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The Purpose of Schooling in the United States:

A Critical Perspective
Cory S. Neil
Colorado State University



















The Purpose of Schooling in the United States: A Critical Perspective 1


Introduction:
Prior to beginning my studies into the nature and purpose of schooling in the United
States, my understanding was, to put it most succinctly, narrow and surprisingly under informed.
Of course, having gone through the system as a student myself, I had a base of experiential
knowledge about what school was intended to do and be. I knew that it was intended to be a
place of learning where students developed skills in certain basic core knowledge that society
deems critical to being able to function in our society and the world at large things such as
mathematics, natural and physical sciences, reading and writing, social studies and history the
subjects and knowledge that are key to being able to understand the world around us and equip
the student to later be able to go out into that world and be, if not a contributing and beneficial
part of society, at minimum able to function independently and navigate life with some measure
of success. And this is really where my previous understanding ended. While I now recognize
that this is, by and large, the intended purpose of schooling, what I now understand is exactly
what it means to be a productive and contributing member of society from the perspective of the
powers that be that dictate the structure and content of education in the United States. I have
come to see the agenda of perpetuating the status quo that has always been a part of our
educational system one that emphasizes what to think and not how to think, that praises and
rewards compliance and assimilation and rejects questioning and individualism and that assumes
there is a single set of knowledge and values that should apply to all students.
Through my studies I have come to redefine my position on what the purpose of
education should be. I still believe that schools should equip students with foundational
knowledge in sciences and math and such subjects as consist of indisputable natural facts that aid
us in being able to make sense of and navigate the world around us, as well as expose them to the
arts that help to develop wonder and creativity. But other than this, I feel the focus of schooling
should be to teach the student how to think, not what to think. The purpose of education should
be to expose the student to as much information and as many perspectives as possible and train
the student in being an independent thinker with skills in critical and analytical thinking. School
should seek to develop the mind, not fill it; it should encourage and reward creative ideas and
questioning and never quell them. The power to break this cycle and redirect schooling in the
United States lies inherently within the hands of the teacher and the schools themselves. As long
as we continue to allow political and corporate interests to dictate and define our educational
system, it will remain nothing more than a tool of separation and a factory for mediocrity.
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What was, is, and should be the purpose of schooling in the United States?
When I began my studies into the nature and purpose of schooling in the United States, I,
as I feel would most when presented with such a question, felt extremely confident in my pre-
exploration response that it is intended to and does supply the young with the core knowledge
and social skills and awareness to be able to be an independent and contributing member of
society that it instills in them the necessary ideas and principles required to make sense of the
world around them and provide the foundations and potential for success in life. And to a certain
extent, this is absolutely correct. But what all too often goes overlooked is that behind this idea
and these principles there exists an unspoken agenda steeped in traditions of exclusion, privilege,
and assimilation, intended to create a very precisely and narrowly defined concept of what
society is and should be. And unfortunately, membership into this society is highly limited and
selective.
One would hope that education would be designed and implemented in such a way as to
do exactly what the word implies educate and to do so entirely and without bias or social or
political agenda. But with even the slightest bit of inquiry into the history of education in the
United States one will find that it has traditionally functioned to create a specifically defined
American citizen, and to do so for a very select group of people. There are two basic elements
that make up education the what and the how. The what are the facts and skills the elements
of what is taught: 2+2=4, the order of the solar system, the rules of writing standard English, etc.
The how is a bit more complicated and holds a great deal of influence on the what, because by
the how I do not mean a particular mode or means of instruction, but the reasoning behind the
instruction the point of view and ideals that are entwined in the lessons the social, political,
and philosophical positioning that dictates what is taught and why. In a sense, the how can be
equated to a type of propaganda delivery method, which is precisely the manner in which it has
historically functioned in American education. Not until very recently has this aspect of
education been identified as being problematic. Traditionally, since the nineteenth century,
unified public schooling in the US was designed to protect and reinforce the ideology of an
Anglo-American Protestant culture (Spring, J., 2013, 5); with the major ideals being
Protestantism, republicanism, and capitalism (Spring, J., 2013). The goal of school was to create
a culturally and idealistically homogeneous American citizenry that would contribute to their
countrys economic viability (Huerta, G., 2009, 10), but the problem was (and still is) that the
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population of the United States is anything but homogenous and did not then (or now)
unanimously share a common idea of success, happiness, or prosperity. From the very inception
of the nation the US has been a land of diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, and philosophical
backgrounds. More than backgrounds, these are self-identifiers the very stuff that defines the
individual. As such, it is easy to see how this concept of education was designed and intended to
truly serve a very narrow portion of society and maintain the system of persecution and privilege.
A system of education which stems from and reinforces the ideas of white Eurocentric
superiority can in no way be considered to be at all sensitive to, let alone inclusive of minority
and marginalized cultures. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s numerous laws have
been enacted, revoked, amended, and overwritten in an attempt to bring about a truer state of
equality in education, however, these policy adjustments have only attempted to address the
surface problems of racial and cultural discrimination and have done nothing to act on the true
root problem that the goal is still to maintain set values and fixed assumptionswhich
emphasize disciplinary control and one-sided character formation (Fernandez-Balboa J., &
Marshal J., 1994, 24). In order to truly repair the educational system in the United States we
need to do more than simply apply various bandages, we must in fact rethink the entire system
and begin anew from the ground up.
While it is hard to argue that education in the US is entirely off target as students do need
to have well-rounded backgrounds in critical subjects such as science and history, math and the
language arts, as these really are essential to being a functioning and contributing member of a
society, we must admit that using education to push a singular agenda of conformity and
productivity based on the archaic ideals of what now constitutes a diminishing portion of the
population is a policy which will ultimately fail in the context of the new global society. The
primary purpose of schools in the US should be to teach students how to think, not what to think.
School should function to develop intellectual skills and abilities and instill curiosity in and
appreciation for all the diverse ideas and perspectives that exist and are yet to exist in the world.
An educated mind should be an enlightened mind capable of critical analysis and independent
thought, not filled with a limited set of prescribed single-sided knowledge. To quote Aristotle:
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
School should be a place of exploration and inclusion that celebrates the diverse cultural and
ethnic reality of the country and addresses the unique needs of each student, not a citizen factory
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that rewards assimilation and conformism. Both historically and currently, the purpose of
schooling in the United States is but to teach, when it should be to educate.

