The Ecology of Education

Lately, upheavals in the American educational system have been much in the news. Everyone has a gripe, everyone has a suggestion, but no one is talking about a critical aspect of the problem: the ecology of education.

The ecology of education goes back to goes back to the "nature versus nurture" argument. Which is the most important, heredity or upbringing? The more refined question is: what is the role of genetics vs. environment? But no matter how you phrase the question, the answer remains: genetics determines the capabilities of the organism, environment determines the extent to which these capabilities will be developed. Genetics considered in the absence of environment is like an event with no place to happen. It is within this context that the ecology of education must be examined.

We certainly do have some animal characteristics we possess be reason of our genetics. We have complicated behaviors, "hard wired" so to speak, which become apparent as we biologically mature. We learn to use certain muscles only after the myelin sheath forms around the nerves that control them, or we are spastic if the sheath does not form. We have a goodly number of "hard wired" reflexes which require no learning at all, like pupil reaction to light We don't have to teach our heart to beat. But, if we move away from the animal properties and move into the area of our language based abilities we have another story.

Verbal education is a process so fundamental it defines our condition of humanness. In all its ramifications, education is so complex and pervasive that it encompasses our entire being and dominates every human activity . It is disasterous if a child can not learn the language. If the causes are physical, but not affecting the brain centers, adjustments can be made. Helen Keller learned to speak and write while being deaf and blind. She made it into the human race and did very well as a writer and lecturer. But, if the failure is the inability of the brain to do verbal processing -speaking and hearing, and/or reading and writing -the results are calamitous. If the disorder is not correctable then the individual is human by means of membership in the species, but does not exhibit basic social activity and never takes his place in society. Language based education is basic to every aspect of human culture and society; it is education that makes the person. We have a word for the noneducable human being: "vegetable."

We are accustomed to the notion that access to education is a variable in our society. All individuals do not have equal access to education, and the education that is available to an individual greatly differs in quality depending upon circumstances. In Fairfax County, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., the school budget is $5000 per pupil; in Smith County, a rural county in the same State, it is $750 per pupil -this is viewed as normal. We have been conditioned to accept our local public school system as the norm, and the local school board as the final arbitor for school policy. While we do have State Boards of Education, which impose teacher certification and curricular requirements, they seem to do little else to introduce an element of equality into the school experience.

Local support for schools ultimately has been found to be inadequate, and a whole host of Federal programs have been instituted to correct some of the imbalances. The Office of Education has become the Department of Education. Support has been offered for preschool programs to minimize some of the differences between preschoolers in affluent families and their poorer counterparts. We have Defense Department inducements for enlistment in the form of higher education -following several versions of the GI Bill -and we have student loans. Yet all of these things are insufficient if we cannot answer a simple ecological question: Which comes first, the education of the Parent, or of the child?

Americans have come to believe education starts with school, and that the educational process is simply a contract between the student and the school. We have taken the attitude that education is a highly personal and singular undertaking. We perceive the educational system in this way because of our experiences within it. A student is graded individually; he recites the lessons and takes the tests singly; he alone receives the grades and the diploma. As a student, you succeed or fail by yourself. It is not difficult to convince ourselves that education is an autecological process: the individual against the system. Nothing could be further from the truth. A mother; a teenager with little or no education herself, can offer her child sparse resources. If the child's grandparents had similar educational assets, the child is deprived of the resources required to be successful in educational achievement. Much of what a youngster learns in school is preconditioned by the competency of the family in which he receives his initial training.

The intellectual resources and assets the family is able to share with a newborn are the first measure of that child's available educational treasure, and are the rudiments of the socialization of that child. A rich home environment promises high chances for educational achievement, a depauperate home environment implies low chances for educational success. We all know this, and we more or less accept it.

But should we accept it? If education is an unalienable right, if it is part of the ecological equity that is the birthright of each and every citizen, are we correct in viewing it as an individual responsibility? Or, should education be perceived as a synecological process? Viewed autecologically education forms a ready basis for class distinction and discrimination, viewed synecologically it is seen to be a process that transcends the individual, and even the family, to become a concern of the society as a whole. The education of each child becomes the responsibility of the society as a whole. If we prize and cherish the Federal System, if we believe the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence endow each individual with certain unalienable rights, then we must believe that the Federal System these documents engender defines such synecological relationships, and takes them into account.

Is the quid pro quo for a grant of sovereignty to the newborn citizen the unalienable right to education? This is a question which must be asked - repeatedly -until every citizen may obtain his unalienable right to enjoy the ecological equity education makes possible.

...Ted Sudia...

FINAL NOTICE
November Board of Directors Meeting

The IdT Board of Directors will meet on Saturday, November 15, 1986 at 9:30AM. The meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Washington D.C. The room number or name will be posted on the Announcement Board in the hotel lobby, or may be obtained at the front desk. All correspondents and members wishing to participate are welcome to attend.

© Copyright 1986
Institute for domestic Tranquility