The Contribution of Education System to the Development a Dystopian Society - Essay Example

Raymy E. Vasquez English 151 Feola 16 December 2008 The Education System We all dream of a "Perfect Society" where there is love and respect for one another. We want to live in a peaceful world; with no violence, no jealousy, and no protests. Furthermore, we want society to have the discipline that almost all institutions work so hard to implement. True enough, we would have a better place to live in. The question at hand is: how are we going to build such a society Knowing that there are many influences that constitute a person's behavior, some of which we do not, or rather should not have control of. What measures are we willing to take in order to achieve it What system are we going to introduce to our education so that we could produce individuals fit for this society Are we willing to sacrifice and violate some values such as the values of privacy and freedom just to attain this so called "perfect society" And if we do, will it be worth it What would have become of us as human beings Education is one way to implement discipline or a desired behavior of any sort. After all, it is undeniable that a nation's education system greatly influences the kind of citizens it has. The people's discipline, values, and way of living are all affected by the kind of education they were able to attain, since we all know that, before being exposed to the real world where we have to work, we have to go through education. Unless we are home schooled and aside from outside influences, we learn everything else in school: manners, culture, academics. If the education system of a society can be altered and controlled by one person, there is a great chance that he will gain control over all of the society. In Paulo Freire's "banking theory of education" from his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he argues that society uses education to avoid people from intervening in what they have created as the perfect society. They have come up with a system that does not allow students to think; rather they are only receptacles of teachings or deposits. He said that "the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world". In this concept, students receive what the teachers give. They don't have a perception or an opinion of their own. They are only to record, memorize, and repeat without thinking. (Freire, Chapter 2). This way, it will be sure that no one stands up to change anything in the system. "The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them". Thus his idea of the students being the "oppressed" and the education system being oppressive because the system has removed the students' ability to think creatively and at the same time, be contributors to the learning process so they don't only listen. Michael Foucault's concept of Panopticism, on the other hand, introduces a mechanism that involves instruments, techniques, and procedures to be able to suppress and control people's minds to make sure that discipline "reigns over society as a whole" (Foucault, Part 3: Discipline). Although this is a completely separate idea, the concept of gaining power and control is the same with Freire's "banking concept". In Foucault's book Discipline and Punish, Part Three, he compares panopticism with a plague affected town. The plague can be an illness, or a symbolic disorder of rebellions, crimes, and vagabondage. In order to contain this plague and avoid any "contagions", a system was built to supervise each and every citizen in all their movements. The town was closed and they were prohibited to leave town in pain of death. All events were under surveillance and everything was recorded. From this concept, Foucault discusses a style of architecture from Jeremy Bentham's idea wherein there is a tall central building that monitors and spies on everything. This way, no physical torture is required to impose the desired behavior since each person is aware that he is being watched from the slightest movement he makes (Foucault, Part 3: Discipline). They who were left outside were the contagious, symbolic of the "leper"; they were excluded from society, cut off from all human contact. According to Foucault, these are the ways of exercising power over men, of controlling their relations, of separating out their dangerous mixtures. In relation to education, these two concepts of banking theory and panopticism have very relevant influences in the education system. As powerful as the banking theory of education is to "minimize or annul the students' creative power", so is the panopticon's power to induce fear in people so as not to deviate, ignore, contravene, nor even question the existing system. Over the years, the education system has been formulated in such a way that the teacher is the only authority inside the classroom. You have to obey or else, you would either be punished or sent home. I'm also sure that we all heard stories from older people, our parents or grandparents perhaps, of how they were taught in their time, with the teacher bearing a stick or a ruler - a tool used to spank their hands when they misbehaved. As children, they already have an idea of fear of authority as similarly imposed by panopticism. So then we were taught to sit still, stand up straight, and raise our hands before we speak in respect to the authority. We were inspected if we have clean nails, proper haircuts, and for some schools a complete uniform. The teacher does a daily roll call, records and grades all activities, the same way that panopticism conducts a surveillance of all events in the society. Thus, discipline is implemented using these concepts by our educators, knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally. As Freire has said, there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize. It is true that discipline and order is attainable and maintainable in this way. Since time immemorial, panopticism has worked for societies without the people even knowing or realizing it. As compared to the concept of "brainwashing" using torture, from the film "A Brave New World", using the concepts of panopticism indeed makes discipline a much easier task. I must say that panopticism does have positive effects in society and education as there are negatives. Using this concept, we will be able to keep track of our strengths and weaknesses in the society as a whole and implement ways to improve behavior and rule out those that make us weak. In school, we can create an orderly and trouble free environment among students, a school where cheating does not exist, knowing that a watchful eye is present, keeping track of their every move. We can reduce child delinquency. By keeping a record of student activities