The role of the teacher:
As a soon-to-be teacher, I feel it is my primary duty to be a driving factor in bringing
about the change I feel is necessary in the educational system in the United States. I must act as
a teacher of thinking, not of a particular set of ideas. I must always be active in my pursuit of
materials that will present my students with a wildly diverse range of ideas and perspectives and
remain constantly vigilant in not allowing my own personal ideas and beliefs to become the
content of my lessons. I firmly believe the role of the teacher is but to guide the student in the
process of learning to keep them on track and instill in them a passion for curiosity and
intellectual pursuit. We should never consider the young mind as simply a vessel to be filled, but
instead as a tool to be honed and mastered by the student. The questioning of ideas should not be
something reserved for life after school, but should be practiced out of principle throughout the
students education. It is our duty as educators to never stifle the curiosity and potential of our
students with or without intent. We should encourage the exploration of ideas and values
different from our own so that the student may discover, for it is through discovery and
examination that we ultimately reach an understanding.
Too, the teacher must not be a passive participant in the system. We must be active and
voice our concerns and opinions on the structure and content of education. For as teachers we
are also role models for our students and as such our actions or lack thereof are also a lesson to
our students. If I am to encourage them to be active in their own education and question what
and how they are being taught, then it is imperative that I lead by example and do the same. I
must act as a representative of their needs and motivations as learners and stand up to practices
and policies which treat students as uniform commodities instead of the unique individuals they
all are. Students can only truly fail in their education once that system of education has failed
them. When my classroom lacks the necessary resources and so hinders a students ability to
succeed, it is my responsibility to do all I can to rectify the situation. And while I recognize that
there exist forces beyond my control, and that it is largely unrealistic that I will be able to
address every single need and want of every student throughout my career, I know that the first
step I can take towards failing my students as their teacher is to succumb to complacency,
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restrain my advocacy, and for even the slightest moment stop believing that improvement is
always possible.

