What It’s About

At last we’ve come to the end . . . the end of this blog series, of Neil Postman’s major works on education, and, perhaps, as the foreboding title of the present work suggests, of education itself, or at least one form of it. In The End of Education Postman makes the case that without a clear and unified purpose behind it, public education in America is in danger of becoming obsolete and useless.¹Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995). The “end” in the title is thus a double entendre, referring in one sense to the possible demise, or termination, of traditional public schooling and in another sense to the purpose, or reason, behind public schooling in the first place. He argues that such a purpose is and always has been necessary in order to give real value to public education but that there is of late something of a crisis of purpose in American public schooling. As a solution to this problem, he proposes and provides rationale for five different but somewhat overlapping and related principles, any one of which might be adopted by public schools to return to them a meaningful purpose and thereby reinfuse value and inspiration into the public education system and, by extension, into the spirit and consciousness of the American public. 

Postman begins by noting that while those who think and write about education have spent much time and energy focusing on the “how” of schooling, i.e. the means by which learning should be done, comparatively little attention has been given to the “why” – the reason for learning anything in the first place. Without such a reason, he argues, school is “pointless” and simply “does not work.”²4. To explain what he means by a reason and why it’s so important he employs the metaphor of a “god.”³See generally Chapter 1: “The Necessity of Gods,” 3-18. Just as devotion to a God or Gods has often given a transcendent purpose, meaning, and clarity to religious education throughout human history and the world over, so all education – including secular public education in America – may be given purpose, meaning, and clarity through devotion to some sort of “god.” This need not be an actual metaphysical being, but refers in this case to any transcendent principle (or set of principles) that works to orient individuals around a shared set of goals and/or values. Importantly, gods hold authority over their devotees largely through their connections within a grand unifying narrative, or “myth”⁴As Postman himself notes, the term “myth” brings with it a significant amount of semantic baggage and can often be taken to mean a story that is false, or dubious at best. However, the sense in which he means it here is much closer to the way scholars of culture and religion use the term, to denote a narrative that holds meaning for people (regardless of its veracity) and through which they can readily interpret the world and understand their place in it. See p.153.. For this reason Postman uses “narrative” synonymously with “god” to describe the sort of transcendent principle that gives purpose to our activities. “A god,” as he puts it, “is the name of a great narrative, one that has sufficient credibility, complexity, and symbolic power to enable one to organize one’s life around it.”⁵6. Examples of this sort of narrative include those found in traditional religious texts such as the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Qur’an, and Bhagavad Gita, but also include more recent narratives concerning powerful philosophical ideas and principles such as communism, inductive science, and technological advancement. These newer ideas could all be said to serve as gods to the extent that, for those devoted to them, they provide a sense of purpose, direction, and meaning to their lives in much the same way as do Gods of religious traditions. 

As for why this sort of great narrative is necessary for public education, Postman begins from a more basic theory regarding human nature – that this sort of great narrative is necessary for human health and well-being in general, that story-telling and myth-making are somehow a fundamental part of our nature, and that in effect we can’t help but seek out and embrace great narratives in order to give meaning to our lives.⁶As he puts it, “My intention here is neither to bury nor to praise any gods, but to claim that we cannot do without them, that whatever else we may call ourselves, we are the god-making species. Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future,” 6-7. Without gods or narratives to believe in, he suggests, people tend to be hopeless, fall into depression, resort to substance abuse or suicide, or try and find escape through immersion in entertainment and/or virtual reality. With gods and narratives to believe in, people may have hope and both reason and direction for their lives, work, and learning. This is where public education comes in. 

As Postman outlines it, there have been several powerful narratives embraced collectively by many in the United States since its founding that have served to give shape not just to shared American culture and identity, but to shared American schooling as well. Early on, these included such ideals as democracy, the “melting pot,” and the “Protestant ethic,” all of which, though different from each other in some significant ways, were largely compatible, shared certain key themes, and – more to the point at hand – shared similar visions of the purpose of public education. According to this shared vision, the purpose of public schooling in early America was to create a public committed and equipped to uphold the values of democracy, tolerance, and liberty among its members – values we might collectively term “liberal democracy”⁷21. or “The American Creed.”⁸Postman credits Gunnar Myrdal with using this term to encapsulate the “system of general ideals” of America at the time that he was writing. See p.13.

Postman is quick to acknowledge that these early narratives were not without their problems (in fact, no narratives are), and that is one reason for some of the changes in American culture and schooling since then. Partly from the gradual erosion of traditional American narratives and partly from the gradual introduction of new narratives into the culture, we are in a much different place today. The main problem Postman finds with this new place is that there are now narratives giving shape to public schooling that are in competition and incompatible with each other and with the original shared vision of liberal democracy. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that educators now seem almost entirely uninterested in discussing the reason for schooling or even acknowledging that such a thing is necessary. Consequently, schools now seem to be suffering from a severe lack of clear purpose, resulting in confusion, division, and alienation among students (not to mention mere lack of motivation). 

So, how did we come to this point? As Postman describes it, it seems no one development is responsible for the decline toward purposelessness we’re now experiencing. Rather, this is the result of several developments in American culture and the wider world since the revolutionary era. To start with, shortcomings in the traditional American narratives and in their carrying-out have been exposed over the years, undermining public faith in their ideals. For example, the idea of America as a beacon of democracy is no longer as convincing as it once was, in light of the record of America’s dealings in foreign policy during the late modern era.⁹Postman mentions in this context America’s actions specifically in “Vietnam . . . Granada, Panama, and Kuwait,” 22. Nor has the idea of America as a melting pot proved terribly successful at dissolving racial divisions as was once hoped, in light of the inequality and exclusion that has been the experience of large numbers of minority Americans up to the present day.¹⁰This may well be an understatement given the political movements and arguments over race and equality that have erupted recently in the early 21st century, and especially in the summer of 2020. To name just one example, consider the Black Lives Matter movement and organization, which over the last eight years has drawn attention (and controversy) to issues of racial equality in America and beyond. For more related to this issue, see note 44 below. In short, with some good cause, our faith in some of America’s oldest gods has been severely shaken.¹¹This is not to say that faith in these old ideals is completely lost, and this is part of Postman’s hope in writing this book. In discussing the now undermined idea of America as a beacon of morality, he reminds us, “Through all the turmoil, it is well to keep in mind that a wounded god is different than a dead one. We may yet have need of this one,” 22.

