What Do Schools Really Teach?

A dispute about literacy education exposes the nature of schooling

“The failures of school are taken by most people as proof that education is a very costly, very complex, always arcane, and frequently almost impossible task.”
– Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society.

Attention has been growing for the Massachusets parents who filed a lawsuit alleging that influential educator Lucy Calkins and her colleagues deceptively marketed a faulty “whole word” reading curriculum. They note that states such as Florida and Mississippi, after switching to a more evidence-based “phonics” approach, achieved remarkable gains in childhood literacy, but that this research was dismissed by Calkins, to the detriment of thousands of students.

This case is about a lot more than literacy education. It exposes at least three major, unacknowledged issues in our society:

1. The danger of blind faith in experts.

2. How schools shape our attitude toward authority.

3. The way chronic failure benefits entrenched institutions.

Credentialism

There’s a name for the phenomenon of blind faith in experts: credentialism. It consists of two, interrelated assumptions:

1. A person who has completed formal training in a field will be competent.

2. An untrained person is unqualified to question or criticize a trained one.

Academia, which is essentially in the credentialing business, is particularly prone to this. As a result, Lucy Calkins’ fall from grace has provoked some soul-searching among teachers and administrators, who are now wondering why they put Calkins on a pedestal, unquestioningly accepting what she told them.

@eduleadershipThe Cult of Lucy Calkins is our fault. We chose to be hero worshipers. And in my district, administrators had nothing to do with it. #t#teachersoftiktok#e#education

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

But this problem is not limited to education. Virtually every aspect of our culture is dominated by a credentialed class we are expected to trust completely.

From certified teachers to licensed plumbers, we implicitly believe that schooling is a prerequisite for understanding, and that it is inappropriate for an uneducated person to question or criticize a more educated one. And where do we acquire this belief? As students in the educational system.

This school-based conditioning is why the literacy controversy sheds light on a broader issue: our voluntary subservience to authorities whose interests are not aligned with ours.

Authority Bias

For most of us, teachers are the first representatives of institutional authority that we encounter. Were your teachers caring and nurturing? Or were they harsh and cold? This formative experience probably had a strong, life-long influence on your attitude towards authority.

Research indicates that children who feel they are treated fairly by their teachers are more likely to follow the rules and trust other authority figures as they grow up. While this “institutional socialization” is part of what helps society function smoothly, it also contributes to a psychological blind spot called authority bias – the tendency to believe, follow, and comply with people we perceive as being in charge, especially when we’re under stress.

In other words, as we move through life, whenever we are scared or uncertain, we instinctively turn to the people who are in charge. On some level, we are hoping that doctors and politicians will help and comfort us the same way our teachers did when we stubbed our toes or dropped our food on the floor.

In a perfect world, this might be okay. But under current circumstances, this behavior has led to our domination by a credentialed class that maintains its status through systemic failure and fear.

The way it works is simple. If you’re in charge of solving a problem, and you solve it, you’re out of a job. But if the problem gets worse, you become more important, and can claim that you need more resources. This is called a perverse incentive, because achieving your stated goal would harm you, while failing will benefit you.

Perverse Incentives

Consider this: When schools don’t teach effectively, what answer is usually proposed? More funding for schools. When anti-poverty programs don’t reduce poverty, what do we get? Bigger programs. When the healthcare system doesn’t cure sick people, what solution is proposed? More healthcare.

In short, if what you provide is considered essential, your own failure creates more demand for what you offer.

Conveniently, if anyone does accuse you of failure, you can use what’s called a “counterfactual fallacy” – the argument that the problem would be much worse if you hadn’t done what you did. Do any of these statements sound familiar?

• “Yes, literacy rates are low, but imagine how much worse they’d be without our program!”

• “The healthcare system isn’t perfect, but without it, millions more would have died!”

• “Our policies may not have solved poverty, but they stopped it from getting even worse!”

It’s difficult to disprove this type of assertion, and if you’re the credentialed expert, then your opinion carries more weight than the uncredentialed people objecting to your actions – especially if you can leverage fear, as in the examples above.

Watch the Watchmen

There is a reason that President Eisenhower, after defeating elitist “egghead” Adlai Stevenson II in both 1952 and 1956, warned the nation to beware of what he referred to as “the military-industrial complex” and “the scientific-technological elite.” He saw for himself that, without oversight, powerful institutions will pursue their own interests, rather than those of the people they serve.

That is why, as with health and safety, education is too important to be left to the experts. The Massachusets lawsuit isn’t just delivering an “emperor has no clothes” moment for whole-word reading movement, it’s exposing the danger of allowing a credentialed elite to control everything.

The counter to this criticism is usually the straw man argument that, without deference to experts, we would have amateur doctors performing brain-surgery, snake-oil salesmen peddling fake medicine, and trigger-happy vigilantes patrolling the streets.

Of course, this is just another counterfactual fallacy. The alternative to blind faith in the elite is not blind faith in everyone else. Suggesting that professionals should be held accountable does not imply that dilettantes should not.

The most rational approach is open-minded skepticism. It’s reasonable to expect that credentialed teachers, doctors, and police officers will do a good job. But it’s unwise to assume that they will. Incompetence, conflicts of interest, and malice are all potential reasons why trust might not be advisable.

Likewise, it’s unwise to assume that the opinion of an uncredentialed person is worthless. Much wisdom can be gained through life experience, and the knowledge of a non-expert may be invaluable.

In trivial matters, we acknowledge the value of our own judgment and the judgment of our peers. That’s why virtually every app and shopping site features user reviews. So, why, when the stakes are much higher – as in medical care, expensive repairs, or the education of our children – do we suddenly blind ourselves to any perspective other than the official one?

At least part of the answer can be found in our own tendencies towards credentialism and authority bias. If the Massachusets parents’ lawsuit is successful in exposing the way credentialed experts continually failed and profited from that failure, we might stand a chance of recognizing how our blind faith in experts and authorities has led to society being dominated by a ruling class that uses chronic fear to maintain its dominance, and systemic failure to gain wealth and power.