In light of this, consider how an industrial-era school system prepares us for the modern workplace. Children are expected to sit still for hours upon hours; to control their impulses; to focus on boring, repetitive tasks; to move from place to place when a bell rings; and even to ask permission before going to the bathroom (think about that for a second). Teachers systematically reward children for being docile and punish them for “acting out,” that is, for acting as their own masters. In fact, teachers reward discipline independent of its influence on learning, and in ways that tamp down on student creativity. Children are also trained to accept being measured, graded, and ranked, often in front of others. This enterprise, which typically lasts well over a decade, serves as a systematic exercise in human domestication. Schools that are full of regimentation and ranking can acclimate students to the regimentation and ranking common in modern workplaces. This theory is supported by the fact that managers of modern workplaces, like factories, have long reported that workers worldwide typically resist regimentation, unless the local worker culture and upbringing are unusually modern. This complaint was voiced in England at the start of the industrial revolution, and also in developing nations more recently. The main symptom is that unschooled workers don’t do as they’re told. For example, consider the data on cotton mill “doffers,” workers who remove full spools of yarn from cotton spinning machines. In 1910, doffers in different regions around the world had a productivity that varied by a factor of six, even though they did basically the same job with the same material and machines. In some places, each doffer managed six machines, while in other places only one machine. The problem was that workers in less-developed nations just refused to work more machines: Moser, an American visitor to India in the 1920s, is even more adamant about the refusal of Indian workers to tend as many machines as they could “ . . . it was apparent that they could easily have taken care of more, but they won’t . . . They cannot be persuaded by any exhortation, ambition, or the opportunity to increase their earnings.” In 1928 attempts by management to increase the number of machines per worker led to the great Bombay mill strike. Similar stories crop up in Europe and Latin America. The reluctance of unschooled workers to follow orders has taken many forms. For example, workers won’t show up for work reliably on time, or they have problematic superstitions, or they prefer to get job instructions via indirect hints instead of direct orders, or they won’t accept tasks and roles that conflict with their culturally assigned relative status with coworkers, or they won’t accept being told to do tasks differently than they had done them before. Modern schools also seem to change student attitudes about fairness and equality. While most fifth graders are strict egalitarians, and prefer to divide things up equally, by late adolescence, most children have switched to a more meritocratic ethos, preferring to divide things up in proportion to individual achievements.
School does help prepare us for the workforce in some ways. We learn how to get used to comparing ourselves against others using standard metrics, we learn how to listen and absorb instructions and execute accordingly, and to learn how to get along with our peers. In this passage, Hanson terms it as “human domestication”.
For me, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. For me, being able to listen, accept standards and getting along with others are traits that are be objectively good. Schools are ultimately a way to inculcate certain values and behaviours that society needs at that point in time. Hence, the shifting focus towards creativity, critical thinking and learning about technology in recent times. While we can be critical of what we are learning in schools, we should not also be too quick to discount the whole education system.