As old gods have receded in influence, numerous new gods have arisen to take their place, but none of these, contends Postman, has sufficient power or credibility to inspire the American public to organize around a common set of values or to inspire students to learn. Here he identifies several gods that have arisen over the last century that purport to give purpose to public education, but that, for a variety of reasons, ultimately fail in their attempts to do so. Some gods fail on the grounds that they have little to recommend them as gods in the first place, that they are rather ill-conceived or unfounded in their claims to give purpose or value to any part of life, learning included. There is for example the”god of Economic Utility,”¹²27. which elevates the economy above all else and views individuals as little more than economic units whose sole purpose and moral imperative is nothing more than productive participation in the economy. Postman criticizes this on several grounds, starting with the point that it is, on the face of it, an uninspiring and empty prospect for most young people, and continuing with arguments that “there is no strong evidence for believing that well-paying, stimulating jobs will be available to most students upon graduation;”¹³30. that training for the sorts of jobs that likely will be widely available hardly requires anything like a public education system of the scale we have; and that any decent education really ought to be about more than economic utility anyway.¹⁴I find his words on this last point worth quoting: “Any education that is mainly about economic utility is far too limited to be useful, and, in any case, so diminishes the world that it mocks one’s humanity. At the very least, it diminishes the idea of what a good learner is,” 31.

Other gods fail because, although they may offer a compelling narrative that inspires some individuals in their private pursuits, they are ill-suited to the enterprise of public education, to the forming of a public with shared values, social cohesion, and a spirit of cooperation – or, worse, they actually run counter to this and serve to cause division in society. An example of this type of god is what Postman terms “multiculturalism.” In the sense in which he uses the term, it refers to the idea that, because of the uglier parts of America’s racist, Eurocentric history and heritage, what is needed now is an overhaul of American values in which cultural and racial differences are amplified and accentuated at the expense of social cohesion. This is a rather complicated and sensitive issue that requires some subtle distinctions be drawn,¹⁵Postman for his part clarifies that “no argument is being made against the acknowledgement of cultural differences among students. I am using [‘multiculturalism’] to denote a narrative that makes cultural diversity an exclusive preoccupation,” 51. He also distinguishes “multiculturalism” from “cultural pluralism” – the acknowledgment and celebration of various ethnic and cultural identities as a part of a shared American Identity, 50. but the basic problem with “multiculturalism,” as Postman outlines it, is its tendency to divide Americans against each other and, in this sense, to promote a sort of “tribalism”¹⁶51. within society.

All of this has left our public schools with no adequate god to serve – no clear or agreed-upon purpose. What, then, is to be done? 

Postman’s perhaps rather obvious and straightforward answer is that we need new gods. But, as we’ve seen already, not just any gods will do; we need better gods than those currently on offer in public schools, with narratives “calculated to inspire the young, their teachers, and their parents.”¹⁷62. Importantly, Postman points out that whatever new ideas are adopted by the schools should not – indeed, cannot – come from the schools in the sense that they are invented by, or originate from schools and/or educators. Rather, to have an educational system that is truly public (and that the public will accept), the narratives it adopts and proliferates must come from the public, from the wider culture outside the school. What is needed, then, is to draw out from American culture and tradition some of the latent, less prominent, or forgotten narratives that may be resurrected to serve as viable reasons for education. 

True to form, having thus described the problem, Postman next proposes not one, but five different solutions – that is, “five narratives that, singly and in concert, contain sufficient resonance and power to be taken seriously as reason for schooling.”¹⁸61. He claims that each of these offers “moral guidance, a sense of continuity, explanations of the past, clarity to the present, hope for the future.”¹⁹61-2. He clarifies that these five are by no means the only possible solutions, but they are, he believes, a realistic start; and, part of his purpose is simply to promote “a serious conversation about reasons”²⁰91. in hopes of thereby preventing American public education from meeting an untimely end. 

In brief, then, these five narratives are:

1. “The Spaceship Earth,” which envisions Earth as a spaceship crewed by all of humanity, adrift in a vast and unforgiving universe, and the purpose of education as the cultivation of a sense of shared human interdependence and collective responsibility;²¹See Chapter 5, 93-113.
2. “The Fallen Angel,” which envisions humans as fallen creatures in the sense that we are all fallible, prone to error, and perpetually imperfect, and in which the purpose of education is the cultivation of an awareness of this fallibility in oneself and others and training in the reduction of error in our pursuit of knowledge;²²See Chapter 6, 114-128.
3. “The American Experiment,” which envisions America as founded upon and characterized by arguments and perpetually open questions and the purpose of education as the teaching of these arguments, their history, and the practice of argumentation itself, along with tolerance for opposing views;²³See Chapter 7, 129-142.
4. “The Law of Diversity,” which follows from the theory that diversity is what brings excellence and vitality to almost every area of life, and which envisions the purpose of education as the cultivation of awareness, understanding, and appreciation of diversity;²⁴See Chapter 8, 143-71. and . . .
5. “The Word Weavers/The World Makers,” which envisions humans as defined and empowered, but also controlled and limited, by our use of language, and in which the purpose of education is learning about language and its ability to shape our lives and sense of reality.²⁵See Chapter 9, 172-93.

A Few Thoughts

OK, so, I have more than a few thoughts. Given that this is the third of Neil Postman’s books I have reviewed on this blog, it should come as no surprise that I am generally a fan of his work, and The End of Education is certainly no exception. As with the previous two books, I found this one to be insightful, accessible, and entertaining. Postman’s perspective brings, as always, a keen awareness of the place of public education within society and the critical role it plays, whether for good or ill. It also brings, especially with the present work, a willingness to raise fundamental questions that penetrate into the heart and soul of the enterprise of public school – namely in this case, “what is it all for in the first place?” Indeed, in asking and answering this question, The End of Education draws on many of the themes present in Postman’s previous works – not just those focused on education but those on childhood, technology, and media – and reads almost like a concluding synthesis, bringing this all to bear on the central question of the purpose for school. 

In terms of organization, the book is quite easy to follow, being separated into two main parts. Part 1 outlines and explains the central problem and briefly introduces Postman’s five solutions; part 2 contains a chapter devoted to each solution, which provides a more fleshed-out argument and rationale and addresses issues of practicality.²⁶In Postman’s words, this organizational division can be thought of as a division between “the doctrine” in Part 1 and “the commentary” in Part 2, See p. 91.

For all of its continuity with Postman’s previous works, The End of Education differs from these in several respects. To start with, it is the shortest of the three books on education, and I must admit it strikes me also as the least polished and thorough. Throughout, Postman paints with some rather broad strokes. There are several places where names are dropped or ideas are referenced almost in passing, and, as a reader, I find myself wishing for a bit more background or explanation. In terms of tone and style, too, The End of Education reads a bit differently. It seems to be the most personal of the three, containing numerous references to Postman’s own past experience as both an educator and a student.²⁷Having grown up in a Jewish household and attending both a “Jewish” school and a public school, Postman brings his own childhood experience to bear on questions of culture, ethnicity, and the role of school regarding such things. See especially p.14-16. While its message is ultimately optimistic, I also detect an unprecedented level of urgency over the problems it identifies, bordering at times on desperation.²⁸In a brief epilogue to the book, Postman states outright that he himself is “not terribly confident that any of [his solutions] will actually work,” 195. The reason for this rather bleak view is that American culture seems to be moving away from some of the basic assumptions necessary to maintain and invest in public school. Specifically, many are now questioning the ideas that “school” is necessary or important (see note 42 below), that a cohesive “public” with shared values is tenable in America (see paragraph 33 and following below), and that “childhood” still exists in any meaningful sense. (Postman has written an entire book on this last point. See Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982).) Ending the book on such a pessimistic note makes the whole thing feel like something of a last ditch effort, but it is at least a worthy effort in my estimation, and one made “in good faith,” 196. 

