In this series, I review what I take to be three of Neil Postman’s most influential works on education. First up (below) is Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969), to be followed in part 2 by Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979), and finally part 3 will bring us to The End of Education (1995).

What It’s About

In Teaching as a Subversive Activity, authors Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner subject the American public education system to a critical evaluation, questioning its effectiveness at preparing students for life in modern American society and the wider world.[1] Writing in 1969, Postman and Weingartner begin from the premise that there are “an increasing number of unprecedented and, to date, insoluble problems” threatening society.[2] They argue that these problems can and should be improved through public education, but that in its contemporary state, the educational system fails to adequately address most, if not all of them. Thus, they advocate a major shift in the educational system toward standards and practices that are designed to foster “attitudes and skills of social, political, and cultural criticism”[3] and thereby “to subvert attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions that foster chaos and uselessness.”[4] Most of the book is devoted to providing support and a rationale for this “new education”[5] and outlining in more detail what it might look like in practice.

Postman and Weingartner’s heavy criticism of conventional public education is related closely to their assessment of their contemporary society and its apparent future trajectory. As previously mentioned, they consider modern America to be threatened by numerous problems. Many of these problems, they note, are related to three more general problems that recently reshaped and continue to reshape the United States and the world. The first two of these are the “Communications Revolution,”[6] which has, in the last century, changed the ways and means through which we communicate – and consequently what we communicate through these new ways and means – and the “Change Revolution,”[7] the previously unprecedented degree and rate of change taking place in many areas of life and society (technology, communications, economics, culture, politics, etc.). These first two problems are exacerbated by a third: the burgeoning of bureaucratic establishments – schools included – which have a natural tendency to resist change, eventually rendering themselves ineffectual and irrelevant when confronted with the significant changes taking place in the society they serve. For Postman and Weingartner, then, the problem with conventional schools is that they are (precisely because they are following their natural bureaucratic tendencies) not preparing students to understand, let alone cope with, the rapidly changing present and future in which they are finding themselves. Because of the weight and difficulty of the problems facing the modern world, what is at stake in all this, potentially at least, is our very survival as a stable, democratic society.

So, what is the solution? Just how can public education be fixed to better equip students to handle the modern world? To accomplish this, Postman and Weingartner propose reconceptualizing the business of education at a very basic level. While the conventional view is that education primarily involves the dissemination of information, knowledge, or “right answers” about certain set subjects, the authors argue that the more significant results of education have to do with the methods and processes involved in learning. Much of what students actually learn in school – what has lasting impact, at least – are habits of learning and ideas about knowledge itself implicit in the educational process and environment. The authors contend that conventional educational processes encourage the passive acceptance, memorization, and recall of authoritative answers to set questions within largely disconnected subjects (e.g. Math, Science, History, English, etc.), and actually discourage open and critical inquiry into new or basic questions.[8] In place of this, they advocate establishing an educational process designed to do the opposite – one which fosters and encourages open and critical inquiry, and in which subjects, in any strict or traditional sense, do not exist – a process they term the “inquiry method.”[9] Under this method, schools would function as a sort of “antibureaucracy bureaucracy,”[10] imbuing students not so much with standardized sets of knowledge as with the skills and habits of critical thinkers and good learners.

Postman and Weingartner have much to say about the sorts of standards and practices that might make up the inquiry method, but at its core, this method is based on two ideas: that “the art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge” and “that question asking, if it is not to be a sterile and ritualized activity, has to deal with problems that are perceived as useful and realistic by the learners.”[11] All of the authors’ more specific recommendations seem to be based on these principles. So, when it comes to the teacher, the authors suggest that their role should be that of one who facilitates question-asking and open discussion among students and who offers problems for students to solve, rather than ready-made solutions. Since, in the view of the authors, these problems ought to be perceived as relevant to the lives of the learners, the questions pursued in the course of inquiry will depend largely on the needs and interests of the students, not the teachers, administrators, or the state. Additionally, the authors draw on work in psychology, linguistics, and semantics to point out that many of the questions arising from the inquiry method will inevitably deal on some level with language and its varied and contingent meanings. For this reason, they suggest that all teachers (regardless of their “subject”) need to teach language as an influence on perception. The authors suggest many other changes as well, some admittedly quite “bizarre”[12] by conventional standards, but all of which are designed to break down traditional conceptions about learning and develop citizens better capable of adapting to the uncertainties of modern reality, thereby subverting the potential disasters that reality holds.

