American narrative. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” she wrote. Where else, save the great narrative of Jesus, can one find a story that so ennobles the huddled masses? Here, America is portrayed as the great melting pot. Such a story answers many profound questions, including, What are schools for? Schools are to fashion Americans out of the wretched refuse of teeming shores. Schools are to provide the lost and lonely with a common attachment to America’s history and future, to America’s sacred symbols, to its promise of freedom. The schools are, in a word, the affirmative answer to the question, Can a coherent, stable, unified culture be created out of people of diverse traditions, languages, and religions?

  There have been, of course, other narratives that have served to give guidance and inspiration to people, and, especially, that have helped to give purpose to schooling. Among them is one that goes by the name of the Protestant ethic. In this tale, it is claimed that hard work and a disciplined capacity to delay gratification are the surest path toward earning God’s favor. Idle hands do the Devil’s work, as do lustful and, often, merely pleasurable thoughts. Although this god of self-control is a legacy of the Calvinist Puritans who founded America, its power extended to many of the huddled masses who came from quite different traditions. They, of course, brought with them their own narratives, which in the context of America served—we might say—as “local gods,” but gods with sufficient power to give point to schooling.

  Here I can offer my own schooling as an example. I grew up learning to love the American Creed while at the same time being inspired by a more “tribal” story, to which I had (and still have) considerable attachment. As the child of Jewish parents, I was required to go to two schools: the American public school, in which the names of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Tom Paine, and Lincoln were icons, and a “Jewish” school, in which the names of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, and Moses were equally sacred. (It should be noted that the democracy-story has almost no significant women; the chosen-people-story has plenty.) As presented to me, the democracy-story did not conflict with the chosen-people-story; neither did the great melting-pot-story, nor, astonishingly enough, did the Protestant-ethic-story (perhaps because it
is not much different from “Jewish guilt,” which proceeds from the assumption that whatever happens, it is your fault).

  The point is (putting guilt aside) that the great American narratives share with my tribal one certain near-universal themes and principles—for example, family honor, restraint, social responsibility, humility, and empathy for the outcast. Integrating these narratives was not difficult for me or for my public school classmates, who were, among others, Irish, Greek, Italian, and German, and who had their own tribal tales to enrich and mesh with the great narratives being taught in school.

  I might add that it did not occur to many of us that the school was obliged to praise our tribal stories or even to discuss them. For one thing, we did not believe our teachers were qualified to do so. For another, the teachers gave no hint that they thought it within their province. For still another, our classes were far too multicultural to make it a practical goal. The schools, it seemed to us, had no business to conduct with “ethnicity.” (The term itself, incidentally, was unknown to us at the time, since it was first used in 1940 by W. Lloyd Warner and did not enter common usage until much later.) The promotion of ethnicity, we believed, was the responsibility of the home, where, among other things, a “tribal” language could be spoken freely (in my case, Yiddish) and where religious traditions and holidays were honored and “non-American” food was consumed. The task was also taken up by one’s church or synagogue, by fraternal organizations, and even to some extent by local political associations. Some of our ethnic stories were also told in the popular arts—in movies, for example. In this respect, the Irish did extraordinarily well, being depicted in many films as hardworking, family-oriented, fun-loving people whose priests sang liltingly and whose nuns were beautiful. The Jews and Italians didn’t fare as well, the Greeks were ignored, the blacks were humiliated, and, of course, the Germans were savaged. Nonetheless, we did not expect the schools to make compensation. Only to make Americans.

  I am aware, of course, that the situation I have just described was not entirely uniform or, I should say, satisfactory. As early as 1915, grievances were expressed against the melting-pot metaphor and more particularly against its supposed reality.6 While it was conceded that the American Creed was based predominantly on an Anglo-Saxon tradition, the argument was made that its principles were being enacted largely by immigrants, who enriched it by their own traditions and who, in any case, would not abandon their tribal identities. Thus, the idea of cultural pluralism entered the schools, mostly beginning in the 1930s. This meant that in many public schools (not mine), the history, literature, and traditions of different immigrant groups were included as part of the great tale of the American Creed. I do not know if the self-esteem and ethnic pride of the children of the huddled masses were elevated by cultural pluralism. Probably yes in some cases; maybe no, with accompanying embarrassment, in a few. Although my own schools were considerably late in adopting cultural pluralism, I do remember an occasion when a teacher, in a rare gesture of accommodation to ethnic diversity, made a point of emphasizing the contribution of the Jew Haim Salomon to the financing of the Revolutionary War. The financing? I would have much preferred if Salomon had been Paul Revere’s backup.