Finally, The End of Education strikes me in some ways as the most abstract, or theoretical, of all Postman’s works on education, containing the fewest immediately applicable methods or practical steps for educators already in the classroom. Some of this no doubt stems from the nature of the central subject, which rests at the theoretical level, the underlying spirit behind the whole endeavor rather than the particular methods involved in carrying it out. It is, after all, a book about the “why” rather than the “how.” Nevertheless, in thinking back on the book as a whole, I’m left wondering seriously about its practical applicability. Assuming Postman’s right, and we want to change the spirit or purpose of something like the American public education system, just how would we go about doing that? Who makes that decision and how? Teachers? Administrators? School boards? Politicians? Would we need new legislation? Can one write into law something like purpose and have that be meaningful or enforceable? Or, would we need buy-in from participants at every level? Is such a shift realistic? 

These are some significant questions to say the least, and I have some thoughts on them, but maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Before tackling these issues, we would do well to first ask whether Postman is right about his central claims in the first place: is American public education suffering from a crisis of purpose? If so, is it bad enough to spell the end of the system? And, finally, are the solutions Postman offers truly viable? In what follows, I’ll consider each of these questions in turn. 

First up, is Postman right in saying that American public education lacks a clear and unified purpose? My answer to this question is an emphatic “yes.” I have many reasons for this answer, beginning with my own experience in the public education system, first as a student, then as an educator. 

I hesitate to put too much stock into the opinions of any school-aged child, myself included, so regarding my experience as a student I’ll just say that I can recall feeling rather jaded and cynical about the whole enterprise of education at least by the time I reached high school, which suggests whatever reason I was given for being there (if any) wasn’t very convincing or inspiring.²⁹As I recall, one of the banners hanging in the halls of my high school read, “Believe and you can Achieve.” This slogan rang hollow to me then, and it does even more so now. “Believe what in order to achieve what, and why?” one might well ask, but these questions were never addressed, at least not clearly and definitively or in a way that connected them to the actual activities of school. Since then, I’ve come across numerous similarly vacuous supposedly motivational slogans, posters, etc.. In my experience, this appears to be par for the course.

As an adult, from my earliest experiences working as an educator to the present, I’ve felt strongly that there’s been something important missing from the experience of most students – namely any sense of meaningful purpose or direction for their learning. In my experience, the way this lack is almost always expressed by students is with a question or a statement along the lines of “when am I ever going to use this in real life?” 

What is that question if not a cry for purpose? Yet, too often as educators we are asked to dismiss such questions as illegitimate or distractions from the official business of school, which is to teach the standards regardless of the reason for them. 

To be clear, I am not saying individual teachers don’t have reasons for teaching or even that some individual students don’t have reasons for learning what they’re taught in school. I am saying, along with Postman, that many of the reasons teachers and students have in mind for the activities of school are really quite uninspired, uninspiring, or otherwise very bad reasons for public school. I am further saying, again following Postman, that even in the case that many individual educators have very good reasons for teaching what they do, there’s no agreed-upon standard reason(s) shared across the system – no clear and unified purpose or set of values on which all can agree. 

This last point bears some unpacking because I suspect many readers may find it incredible at first glance. “Surely,” one might object, “there must be some reason for public school about which almost everyone agrees, some least common denominator of sorts.” I suspect many of those who are of this persuasion might have in mind something like the learning of skills – life skills, technical skills, or (now) social skills, and/or any other sort of skills that are believed to help prepare students for functioning (and competing) within our modern society and global economy. What else are schools for, we might ask, if not to provide students with skills such as these? Why else would educators be encouraged to assess students on how well they can demonstrate their abilities (as opposed to what they know or what they believe) or to express students’ learning goals with statements beginning with “I can?”³⁰For anyone unfamiliar, the reference I’m making is to “I Can Statements,” or “Can-do Statements,” which are a tool sometimes used by contemporary educators to aid in organizing and expressing clear learning objectives for students. My point here is that these serve as one indicator that current trends in education emphasize the development of skills. I have no major objection to the use of such statements, though I do think the full educational impact of them is worth analyzing closely. What do we teach students about learning when we encourage them to always think of it as something they should be able to act on somehow? Is anything worth learning that bids us not act? Or, that acts on us in some way? At the very least, we might say, we can agree that students should have some proficiency in mathematics and English – the two main languages essential to functioning in almost every part of modern American society. Why else would we have nation-wide Common Core standards in these two subjects, and only these two subjects?³¹If you’ve been out of school for a while, you may not be familiar with Common Core standards, which were developed beginning in 2008 and are now adopted by 41 US states and some additional territories. The express reason that these standards focus on Math and English specifically is “because they are areas upon which students build skill sets that are used in other subjects. Students must learn to read, write, speak, listen, and use language effectively in a variety of content areas, so the standards specify the literacy skills and understandings required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines,” Common Core State Standards Initiative, “Frequently Asked Questions,” Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing America’s Students for College & Career, accessed January 8, 2022, http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/frequently-asked-questions/. Note the emphasis placed on “skills” in this explanation.

These points are well taken; certainly there seems to be some consensus, at least officially, that schools are for the teaching of certain practical skills. Nevertheless, I believe Postman would argue – and I would concur – that the aforementioned skills, even if taken all together, fall woefully short of constituting adequate reason for public education. This gets at a crucial point in his argument that I suspect might prove hard for some to accept, precisely because it deals with assumptions that tend to go unexamined. As I read it, there seem to be three main parts to this argument that go something like what follows:³²The argument that follows is partly drawn from Postman, partly my own. Though Postman doesn’t frame an argument exactly this way, all three of the main points can be found in The End of Education.

