A plain-spoken sham: Education’s great scam

Image: The Pied Piper of Hamelin / Wikipedia. Artist: Augustin von Moersperg

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Xavier Massó

We can debate whether the educational crisis we are experiencing is structural or temporary, systemic or confined to particular areas; whether we are dealing with a conceptual error maintained with dogged obstinacy, or with the poor implementation of a theory so perfect that it belongs neither to this world nor to the world it is meant to serve; or whether, alternatively, we are looking at a romantic educational model turned into a business, an educational avatar of Fichte’s philosophical idealism, the quintessence of flower power put through the blender of Christian neo-millennialism, or a piece of neoliberal/transhumanist social engineering steeped in sulphurous, demonic vapours.

We can debate all of the above, and much more besides. But if, as Gonzalo de Berceo put it, we want to ‘fer una prosa en román paladino’ —to write in plain English, as it were, and call a spade a spade—, then we must say plainly what we are dealing with: a con, a colossal fraud. We have been sold a pup by the brotherhood of pedagogists who cooked up this contrivance and by the politicians who invested them with authority. Yet neither side is prepared to admit any mistake or turn back, under any circumstances. The first group has its livelihood at stake: it needs to keep its snouts in the trough, line its pockets and keep the whole operation fat and happy. The politicians, for their part, have plenty of votes and a great deal of money riding on it, quite apart from the shame they seem incapable of feeling. The price of keeping those votes captive is that the show must go on, because the spectacle is what keeps the business afloat. Besides, they are not paying for it out of their own pockets, and there is plenty to be gained…

The fact is, there is no mistake to admit to, because they have made none — or at least none of any consequence. Both sides are successfully achieving their respective aims. The pedagocrats, applying their age-old golden rule of creating a problem wherever none exists and always having another problem ready for every solution, have more than achieved their goal of becoming indispensable power brokers in the education system. For years they have themselves problematised, stigmatised and wrecked the education system, turning it into a grotesque distortion of reality, a caricature of something no one can quite identify. The politicians, in turn, have also achieved their overriding aim, which was always to secure a captive vote drawn from populist constituencies. To all appearances, that vote is now firmly entrenched and requires no more than routine maintenance. The charade must, of course, continue; in other words, they must keep up the pretence.

In short, this is a racket around which a gigantic scam has been built, with countless offshoots, vested interests and more filth than in the Augean stables. For more than thirty years, our shepherded and hypocritically timid society has been meekly swallowing the whole thing. None of this, however, could have continued without the culpable complicity — active or passive — of a society that has been all too willing to turn a blind eye, either because it suits it or because it prefers to believe the story.

The scheme is so cleverly contrived that it even has its own safety valves. Every three years, when the PISA results are published, education makes the news for a few days. It appears in the media, and people wonder what on earth is happening in schools to produce such abysmal results. The inevitable catharsis follows, and we witness the familiar spectacle of their mock displays of outrage over the ‘surprisingly’ disastrous educational results. It is crude theatre, like the scene in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) in which the unforgettable Captain Renault cries out indignantly, ‘I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!’, and orders the casino to close, while someone discreetly slips him his cut. But, as I said, this lasts only two or three weeks. Then the casino opens again, nothing has happened, and we will see one another in three years’ time.

There is deliberate wrongdoing, of course, on the part of certain charlatans who deserve to be tried and convicted for the irreversible damage they have done and continue to do. But society is culpable, too: it succumbed with suspicious alacrity to the blandishments and impossible promises of rogues straight out of a textbook. Society preferred to be enchanted by the siren songs of swindlers and entrusted them with the education of its children. That is partly understandable: who would not like to hear that we all have a genius within us, and that even a child who is a bit slow on the uptake will thrive at school thanks to some pedagogical magic spell that awakens the shining light within? And if it turns out that there is precious little genius after all, then it is all or nothing: everyone passes, and we might as well enjoy life while we can.

It was much the same in the fabled town of Hamelin. Yes, the one with the piper, the rats and the abducted children. Its citizens wanted to rid themselves of the plague of rats, but not one of them was prepared to roll up their sleeves, let alone get their hands dirty dealing with such repulsive rodents. So they hired the colourful piper who had so conveniently offered his services — and who turned out to be a necromancer. They offered him what he asked for without stopping to consider what it meant to invest him with the power they were handing over. ‘We can always refuse to pay him,’ the naïve fools thought.

But the piper knew from the outset that the greedy burghers of Hamelin had no intention of paying him to get rid of the rats. In reality, the gold they had promised him, but withheld after he had freed them from the rat infestation, is merely a metaphor for their refusal to accept responsibility. The real price they would pay was for placing themselves in the hands of a necromancer whose real aim was to take the town’s children. The failure to pay is merely the pretext for taking the children, just as he had taken the rats before them. And, as the saying goes, steal from a thief and you are forgiven for a hundred years…

More or less the same happened here, metaphors aside. Society washed its hands of its responsibilities and handed control of education to a bunch of rogues. And demagoguery, let us admit it, proved popular and carried the day. Universal passes, education à la carte, gamification, ‘forbid nothing’, everyone is a winner, qualifications for all, and life is short so enjoy it — oh, and everything paid for (!)… a cocktail worthy of Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island, devised with precisely the same intentions. Who could say no? Nobody — or just a handful of killjoys, whom it was easy enough to silence. The scheme went ahead to cheers and applause. It seemed that at long last someone had squared the circle: the children were on Pinocchio’s island of games, while the adults were happier than Sancho Panza as governor of the island of Barataria. But then reality intervenes: squaring the circle was a chimera, we know where Pinocchio’s island led, and we know how Sancho’s governorship of Barataria turned out. The trickster becomes the tricked. The great Gregorio Morán put it lucidly years ago [1]: “the most painful thing about the defeat of public education is that it was brought about by the very people who would have needed it most”.

When it becomes all too obvious that things are not working, and that fourteen-year-olds cannot even perform the most basic tasks, Plan B is put into action: if content has to be cut and standards lowered to grotesque levels, so be it. The pedagogical narrative will provide the necessary justification: learning is not what matters, but learning how to learn. Why teach content if everything is on the internet and we now have AI, which allows children to learn whatever they need, whenever they want? Are we not democratising knowledge by giving everyone access to the internet? Why memorise anything? School is not there for learning, but for social interaction and happiness…

How is it possible for a society to fall into such a trap and succumb to arguments whose fraudulent nature is there for all to see? And how can it be that this narrative of educational success — if anyone were to advance it in any other sphere of human activity, they would be taken for lunatics and become a laughing-stock to anyone with a modicum of common sense?

These are the things that almost everyone discusses in private, sotto voce: a profound truth that is widely known yet kept silent, as true as it is forbidden. What everyone knows, but no one dares to say in public.

Surely the time has come to say enough is enough. But it will have to be society that does so: neither politicians, nor the pedagocrats, nor the media outlets tied to those in power — which means almost all of them — will ever do it. What matters to them is that the show goes on, because when the spectacle ends, the business ends; and when the business ends, so does their gravy train. And so the game goes on…

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[1] Gregorio Morán, ‘La derrota más sentida’ [‘The Most Deeply Felt Defeat’], Sabatinas intempestivas, La Vanguardia, 13 September 2010.

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Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons