Hobbits8 - Education and the Industrial Model

Hobbits8

Aug. 7, 2006

Education and the Industrial Model

I've been reading The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul (he's taken a back seat to books I'm reading in preparation for school right now). There were some connections I made between that book and things said at the CiRCE conference. Although I didn't want to give away the conference with people like Cindy doing such an admirable job of telling about the workshops, I was so struck at the timeliness of one of the themes of the conference. Education was likened to cultivation rather than production. We have such a production-oriented mentality because of the assumptions we have which have been molded by the Industrial Society. Although I'm not sure I'd want to be a true agrarian and go back to the land and do everything ourselves, I do want to make sure I'm not letting my mind be controlled by industrial models in education. Ellul demonstrates how technology has reached it tentacles into every area of life. One example is the production of the car. Once the car was built and was made more efficient, the demand arose to make roads better because the efficiency of the car was wasted and limited by the poor roads. The roads are then made better, but had to be paid for by taxes which required legislation. So we have technology affecting commerce, economics, and politics. In other books, I've read how business came to be so influential in education and how modern educational philosophies reflect business ideals. The CiRCE conference juxtaposed an agrarian model to the industrial model. An industrial model is concerned with the most product for the least money: efficiency. It's concerned with uniformity, not craftmanship. We should never view life that way. We're dealing with living people, not objects to be manipulated.

I was thinking about this this last weekend in looking over what I accomplished last week. I felt that I hadn't gotten much done. I had looked back over the many things that seemed to interrupt my purposes and realized that all those things were important. They were the interruptions of life and involved relationships with other people. SAHMs can particularly have difficulty seeing the importance of what they do because they don't bring home a paycheck or do something in the world that's deemed important by our society. But where does that mindset come from? I believe it comes from buying into the lie of the industrial model into all of life.

I was touched by something one of my sons told me last week. He has stumbled across a blog where the woman was staying at home with children, but she felt that she wasn't doing anything really important *out* in the wide world. He posted that he thought she should never think that what she was doing was not important and not impacting society. Then he said that he felt that his own mom (me!) had a great impact by being home with him and his siblings. It's sort of like the pebble dropped into the pond. There are repercussions beyond which we will ever know. But I think that if we think about what kind of important role we're playing in our children's lives as something we're crafting or cultivating and not something that we're trying to do with the greatest amount of efficiency with the greatest amount of end product, the more satisified and content we'll be in the lives we live.

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Aug. 10, 2006 - Being vs. doing

Posted by Rick Saenz

In his book Presence of the Kingdom, Jacques Ellul makes a powerful case that Christians should concentrate on being rather than doing, i.e. that the role of a Christian is not to accomplish any particular thing, but to respond in a Christian manner to whatever situation he finds himself in.

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Aug. 10, 2006 - Thanks

Posted by

Thanks, Rick. That sounds like a good book. I've gotten three of his books: Propaganda, The Technological Society, and The Ethics of Freedom. Although I was a little put off by what Melissa said ("Just say no.") on her blog, I can totally relate to feeling like I can easily get sucked into everyone else's pet project. I've recently gotten out of "doing" a couple of things that took a lot of my time over the last four years. What you've said has reinforced my feeling of "rightness" about doing that. So far, from reading Propaganda and TS, it seems that Ellul has a lot of insight into complex matters.

Edited by Hobbits8 on Aug. 10, 2006 at 8:39 PM

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Aug. 14, 2006 - thanks

Posted by Anonymous

Thank you so much for this post! I came over from Cindy's blog. Your point about education being more about cultivation than production is very profound and I will definitely be thinking on that this week as I prepare to start school next week.

Blessings to you!
Meredith (www.entdraughts.blogspot.com)

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Aug. 18, 2006 - Untitled Comment

Posted by harrishouse

I post here with great trepidation! I just looked up your blog and had no idea you were also on homeschoolblogger . As a beginning homeschooler, I do not feel worthy at all to discuss these matters with someone as experienced as Patti.
However, I have to say that my DH and I were just having this discussion. My DH will be very quick to tell you that the current "education system" is NOT turning out good workers. As a store manager, he sees people daily who can not spell well enough to fill out a job application or make change to his customers.
Now consider what "school" was like before the turn of the century. Yes, it was an agrarian society (love Dominion's blog too). Yet, I believe I have read that there was an extremely high literacy rate! Many children only attended a one-room school house a few months for perhaps 8 years.
They didn't have computers, workbooks, Xerox machines, DVD's or even textbooks for that matter. The teacher may have had the only books owned by the school.
Yet, take my great-grandfather , he could read anything, write like a calligrapher, spell without error, quote the founding fathers, and do college level math IN HIS HEAD! (Remeber -- 8th grade education)
This, to me, says a lot about education in our "industrial age."
I haven't read any books on the subject, but to me, the conclusions about our current ps methods are obvious!
And Patti, when do you all find time to read these books?

momgenet (who's most philosophical book read today was Dr. Suess!)

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Aug. 18, 2006 - Trepidation

Posted by Hobbits8

Dear Genet,

Please don't worry at all! We're all experienced in different ways and we all have to start somewhere! Thanks for your comments. Your great-grandfather sounds like an amazing man. I was recently reminded of something that happened a few years ago at a grocery store in the middle of Springfield somewhere--I am thinking that it was on College St. I was at a checkout, and someone came up and asked the checker how much one thing would be if the price were 5 for $1. That was astounding enough, but then when the checker got out her calculator to figure it out, I was flabbergasted.

As far as my reading time goes, since my kids are older now, I do get a lot more un-interrupted time. Although maybe not as much as one would think. There's always something going on with older kids, too, but there are usually bigger spaces in between. It's hard to even keep a train of thought with little kids. I usually read history and literature related to what we're studying during the school year, and then more philosophical books that are for my own interest in the summer. I can't tell you how important I think it is to read lots. When I read my first non-fiction book when I was 22, it was hard. I recently re-read that book and thought how easy it was. I can only attribute it to practice. Now I've read enough philosophical materials and history and so many interesting connections get made, that it's a lot of fun for me.

Thanks for posting!

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About Me

I am the 48-year-old homeschooling mother of six children residing on 40 acres in the Ozarks of Missouri. I plan to write about odds and ends of things related to education, history, theology, genealogy, and my kids, of course. My husband is the owner of Clever Welding, a portable welding business.