First, if the teaching of practical skills truly is the purpose of public education, the evidence suggests this purpose is not being served very well by what’s actually done in schools. We’ve seen already, in Postman’s refutation of the god of Economic Utility,³³See paragraph 7 of the summary above. that schools can’t guarantee gainful employment in any particular sort of career or field will be available to students upon graduation. This is determined by all sorts of factors at play within the economy that are quite beyond educators’ abilities to predict, let alone control. Furthermore, despite how we tend to talk about it, the idea that better performance in schools sets students up for better performance or competition within the economy upon graduation is at least questionable.³⁴In making this claim, I’m venturing into territory that is quite a bit beyond my personal familiarity or expertise. I certainly don’t mean to overstate the case, and I welcome any evidence that could correct me on this point if I’m mistaken. That being said, here are a few reasons why I am willing to make the claim despite my reservations. First, Postman himself makes a strong claim along these lines early on in the book: “There is little evidence (that is to say, none) that the productivity of a nation’s economy is related to the quality of its schooling,” 28. In support of this statement, he cites “the work of Henry Levin of Stanford University” (though that’s as specific as he gets), 28, note 4. He also points out the difficulties with discovering anything conclusive by comparing scores in math and reading between nations with very different cultures and values, and the fact that even when these comparisons have been made, there is no consistent correlation between better test scores in these subjects and more productive national economies. See p.28-9. In thinking about this myself, I imagine it may be possible to show some statistical correlation between school grades or test scores on the one hand and employment, job performance, or salary on the other, but as always, it’s important to remember that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. The proper conclusion to draw might rather be that the traits that make good students – conscientiousness, attentiveness, organization, etc. – also tend to make good employees. Certainly, something like a high school diploma or any other sort of credential provides very clear economic benefits to someone seeking employment in our economy, so in that sense at least, school performance could be said to set students up for more economic opportunities. But, that is not what’s at issue here. The question is whether the actual content of public education provides students with skills useful for life and work after graduation – whether many of the skills acquired in school are directly transferable to the real world. I tend to think not. For more on this, continue reading. Here, I’ll remind readers of the question often posed by students, “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” About how many academic things are we forced to reply, “Well, probably never exactly this,” or the only slightly better, “You never know, it might come in handy at some point?” As adults, how many things that we learned in school must we admit years later that we haven’t really ever had to reference for our everyday lives, much less our work? In the face of this, school can sometimes seem like one of the least practical things we ever do. 

For those who buy this first point, the conclusion that’s often drawn is that we’re doing school wrong, and we need to change it – to make it more practical, more relevant to everyday life, to provide more job skills, technical skills, and the like. This is, however, precisely the wrong solution, warns Postman, and it brings us to the second point in his argument – that even were schools to improve in their ability to train students in various sorts of practical skills, this would not be a good purpose for a public education system.

Taking job skills, for instance, one basic problem is that we have no way of knowing which jobs students will pursue, and therefore no good way of deciding which job skills to provide students in school. Postman also points out that the more rudimentary skills and qualities necessary for a rapidly evolving job market will be “well served by any decent education.”³⁵32-3. To give a bit more explanation about what’s included in a “decent education,” Postman offers as a starting point “the making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people,” which he says “has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies,” 32. I quite agree. I might well add that it seems obviously more practical and efficient for people to learn job skills in on-the-job training, technical schools, and college programs built around specific careers. 

If not job skills, then, we might still be inclined to think of public education as a good place to introduce other practical skills, such as those in the use of technology, especially the latest technology, so as to prepare students for the future. This too, Postman warns, is fraught with problems of a similar nature. To start with, as with job skills, there are far more practical and efficient ways for both young and old to learn the use of new technologies. In fact, this is something that people tend to be able to do quite readily without the help of public schools when it suits them. Part of the reason for this is that technology has itself already come to be of such high value in American culture and society that it threatens to control almost all parts of our lives, to become an end to be served by us rather than a tool used in serving our ends – to become, in a word, a god. 

Postman has quite a bit to say about the “god of Technology” and why it’s not a good reason for school, but the short version is that it is ultimately a “false god.”³⁶50. Not only are its promises to eventually solve all humanity’s problems overdrawn, but even those solutions it manages to deliver always come at a cost, always come with changes to society, culture, and the economy that go well beyond simply making things easier. That these changes are often unintentional and never completely predictable makes them no less real or significant, and for many people in many contexts they’ve proven to be disastrous.³⁷There are countless examples of this throughout history. Consider the environmental effects of the use of internal combustion engines, of plastic wastes, or of industrial scale harvesting. Then again, consider nuclear technologies and the numerous disasters they’ve caused, some more intentional than others. Perhaps no example is more salient to us today than the internet and its numerous unintended consequences, especially for young people, some of which we’re still just beginning to realize. Whether or not any particular technological development is ultimately a good thing for the world is not for me to judge here (and my judgement wouldn’t make much difference anyway). The point is that technology always brings profound and far-reaching consequences, some bad, some good, and is for this reason is not something to be taken lightly, least of all treated as an end in itself. Therefore, to make it a chief aim of public schools to teach students how to use the latest technologies without also teaching them when and why they should use them, or why not, or to what end they should be used, is much worse than inefficient or unnecessary; it’s irresponsible, even dangerous. 

This is to say, in other words, that in teaching technology, the “why” (which necessarily includes the “why not”) is even more important than the “how.” And, I would argue that the same goes for any skill set in which we might wish to train the public. As it is with job skills and technical skills, so it is with life skills, social skills, math skills, language skills, or any others; without adequate direction and purpose, in the hands of the public (especially the youth) these become worse than useless. All of this is just to say that the teaching of practical skills isn’t an adequate reason for public education – is in fact no reason at all, which brings us to the third and final point in Postman’s argument. 

Recall that a “reason,” in the sense in which Postman uses the term in the present work, is not just an agreed-upon learning outcome or measurable goal, but is a transcendent or “metaphysical”³⁸3, 4, 27. Postman uses this term several times to contrast, as I take it, the sort of deeper reasons he’s interested in from more superficial reasons, which often boil down to methods or techniques, means as opposed to ends. principle – a “god” or “narrative” that gives meaning and value to what’s learned. It’s therefore not enough to settle on a least common denominator such as certain levels of proficiency in Math and English. Even were everyone universally to agree these are good things for the public to have, the question would remain, “Why?” To what end? What’s worth calculating? What’s worth communicating? And, what’s not?

So, no, the teaching of practical skills does not constitute an adequate reason for public school. We need to look elsewhere for that, to answer deeper questions, questions about purpose, like those above.³⁹It’s worth mentioning here that the solution is also not as simple as cultivating empathy among students. I don’t deny the benefit and importance of this, but it can’t be the whole answer. Empathy – like all sentiments – has its limits. Without shared beliefs or values behind it, it can be shallow and brittle and will quickly fall apart in the face of true conflict. It’s not that beliefs necessarily matter more than feelings (a debatable point), but that beliefs and feelings are always intertwined. To try and artificially promote empathy without addressing serious differences in beliefs, then, will first of all be met with resistance from some students (and parents) and secondly, even if successful in the short term, will poorly prepare them for life as adults when the stakes become much higher. Thus, the same problem is applicable here. Even if we agree that empathy is something good for the public to have, we must ask why. To what end should we promote this? What is the reason for it? If someone doesn’t want this, why should they buy into it?

