There is a perverse incentive at the heart of our society, and it’s reinforced by regulations and credentialing requirements that establish and protect the monopolies and cartels that provide virtually everything we need.
It is this: as soon as you are considered essential, your own failure creates more demand for what you offer.
To make matters worse, our tendency to trust the authorities is part of our unconscious programming. Psychologists refer to this tendency as “authority bias,” and have observed that it is amplified by stress.
This means that, since we are more prone to blindly trust authorities when we are afraid, people in position of authority benefit from frightening situations.
All of this adds up to a truly dismal bottom line: the more stress and failure the elite create, the stronger and more unquestioned their dominance of society becomes.
The Role of Schools
To understand how schools play a key role in this system, there is no better guide that Ivan Illich’s 1971 masterpiece, Deschooling Society. In it, Illich refers to schools as “the reproductive organ of a consumer society,” in which “children become a natural resource to be molded by the schools and fed into the industrial machine.”
In Illich’s view, school is a self-perpetuating institution that creates dependence and reduces freedom among the population. As he eloquently phrases it, “School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” In his view, school is a tool that allows the ruling class to indoctrinate the masses, at an impressionable age, into a way of life that is antithetical to their own health and happiness, but which serves the interests of the elite.
George Carlin more crudely but no less eloquently stated the same idea during his 2006 “Life is Worth Losing” standup routine.
“There’s a reason that education sucks. And it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers.
Viewed from this perspective, it becomes appallingly obvious why schools have doubled-down on failing policies – not just in literacy, but in virtually every subject: what’s bad for children is good for schools. Instead of taking poor educational outcomes as evidence that their approach is wrong, administrators take it as evidence that they need more resources to do more of the same thing, and the children’s parents - who are, themselves, products of the same kind of schooling - believe it, because that’s what they’ve been taught to do.
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 a gross misrepresentation of what Illich and others have recommended. 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 this. We trust 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 lies in the conditioning we receive in school. We are taught to trust the authorities – beginning with our teachers – and this authority bias becomes part of our unconscious programming. 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. Instead, they - or at least some portion of them - maintain systemic failure, ensuring that we continue to need, rely on, and pay them.
Reading is important. Demanding accountability from educators is important. But far more important is recognizing the way our blind faith in authority allows society to operate for the benefit of an unaccountable and self-interested ruling class.