How schooling continues the existing order:
Although I do recognize movements in the right direction away from traditional
education with a focus on the past to a new system that looks towards and attempts to anticipate
the future and what it will take for students to be successful in the years and decades to come, we
are still hampered by the idea that a quality education is dependent on the what and not the how
something that is clearly demonstrated in recent legislation such as the No Child Left Behind act
(NCLB) and the subsequent development and implementation of the Common Core State
Standards (CCSS). Deeply imbedded in both these programs is the idea of a one-size fits all
concept of education that there are but a single set of American values that should be
instilled in all students values that still stem from a Eurocentric perspective of privilege and
cultural superiority. And so the problem remains that these values are but the values of a select
powerful few and in no way are representative of or relevant to the current national and global
landscape. Education still fails to recognize the multicultural and multi-intelligence reality of
todays students. This problem is also directly related to the persistence of the teacher-centered
classroom where the focus is on the delivery and absorption of information from the teacher to
the student (Huerta, G., 2009). In this classroom model, the standard form of instruction is
through lecture and the focus is thereby on the role of the teacher and not on the needs of the
students. Dialogue between the teacher and students is essentially non-existent and so the
position of superiority of the teacher and their ideas and values is maintained as correct while
those of the students (especially the case with marginalized students) is maintained as inferior or
wrong (Fernandez-Balboa J., & Marshal J., 1994). Schooling perpetuates the existing order
because it was initially designed to establish it, and since its inception in the nineteenth century,
no real steps have been made to do what is really necessary to fix the inequalities in education.
To do so we do not need to constantly add and remove acts of legislation these only serve to
mask the problem for a short while until it bleeds back through to public attention and outcry
what is needed is a total rebuilding of the system from the ground up with the focus being on
attempting to account for the current and anticipating the future needs of an ever increasingly
diverse student population that must be prepared to enter into a swiftly evolving world.

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How schooling can transform the existing order:
We are currently positioned at what could potentially be a new dawn in the nature of
education in the United States. More and more we are beginning to identify the serious failures
of our educational system and taking steps in the right directions to rectify them. However,
breaking from the security of tradition that has been the overwhelming guiding force in
education seems to be proving harder to do than anticipated and accounted for. As disappointing
as this may be, it should not come as a surprise change, real and dramatic change, is always a
struggle. The problem is that we have been addressing the problem from the wrong direction
in order to transform our existing social order from one of oppression and privilege to one of
genuine equality, the shift must come from the bottom up and not the top down we must begin
by transforming our educational system as it is the students of today who become the leaders of
tomorrow. Schools have the power to change a society in that schools are the creators of the
future members of society. But as long as we allow political and financial interests to dictate the
nature of education, we will continue in the same state of affairs. Education must be guided by
educators and focused on the needs and abilities of the students they educate. The increasingly
diverse landscape of the country is undeniable and we can no more ignore nor tiptoe around
racial and cultural difference in our society and schools (Schofield, J., 2010). These qualities
must be embraced and the traditional idea of a singular American citizenry abandoned. We must
also recognize and adjust for the multiple intelligences that are directly linked to the diversity of
population and be able to adapt our teaching methods to ensure that every student has the same
opportunity to achieve in the classroom (Lane, C., n.d.). With these realities and new advances
in neuroscience that are drastically changing our understanding of how the mind actually learns
(Willis, J., 2006), we are poised to not simply fix the issues that plague US schools, but to
completely do away with them. And it does not start with federal or state legislation it starts
with the teachers. As future teachers, we are in the exact position necessary to bring about a true
revolution in schooling and through it, society. But to do so we must have a true commitment
to our students and to their futures. We must be the change that we want to see that needs to
occur.



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References
Huerta, G. (2009). Educational foundations: Diverse histories, diverse perspectives.
Boston:Houghton Mifflin.
Ferniandez-Balboa, J., & Marshall, J. P. (1994). Dialogical Pedagogy in Teacher Education:
Toward an Education for Democracy. Journal of Teacher Education, 45(3), 24-34.
doi:10.1177/0022487194045003003

Spring, J. H. (2013). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the
education of dominated cultures in the United States (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-
Hill.
Lane, C. (n.d.). Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Retrieved from
http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html
Burkholder, Z. (2007). Because Race Can't be Ignored. Education Week, 27(9), 29-31.
Willis, J. (2006). Research-based strategies to ignite student learning: Insights from a
neurologist and classroom teacher. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development.
Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference. Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill.
Schofield, J. W. (2010). The Colorblind Perspective In Banks, J. A., Banks, C. A., Multicultural
education: Issues and perspectives (pp 271-290). Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.