Looking at the U.S. educational system with a hammer

 Khan’s “The Broken Model” and the video “The Short History of American School” show the creation of American public schools. Both sources mention how Horace Mann brought the Prussian model of education to the U.S., instilling values of obedience and promptness to prepare students for the workforce. This model made a seven hour day of subject blocks denoted by bells ringing, physical education, and a lunch period inside the schoolhouse an obligation for all children. It is diametrically opposed to fostering creativity and imagination amongst them. 

The pictures above illustrate how the U.S. school system propagates a culture of capitalism and consumerism. These ideals do not allow for free thinking and curiosity, forcing every child into the same box of docile student aka worker aka subject. This reminds me of Karl Marx’s work “Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property,” in which he writes that 

“The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.” 

Students must give up an essential experience, whether you’d consider that sociocultural or biological or one of the human soul, in order to pursue their education in America. The worst part about it is that this is not a choice that students make for themselves. It is just the way things are. They are reduced to mere tools of capital accumulation.

Mann viewed this Prussian model of education as an equalizer for children insofar as it allowed for all children to learn about things that were previously inaccessible to them. I don’t disagree that the possession of knowledge is a means to accessing power, yet the way in which children acquire this knowledge fundamentally disempowers them. Khan writes that “the state’s apparently benevolent goal of universal education has actually been an insidious effort to capture all children in its net,” (12). Some of the ways to escape the net are 1) not attend public school and/or 2) move out of the U.S. These options are not just inaccessible economically, but many families do not have the bandwidth nor access to information to do this for their children. 

Regardless, the onus should not be on individual families to provide their children with a robust education. I agree with Khan that a robust education is one that doesn’t reduce fields of study to “subjects” that need to be tested with rote memorization in an environment that prioritizes subordination. It is one that fosters a child’s identity as an individual in the pursuit of knowledge. To achieve this requires an entire overhaul of the U.S. educational system. To achieve this would require a monumental shift in the sociocultural milieu of America, as many systems are wrapped up into one another. To reimagine one might mean reimagining another. This might be scary and impossible for some to conceptualize. To me, it is also exciting and necessary. The U.S. educational system upholds privilege– educational and subsequent economic inequalities, the school-to-prison pipeline, just to name a few examples– and it needs to be addressed with a hammer.