  Whatever the gains or losses may have been in the self-esteem of the students, cultural pluralism made three positive contributions toward maintaining the vitality and usefulness of the narratives underlying the public school experience. First, it provided a fuller and more accurate picture of American culture and, especially, its history—which is to say, it revealed the dynamic nature of the great American narratives. Melting pot or not, America was shown to be a composite culture from which, in principle, none were excluded. Second, at no point was the inclusion of the immigrant narratives presented as a refutation of the American Creed. Even the horrendous stories of the massacre of “native” Americans, slavery, and the exploitation of “coolie” labor could be told without condemning the ideals of democracy, the melting pot, or the Protestant ethic. Indeed, such stories often served as an inspiration to purify the American Creed, to overcome prejudice, to redeem ourselves from the blighted parts of our history. Third, the inclusion of any immigrant narrative was not intended to promote divisiveness among different groups. The idea was to show that there were substance and richness in each tribal tale, and that we were better for knowing the gods of other people.

  It would seem that certain versions of what is now called “multiculturalism” reject all three of these ideas, and this rejection, I will soon argue, seriously threatens the future of public, as opposed to private, schools. Here, I will say only that the idea of public education depends absolutely on the existence of shared narratives and the exclusion of narratives that lead to alienation and divisiveness. What makes public schools public is not so much that the schools have common goals but that the students have common gods. The reason for this is that public education does not serve a public. It creates a public. And in creating the right kind of public, the schools contribute toward strengthening the spiritual basis of the American Creed. That is how Jefferson understood it, how Horace Mann understood it, how John Dewey understood it. And, in fact, there is no other way to understand it. The question is not, Does or doesn’t public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things, and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling.

  2 • Some Gods That Fail

  It has not been a good century for gods, or even a good century and a half. Charles Darwin, we might say, began the great assault by revealing that we were not the children of God but of monkeys. His revelation took its toll on him; he suffered from unrelieved stomach and bowel pains for which medical historians have failed to uncover a physical cause. Nonetheless, Darwin was unrepentant and hoped that many people would find inspiration, solace, and continuity in the great narrative of evolution. But not many have, and the psychic trauma he induced continues barely concealed to our own day. Karl Marx, who invited Darwin to write an introduction to Das Kapital (Darwin declined), tore to shreds the god of Nationalism, showing, with theory and countless examples, how the working classes are deluded into identifying with their capitalist tormentors. Sigmund Freud, working quietly in his consulting room at Bergasse 19 in Vienna, bid fair to become the world’s most ferocious god-buster. He showed that the great god of Reason, whose authority had been certified by the Age of Enlightenment, was a great imposter, that it served mostly to both rationalize and conceal the commands of our most primitive urgings. The cortex, as it were, is merely the servant of Genitalia. An original but soul-searing idea, it may even be true. All of this not being enough, Freud destroyed the story of childhood innocence and, for good measure, tried to prove that Moses was not a Jew (for which he apologized but did not recant) and argued that our belief in deities was a childish and neurotic illusion. Even the gentle Albert Einstein, though not himself an Einsteinian, contributed to the general disillusionment, wreaking havoc on Isaac Newton’s science-god—a Freudian instance, if ever there was one, of the son slaying the father. Einstein’s revolutionary papers led to the idea that we do not see things as they are but as we are. The oldest axiom of survival—seeing is believing—was brought to heel. Its opposite—believing is seeing—turned out to be at least as true. Moreover, Einstein’s followers have concluded, and believe they have proved, that complete knowledge is unattainable. Try as we will, we can never know certain things—not because we lack intelligence, not even because we are enclosed in a prison of protoplasm, but because the universe is, well, malic
ious.

  The odd thing is that though they differed in temperament, each of these men intended to provide us with a firmer and more humane basis for our beliefs. And someday that may yet happen. Meanwhile, humanity reels from what has been lost. God is dead, Nietzsche said before he went insane. He may have meant gods are dead. If he did, he was wrong. In this century, new gods have rushed in to replace the old, but most have had no staying power (which is, perhaps, what Nietzsche was prophesying). I have already alluded to three of them: the gods of communism, Nazism, and fascism. The first claimed to represent the story of history itself, and so could be supposed to serve as an inspiration until the final triumph of the proletariat. It ended rather suddenly, shockingly, and without remorse, in a rubble of stone on the outskirts of West Berlin, leaving the proletariat to wonder if history, like the universe, is also malicious. Hitler’s great tale had an even shorter run. He prophesied that the Third Reich would last a thousand years, perhaps longer than history itself. His story began with a huge bonfire whose flames were meant to consume, once and for all, the narratives of all other gods. It ended twelve years later, also in fire and also in Berlin, the body of its godhead mutilated beyond recognition.