The Future of Secondary Education

Bobbit’s vision of the post-nation state (that he calls “the market state”) is much more optimistic than mine. He believes, for instance, that not every society will adopt the most aggressive form of the new order. Some societies will fight to retain some of the vestiges of the nation-state (such as the 100% free public education for everybody, for instance) and will even succeed. (This is not my position but Bobbitt knows a lot more about it than I do. Besides, optimism is attractive.)

According to Bobbitt, the society that will not even try to hang on to the welfare state* and will, instead, embrace the new model completely and whole-heartedly, kicking away every last trapping of the nation-state, is the United States. He says that this is a country that always resisted centralization. Its citizens are historically suspicious of the government. Everybody will be only happy to see the weakened government lose its power to do anything of great value.

I think he’s right. Look at what’s happening. Academics are cheering Bill Gates’s attempts to wrestle control of academic publishing from academic institutions. Nobody even tries to wonder what the privatization of scholarship will mean in the long term.

But forget about higher ed. At this point, there is a huge question as to whether the 100% free public education for everybody will survive the changes. And what do people do? They are battling Common Core – the state’s last, pathetic effort to hang on to secondary education. And they will win, too. This will be a Pyrrhic victory because, for the first time since the consolidation of the nation-state 100 years ago, we will have huge groups in the population that will get no secondary or even primary education at all. But ooh, we will have beaten the big bad gubmint and taken away its right to tell us what to do.

Sorry for sounding bitter, folks, but 100% literacy and the free secondary education for all is one of my most favorite achievements of humanity. It arose because it was desperately needed by the nation-state**. And now that the nation-state is fading away it’s at risk of dying away.

I’m also sorry for plunging into the heavy stuff right on the first day of the new year but this is the year of working on my second book and I have to be in good intellectual form. On the positive note, I’m traveling to Montreal on Saturday and there will be many opportunities for uplifting posts about shopping and restaurants.

* Every nation-state is a welfare state by definition.

** I can explain why the nation-state needed it so badly if anybody wants to know.

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50 responses to “The Future of Secondary Education”

J. Otto Pohl

January 1, 2015

We don’t have free secondary education in Ghana.

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January 1, 2015

// uplifting posts about shopping and restaurants.

Just wanted to note that different things are uplifting for different people. I am not interested in shopping and restaurants, but yes – in nation state, especially when somebody is so optimistic.

// 100% literacy and the free secondary education for all is one of my most favorite achievements of humanity. It arose because it was desperately needed by the nation-state

Because you need people to know the state cares for them (education and good jobs), if they are expected to go to wars? Also, educated population will give more to the state than an ignorant one, will help the state to become stronger than other states. Unlike in today’s world, in which one can invite professionals from other countries or move companies there.

Have I missed something?

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cliff arroyo

January 1, 2015

I think too much emphasis is given on war-making as a raison d’etre of the nation state. The primary reason for the creation of the nation state is more organizational.

Human social organization tends toward a (universal?) clan-tribal orientation that has some benefits but lots of drawbacks as well. For one, contacts between people from different clans/tribes tends to be difficult and fraught with mistrust. The nation state is a way of redirecting the existing clan-tribal loyalties toward a larger unit of abstraction.

Education helps makes that reorientation from “my people who I know” to “my people, most of which I’ll never actually meet” easier.

And in general technological advancement means you need a larger chunk of the population to be educated for things to run. And more educated people want a say in how things are run and in the decision making process.

From the governmental perspective: Technological advance in its current form means we don’t need so many educated people so why keep educating everybody? Why convince them they should have a say in how things are run when that’s not true?
Why try to educate the people living in particular borders when we can just poach the people we want from anywhere?

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1. el
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  // I think too much emphasis is given on war-making as a raison d’etre of the nation state. The primary reason for the creation of the nation state is more organizational.
  
  I like your interpretation better.
  
  // Why try to educate the people living in particular borders when we can just poach the people we want from anywhere?
  