This is the point at which things get a little complicated, because finding answers to these questions on which we can all agree is particularly difficult in a nation like the United States – that is, a liberal-secular nation with a diverse population. Indeed, I suspect many parents of students are apt to think the above questions are none of the public schools’ business. Perhaps that’s why we’ve tended to settle on schools offering mere practical skills and left the question of purpose up to individual families – in essence, to privatize purpose. It may seem, after all, only appropriate to limit the role of a government-run educational system on our personal beliefs and values in this way. I certainly see the merits of this position, but nevertheless I think it is a mistake for several reasons.  

First of all, as Postman reminds us, public education in America has from the beginning been organized around a shared purpose, which has of necessity entailed instilling certain beliefs and values in its citizens.⁴⁰See paragraph 4 of the summary above. So, from a historical perspective, there is good precedent for this being very much the schools’ business. Secondly, even if we wanted to try and teach bare skills without any values or beliefs, I don’t think such a thing would be possible. This is because all education is value-laden whether or not we intend it. Even if it’s just in what skills we choose to teach, or how we choose to frame these skills or apply them, there are values communicated in what we teach.⁴¹This point strikes me as at once both blaringly obvious and quite difficult to demonstrate easily. I suppose it rests partly on the notion that we learn just as much from silence as from sound and partly on our natural ability to make inferences about why something might be important or valuable, to fill in the cracks of our education, so to speak. The result is that children learn, from an alarmingly young age, all sorts of things about the reason for school, whether or not anyone ever broaches the topic with them explicitly. I’ve personally had school-children as young as second grade explain to me in no uncertain terms that the reason for school is for individuals to get jobs and make money, plain and simple. I can’t resist adding here that I explored this connection (very briefly) in a presentation I gave through PechaKucha Kalamazoo in the Summer of 2019. See Joel Sanford, Wisdom, Power, and the Pursuit of Happiness, PechaKucha, August 13, 2019, video, 6:50, https://www.pechakucha.com/presentations/wisdom-power-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness. Any promise to provide value-free education is thus a false promise, all the more so because it runs the risk of involving self-deception among its educators. In this way, education without any value judgements has essentially the same problem as news without any bias: it’s not completely possible, and we should be highly skeptical of those who claim to provide it. 

But, supposing we could at least get close, eliminate as much of the value judgement involved in education as possible, wouldn’t that be worth something? Well, yes, it would be worth something, but as Postman argues, such an education system would be worth so little that it would hardly be worth having. It would certainly not be worth enough to justify all the time and expense we now put into public schooling. In such a case, we might well be better off reducing the whole thing to a fraction of what it is now, or privatizing it all, or simply eliminating it altogether. Far from exaggerations, these are precisely the types of possibilities that have been discussed for some time now surrounding American public education,⁴²Apparently, this has been a topic of serious discussion at least since the time Postman was writing in 1995. He mentions several authors predicting and/or advocating such things as public education’s “conversion to privatized schooling . . . its subordination to individually controlled technology [and its being] taken over by corporations . . . and operated entirely on principles associated with a market economy,” 61. Whatever might end up happening to public schools, it appears there has been a growing sentiment in some circles, at least for the last 20 years or so, that they are somehow obsolete – “nineteenth century inventions that have outlived their usefulness,” 195. In our own day, this same sentiment appears to be alive and well, not least among school-children, who are all too willing to be convinced of theories that tell them school has no real point (and certainly they’re partly correct). Many adults agree as well, and examples of this line of thinking abound for anyone who is paying attention to what people are saying about school in the wider culture, especially but not exclusively on the internet. For one particularly relevant example, consider this video by Prince Ea (to which, it’s worth noting, I was first introduced by my own class of seventh grade students): Prince Ea, BEFORE YOU GO TO SCHOOL, WATCH THIS: WHAT IS SCHOOL FOR?, YouTube, September 3, 2018, video, 8:13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PsLRgEYf9E. and this is precisely the sort of end that Postman hopes to avoid in writing the present work. 

As it so happens, for all the talk about the need to reduce, transform, or eliminate public schooling, there are a great many Americans who still seem to believe in it. It shows up time and again as an issue in political races (although some of that involves arguing over the question of privatization). Beyond the political arena, it’s also something on which many a private citizen seems to have an opinion, and not just regarding logistical concerns such as funding, technology, safety protocols, etc., but regarding substantive questions of content and curriculum – questions about what’s being taught in school. I take it as a good sign that so many of us still care about this. I hope it means we recognize just how important and powerful public school is – that it doesn’t just supply skills or disseminate knowledge, but forms and shapes the beliefs and values of the next generation of citizens for life in our shared society – in Postman’s words, that it “creates a public.”⁴³18. 

Of course, just because many of us care about this, doesn’t mean we agree about it; far from it! The question of what should and should not be taught in school can be exceedingly controversial. During my own school-aged years, for example, there was still quite a lot of controversy over the teaching of evolutionary biology and sex education in schools. More recently, there seems to be more argument over issues of race and how exactly public schools should address them.⁴⁴It would be hard to find a better example of the controversy over race and education than that surrounding the 1619 Project. This project, which started with a special issue of New York Times Magazine in August of 2019, “illuminates the legacy of slavery in the contemporary United States, and highlights the contributions of Black Americans to every aspect of American society,” Pulitzer Center, “About The 1619 Project,” The 1619 Project: Education Materials Collection, accessed January 16, 2022, https://1619education.org/about-1619-project. It has grown through partnerships to include a host of educational resources, many of which are made available for free. The “1619” in the title refers to the year in which a ship bearing African slaves arrived in Virginia, and the goal of the project is thus to “reframe American History by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year,” Jake Silversteen, “Editor’s Note,” New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2019, 4-5, accessed January 16, 2022, url: https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the project has met with more than a small amount of criticism from some who see it as revisionist history or otherwise wrong or destructive to traditional American values. Several organizations coming from this perspective have titles including “1776,” apparently as a way to emphasize that year – not 1619 – as key to the start of American history. There are the 1776 Project, 1776 Project PAC, and 1776 Unites to name three such organizations. In each of these cases, education is a central focus, with curriculum and educational resources made available for free. So, here we clearly have a deep controversy with at least two oppositional parties each advocating for their perspective as the best one to be offered to school-children. We could add more items to this list (e.g. issues of gender and/or sexual identity, prayer in school, the pledge of allegiance, etc.), but the point is just that the content and structure of public education is a cause of controversy now as much as ever. 

