BACK TO SCHOOL
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Is School an Octopus
By SAMUEL WITHERS
Council for Basic Education
The tendency of American
schools has been to take on more
and more responsibility for bring
ing up our country’s young people.
'Kie range of subjects taught has
been steadily expanded (often un
der the banner of “Enrichment”
and the range of years has ex
tended both downward and upward
from the traditional twelve years
of public school.
Now if the schools are criticized
for this expansion and extension,
their spokesman cry that the crit
ics are for retrenchment. But re
trenchment in itself is not always
bad. One may retrench from a poor
position without loss of honor. Are
the schools trying to do too much?
I think they are.
There was a good reason for the
schools’ larger guardianship of
their charges — a guardianship
which, in many schools, made intel
lectual training of these charges
only a minor part of their respon
sibility. Fifty years ago, when this
expansion of program really began,
there were many immigrant child
dren and many children of the new
era in industry who would have
been nearly orphans if the schools
had not mothered them.
But now, while most of these
strains have been assimilated into
our culture and there are many
other agencies besides the schools
to help in personal adjustment and
family problems, the social side of
the schools’ program has become
steadily more emphasized.
Courses in Socializing
Included in the all-protective
duties of today’s schools is instruc
tion in cleanliness, acceptable sex
habits, proper attitudes towards
“peers," parents, and dance part
ners; dating procedures, driving
techniques and habits, training for
citizenship, reverence for God and
country, and reverence for the
American way of life. Homemaking
and cabinetmaking, among the first
acquisitions under the new con
cept, are still included.
A desire for bureaucracy fosters
(this continuation and further ex
pansion of the province of Ameri
can schools. In a parallel to Park
inson’s law, the more the schools
take unto themselves, the larger
the staffs they require; and the
larger the staffs (guidance person
nel, administrative assistants, ets.),
the more the schools want to take
over the personal as well as the in
tellectual lives of thir pupils.
Secondly — and here schools are
not mainly to blame, parents have
abdicated their duties. Where par
ents have seen the school ready to
teach everything from Emily Post
to posterity, most of them have re
laxed, realizing that now their only
parental jobs were conception, pre
natal care, child-bearing, and a
couple of years of infancy. There
was a brave new institution ready
to manage the children from there
on. (How far backward in this
chain the schools might go if their
downward extension continues is
both comic and horrifying to con
sider.)
Bring Back Family
(Continued On Page 4)