  I think it happens much less in Israel (yet) since Jewish Israelis are very worried about becoming a minority and Israel tends to let only Jews in. Am I mistaken? All the time, when I read nation state posts, I try to apply them to my country and most things don’t suit, in my opinion. Educated Israelis working abroad does suit, but letting any (non Jewish) foreign immigrants in, let alone inviting them, doesn’t.
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  War – making is the point and goal of any state. This is an interesting philosophical question: is war a pathological state that humanity is trying to avoid by all costs or is it a natural way of being? Obviously, there are different philosophical systems that answer this question differently.
  
  The very definition of a state is that of a construct that can exercise internal and external violence on behalf of the people. Since the state is about violence and everything else is incidental, dropping war out of the equation is too big of a leap for me.
  
  Everything else you say is spot on.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    January 1, 2015
    
    It’s a chicken-egg thing. Different social organization made different kinds of war possible, that doesn’t mean that was how/why the form of social organization came into being.
    
    My favorite moment of Penny Dreadful* was one character noting that it was just a matter of time before war underwent the same transformations from industrialization as the rest of society…
    
    *a tv series, not great but usually entertaining and often very good (I was despairing a little when I realized it was largely an Eva Green vehicle, but she was up to the challenge and I’ve had to re-evaluate her after disliking her a lot in Casino Royale).
    
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Clarissa

January 1, 2015

OK, first of all, how can one not care about restaurants and shopping? That’s just wrong. 🙂

I will write a post on why the compulsory state education arose in the XIX th century since readers seem interested.

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1. el
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  \ I will write a post on why the compulsory state education arose in the XIX th century since readers seem interested.
  
  Can you also write why nation states arose when they did and not earlier? Or have you already written about it?
  
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Stille (@aperfectbalance)

January 1, 2015

Why did the nation state need the education system?

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aglaonika

January 1, 2015

Yep, I’m also interested in it.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  See the most recent post.
  
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matt

January 1, 2015

Who is talking about doing away with secondary education? Any serious organizations? Conservatives (broadly, of course not all) support public funding, but private education implementation through vouchers primarily. Secondary education is aka high school (grades 9-12 in us correct)? Has ANY national politician or major foundation supported doing away with free k-12? Just because some think unions and schools based explicitly on where you live should go the way of the dodo bird doesn’t mean supporting going away from paying for that school. Hell, most conservatives more than anything would probably say, military, police, and public education (k-12 at least) are govt. 3 biggest roles.

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cliff arroyo

January 1, 2015

Wake up and smell the coffee. It’s not what politicians say, it’s what they do. Politicians all warble about how important public education is, how many of them send their kids to public schools?

Vouchers are an intermediate step in the government divesting itself of educational obligations. It introduces competition between schools as a means to close down unerfperforming ones (and the popular ones won’t need public money).

“Just because some think unions and schools based explicitly on where you live should go the way of the dodo bird doesn’t mean supporting going away from paying for that school”

That’s just silly. Of course it is. The idea of public education is that it’s largely fungible that it doesn’t matter which lake you got the water from as long as its clean. All political moves in education have been about poisoning some lakes (making education non-fungible).

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Clarissa

January 1, 2015

Bobbitt is being read faithfully in the White House and Downing Street. He worked for Carter, Bush and Clinton. He is deeply admired by Tony Blair.

All that I’m saying in these posts is new to you (and it was new to me) but it is very well-known, and has been for quite a while, in the top echelons of power.

Please observe, as well, that Bobbitt worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations. Because aside from small cosmetic differences in policy there is an underlying reality that no political party can brush off.

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musteryou

January 1, 2015

The signs that the middle-brow by temperament will get any education of any significance is very low indeed. I see how they fight against it. They claw against anything that smacks even the slightest bit of elitism and project their own identities into it. I cautioned that it is better not to say, “This philosopher is stupid” about any philosopher but rather, “I perceive this philosopher to be stupid.” That second approach is not only much more philosophical, but gives you some wiggle-room for future growth. But the troll (let us call him middle class America) resorts back to the first statement.

What I see is that there will be a separation between high and low, with those who can at least tolerate THE MOOD of elitism breaking off from those who cannot tolerate it. That will be the substantive basis for the point of departure.