Perhaps there has always been some controversy over what’s taught in school, and maybe that’s as it should be. However, I would suggest that the controversy is increased, intensified, and exacerbated to an unhealthy degree by a lack of clear purpose within the public education system. This seems evident to me from the way arguments about school content tend to be expressed (e.g. “us versus them”), how they tend to fall along political lines, and how educators themselves tend to respond to them.⁴⁵The responses from educators certainly vary, so at risk of overgeneralizing, what I want to suggest is that educators are sometimes too quick to respond at all to these arguments, to come down on one side or the other of controversial issues. In considering again the example of The 1619 Project (see note 44 above), we might be tempted to either accept the goals of The 1619 Project and implement them in the classroom or to accept the goals of the opposition view and implement them instead. However, my hope is that most educators wouldn’t see it as their role to ally themselves completely with either side of this controversy, but rather to teach the controversy itself – to recognize that 1619 and 1776 are both significant years in American history but that American history in fact begins with neither of these dates, and that all history is perspectival and open to reinterpretation and revision. This is essentially to say that our role should be to teach students how to think, not what to think, and I believe this approach is the sort of thing Postman has in mind with “The American Experiment.” The result seems to be that controversial issues aren’t ever really resolved into compromise or agreement; rather, as happens with many issues, those of opposing views on school tend to become more entrenched in their respective views and arguments continue unresolved, both sides fighting for control. It’s almost as if public schools are viewed by all parties as mere tools to be opportunistically manipulated toward their ends should the chance arrive. 

Don’t get me wrong. The system is in many ways just a tool, and I think some of this sort of manipulation is inevitable. As I mentioned above, all education is value-laden, and those values come from somewhere. However, what’s concerning is the thought that our public education system would be so malleable as to become a tool merely for the service of the current majority or the latest trends. My hope is, rather, that there could be some stability and integrity to the system, that it might withstand the winds of change that sweep through culture and politics. I can think of no better way to provide this than a clear and express purpose for the system which is agreeable to all (or almost all). To put this another way, if public education is a tool, it should be a tool designed and designated for a specific purpose that’s useful to everyone, not one to be used (and abused) by whoever can get their hands on it for whatever they happen to see fit.⁴⁶To put this all yet another way, what I’m arguing is that – as lofty as this goal might sound – public education should transcend partisan politics, not in the sense that it avoids political issues altogether (this would be counterproductive, not to mention impossible), but in the sense that it neither endorses nor excludes any political view held by the public. I recognize the extreme difficulty of this and some of the complications that inevitably will arise, but I also believe that if public education doesn’t do this – if it doesn’t at least attempt it – then it’s not public education at all; it’s mere partisan education, and it’s no wonder certain parties are alienated by it. 

And yet, that’s exactly where we are. If public education isn’t being openly criticized for being outdated, inefficient, or pointless, it’s under threat of being wrent apart by political tug-of-war.⁴⁷I hope I’m being hyperbolic here, but I’m not so sure I am. I recently came across the following book by Mary Rice Hasson and Theresa Farnan, the title of which speaks for itself: Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child From Public School Before It’s Too Late (Washington: Regnery Gateway, 2018). The authors write from a self-described conservative perspective about some of the ideas and values becoming prevalent in American public schools which they find highly objectionable, and they ultimately call on fellow conservatives to remove their children from the system. Who’s to say how many will answer this call? Yet, the fact that this call was made at all, that people are seriously advocating to large numbers of Americans that they abandon the system altogether, is but one more example of the widespread distrust and alienation some feel toward the schools. Everyone seems to agree it’s not doing its job very well, but no one seems to agree on exactly what that job is, which brings us full-circle back to some of our original questions. Is public education experiencing a crisis of purpose? Absolutely, yes. Is it bad enough to spell the end of the system? Again, yes, or at least lots of people seem to think so, and there is evidence that things are already moving in that direction.⁴⁸I have already mentioned those who have been calling for an end of one sort or another to traditional public schooling for the last two decades (see note 42 above) and those now calling for parents to simply abandon the public schools (see note 47 above). To this I’ll add that technology now makes it possible for more and more students to attend school remotely through distance learning and online educational programs. While such programs vary widely in terms of general format and the amount of live instruction and class interaction involved, the overall trend seems to be that more and more is becoming automated and individualized. This means that for many students, school is starting to look increasingly like a series of online training modules. If this doesn’t spell the end of education as we know it, I’m not sure what does. 

So, I am in full agreement with Postman’s framing of this problem. But, what of the solutions he offers? Do any of those five proposed narratives serve as viable reasons for public school? 

My short answer is, “Yes, I think they all do.” To be sure, there are complications to consider for each of them, and none is without its pitfalls, but ultimately I think all of them could work to restore meaning and purpose to the activities of school. I’m tempted to say we could scarcely do worse, since the question of the purpose for school seems to be something hardly anyone takes as seriously as Postman, and these may well be some of the only real offers on the table.  

In what follows, rather than address each of the five solutions in turn, I’ll offer my thoughts about some merits that I think all of them share. 

To start with, all five solutions have the merit of being largely secular – that is, not necessarily tied to any particular religious tradition and compatible with a great many popularly held beliefs and worldviews.⁴⁹Having spent some time studying a fair number of different religious traditions, I know better than to make universal statements about all beliefs or worldviews. There are just too many out there, and counterexamples to any such universal statement are bound to arise. It is as true in public education as it is in life generally: You can’t please everyone. Thankfully, this has never been the goal or standard. This is of course exceedingly important in the United States – a liberal secular nation with an increasingly diverse population with respect to beliefs and religious affiliations. So, although Postman is suggesting in each case that Americans believe in a new “god,” or metaphysical principle, none of these beliefs goes so far as to address such traditional fundamental questions as the origin of the universe, the purpose of life in general, or what is ultimately good or evil. In my estimation, then, relatively few people should have trouble buying into all of the five, at least to some extent, while also maintaining their current religious/philosophical beliefs.⁵⁰A possible exception might be solution number 4, “The Law of Diversity,” to the extent that this “law” is meant to be held as an absolute axiom, meaning that always and everywhere diversity brings excellence and vitality. As Postman acknowledges, some might object that too much diversity sometimes leads to a relativizing of values or standards. He argues against this on the grounds that our shared humanity means we ultimately recognize the good in diverse perspectives, even as we can acknowledge differences. Thus, he suggests, “Diversity does not mean the disintegration of standards” . . . “It is an argument for the growth and malleability of standards,” 80. However, I’m sure there are those for whom growth and malleability are little better than disintegration when it comes to certain standards they’d like to see remain static. In response, I would first of all argue that any standard so important as to remain unchanged in this way I would hope should be able to stand up to outside challenges. In any case, those of this persuasion have little say in the matter. The fact is that we are a diverse nation, and our diversity does raise challenges to monolithic standards of excellence. The question is how we choose to respond to these challenges – by embracing them or resisting them. For more on this, continue reading. 

