From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 06:01:33 GMT

                                 Wednesday, the 30th of December, 1992

I wrote, regarding G.A. Smith's program of environmental education:
                I thought approximately the same thing as John: There is
  no way I'm going let them carry out their experiments in indoctrination
  on *my* children. It is this rot---together with the fact that there is
  so very much like it already in the schools that most of what my wife and I
  consider real education gets ignored of a necessity---that has us committed
  to homeschooling our children.

Michael McDonald responds:
  Contrary to what John McCarthy said in reply to my post, I truly *am* amazed
  at the facile way some folks equate the notion of socialization with
  indoctrination.  Socialization is part of any educational process.
  Indoctrination has to do not so much with the educational institution as
  with the methods of each educator, and I would thank McCarthy not to assume
  that I am a proponent of *indoctrination* just because socializing children
  to *see* the common-sensical idea that allowing the environment to be
  degraded hurts us all strikes me as a good thing.

  Thus far, the arguments proffered here in favor of homeschooling strike me
  as profoundly selfish, as primarily a matter of wanting to ensure that 
  children are good little reflections of their parents.  Talk about
  indoctrination!

Well, Michael, you seem to be requesting the longer response:

Point the First.
Look at what I wrote. I said I agreed with John (Scott) for two reasons:
(1) The environmental educational program advocated by Smith is
mind-control rot; and (2) There's already too much such rot in the
schools as it is, so that schools aren't doing the important stuff.

Point the Second.
You haven't shown in what way ``socialization'' is distinct from
``indoctrination'' in your vocabulary. Leastways when you talk of
*socializing* children to see things your way, it sounds to me like
you are trying to subvert the fact that American voters and consumers
have chosen otherwise, or maybe you are asserting that the only way this
could be possible is that these Americans have been improperly
socialized, that you, or that ``environmental experts'' know better.

Point the Third
It may be true that environmental degradation is a bad thing,
assuming of course that terms are suitably defined (to date,
they have not been). It is not true that simply asserting this notion
is what said program of environmental education is about. Rather,
even if that much counts as a truism, it is only a mask for
something much more, and much more objectionable. (I refer to
any possibility of teaching American schoolchildren that
``individualism'' is the enemy, for instance. Having seen all
too much of the much-vaunted ``communalism'' in Canada and in
Europe, I disagree.)

Point the Fourth
Whether I am environmentally correct or not, I consider
my key objection to be that what is imagined with such
a program *is* mind control. I *am* objecting to method
more than anything else. It am objecting to the fact that
the program envisaged is ad men, not study. It is ``get 'em
while they're young.'' Exactly like other efforts at education
denoted by slogans such as ``No means No!'' and ``Just say
No to drugs''. The idea implements the sociologist's creed that
rational and democratic debate, judgment, essay, and book can be
replaced somehow by a government panel of experts who decide,
and then take our tax dollars to hire the best ad men that
money can buy to *make* all of us agree with the decision. It doesn't
matter a hill of beans to me whether the end behaviour desired
by the program is good or not. What matters is only whether the
ad campaign is out to usurp rational judgment. For instance, I
certainly want my children to learn to refuse to use dangerous
drugs. But God forbid that they do it only because their
third-grade teacher spouted some TV advertising slogan at them.

Point the Fifth
John McCarthy was exactly right when he pointed out that these
ad campaigns can, and often do, backfire. So, even if you don't
care that children might be seduced into doing things for the wrong
reasons, you might worry that the ``educational program'' will
only serve to educate people to be very cynical about environmental
claims.

Point the Sixth
(Related to my previous point) It would be foolish of you to believe
that homeschooling would produce carbon copies of parental
teachers. It would be equally foolish of you to believe that that
might be its goal.

Point the Seventh
If I did want my children to become carbon copies of me, I might
do better choosing to send them to public schools than homeschooling
them. Since I was schooled in a public school, I mean. I was
valedictorian of my high school graduating class of about 800.
Warren Central High School in suburban Indianapolis was always
in the top couple by any academic measure in the state. I.e.,
I surmise I had some of the best that ordinary American public schools
had to offer. After graduating in honors physics from Purdue, I won a
Churchill Scholarship for a year of postgraduate study at Cambridge.
It was during this year (1982-83, I was 22) I read _Tale of Two Cities_
for the first time. *This was my introduction to the French
Revolution.* And that is my complaint about American public schools
in a nutshell. Now, mind you, it was *I* who wasted those 20
years in front of a television set learning next to nothing, but my point
is that public schools let me get away with it swimmingly. It is
precisely because I do not want my children ground into mind-numbing
mediocrity that I want to keep them from the public schools.

And I see *nothing* in an environmental education program other
than a proposal for more time spent away from actually learning
anything.

              Mike Morris
      (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)


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