Once this break-away has occurred, certain barriers, administrative, psychological and otherwise, will be erected against those who have been left behind. They will never be able to catch up again and will have sealed their own fates — at least at this point in history.

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aglaonika

January 1, 2015

“What I see is that there will be a separation between high and low, with those who can at least tolerate THE MOOD of elitism breaking off from those who cannot tolerate it.”

Do you talk about intellectual elitism, or some other kind?

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1. musteryou
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  At the moment I am talking about a sort of Nietzschean mood of intellectual elitism, but circumstances could also lead to it sprout into other kinds.
  
  To explain further my idea of how the MOOD of elitism could become a wedge, I think that is already happening as public schools adopt the idea that children should run their own education. The child-parents axis has the authority, but the teacher does not. This leads to an overweening arrogance, which is not condusive to learning. Other parents send their children to private schools, which have the characterstic that the authority of the teacher is still maintained.
  
  Let me try to explain some more. If there is an acknowledged gap between an authority and a pupil, learning can stil take place. We do not read books to take in what we think we already know. The student who wants to learn more than he or she knows actually REQUIRES that a gap be maintanied between themselves and the one imparting knowledge. The capacity of a person or a culture to maintain that sense of a gap is what I call a tacit admittance of elitism. Without this gap, nothing is attained — at least nothing more than has already been attained.
  
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  1. aglaonika
    
    January 1, 2015
    
    “We do not read books to take in what we think we already know.”
    
    So the parents who don’t possess the mood of intellectual elitism will be able to teach the bullshit they think they already know to their kids, as the state won’t have a say in the education of the children? This way the new state model won’t be any closer to meritocracy as the former was, because kids still can’t choose where they want to born, and those who are born in the wrong place will be kept on an intellectual level from where they won’t have even the chance to move forward. If this will be true the power dynamics won’t be that different indeed.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 1, 2015
      
      “So the parents who don’t possess the mood of intellectual elitism will be able to teach the bullshit they think they already know to their kids, as the state won’t have a say in the education of the children?”
      
      EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the greatest danger of this system that I’m talking about. In the US, it is already increasingly fashionable to “homeschool” and “unschool”, leaving the children with zero chance at getting any exposure to any ideas than the ones held by their parents.
      
      It is an absolute tragedy, in my view.
      
      “This way the new state model won’t be any closer to meritocracy as the former was, because kids still can’t choose where they want to born, and those who are born in the wrong place will be kept on an intellectual level from where they won’t have even the chance to move forward.”
      
      Precisely. As you can see, this is enormously problematic.
      
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    2. musteryou
      
      January 1, 2015
      
      Yes it is how reality works, in unfair ways, and not according to any efficient system to give people what they deserve when they deserve it. Like everything, Darwinianism plays its part. It’s not like every animal that gets killed by a lion is of an inferior genetic strain. Many are very fit, robust animals, or just very young animals that would have fared extremely well.
      
      What I am pointing to is very far from being a system of natural justice. But I am pointing to something interesting that seems to be occurring right now, which is human instincts making an adjustment in relations to themselves. I’ll try to put it this way. A great deal of latitude has been offered for children and parents who want to bring up the children themselves. Actually, in a way that issue of the education of minors doesn’t even interest me as much as the way that fully grown adults fight with fury against being educated by drawing extremely narrow boundary lines. We see that on the Internet, for instance. But in any case, children and parents. Certainly. We have been experimenting with letting them to their own thing to a large extent, as a society. What they’ve come up with is a tendency to push forward a view that knowledge isn’t all that important. We’ve let them do that, and like trolls on the Internet they have come up with the ideal short-term solution to bolster their self-esteem. “If knowledge is difficult to obtain, it isn’t worth it. I/we are fine just the way we are!”
      
      But of course this is a decline in consciousness, so certain sectors of society will be in revolt against it. They’re the ones who still maintain that there may be a gap between what they already know, having sprung out of the womb, and what they ought to know.
      