and grading them, we can produce more hardworking individuals than lazy ones. In our cities, we can decrease rebellion and induce a strong sense of respect to the authorities. All the intentions of doing these things are noble and serve the best interest of people but to what extent Imagine that all your actions are being monitored, watched, every second and every single movement good or bad. Wouldn't you want to have some space of your own If the extremes are to be implemented, just as the idea of the panopticon is, what are we to do with the humanitarian values of freedom, of privacy, of individuality If all our actions are to be recorded, what happiness and satisfaction do we have in ourselves, given that the city is safe and the schools trouble-free, if we know that everyone is just behaving accordingly because of fear What pride would people have in themselves if the only reason they are behaving the proper way is the fear of being punished It is true that we will have a much safer and orderly environment but it is not true that these people have been taught true discipline. How can you trust anyone then, when the cameras are finally turned off There is no assurance after all. What is discipline in the first place The dictionary defines it as "training to act in accordance with rules" (Dictionary.com). Does it always have to be forced At some point, maybe we can formulate laws and punishments to regulate behavior, but too much regulation leads to dictatorship. We are after all, humans and not robots following orders from a computer. We have the capacity to think, be creative, and contribute to create changes in the world as generations evolve. More importantly, we have a "conscience" that keeps us from doing something bad and not simply because we fear being punished. Another negative aspect of this partition and panopticism is the practice of excluding individuals who deviate from the norms. Exclusion brings order in a society that's why prisons and asylums were invented. However, we must remember that these people such as we are, are human beings, capable of errors as much as change. That is why the justice system in almost all countries (not all) is designed in such a way that the accused or even the convicted still has a chance to prove himself not guilty, or if so, changed. So in conclusion to the idea of having a perfect society, the truth remains, that society is composed of human beings capable of change and committing mistakes, having illnesses, and our systems have to be designed in such a way that would support them and their characteristics, not to turn them into immobilized, illogical robots. In the Brave New World, which discusses "Brainwashing", another technique is being introduced in what may be called as "mind-manipulation". In the movie, which was also based on Huxley's novel, this mind manipulation was shown in the character of Lenina Crowne, a teacher who was put in charge to program children's minds by using "sleep teaching machines" that condition the children at night. However, some parts of the movie do not really follow the ideas of Huxley's novel: like genetic engineering to erase and program people's memory. (Brave New World, movie). This mind-manipulation technique was derived from Ivan Pavlov's experiment on conditioned reflex. Sad to say, that as noble as his intentions were, Pavlov's theory had been adopted by communists to perform a sort of mental torture in order to obtain confessions and information. "Physical torture and other forms of stress were inflicted by lawyers in order to loosen the tongues of reluctant witnesses; by clergymen in order to punish the unorthodox and induce them to change their opinions; by the secret police to extract confessions from persons suspected of being hostile to the government" (A Brave New World, Brainwashing). In this technique, psychological stress is given to the subject or person being the target. When he can no longer bear the torture, he then reaches a state of neurosis and his brain goes on strike so that new behavior patterns may be suggested to him with the greatest of ease. At this point, he does not question or deviates from the instruction or suggested behavior; he just follows it, just as prisoners confess what his captors want him to confess. In education, although there is no obvious evidence of torture inflicted upon students, there is still at some point, a system of mind-manipulation, which agrees with Paulo Freire's banking concept: the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students. As the book says, "Brainwashing, as it is now practiced, is a hybrid technique, depending for its effectiveness partly on the systematic use of violence, partly on skilful psychological manipulation". All these techniques and concepts of gaining control agree with Paulo Freire's argument regarding education, that students are being oppressed. If the education system would remain this way, students would remain oppressed. They are oppressed because although they are only learning, they are entitled to hold some beliefs and values of their own, which may be unique to others and they are not getting that right when they are forced to adapt to a system which is inconsiderate of human needs and character. Each individual, and such are students, have experiences which may be unique from everyone else even the teacher. This gives him an opportunity to know something that not everyone knows and in this case, he knows more than the teacher does. In that process of learning, both teacher and student learn from each other. They become equal in a way. "From the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power." What wrong is there to learn from someone else if he has more information about a certain thing than you do If you acknowledge that person to have the same skills and abilities that you have although not in the same level, then the learning process does not have to be as constricted and as narrow as it seems. Individualism and creativity will flourish and we will have better facilities in the future, better employees, so then follows better companies, better products, and even more improved systems as we progress. "The solution", according to Freire, "is not to 'integrate" them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become "beings for themselves." Works Cited Brave New World. Dirs. Leslie Libman and Larry Williams. Perfs. Peter Gallagher, Leonard Nimoy. Prod. Dan Wigutow. NBC, Los Angeles. 19 April 1998. "Discipline" definition. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Path: search, discipline Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Books, 1993. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World: Revisited. New York: HaperCollins, 2004. Read More