A Few Thoughts

Overall, I found Teaching as a Subversive Activity to be engaging, insightful, and entertaining. The central arguments are clearly stated within the first three chapters, and the authors provide numerous examples and illustrations to reinforce them throughout the rest of the book. These arguments are certainly bold, and the writing style matches this boldness, to the point of being deliberately provocative at times – especially, I imagine, for readers with a strong commitment to traditional forms of schooling.[13] But then, such provocation seems unavoidable considering the authors are calling for nothing short of a fundamental restructuring of the traditional system. For anyone involved in public education, whether they end up agreeing with everything or not, this book poses some important questions to consider.

While the authors are proposing systemic changes across the board, their discussion isn’t limited to the big picture or the theoretical level. Rather, there are numerous very specific examples and practical suggestions throughout the latter half of the book, including actual transcripts from lessons taught using the inquiry method.[14] One of the most helpful sections along these lines is a chapter toward the end that offers steps that can be taken immediately by those who wish to create a more subversive learning environment in their classrooms.[15]

In evaluating the central thesis of the book, it seems to me helpful to view it as three connected claims:

1. That there are numerous difficult problems facing modern America and the world
2. That these problems are not adequately addressed by the current public education system
3. That a change in the focus and structure of the system toward the cultivation of critical thinking and free inquiry would better address these problems

For my own part, I am convinced that all three of the above are well-founded, though the final claim begs some important questions. In what follows, I consider each in turn.

Claim 1 – that there are numerous problems facing us today – seems to me to be fairly self-evident to anybody following politics or world news. Postman and Weingartner themselves treat this claim as an assumed premise and do not really bother to defend it other than to enumerate briefly the problems they have in mind. What is striking is how many of the same problems are still relevant today, nearly 50 years after the book was first written. Some obviously no longer hold the same importance or urgency they did in 1969 (e.g. “the radioactivity problem,” “the Vietnam problem,” and others related to the “communist-conspiracy problem.”[16]), but many have stuck with us and may have even increased in urgency for one reason or another (e.g. mental health, pollution, “the Middle East problem,” and misinformation[17]). Still others spring to mind that we could add to the list to bring it up to date. The authors make no mention, for example, of global warming, the energy crisis, terrorism, the national debt, immigration, or (naturally) any of the problems or controversies concerning the use/abuse of the internet. The take-away, I think, is that Postman and Weingartner were right in linking many of the problems they saw at the end of the 1960s to the changes brought on by the communications revolution, and they were right in their prediction that such changes would continue to take place at an unprecedented rate, resulting in the many problems we face today.

As for claim 2 – that society’s problems are not adequately addressed by the public education system – I think Postman and Weingartner make an excellent case that schools tend to function as bureaucracies, committed to traditional standards and methods of instruction that often have very little to do with the complex and varied realities faced by those graduating from the system, much less with the large-scale problems faced by all of us collectively. The brilliance of the authors’ analysis is that they identify the root cause of this inadequacy in the structure and form of the system itself, in the way it trains or indoctrinates students into patterns of thinking (or not thinking, as the case may be) that are rigid, unreflective, uncritical, and ultimately, unrealistic.

What’s more, I think the general lines of this analysis are still quite relevant today. There is much in my own experience in public education, both as a student (in the 90s) and an educator (now), that accords with Postman and Weingartner’s assessment and leads me to believe we have not come very far since 1969. I’m sure there have been changes which might be considered attempts to bring schools up-to-date or make the curriculum more relevant to life today, but (in my experience) many of these either amount to too little, too late, or miss the point entirely – that it is what we learn about learning that has the most important and lasting impact on us throughout the rest of our lives. There are many aspects of conventional education I could cite as examples, including everything from class schedules to evaluations to behavior management, but I limit my treatment here to one example that I hope can serve as an illustration of the principles at play more generally. For this end, there is perhaps no better example than the use of communications technology in schools. This has been one of the most obvious transformations of the school environment since my own time as a student, and it often seems to be praised as a mark of progress or increased relevance when schools incorporate newer, faster, or more convenient technology in the classroom. Many students now have ready access to the internet in school and are encouraged to use it for research and to connect to a host of online educational programs. Additionally, and consequently, students are now introduced to various computer-related skills from a very early age, such as typing, creating multimedia presentations, and even coding. Now, each of these changes could be evaluated individually, and each of them probably has much to recommend it depending on its intended purpose. I only wish to point out here that none of these changes in the learning environment seems to have as its direct motivation or aim the cultivation of critical thinking or self-reflection in the learners. If anything, it seems to me that these changes, by making certain sets of knowledge more easily accessible and by adding to the list of merely technical and basically passive tasks to be performed, tend to undermine the need for critical thinking or self-reflection in students.

