"The idea that we ought to help children become more challenging, more willing to stand up to authority, will seem both curious and objectionable to adults who view kids as too rude, loud, and rebellious already. The central mission of many books (and workshops) on the subject of classroom management is to create a more efficient environment for the teacher to pursue her agenda, and that generally entails heading off inconvenient challenges from students. Of course, this tells us more about the desire for compliance on the part of the people who write and read these books than it does about what children are like." [6]
Further, we cannot discount what Atwood and Kohn suggest about assumptions concerning human nature at the center of our commitment to education for compliance: Gilead in Atwood's novel is a Christian theocracy, a government grounded in a belief in Original Sin. As Kohn notes above, authoritarian and scripted approaches to children reveal a faith among those in authority that children (and all humans) are essentially flawed and must be corrected. And therein lies the ultimate paradox of the U.S. as a culture claiming to believe in individual freedom and democracy but institutionalizing its contradictory faith in debased human nature.
If humans are truly born with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we as a people who embrace human agency and freedom must have faith that humans are essentially good, not slaves to Original Sin. To be a people committed to democracy and individual freedom, we must not embrace a public education system driven by coercion and compliance.
The accountability movement, then, is focusing on "fixing" the people while never considering the failure of the systems:
When students drop out of our schools, instead of assuming there is something wrong with the children themselves, what are the conditions in our schools and our society that are compelling these children to drop out?
When student test scores are low, instead of examining the students, what are the flaws in the tests themselves, in the process of testing itself?
When educators cheat on standardized testing, instead of assuming those teachers to be self-serving and "bad apples," what in our system of accountability is driving professionals to these behaviors?
When poverty proves time and again to be the primary determining factor in student outcomes, instead of trying to remediate the children living in poverty, what are the social forces creating lives of poverty for those children and their families?
As Atwood's novel shows us, to abdicate our faith in human agency to some authority is to abdicate our humanity. June as a free human is kind and loving--oppressed and coerced, she is debased and murderous.
The public discourse about education and education reform, then, must confront the contradictions being championed by the new reformers, all speaking from lives of privilege and authority:
People in authority who promote coercion--"no excuses" charter schools, standards, testing, rubrics--are in fact stating that freedom and autonomy are for the elite only, not for those Others who must be compelled to comply. [The paradox of authoritarian ideology is that humans are flawed and must be corrected, but that begs the question, Who then can be the authority if all humans are flawed?] Human freedom, then, is not a basic right of all people, but something earned within the guidelines and purview of the ruling elite.
If we are genuinely people committed to democracy and individual freedom, and if we genuinely believe universal public education is essential for that democracy and freedom to thrive, then we must reject education policy and practices that are committed to coercion and not human agency.
U.S. public education and current calls for education reform are committed to maintaining the authority of the elite--not ensuring a thriving democracy, not honoring human dignity and agency.
We are raising birds in cages and demanding that they earn the right to fly.
We are raising pit bulls to fight and putting them to sleep for their violence.
We are forcing children to sit down, shut up, do as they are told, and then wondering why they can't think for themselves. . .
We need to look in the mirror of public education and see ourselves for who we are, not what we claim to be.
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