      Like anything with humanity, imbalances and attempts to make corrections are messy and do not guarantee any perfect outcome. A lot of potentially worthy young springbok will be eaten.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        “A great deal of latitude has been offered for children and parents who want to bring up the children themselves. Actually, in a way that issue of the education of minors doesn’t even interest me as much as the way that fully grown adults fight with fury against being educated by drawing extremely narrow boundary lines.”
        
        Given that most people stay at the emotional, psychological and intellectual age of 12 until the day they die, it doesn’t really matter if we speak of children or adults.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        I agree totally. i wish I didn’t.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        “I agree totally. i wish I didn’t.”
        
        I wish so, too! I don’t like to be so negative but that is the conclusion I am forced to reach.
        
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        aglaonika
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        “Given that most people stay at the emotional, psychological and intellectual age of 12 until the day they die, it doesn’t really matter if we speak of children or adults.”
        
        Wow. I’ve always said the same thing, just with the age of 13, but everybody just laughed at it, and I got shut down. Finally, I got an approval. Is there a theory out there about this btw?
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        “{Wow. I’ve always said the same thing, just with the age of 13, but everybody just laughed at it, and I got shut down. Finally, I got an approval. Is there a theory out there about this btw?”
        
        Yes, there is, definitely. But my mind is a complete blank on the subject right now. It’s one of the 2nd half of the XXth century psychoanalysts who advanced this idea.
        
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  2. Clarissa
    
    January 1, 2015
    
    “Let me try to explain some more. If there is an acknowledged gap between an authority and a pupil, learning can stil take place. We do not read books to take in what we think we already know. The student who wants to learn more than he or she knows actually REQUIRES that a gap be maintanied between themselves and the one imparting knowledge. The capacity of a person or a culture to maintain that sense of a gap is what I call a tacit admittance of elitism.”
    
    Very true. It is extraordinarily hard to push people towards letting in new information. Extraordinarily hard. Which is why I like my blog because my readers don’t have this extreme intellectual rigidity. I have no idea why people are so terrified of the word “elite.” Of course, we are the world’s intellectual elite. See how we choose to spend the first day of the year? Reading about and discussing the stuff that the absolute majority of people in the world is not equipped to understand or care about.
    
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    1. aglaonika
      
      January 1, 2015
      
      “I have no idea why people are so terrified of the word “elite.””
      
      I’m terrified of it because my self-righteous authoritarian ex-soldier uncle always used this word when he talked about himself. He was very very very far of any kind of elitism. I hear this word and his dumb face comes into my mind at once. I have no idea about other people though. 😎 Maybe the word was abused by people like my uncle too much.
      
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      1. musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        I think a certain brashness and self-justifying tendency to dominate has become associated with the term. But to my mind, as I have stated before, a real elite is one that is capable of dealing with its dirt in the most inoffensive way possible. To my mind we can really distinguish between different grades of power by how they dispose of their dirt. There are those who get very offensive and try to excrete it onto you. I doh’t call those people elite by any means. You need to be able to deal with things discretely and diplomatically. A lot of the disposal of dirt must be hidden from view. You can’t go around excreting on people, because only those with very damaged and debased mindsets will take this as a sign of your innate superiority. People have to learn to be subtle.
        
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        aglaonika
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        “But to my mind, as I have stated before, a real elite is one that is capable of dealing with its dirt in the most inoffensive way possible. To my mind we can really distinguish between different grades of power by how they dispose of their dirt.”
        
        From this point of view I’m quite far of being an “elite”. It’s very hard for me to be subtle in a powerless situation (and this is a huge problem in my everyday life). I wonder if you see a connection between the level of power one possesses (I mean material power here like position, wealth, connections, etc.) and one’s ability of being subtle. Because for me it’s easy to be subtle when I possess some kind of material power. However when I find myself in a powerless situation, I become anxious and can’t be subtle any more and then I can be very cynic and rude.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Let me think. One of the reasons why subtlety “works” as part of the masterly disposition is that it simply requires less energy. Another reason is that one is much more likely to keep one’s position in a state of power if one’s actions are smooth and virtually undetectable. Another is that, because this mode of behavior has developed over the evolution of history, similar types recognise others by their mannerisms.
        