In this way and others, what our schools are still teaching today about learning is the sense that knowledge is just out there in a book somewhere or in the mind of a teacher or a scientist or (now) on the internet, that most everything about the world is known unambiguously and with certainty – because, after all, it comes on good authority – and that questioning authority figures (or even oneself) is frowned-upon and, anyway, not worth doing because it won’t lead to any knowledge or insights that are practical or important for a successful and happy life. What seems nearly absent is any sense that there are mysteries and ambiguities in the world, that there are perennial philosophical questions worth pondering and struggling with, that there are fundamental differences in beliefs and values that can and do cause estrangement and conflict (even between well-educated and rational adults), or that conflict itself can be a valuable and productive learning experience rather than something to be avoided at all costs.

My position on claim 2 bears some further explanation because it is a strong indictment, and I wish to make quite clear what I mean and what I do not. I do not at all mean to suggest that schools do not provide valuable services or that teachers and other educators in general do not do quality work in providing those services. On the contrary, I have great respect for the educators I know and whose work I have witnessed. I know they fill many needs for their students as well as students’ families and communities, needs that often go well beyond their responsibilities as stipulated by the federal, state, and local standards, and they do all of this, at times, under extremely difficult circumstances. In a sense, teachers are the first victims of the problems facing public education. It is they who are most familiar with and most directly affected by the institutionalized standards and restrictions – in short, the bureaucracy – that serve to stifle the sort of free inquiry which Postman and Weingartner advocate. Regardless of their own best intentions or motivations, teachers’ jobs depend on their adherence to certain standards and restrictions. It is my belief that much of the good accomplished in public education is done in spite of these standards rather than in accordance with them.[18]

But, I do not mean to suggest that the standards are entirely without value either. There is much practical value in mathematics, and certainly in reading, writing, and speaking English (that is, of course, in a country in which the most used language is English). The traditional subject demarcations, too, have value as an organizational structure. The trouble starts when these things come to be seen as necessities or ends in themselves, which all of us must serve, rather than being recognized for what they are – tools created to serve our ends.[19] Math, English, History, Science – these all have value, but only insofar as they have utility to meet the needs of humanity. And, they do have utility, but so do many other things. Furthermore, the utility of any knowledge or skill requires that one also be skilled in the actual process of applying it and in identifying which needs are worth applying it to in the first place. The point (both my own and that of the authors, I believe) is that the conventional educational process lacks a view of its own utility or connection to reality – a reality, it bears repeating, fraught with difficult problems (problems which do not readily lend themselves to solution by mathematical formula or proper sentence structure). So, I acknowledge that schools do society a great service, but at the same time – and even by the same means – they do us a disservice by discouraging students from thinking critically and carefully about the real world and their place in it.

To put this all another way, if knowledge is power, then we are certainly empowering students with what we teach. But, power – we must never forget – may be used for many ends, whether good or ill. What students need more than power is an understanding of the utility of their power, a sense of responsibility for it, and guidance in how best to utilize it. In a word, what they need is wisdom.

This brings us to claim 3.

As I have outlined it here, Postman and Weingartner’s third and final claim follows somewhat naturally from the first two, such that if you are convinced by the first two, you are likely to be convinced by the third – that what we need is a shift toward a less bureaucratic educational system, one that encourages critical thinking and free inquiry so as to better handle the rapid change and instability of present reality. As previously mentioned, I am personally in agreement with this claim and with the general outlines of the changes the authors propose making to the system, but I think there are some important questions to be raised about these changes and their implementation.

Most of my questions have to do with what might be termed the “student-centered” aspects of the new education proposed by the authors. Since this new education (and the inquiry method in particular) is based in part on the premise that questions should be “perceived as useful and realistic by the learners,”[20] the authors emphasize strategies that give students a very active role in the educational process. In places, this emphasis seems to go so far as to allow students to basically run the classroom, or at least the curriculum. I see two potential problems with this.