This leads us rather directly into what I would consider another merit shared by all five solutions – their orientation toward inclusivity and diversity. Whether it’s the inclusion of all humanity in a collective struggle under “The Spaceship Earth;” the inclusion of diverse beliefs and opinions under the “The Fallen Angel” and “The American Experiment;” the inclusion of numerous perspectives, understandings, and interpretations of language under “The Word Weavers/The World Makers;” or the inclusion of diversity in all its forms under “The Law of Diversity,” inclusivity and diversity seem to be major themes in Postman’s solutions. This is important for several reasons, beginning with the observation made above regarding secularity: that America is a liberal secular nation comprised of quite a diverse population. We are diverse not just in terms of religious belief and identity, but also race, ethnicity, cultural and national heritage, socio-economic background, gender/sexual identity and orientation, and of course political opinion. This remains both one of the greatest promises and challenges of America as a nation, as a government, and as an idea – or “experiment” as Postman accurately puts it. How can such a diverse group of people come together and cooperate as a society? Can they? If so, how can they hope to effectively maintain and manage a democratic system of government? That these are open questions – that we’re still in the experimental stage nearly 250 years after the start – should surprise no one given some recent events.⁵¹I’m referring above all to the events of January 6th, 2021, during which a group of about 2,000 people invaded the capitol complex in Washington, D.C. and obstructed part of the official process to finalize the presidential election. However one feels about these events, they certainly indicate a blatant distrust in the democratic process on the part of this group. But, as I see it, this is but one symptom of a long-standing deeper problem for our nation. I think it’s accurate to say there’s been a deterioration of trust among Americans generally in many parts of the democratic process, the government, and their fellow citizens for quite some time. In my experience, it’s become something of a cliche to say that “we’re as divided as ever before,” and maybe we are. Divisions have always been a part of the package, and arguing over our divisions a part of the process. What’s concerning now is that we’re starting to see what happens when arguments cease. 

At this point, we would do well to pause and consider what’s at stake here. What I’m discussing goes well beyond the institutionalized public education system to encompass the whole of American society itself. In the end, this book is primarily about what makes us a society in the first place: the shared identity, beliefs, and values – the shared purpose that brings us together and keeps us together as a nation, rather than a mere collection of individuals. In short, this book is about the heart and soul of America. Both in principle and in practice, to be truly viable, any heart and soul of America must account for and represent the full diversity of Americans. This is why an orientation toward inclusivity and diversity are essential to any shared purpose. Postman’s main insight, then, lies in identifying the public education system as the best hope for instilling this in the public and indeed in recognizing this as the right and proper role of public school in the first place. 

But, what a task! One might reasonably wonder these days whether such a thing is either desirable or possible. It is my belief that it is both, which is an optimistic position, to be sure. To explain my reasons for it will lead me to two additional merits shared by Postman’s proposed solutions. 

So, why is it desirable to use schools to instill the American public with shared purpose? For that matter, why is it desirable for America to have a cohesive public in the first place? Why is it desirable for America as a nation to exist at all?⁵²As unfashionable as it may still be to raise questions such as these explicitly, I think there are numerous reasons they are worth raising, and I get the distinct impression that people are actively raising these questions anyway, if not through their words, through their actions and attitudes toward their fellow citizens. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. For me the answer goes all the way back to some of the foundational values of our nation, some of those “old gods” of which we may still have some use. To put it briefly, I believe America is worth preserving because liberal democracy is worth preserving. There is much more that could be said on this question, and this by no means exhausts the list of reasons to want to preserve American society, but suffice it to say here that, for me, this is top of the list. 

Yet, liberty is a tricky thing, as is democracy. Without certain measures in place to tame and protect them, both can easily prove either self-destructive to society or end up as mere false promises. I therefore count it as an additional merit that Postman’s solutions all seem interested in providing those measures and are all in this way complementary to liberal democracy. Some more directly than others, but each in their own way pays complement to ensuring personal liberty and democratic cooperation are able to exist side-by-side. For example, consider “The American Experiment,” which takes as its main educational goal the teaching of arguments and argumentation with a view to equipping citizens to enter into arguments in a constructive, sophisticated, and critical manner. It seems to me that little could be more essential to the healthy functioning of a liberal democratic nation than the ability of its citizens to argue well (i.e. constructively). At the risk of over-explaining this connection, allow me to break it down in the following terms. If people are going to be allowed to think, speak, and act freely, they’re going to disagree; if they’re going to disagree, they need to learn how to resolve disagreements in some way that’s constructive. Perhaps if we emphasized this more in schools, we’d have a citizenry better able to handle the responsibilities that liberty and democracy require. Similarly, if we placed greater emphasis on our interconnectedness, our own fallibility, an appreciation of diversity, and an awareness of the role of language in our understanding, we’d have a citizenry much more well equipped to navigate the many challenges that inevitably arise in a liberal-secular democratic nation such as ours, not to mention in the wider world. That’s the education our citizens need, and that’s what Postman’s solutions offer. 

So, maybe this all sounds good in theory, but how realistic is it? Can we really hope to use something like our public school system to accomplish all this? To create a citizenry with shared value and purpose, which can disagree, argue, compromise, and cooperate – especially with such a large and diverse population? 

That is a key question, and one which I can’t answer definitively. I can say, first of all, that we’ll never know for sure unless we try. Secondly, in my estimation, if we’re going to try, Postman’s solutions or something similar to them would probably be about as good a chance as any we’ll get. This brings me to the final merit shared by all five solutions – that they are balanced and realistic enough to work in the United States. 

Postman is explicit in his intentions to propose realistic solutions to the problem he identifies – i.e. to propose narratives that could actually work in America for Americans.⁵³See p.62. In my view, he succeeds in this attempt, and he does so largely by striking something of a balance, avoiding extreme positions that only a minority can accept or positions that are otherwise a poor fit for our politics, culture, etc.. A couple of his proposed narratives – “The American Experiment” and “The Law of Diversity” – are to a significant extent about this sort of balance. Both remind us of the constant need to consider people different from us and perspectives different from our own. The  ideal hoped-for result of this is that all individuals and groups should be insiders, none should be excluded or marginalized.⁵⁴Of course, ideals rarely if ever square with reality. It’s important to recognize that any education system we come up with will be imperfect. The important thing here is to have the right goals in mind to strive toward. Even those narratives that are not exactly about balance nevertheless strike a balance among extremes – a moderate enough position to hopefully be acceptable (or at least not too objectionable) to the vast majority of Americans. “The Fallen Angel” and the “Word Weavers/The World Makers” are both concerned with aspects of humanity that are universal and therefore, I should hope, hardly a cause for objection on political or ideological grounds. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone uses language. Understanding this better can only help us understand ourselves and each other better.

