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Introduction
I have worked in higher education administration for almost 30 years. While my longevity derives in large part from the choice of a career that I have enjoyed and from which I have made a living, I have also over these years held out the hope that the educational system in which I work could continue to provide a way and seek new ways for humans to rise above their everyday circumstances and for the world to become a more thinking, caring place for all to live. I have often said that the primary role of education in society is to attenuate, if not eliminate, human misery. As I now approach the end of this career, any hope I have held out for the current system has all but evaporated.
Although I speak here of the educational system in the USA, I think what I say applies to the systems of many other countries as well. The rhetoric about the potential value of education in society has been around awhile and persists: the joy and empowerment of intellectual pursuit, the central role of critical and creative thinking in the sustainability of a democratic society, the liberation of the unique contributions within all of us, and the recognition of a myriad of learning styles, suggesting that learning happens in doing and that teaching exists to guide that doing wherever it may lead. I say “potential” to emphasize that the rhetoric is about what direction educational thinkers say it ought to be moving based on current best knowledge and theory, not where it is or has been. Yet, all evidence points to an educational system heading in the opposite direction of that implied by this rhetoric: a devaluing of the intellectual life of the individual in favor of mass hegemony, a rejection of the premise that democratic governments and workplaces require citizens and employees who can think for themselves, an apparent desire on the part of those who control the purse strings to create bands of robots who are trained primarily to perform specific job-related tasks, and a failure to recognize the value of the unique contributions of every human, including the unique ways each of us learns.
My interest in alternative educational systems has been...