The first is simply that students, especially younger students but, really, students of all ages, tend to lack the life experience and perspective necessary to choose for themselves what is most “useful” and “realistic” in their own lives.[21] Teachers tend to know more about life than students do, and I think there is a lot to be said for teachers sharing that knowledge and guiding students toward what they (the teachers) judge to be in the best interests of the students rather than letting them figure it out for themselves. Postman and Weingartner do seem aware of this issue and point out that while it is the students that ultimately judge what they perceive as relevant to their lives, this in no way prevents teachers from guiding that process by suggesting lines of inquiry for the students. Still, I wonder if reducing teachers to the position of merely offering suggestions is going too far. After all (speaking from my own experience), it is quite possible to learn something useful without fully appreciating it at first, only to recognize its usefulness later in retrospect. Isn’t there something to be said for forcing some things on students even if they don’t yet appreciate them?[22] On the other hand, as previously discussed, I am concerned that some of what is currently taught in schools as a part of standard curriculum ends up not being terribly useful at any point in the lives of most students, and it is important that we don’t mistake standards for ends in themselves. I don’t know that there is any easy solution, but it seems to me possible to strike a balance whereby we subject students to at least some studies that they may not perceive as immediately relevant while also encouraging inquiry into all sorts of areas that they do.

The second problem I see with the emphasis placed on student control in the new education is that it seems a certain amount of rigidity and even authoritarianism is indispensable to the basic function of any classroom, even one devoted to student-centered free inquiry. As any experienced educator knows, classroom management is one of the primary tasks of a teacher, and while it may be good for students to be able to question authority, it seems to me they need to at least recognize the authority of teachers and other staff in creating and enforcing the rules necessary to ensure an environment that is safe and conducive to learning. That in creating and enforcing such rules teachers introduce an authoritarian element to the educational process thus seems unavoidable. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily preclude completely the introduction of any of the changes Postman and Weingartner advocate. It just seems to me those changes can’t be so extreme as to do away with the authoritarian elements in the educational system altogether. Again, the difficulty is in determining how best to strike a balance between free critical inquiry and the restrictions necessary to ensure such inquiry remains truly beneficial.

It strikes me that the questions I raise above are not so much arguments against the subversive teaching strategies outlined by Postman and Weingartner as reservations about how they might be taken too far or otherwise implemented poorly. In the end, I think public education should change, and it should change in the direction in which the authors suggest. That many questions and concerns accompany such a major shift in both theory and practice should probably come as no surprise, and one can’t in fairness blame the authors for failing to address them all in this book. Postman himself had much more to say on the subject of public education, and he did so primarily in two later books: Teaching as a Conserving Activity and The End of Education. I plan to consider each of these in turn, in parts 2 and 3 of this series.

One final note before leaving behind the present work. We have seen that Postman and Weingartner base their call for change in public education on the problems and climate of the modern world. While I think they have a point in identifying the present period in history as necessitating an especially urgent response to some problems, I would go a bit further than the authors and suggest that the kinds of changes they call for aren’t only helpful for solving our current problems but would benefit any society, ancient or modern.

The world has always had its problems, and it seems to me that many of our “modern” problems are just modern versions of what are, in principle, perennial problems or concerns. More than the number of problems we face, one of the things that has changed recently (as a result of the communications revolution) is our awareness of the problems going on around us. Somewhat ironically, this increased awareness seems not to have brought with it an increased capability for finding solutions. Indeed, if anything, we seem less able to effectively tackle many of the large or small-scale problems we face today.[23] Another thing that has changed recently in many places is the scale of our problems and their effects, which perhaps brings with it an increased urgency for finding solutions, but not necessarily any fundamentally new types of problems.

The point is this: whether we are living in 2018 CE or 2018 BCE, we are living in a world that is as cruel and mysterious as it is pleasurable and beautiful, and we are living with other people, who bring with them community as well as conflict and a host of ethical questions to consider. To live well in any era, in any society – and for a society itself to live well – requires that we learn how to learn – how to ask questions in order to better understand ourselves, others, and the world, and how to use what we learn in the pursuit of what is ultimately valuable. A public education system that detracts from this goal detracts from one of our best hopes for making life itself worth living.

The Bottom Line

If you are an educator at any level or otherwise have a stake in public education, I highly recommend Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Whether or not you end up agreeing with the conclusions drawn by the authors, the questions they raise about the structure of the public education system and the place of such a system in society are of great importance, especially for those who are an integral part of that system.

