Three Cheers for Tiana Parker

Boston College professor of psychology Peter Gray, in a great commentary on Salon.com, "School is a prison -- and damaging our kids", observed that:

"School is a place where children are compelled to be, and where their freedom is greatly restricted — far more restricted than most adults would tolerate in their workplaces. In recent decades, we have been compelling our children to spend ever more time in this kind of setting, and there is strong evidence (summarized in my recent book) that this is causing serious psychological damage to many of them. Moreover, the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school."

The focus of Gray's commentary is on the compulsory nature of a government-run school system and its accompanying carrot-and-stick regime. He writes, "The top-down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiosity or by any real, felt desire to know, is well designed for indoctrination and obedience training but not much else. It's no wonder that many of the world's greatest entrepreneurs and innovators either left school early (like Thomas Edison), or said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it (like Albert Einstein)."

Gray wonderfully contrasts this environment with one based on self-directed education and children's "amazing drive and capacity to learn". He praises the wonderful Sudbury Valley model and notes that "Students in this setting learn to read, calculate and use computers in the same playful ways that kids in hunter-gatherer cultures learn to hunt and gather. They also develop more specialized interests and passions, which can lead directly or indirectly to careers. For example, a highly successful machinist and inventor spent his childhood playfully building things and taking things apart to see how they worked. Another graduate, who became a professor of mathematics, had played intensively and creatively with math. And yet another, a high-fashion pattern maker, had played at making doll clothes and then clothes for herself and friends....I’m convinced that Sudbury Valley works so well as an educational setting because it provides the conditions that optimize children's natural abilities to educate themselves."

While outside the scope of Gray's commentary, one could easily glide from observations about schools' incompatibility with the natural learning process to their tendency to stifle, or even destroy, individuality. In fact, the focus of curriculum training and child psychology -- especially when practiced in a compulsory-school environment -- for many years has been far more about making kids conform to standardization than it has been about fostering their personal growth. Some have argued that from the beginning schools were really about making children Godly and obedient, rather than helping them become happy, healthy people. Gray touches on this briefly:

"Schools as we know them today are a product of history, not of research into how children learn. The blueprint still used for today’s schools was developed during the Protestant Reformation, when schools were created to teach children to read the Bible, to believe scripture without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. The early founders of schools were quite clear about this in their writings. The idea that schools might be places for nurturing critical thought, creativity, self-initiative or ability to learn on one's own — the kinds of skills most needed for success in today's economy — was the furthest thing from their minds. To them, willfulness was sinfulness, to be drilled or beaten out of children, not encouraged."

When religious forces were replaced by secular planners, the people in charge of designing schools, in every aspect from curricula to architecture, were still motivated by a desire to "mold" children "like pieces of clay", but instead of saving souls they wanted to ensure a steady supply of "good citizens" and compliant factory workers. It's not surprising that one such experiment was labeled "platoon schooling" by its administrators. As Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, put it, "School is the cheapest police." (For more on this, see John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education.)  

While the entire edifice of government-run, compulsory schooling expends a great deal of energy convincing people of its unquestionable benevolence, the real end sought is the power to force square pegs into round holes -- to "police" children who, above all, simply cannot be trusted to find their own way but instead must be forced not only to learn, but also to behave in socially acceptable ways -- as defined by politicians and bureaucrats. Children are subjected to arbitrary dress codes, regular violations of their privacy, ringing bells, group learning, bullying, mass punishments, terrifying terror drills, and mindless "zero tolerance" policies and punishments -- not to mention the degradation of having to ask permission just to use the restroom. When children are instructed, as part of their daily lesson, to write letters to legislators demanding more money for schools we see the naked drive for power revealed in all its ugliness. 

And that ugliness can quickly descend into spitefulness. A student in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 7-year-old Tiana Parker, was recently told that her hair style was unacceptable to school administrators. Miss Parker has dreadlocks, and that violates the Deborah Brown Community School's policy against "faddish styles". We can be certain that Tiana's dreadlocks are of no concern to her community, but her "community school" finds them more distracting than her exemplary grades. Her father, Terrance Parker, identified the real source of the problem:

"My daughter Tiana is very unique. She's a loner. She wears boots all the time. If she finds something she likes, I don't want anybody to tear her down. Whether you like it or not, I always taught my kids to be who they want to be....She told her mom, 'I don't want to cut my hair.'"

Sorry, Mr. Parker, but when school officials see your daughter's beautiful, bright, smiling face they do in fact notice her uniqueness, her desire to be exactly who she wants to be -- and they want more than anything to tear it down. One can easily picture the petty, small-minded, vindictive little tyrants at Deborah Brown smiling gleefully at the thought of Tiana Parker's submission. Conformity uber alles.

Fortunately, Tiana's parents respected her desire to express her individuality and rejected Brown's nasty authoritarianism; they moved her to a different school with a different policy. A victory, yes, but a small one: At age 7, little Tiana can look forward to eleven more years of the vicious, anti-individualist nature of public schooling, in its many other forms. Let's hope she comes out the other end with some shred remaining of the spirit she has today. Many kids aren't so lucky.