        Not being subtle is the prerogative of the powerless — and it is a real prerogative. I, myself, have learned to use it, during times when I had so little power that my life had become abominable.
        
        At the same time, it is the height of masterfulness to be able to use subtelty EVEN WHEN one has very little power. I call that almost shamanic subtelty. To exercise subtlelty from a position of disempowerment requires a lot more knowledge and experience than to exercise it from a position of real material advantage.
        
        When I spoke on this blog recently about how a sense of knowing about psychological balance can work to your advantage, I was speaking about exactly this — using subtelty form a point of relative powerlessness. But this can still be masterful and in some respects it is the trump card. (It’s not the winning card in all respects, but in some ways it is, especially because it is unexpected.)
        
        It works best when someone is playing a crude hand against you. They are actively showing their disrespect by playing with you crudely. That gives a clear signal that they do not expect masterfulness. In that case, the key is to keep a clear head. You don’t want to hurt them (that would be crude), but you want to remain masterful.
        
        The problem with those who are not masterful is that they play out their hand. They are so convinced of winning that they underestimate what they have put at stake.
        
        To speak a little esoterically — which is to say, in a masterful manner — you have to play your own hand in such a way as to reveal to yourself (if not to them) what they have put at stake. It is basic judo. You defeat them with their own arrogance.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        “At the same time, it is the height of masterfulness to be able to use subtelty EVEN WHEN one has very little power. I call that almost shamanic subtelty. To exercise subtlelty from a position of disempowerment requires a lot more knowledge and experience than to exercise it from a position of real material advantage.”
        
        As I said before, I’m not seeing how this is different from the extremely traditional cultures educating women to exercise cunning, sly manipulation, and subtle insinuations to get what they need. I grew up hearing these exhortations, which is why today I will scream down the house and dominate openly, aggressively, and loudly. I’m really tired of hearing that “a woman’s strength lies in her subtlety.” My strength lies in my strength, period.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Yes, I think you have made me aware of how you canont tell the difference, actually.
        
        In any case, it has nothing to do with feminine anything.
        
        My supervisor compared me to Cicero, rather, when I finished my PhD. That might give you a closer idea of what we are talking bout here.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Or to put it differently, I had absorbed some of the Rhodesian capacity for psychological warfare, which was a large part of the backdrop of my existence growing up.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        ATTACKING FROM UNDERNEATH:
        
        Following Julius Caesar’s death Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. He was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and consequently killed in 43 BC.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Or to put it differently again, some guy whom I had admired and trusted began attacking me at a sensitive point in time, when I was making a turning point toward the home run of completing my thesis. This guy was Freudian. He accused me of “projecting”, when in fact it was others who had been projecting onto me.
        
        This gave me a very sharp insight, which consolidated a suspicion I had been starting to entertain, that Freudianism was a philosophical idealist system that effectively misread the direction of psychical cause and effect, especially when it came to women. So I stated as much in my thesis.
        
        Of course this is a minor thing. I stated that I would not use Freud as my paradigm because he “transparently reversed the direction of cause and effect” especially in the instance of Dora.
        
        But, this ability to benefit intellectually from my misfortunate of being attacked in such an opportunistic way was gratifying to my spirit. I grew from it, rather than became diminished.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Or to put it a different way. If someone is setting you up to look hysterical, you have to do some pretty acute maneuvers. What works is not passivity, but the unexpected nature of your sudden movement — it doesn’t matter in which direction.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        An alternative is not to look at yourself through the eyes of the others. Then the importance of how you look evaporates. Establish the primacy of your own gaze.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Yes, of course, but I would presume that my own gaze has primacy. At least right now. In the past I was trying to collect information that would enable me to map my environment — a cognitive pursuit. Right now, less so — hence all primacy is given to my own gaze.
        
        Imagine if a child of two gave primacy only to their own gaze. Or imagine if someone in the middle of a narcissistic take-down gave primacy to their terror?
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
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aglaonika

January 1, 2015

@musteryou

“One of the reasons why subtlety “works” as part of the masterly disposition is that it simply requires less energy.”