If you do not currently have a stake in public education, there is still much in this book that may be of interest. Since all of us, as members of the public, must deal in one way or another with the effects of the public education system, we all share an interest in understanding those effects better. However, education is just one of many influences on society, and if your interest is in understanding contemporary society/culture more generally, there are probably better places to start. Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is one such place,[24] as is any work that takes a broad critical approach to the history or sociology of the modern period.

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[1] Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1987).

[2] 11. Some of the problems the authors list are issues of mental health, crime, suicide, overpopulation, food and water shortages, pollution, radioactivity, existential angst, and international conflict (e.g. Vietnam, Cuba, the Middle East), 11-12. It is worth noting how many of these are still relevant today.

[3] 20.

[4] 31.

[5] 78, 91.

[6] 23.

[7] 27.

[8] The authors list the following as examples of what is learned implicitly through conventional classroom structure:

“Passive acceptance is a more desirable response to ideas than active criticism.

       “Discovering knowledge is beyond the power of students and is, in any case, none of their business . . .

              “The voice of authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgment . . .

“There is always a single, unambiguous ‘Right Answer’ to a question.

“English is not History and History is not Science and Science is not Art and Art is not Music, and Art and Music are minor subjects and English, History and Science major subjects, and a subject is something you ‘take’ and, when you have taken it, you have ‘had’ it, and if you have ‘had’ it, you are immune and need not take it again. (The Vaccination Theory of Education?),” 36.

[9] See especially Chapter III, 40–51.

[10] 30.

[11] 91-92.

[12] 146.

[13] Among the boldest suggestions, for example, are the following, listed toward the end of the book:

“2. Have ‘English’ teachers ‘teach’ Math, Math teachers English, Social Studies teachers Science, Science teachers Art, and so on . . .

“8. Declare a moratorium on all tests and grades . . .

              “9. Require all teachers to undergo some form of psychotherapy as a part of their in-service training . . .

“10. Classify teachers according to their ability and make the lists public . . .

“11. Require all teachers to take a test prepared by students on what the students know . . .

“15. Require all the graffiti accumulated in the school toilets to be reproduced on large paper and be hung in the school halls,” 146-48.

[14] See the transcripts on 81-86 and 118-21.

[15] See Chapter XII: “So What Do You Do Now?,” 196-208.

[16] 12.

[17] This statement regarding misinformation could easily have been written today: “The misinformation problem takes on a variety of forms, such as lies, clichés, and rumors, and implicates almost everybody, including the President of the United States,” 12.

[18] The authors seem to agree: “’Requirements’ violate virtually everything we know about learning because they comprise the matrix of an elaborate system of punishments that, in turn, comprise a threatening atmosphere in which positive learning cannot occur. The ‘requirements,’ indeed force the teacher – and administrator – into the role of an authoritarian functionary whose primary task becomes that of enforcing the requirements rather than helping the learner to learn,” 160.

[19] Exactly which end(s) should be served is an extremely important question, and it just so happens to be the subject of another of Postman’s books – The End of Education (1995). I plan to review this book in part 3 of the present series.

[20] 92.

[21] Note that I say they tend to lack life experience and perspective. This is not always the case, and I agree with the authors that one problem comes from a failure on the part of teachers to give their students enough credit at times. I have for some time been a firm believer that one can learn from just about anyone because we all have a perspective worth sharing.

[22] For example, speaking and understanding English (and to a lesser extent, reading and writing) are basic to communicating in many parts of our society. Forcing students to develop these skills is almost certainly to their benefit whether they recognize it or not.

[23] This may have much to do with the kind of awareness most of us now have, which is a far cry from the sort of expertise or familiarity that might serve as a basis for viable solutions. Instead, I believe what we too often have now is a distorted and superficial awareness which provides us only an illusory sense of expertise or familiarity. For more on this, see Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, now available in a 20^th Anniversary Edition: Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 2006). This is perhaps Neil Postman’s best-known work and has come to be regarded – rightly so in my view – as a modern classic.

[24] See note 24 above. I actually first encountered Postman’s work in Amusing Ourselves to Death, which then led me to his works on education. In that book, he analyzes the impact of communications technology (specifically, broadcast television) on many aspects of American society and finds it guilty (or rather finds us all guilty, through the way we use it) of undermining our ability to engage intelligently or productively in public discourse.

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Review: Teaching as a Conserving Activity by Neil Postman >>