The Other Invisible Hand
Everyone knows about Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', one of the seminal metaphors in economics. To be more exact, it is the idea that the forces of competition, self-interest, and supply/demand will work together to produce the most efficient allocation of resources. This is the basis of the 'free market'.
But if that is the right hand of human social impulses, the left hand is Robert Michels' hand of the bureaucratic impulse, the idea that keeping things tightly controlled is a good thing. This is the basis of the 'market square', the framework in which and through which the 'free market' is forced to operate.
John Taylor Gatto, in his book Weapons of Mass Instruction, mentions what sounds awfully like the other invisible hand in the context of education. He says:
...men and women who staff institutional schooling are very like those in other complex institutions — if they exercise significant free will they will become outlaws who must be sanctioned, and things which improve performance are hardly more welcome than things which impair it. Deviations from a steady state jeopardize the 'system mission'... innovation was powerfully resisted; independent practitioners were sanctioned — ostracized if they persisted
This sounds so much like the old place. Essentially, teaching the way I did was considered 'bad teaching'. Ironically, when I did the boring stuff, I was praised for it. When I did the interesting stuff, a few enlightened people in distant powerful places thought it was good, but the immediate hierarchy squirmed. And because I was one of the 'interesting people' (of which there were really quite a few; I wasn't the only one), whenever something suspicious happened, I was immediately on the shortlist of people to blame.
I realise now that essentially old men running bureaucracies always want to hold on to power. It is a deep-seated impulse which is perfectly natural, since to lose their grip (or to appear to) is to admit uselessness and impotence. Sometimes it is also for very good reasons; these people perceive that they are the best persons for the job and cannot imagine anyone would be as good at being them. In that sense, they are right — nobody is so alike them that replacement would be exact.
Robert Michels said that the key function of bureaucracies is never their publicly-stated primary mission, but the protection and maintenance of the bureaucracy itself. In that light, it is quite obvious why most innovation is a sham, a shoving around of things designed to look like advancement and progress, but masking the truth.
In an educational context, this truth is that students are not smarter than before, not wiser, not more capable; they are just as good as ever, except that schools take credit for their work and subtly persuade them that without school, they would not be as successful. Instead of empowering them and setting them free, as schools claim, they are actually applying invisible shackles with an invisible hand, so that the majority of students never grow up to become the insurrectionists that society really needs for true progress.
One of those shackles is called 'debt to society', which over the last few decades has overtaken the perfectly legitimate debt to parents. In this era, parents often feel incompetent to educate their own children, a feeling enhanced and intensified by constantly changing syllabi which in some cases teach less than those parents learnt when they were in school. That is why students can imagine that their debt to society is greater than their debt to parents; society provides schools that provide grades and certificates and jobs based on those, and money beside.
When Smith's invisible hand meets Michels' invisible hand, students are flattened in between and become two-dimensional. The combination of 'free market' and 'controlling framework' leads to dominance by those capable of brachiating through the social jungle, the monkeys best able to follow monkey rules. Those who would change those rules or make their own rules are few because many think they would fail.
Yet even supposedly conservative texts like the Bible say things like, "Do not be conformed to the system of the world." The Biblical Jesus paid tribute to the Law, but he said that the fulfillment of the Law was beyond the Law itself. He was the independent insurrectionist of his time: the Sabbath was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath — the Laws were made because of the hardness of men's hearts. But it is Man who is more important than Law.
We who live in the framework should be aware of both invisible hands. It is Michels' bureaucratic hand that is more pernicious, more deadly. It preserves a population pyramid in which craftsmanship is denied a proper place, and administrative power is king. I suspect that if even 10% of the teachers of the nation were to aim beyond the framework, at least 50% of their students would be lifted beyond the limits of their current horizons.
=====
Note: I think the major difference between Smith's hand and Michels' hand is that Smith thought the invisible economic hand was a good thing in general, whereas Michels thought the invisible bureaucratic hand was an evil thing.
But if that is the right hand of human social impulses, the left hand is Robert Michels' hand of the bureaucratic impulse, the idea that keeping things tightly controlled is a good thing. This is the basis of the 'market square', the framework in which and through which the 'free market' is forced to operate.
John Taylor Gatto, in his book Weapons of Mass Instruction, mentions what sounds awfully like the other invisible hand in the context of education. He says:
...men and women who staff institutional schooling are very like those in other complex institutions — if they exercise significant free will they will become outlaws who must be sanctioned, and things which improve performance are hardly more welcome than things which impair it. Deviations from a steady state jeopardize the 'system mission'... innovation was powerfully resisted; independent practitioners were sanctioned — ostracized if they persisted
This sounds so much like the old place. Essentially, teaching the way I did was considered 'bad teaching'. Ironically, when I did the boring stuff, I was praised for it. When I did the interesting stuff, a few enlightened people in distant powerful places thought it was good, but the immediate hierarchy squirmed. And because I was one of the 'interesting people' (of which there were really quite a few; I wasn't the only one), whenever something suspicious happened, I was immediately on the shortlist of people to blame.
I realise now that essentially old men running bureaucracies always want to hold on to power. It is a deep-seated impulse which is perfectly natural, since to lose their grip (or to appear to) is to admit uselessness and impotence. Sometimes it is also for very good reasons; these people perceive that they are the best persons for the job and cannot imagine anyone would be as good at being them. In that sense, they are right — nobody is so alike them that replacement would be exact.
Robert Michels said that the key function of bureaucracies is never their publicly-stated primary mission, but the protection and maintenance of the bureaucracy itself. In that light, it is quite obvious why most innovation is a sham, a shoving around of things designed to look like advancement and progress, but masking the truth.
In an educational context, this truth is that students are not smarter than before, not wiser, not more capable; they are just as good as ever, except that schools take credit for their work and subtly persuade them that without school, they would not be as successful. Instead of empowering them and setting them free, as schools claim, they are actually applying invisible shackles with an invisible hand, so that the majority of students never grow up to become the insurrectionists that society really needs for true progress.
One of those shackles is called 'debt to society', which over the last few decades has overtaken the perfectly legitimate debt to parents. In this era, parents often feel incompetent to educate their own children, a feeling enhanced and intensified by constantly changing syllabi which in some cases teach less than those parents learnt when they were in school. That is why students can imagine that their debt to society is greater than their debt to parents; society provides schools that provide grades and certificates and jobs based on those, and money beside.
When Smith's invisible hand meets Michels' invisible hand, students are flattened in between and become two-dimensional. The combination of 'free market' and 'controlling framework' leads to dominance by those capable of brachiating through the social jungle, the monkeys best able to follow monkey rules. Those who would change those rules or make their own rules are few because many think they would fail.
Yet even supposedly conservative texts like the Bible say things like, "Do not be conformed to the system of the world." The Biblical Jesus paid tribute to the Law, but he said that the fulfillment of the Law was beyond the Law itself. He was the independent insurrectionist of his time: the Sabbath was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath — the Laws were made because of the hardness of men's hearts. But it is Man who is more important than Law.
We who live in the framework should be aware of both invisible hands. It is Michels' bureaucratic hand that is more pernicious, more deadly. It preserves a population pyramid in which craftsmanship is denied a proper place, and administrative power is king. I suspect that if even 10% of the teachers of the nation were to aim beyond the framework, at least 50% of their students would be lifted beyond the limits of their current horizons.
=====
Note: I think the major difference between Smith's hand and Michels' hand is that Smith thought the invisible economic hand was a good thing in general, whereas Michels thought the invisible bureaucratic hand was an evil thing.
Labels: Education, Ideas, John Gatto, Rules, Society
etched with acid at 12:07:00 pm
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