Not in the case of an impulsive person. For me subtlety requires way more energy than rudeness and cynism – unfortunately these are the things that naturally come without any effort on my behalf.

I would happily follow all what you described, but I still can’t overcome the panic that powerless situations cause in my mind. When panic comes, I don’t think just react. I can’t be masterful when I’m not able to think. I agree with you that it’s not exactly the highest mode of existence, but I just don’t have any tools to overcome the panic resulted from powerlessness. When I’m in the state of panic, it’s like I would be controlled by someone else, I’m just a puppet that moves in the direction the master chooses. And the master is fear. Everything you said is true, but I still can’t pass this landmark.

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musteryou

January 1, 2015

It’s weird but I have never had the sensation of being controlled by someone else.

In any case, mastery is not a requisite for anything, but perhaps improved quality of life: If one can NOT feel powerless, that it better than feeling powerless.

The other point to consider is that we all have an observing facet of our minds, which is always monitoring and registering how we are faring. This part can receive a huge self-esteem elevation when we handle ourselves with deftness – so long as that is what we have desired to do.

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1. aglaonika
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  “If one can NOT feel powerless, that it better than feeling powerless.”
  
  Yes, if we remove the cause then we don’t have to deal with the unfortunate results, that’s a good direction indeed. Do you have any ideas how it is possible to abolish the sensation of powerlessness? I guess one must be a saint or a superhuman to achieve that.
  
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  1. musteryou
    
    January 1, 2015
    
    Well, I did a lot of Nietzschean work on myself. Basically it involved crossing gender boundaries and attacking my own superego restrictions.
    
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    1. aglaonika
      
      January 1, 2015
      
      So that basically means everyone has to find his or her own solution, as I guess the problems you had to solve are entirely different from the problems I have to solve. I thought there wouldn’t be any easy recipes for this.
      
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      1. musteryou
        
        January 1, 2015
        
        Our backgrounds are definitely different. I can only speculate. If you look at Clarissa and how she runs her life, her aggressive approach has obviously been very successful for her. She is intrinsically convinced about the equality between men and women. That is a huge fucking advantage already — perhaps THE fundamental one.
        
        In my case, I came from a warlike background, but women were not expected to fight. In fact the opposite. I had a lot of ground to make up. Even though it was within me to access a warlike consciousness, I had to be pushed to a point of extreme pain before I switched on that ability. Once I decided that is what I would do, there was not turning back. I became warlike.
        
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Clarissa

January 1, 2015

What are powerless situations? Can anybody give an example?

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1. musteryou
  
  January 1, 2015
  
  An excellent but insincere question!
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    January 1, 2015
    
    It’s not my terminology, it’s not my language but powerlessness is being discussed here like a regular, everyday phenomenon. And I need specific examples.
    
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    1. musteryou
      
      January 1, 2015
      
      It can’t be explained. Try imaging a sensation you might feel in your body, like when you touch something cold, or try imagining there is such a thing as “society”. There are too many intangibles, which can’t be translated into concrete form.
      
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2. aglaonika
  
  January 2, 2015
  
  I mean powerlessness in a literal way, when one party possesses much less power than the other party, and doesn’t have the tools to vindicate his or her interests. Parent-child, landlord-renter, employer-employee, nth-generation citizen-immigrant, man-woman (these days only in certain situations for example at night on a derelict street), teacher-student, authority-regular citizen etc. Well, I know that in the Western countries the laws try to mitigate these power deficiencies, but they are still there, although in a softer version. I also want to mention that I met most of these situation in a country where the laws give a crap about fixing powerless situations and helping the powerless party, so I met the harsher versions of power abuse than someone who has lived in a normal country where laws aren’t only about cozying up to the powerful and this fact changes my starting point, and raises the level of my frustration. My main problem with these situations that it depends only in luck if the powerful party abuses their power or not – maybe they won’t, but if they want you can’t do too much about it, and you can never know, and if you want to prevent it you have to be in the state of constant alarm.
  
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