Reading:  Bertrand Russell's "Freedom Versus Authority in Education" from Sceptical Essays

In the early 20th century Russell thought that what he called "regimentation" was the source of evil in education.  Russell complained that education authorities were starting to look at children as raw "material for grandiose social schemes" (Russell 152).   His concern was future "hands" in factories and future "bayonets" in wars.  What Russell called "regimentation" is similar to the technocratic—i.e. reductive mentality that characterized the policies made under former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.  Spellings went around the country speaking about how children are our "future investments" and that we must "be able to keep tabs on how our portfolio's are performing."  Whereas Russell was concerned about war, Spellings makes ready admission of a class war.  Only something like 20% of the country has a substantial amount of money invested in stocks, so the reductive educational metaphorical model is not even sensical to approximately 4 out of 5 Americans.  But so many of us want to believe that serious investing is right around the corner as a part of our dream, so we are not prepared to mentally and physically fight off the pestilential metaphor.  To my way of thinking Spellings's metaphor—which became of course the foundation for the pernicious No Child Left Behind policies that characterized education in the United States in the first decade of the 21st century—is the same poison that Russell had in mind when he wrote about "grandiose schemes." 

So many folks continue to be led by the misconception that higher education is some sort of a testament to the work ethic of the person stamped with the arbitrary documentation that comes with tertiary education.  Obviously, the majority of the people who succeed at higher education are by definition the most spoon-fed and the most babied, the most likely to have received all sorts of degrees of handouts, not from the state of course, but from their parents.  This is a fact and a sort of open-secret, that almost nobody wants to acknowledge because of the unseemly and impolite nature of the conversation.  Interestingly, Russell commented on this situation in the early 20th century and observed tht universities in England at the time were teeming with lazy, unmotivated rich kids who were there for no apparent reason.  Russell opined that the young men seemed to be lacking in academic aptitude and had very little curiousity about the world.  Russell writes, "The rich young men who now waste their time in college are demoralizing others and teaching theselves to be useless"  (148).  Russell continues, "If hard work were exacted as a condition of residence, universities would cease to be attractive to people with a distaste for intellectual pursuits"  (148). 

Russell also seemed to be aware of the competetive streak and arbitrary distinctions conferred upon educational value by the so-called quality of the institution.  To paraphrase Russell, he said that professional men have a unique outlook on education for their own children.  a professionals income derives from the fact that his/her own education was better than the average working class person's education.  As society becomes increasingly competitive, it becomes dangerous to power and income if working class people start receiving quality educations, or at least educations that are deemed to be of the right level of quality.  Russell writes, "What matters is not an education that is good in itself, but an educatin that is better than everybody elses"  (144).  It is interesting that he was able to perceive this increased competition early in the 20th century along with the arbitrary cache that is bestowed upon certain institutions. 

Thoughout the essay, Russell comments about educational impulses and how children should be educated.  One of the more interesting thoughts from this chapter is that "Every child learns to talk by its own effort"  (146).   In other words, he endorses, not so much a completely lawless or free-spirited education, but he does see the problem with forcing content upon people when their instincts or desires to learn the material are still dormant.  His outlook is a little bit like the proverb about how you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.  At some point the horse will drink and the pedagogue might have to do a little patient waiting. 

Another interesting finding is that Russell completely embraced what we would call today tracking.  He writes, "It is very undesirable to combine in one class children whose mental capacities are very different"  (147).  He goes on to term these "capicities" in the more concrete and non euphemistic or politically correct language of certain children who are bright and talented and certain children who are dumb.  Whether right or wrong on this point, one might say that Russell had a prescient understanding of the Bell Curve model of students—he was after all a mathematician.