POLITICS MATTERS IN EDUCATION

In a recent post on +Education Revolution, a Google discussion blog site, the question was asked, “Does politics matter in education?” In my mind, politics matters in a fundamental but yet unresolved way. Of course, it matters.  It matters in the way we fund education; it matters in who is educated; it matters in the way classes are taught; and it matters in what is taught. The political bias of the teacher matters. All of these things are so intertwined that one cannot easily separate them for purposes of discussion. Therefore, the only logical approach to such a discussion is to try to look at the fundamental political philosophies involve, which is complicated by the fact that political philosophies are intertwined.

Recently cognitive linguist George Lakoff discussed the subject of political philosophies as it related to organization of families and government. He couched his discussion in terms of models, metaphors, and morality. Although, everyone recognizes there is party overlap, most people interested in politics can easily divide politics into two parties: conservative and progressive. The adherents of each group define themselves in righteous terms. Conservatives want to “preserve all the good things from the past” and progressives want to “create a new and bright future”. It wasn’t until evolutionary psychologist define what the past really meant—behavior has a genetic base—that these definitions took on real meaning. Conservatives define what is good from the past in terms of their perception of “natural” or “moral order”. Progressive believe the same way when it comes to order but came up with an entirely different mechanism of achieving order or “discipline”.

The underlying principle seemed to be the well-conserved principle of hierarch dominance, a natural order. In genetic terms, it means that many species demonstrate the same characteristics, for example, we all know what the expression “pecking order” means, which implies that natural order is genetic as opposed to learned. Politics is the human form of pecking order; actually, it does not refer to the result but refers more to the form of fighting among ourselves to establish a pecking order. With conservatives, strength and authority rules while with progressives, it seem to means appreciation and gentle persuasion establishes order and authority. In the process of our humanization, we as humans seem to be slipping from bestial strength to altruism. In other words we seen to be have direction; going from beating each other up until they cooperate to convincing others through words and actions to cooperate.

Everyone wants their child to be educated but what that means is as different as parents are different. Where I grew up education was mandatory and included such demons as truant officers, in contrast as an adult, for years I live in a culture where school attendance was optional. Most “so-called progressive” parents felt that education meant reading and writing at about the 4^th or 5^th grade. Most parents were progressive but other factors that played a part. In that culture, it was more important to have money to buy food than it was to buy books. Education meant learning how to swing a machete.

In most cultures, people do not want to pay for other peoples children to have an education. Other parents do not want to pay to have their own children taught something they do not believe while in still other cultures people do not want anyone teaching children something they do not believe. In some cultures, the men do not want females taught anything while in others they do not want children who are different to go to the same school as their own children. Some parents consider teaching music or art as wasteful for others it is consider essential.

In some schools, how teachers teach is an important or even more important than what is taught. In Finland, the system apparently is quite different form that in Singapore or South Korea. In Finland, it is a nurturing system while in Singapore and in South Korea, it is an authoritative system; these seem to be the three top systems in the world.

Does politics matter? There isn’t one decision alluded to in the above paragraphs that can be made without reference to a government of some kind: federal, state, city, local, or school board and head master or principle. Each step runs as a democracy or a dictatorship but not necessarily the same form of government at each level. The trend seems to be the small the governing unit the more authoritarian it seems to be.

The puzzling thing is that a teacher can say to parents that politics doesn’t matter to him or her; of course, it clearly does matter—it no only matters but matters a lot. However, talking to your student’s parents is like talking politics with your barber. Talk is cheap action speaks!  As a progressive, I feel comfortable in saying this because teachers by definition tend to be altruistic.

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