Anthony Cruz

June 14, 2004

Period 4

The Great Hegemonic Tool

 

Public schooling was thought of to be a good idea, free education for all and the opportunity for advancement available to the human race. This ideology sounded good at the time, but as years progressed, the purpose of school had been forgotten. Rather than have students graduating at a higher intellectual level, school had became so standardized by the government that schooling administrations were able to categorize a student on their level of performance. The public schooling system has been used as a hegemonic tool imposed on children’s young impressionable minds to produce a submissive conformist outlook for students.

With the advent of the clock, public schooling had set the gears in motion to dehumanize students and make them into machines. Schedules would become more rigid and flexibility shortened. Unbeknownst to them, students were already being molded to their working schedule after they would graduate.  They to, along with their parents, be required to awake early morn, go to their place of business (in this case school), come home and do additional work (homework) to compensate for the hours, which their parents were not home. Parent and student alike would be at home ‘relaxing’ at the same roughly. And the remainder of time in their day, eight hours or so, they were allowed to do what they wanted for the most part. However, during the hours you are under their rule, your own peers reinforce the importance of conformation, lunch being the opportune moment to do this. It is at lunch where the sheep are herded and forced to find their groups and if they stray they will be met with the herder and thrown back into formation. ProEducation slogans and drones of the media is what keeps students regulated and coordinated in schools during lunch. The slogans help bash into the minds of the young that if you are not educated that there is no possible way to succeed. And the drones of the media, in forms of bullies, will reveal how important it is to be like everyone else or you will get punished and pushed around. It is also at lunch where school administrators went as of so far to give the students the illusion of power by granting them the Associated Student Body (ASB). What better way to control the masses than to give them the illusion that they have power right? Sadly, they do not know is that the students are just like a puppet government. They take orders from the higher powers that be and make think they make decisions. However if a decision ever contradicts with that of the administrators, it is over ruled and not allowed. Any activities done through the ASB is also another form of an illusion of power. These very same activities bring all the students together and distract them and do not allow them to think presenting a good show via the activities is controlling them. 

Now within this construct, opportunities would appear to further reinforce conformity and what better way to do it than through fear. Authority figures in the schooling system nation wide have made it a mission to ensure that any student found being willfully disobedient would be dealt with accordingly to make sure that students are ‘brought back into line’ with the others. A very broad term indeed and it can be used for virtually any situation, one would think that a school would narrow things down a bit more. With this, comes into mind California education code 235.5 (a)

 

233.5.  (a) Each teacher shall endeavor to impress upon the minds of

the pupils the principles of morality, truth, justice, patriotism,

and a true comprehension of the rights, duties, and dignity of

American citizenship, and the meaning of equality and human dignity,

including the promotion of harmonious relations, kindness toward

domestic pets and the humane treatment of living creatures, to teach

them to avoid idleness, profanity, and falsehood, and to instruct

them in manners and morals and the principles of a free government.

One would think that willful disobedience would be taught and if not, promoted. If teaching Greek philosophy has taught us anything it’s that Socrates questioned people relentlessly about their beliefs. It is questioning that helps the human race advance. However, school has taught us that ANY questioning of things (The authority of teachers or laws/rules in this case) will result in teachers using the term willfully disobedient to shield themselves from their own ignorance and punishing the student to deflect the attack. And if willful disobedience doesn’t land a student enough punishment to go back in line with they others, teachers have other ways of striking fear into the students. For example, the teachers themselves are like the Gestapo. They patrol area’s, pacing themselves looking for kids to bust and send them up to be written up. Off to your counselor you will go to plead your case but only to be met with the well clause (The, Regardless of what you say, your opinion has no worth, now submit or be punished clause) regardless of how well of a constructed argument present. The schooling board has also made it so difficult for a student to win against a teacher, that a student feels it is a hopeless cause and will sooner submit than to undergo all the trouble of getting their point of across.

And now with the nation wide No Child Left Behind Act, homogenized students can be the only outcome. Although it is a “false attempt to show progress[1]” by means of relentless testing, it still remains the dominant factor of switching a school’s objective to turning students into jeopardy players and teaching them how to memorize and not analyze.  The ideology behind school has been lost with this so-called act that has turned schools into glorified day cares. The schools new objective is to regulate and coordinate student progress. Quota’s of progress have been set so high and the ways to gauge progress is very vague. A bilingual student that just moved to America two years ago can progress 100 points on a test but if he is shy of one point from the quota, all those other points of progress are meaningless to this new scale. However if a native born student increases their overall performance by two points and exceeds the quota by one point, in the eye of the No Child Left Behind Act, that students is a success and the other is not. If this act has proven anything it has provided students and teachers alike with a false sense of accomplishment. It has also stripped any remaining chance of fun (not known by teachers) that was left in the classrooms for students and converted them into mass rooms of students getting the same facts nationwide stuffed down their throats.

Over a rigorous course of pro conformity and pro education messages public school has taught students if they are smart enough to even realize, that they are just another brick in the wall. No longer is there room in the education system for individuals with creative abilities. No, the call for public schooling is to make the students conform submissively and not question they rulers at hand. The relationship between teacher and student has now become inhuman. Students of the future can now go to school in hopes of being crammed senseless facts in hopes of passing test that they probably never cared about in the first place. The children of the future have now become the slaves of the present.