The increasing responsibilities of the schools

Title

Creator

Ack, Marvin

Language

English

Year

1969

Subject

Panorama Volume XXI (No. 4) April 1969

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

■ At what stage is the rearing and education of the youth should start for more effective results? THE INCREASING RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE SCHOOLS I think the most striking changes that have taken place in our lifetime have been the increased amount of knowledge available to us and the corresponding in crease in the complexity of life. At the time of the American Revolution (or about 100 years ago) an in telligent man could be a classical Greek scholar, an engineer, a historian and a farmer all at the same time. Today engineering is divided into a number of sub-spe cialties and it takes years and years of study to be an expert in even in a part of one of the sub-specialties. In the last 10 years the world’s cache of facts has doubled. The amount of knowledge accumulated in the last decade equals the amount gathered in all the years of written history! This proliferation of knowledge along with the associated amplification of the com plexity of the environment that man has now to adjust to, has exploded many of the simplistic beliefs once held regarding the function ing of our universe. These changes have pro duced feelings of inadequacy and incompetency in increas ing numbers of parents, so much so that in many areas they have abdicated their traditional responsibi lities and insisted that other institutions assume some of the burden. The school, operating as it does as a captive social agency, has been one of the institutions most prevailed upon to step into the breech. Schools have been asked to prepare students for college, or for a vocation, to teach driver education, to institute a lunch program, to take the responsibility for after school recreation, to teach 2 Panorama home economics, family plan ning and now sex education. And then parents wonder why they can’t understand how their children develop the attitudes they hold. I wonder if this transfer of responsibility hasn’t at limes resulted in repercus sions beyond what either the family or school anticipated. The school is saddled with assignments it is ill-equipped tp carry out, the family has found its taxes increased and its children with attitudes the antithesis of what they liad expected. I have often wondered whether such a transfer of responsibility is even possible. To me edu cation is a mutual, coopera tive endeavor. If a child gets a good education it is not only because he has gone through a good school system but also because he came from a home where learning and education were valued. Our clinical experience with children at the Menninger Foundation indicates that until children receive parental permission to dis cuss sex, they cannot; and furthermore they cannot “hear” what the therapist has to say on the subject. For this reason a child-the rapist will seldom introduce this topic into the out-pa tient treatment for a child — despite the child’s interest and readiness — until the patient has the approval of the home and even more, the assurance that the pa rents are willing to continue the discussion at home if the child so wishes. Other wise, the children feel guilty or inhibited or both and the entire effort becomes futile. If it is true that children cannot “learn” about sex without active parental in volvement, t h e question would then become not who shall take the responsibility in this area, but rather how can the home and school enter into an effective dia logue in this area so that an articulated program can be developed? There is another areas of educational activity which if it eventuates will have even greater repercussions on the family than any existing practice and that is what is now called preschool educa tion. Although this is not Aphil 1969 3 yet a reality except for a limited number of our dis enfranchised population, it is quite likely that in the fore seeable future mandatory public school education will be the law of the land for children from there on. Research has demonstrated that by the time some dis advantaged six-year-old child ren enter the first grade the sensory and intellectual de privation they have suffered has been so great, one can predict with a high degree of accuracy which ones will be high school dropouts! And this, mind you, is prior to their first academic con tact. Surely if some come destined to complete failure there must be hundreds of thousands more who enter school with limited disabi lities. Obviously from an educational point of view, for these children it may be essential and imperative that the school entrance age be lowered. I feel confident that the more affluent seg ment of our society will soon demand the same opportu nity for their offsprings. Although it will be dif ficult to contest the intellec tual and academic value of this experience, society will need to consider the effect of such an experience on the total development of the child. The prevailing psy chological theory which guides our clinical opera tions with child and adult patients suggests that the ma jor portion of the indivi dual’s personality is estab lished prior to the onset of school. It is, of course, com mon knowledge that pre school children are extreme ly impressionable and malle able. However, we have dis covered that what they have encountered in their child hood in terms of attitudes and experiences often estab lishes lasting, and sometimes immutable behavioral pat terns. This is not to say that change does not take place after six; of course it does, but rather the change occurs within broad but pre determined boundaries. Now, lowering the starting age will mean that the charge to the school will be not only to impart know ledge or transmit culture, but implicitly to take part in the rearing of our child ren. If this eventuates, the Panorama school will help establish values, attitudes, behavior traits and so forth. Al though the ostensible func tion will be to educate our youngsters, they will in fact be assuming the responsibi lity for a share of the child’s basic personality develop ment, a function which in the past has been almost ex clusively the domain of the family. I am not suggesting whe ther this will be a whole•Some, beneficial move or a debilitating and disastrous one. This question cannot be answered at this junc ture, certainly not without knowledge of how this will be programmatically accom plished. We do know from past experience that the re sults will be disastrous if this is considered just an other responsibility of the school undertaken without constructive change in teach er training programs utiliz ing the knowledge and skills of psychoanalytically orient ed mental health specialists. There seems to me no question that the increasing complexity of our world will demand changes in the fa mily, its functioning and sphere of influence. The questions we need to ponder, discuss and argue are what kind of change, for what purpose, and by whom? By Marvin Ack, Ph.D., Science Digest, March 1969. THE REAL REVOLUTIONS . . . soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as in the old. The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints. — From The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. Aphil 1969 5

pages

2+

Media