“The Spaceship Earth” is perhaps the narrative that runs the greatest risk of finding objection on political grounds in America. Several historically prominent American values run counter to the idea that the whole Earth and all humanity are sharing in a collective struggle and responsibility,⁵⁵Some of the values I have in mind here are nationalism, ethnocentrism, traditionalism, social Darwinism, and individualism, not to mention racism and simple self-centeredness. so it’s easy to foresee such a narrative being considered too liberal or anti-American by some. However, my hope would be that the majority of Americans would consider this something worth teaching our young, particularly if, as Postman suggests, we begin by emphasizing care of our immediate neighborhoods, expanding outward from there. Failing that, this narrative also has the benefit of being, in its basic points, undeniably true: we are all connected whether we like it or not. How we choose to respond to that fact is up to us, but certainly learning about those connections is in the best interest of our citizens. Perhaps for this reason, if for no other, I believe this narrative can work even in America. 

So, to recap, I think Postman is right that American public education is experiencing a crisis of purpose, and I think his proposed solutions to this crisis are all quite viable based on several merits they all seem to share. They are all largely secular, inclusive, supportive of liberal democracy, and balanced enough to be realistic in America. I believe we would do well to adopt any or all of them. 

There remains, however, one set of questions still to answer: if we want to adopt these principles, just how can we go about doing that? Who do we need to convince to actually make this change, and how would it be made? 

In thinking about this question, I must first of all admit that I can think of no simple or easy answer. As it stands today, the American public education system is large; it’s complex, and it’s dynamic, with many moving parts and many people that make decisions for it at various levels. It is also what one might call decentralized. Some significant policies and decisions come top-down from the federal level, but many more are made at the state and local levels. Local school boards, district and building administrators, and individual teachers all wield a significant amount of power when it comes to what’s actually being taught in the classroom. Ideally, then, the answer to the question of who to convince is “everyone.” However, since such an ideal goal is rather too grand to be of much help at this point, I’ll offer just a couple more thoughts on where we might start in making these changes. 

Of all of the stakeholders in the educational system mentioned above, those with the most frequent and consistent direct contact with students, and therefore the most immediate capability to enact any changes, are teachers.⁵⁶I would include here also paraprofessionals, teacher’s aids, counselors, etc. – basically anyone who has direct contact with students and/or is involved in providing instruction. All are in a position to make this change. If, as is sometimes said, teachers are “the heart” of the public education system, then we’ve no better way to change the system than to change the hearts and minds of teachers. Even without any changes to standards, policies, or curricula, individual teachers can change how they teach to serve a new purpose (even if it means subverting certain official purposes to some extent).⁵⁷I happen to know teachers can do this because they already are doing it. It’s no secret that educators do much more than teach the required federal, state, and local standards. This seems inevitable given all the time they spend with students, and I’m not sure I’d have it any other way. But, it’s also an awesome responsibility, the implications of which ought to be taken very seriously. I’ve already mentioned that all education is value-laden (see paragraph 22 above) and that teachers are sometimes very quick to adopt and proliferate certain viewpoints on issues they deem important (see note 45 above). It may or may not surprise some readers to know that there is an awful lot of discussion among public educators about what’s “really important” for students to learn and that some of the things deemed important by certain parties have little if anything to do with what’s mandated by the state and federal governments. In many ways, when it comes right down to it, each individual teacher gets to decide what’s most important to them, which is an extraordinary amount of freedom and power. This is, I should add, a part of the crisis of purpose that’s a central concern of the present work – that is, there’s no clear unified purpose to the system; rather, everyone seems to be choosing one for themselves. So, it is with some reservations that I’m suggesting – since we’re picking and choosing already at this point – teachers should choose for their own purpose one or more of those offered by Postman or something close to them, in the short term at least. Postman provides some suggestions on ways this might be done,⁵⁸Because so much of his book focuses on the big picture, many of Postman’s practical suggestions involve large-scale, systemic changes that would require political or administrative buy-in, but some of them can be implemented immediately by individual teachers in their classrooms, with little or no outside changes. Some of my favorite of these ideas include students being asked and encouraged to point out and correct a teacher’s errors (p. 117-18), students being asked to consider questions about the effects of various communications media and technology (p. 141, 190), students being taught about the origins of words in the English language (p. 146-47), and, of course, students being introduced to the study of various religious traditions (p. 151-57). but I’m confident that any decent educator will have no trouble finding their own ways to do so if they truly believe in the purpose they’re serving. Thus, in the short term, I would urge teachers to start considering the ideas and arguments outlined here very seriously. 

So much for the short term. In the long term, I think we would do well to remember one key aspect of the educational system that has remained unchanged since the beginning – it is public. This means, among other things, that the system belongs to the public, and ultimately, it is the public that decides (or should decide) what it should be, provide, and do – in other words, what its purpose is. One of the most direct ways this can be done is through voting, specifically voting for school board positions. Local school boards make many decisions for their districts, but most important to our purposes here are the decisions they make about the missions and guiding principles of the districts they serve. As artificial or sometimes vacuous as something like a mission statement can be,⁵⁹It has been illuminating to me to do just a bit of research into mission statements of school districts. Too often in my view, they rely on buzzwords that lend themselves to extreme vagueness (e.g. “success,” “achievement,” “pursuing dreams,” “excellence,” “making a better world,” etc.). I don’t mean to attach too much importance to this, but I do wonder whether we’re sometimes simply being intentionally vague in order to gain approval from a wide constituency. After all, who would argue that “success” isn’t a good thing? The problem, of course, is that different people define success quite differently. it is nevertheless a chance to put down in writing a clear purpose. To the extent that it is taken seriously and enforced, it is my hope that it really can change what we teach and how we teach it. For this reason, I would urge school board members to consider seriously the ideas and arguments outlined here, and I would urge the public at large to do the same, to vote accordingly, and to demand that their districts seriously address the purpose for their schools. 

In the end, it may well be that none of this will make much difference. There are many forces in society working against giving public education a transcendent purpose, and our schools may already be on their way to a much less noble fate. 

I hope this is not the case, and I remain optimistic that it won’t be – an optimism I’ve derived in no small part from Neil Postman. No author has been more inspiring to me in this regard, and no book has better encapsulated my own relationship and attitude toward our schools than The End of Education. Increasingly, the kind of education it envisions is the only kind of which I find myself wanting to be a part. In any case, it’s the kind I believe our country truly needs. 

The Bottom Line

In my last review in this series, of Teaching as a Conserving Activity, I wrote that it “is a brilliantly insightful and original work that is much more than a book about teaching written for teachers. It tackles crucially important questions about society and its overall stability with a focus on what the public education system should – or should not – do about them.”⁶⁰“Review: Teaching as a Conserving Activity by Neil Postman,” “The Bottom Line.”

All of these words could apply equally well to The End of Education. The only thing I’ll add is that here, more than in any of his other works, Postman cuts straight to the heart of what’s at stake in American public education – namely the heart of the American public. For this reason, despite some concerns regarding clarity and detail, I highly recommend this book to anyone with a stake in American society, but especially to my fellow educators. May we fully realize our purpose and live up to it . . . before it’s too late. 

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