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The Future Of Education and The Utopian Trap
I was walking with my son in an older neighbourhood in Edmonton when we came across a school building, sitting, like a castle or cathedral complete with tower and battlements, among modest wood frame houses, some built in the first decades of the last century. Andrew observed, rather sadly, the contrast between the school now in front of us and the ones currently under construction: “There was a time when schools were built in brick and stone to last a hundred years … you wonder what they were thinking.” It’s a good question to ask as the Alberta Teachers’ Association enters its second century.
Old King Edward School and those like it that can be found in cities and towns across Alberta were a material expression of a community’s belief in the central importance of education and confidence in the future. The builders of those schools lived in an imperfect world and yet persevered in the belief that things could be better, at least for their children, and that public education would be the vehicle for progress. Even though school structures today are built to last decades rather than a century, these beliefs continue to drive the demands that are placed on public education.
And those demands can be onerous: we expect our schools to be more safe, more gentle, more nurturing, more inclusive, more meritocratic, more egalitarian, more rational, more responsive, more anticipatory, more interesting, more stimulating and more virtuous in every respect than the larger community within which they are rooted. Our schools are expected to be, in microcosm, a model of what we say we would want our society to be. This is the utopian vision of education and its role in creating the future.
It is also a trap.
Here is the problem: utopian perfection is by its nature unattainable and the utopian vision imposes upon public education unrealistic expectations about what schools can achieve. Public education’s imperfections are then perceived as failures of the system and of teachers. In the minds of many, the critical question then becomes, who can we hold accountable, or, more directly, who can we blame?
The utopian vision also poses a particular danger in that it can far too easily be used to advance a future that is singular, uncompromising and ultimately corrosive. We have the legacy of residential schools to prove that what was originally conceived of in grand utopian terms by persons of power and influence visited immense suffering on children, their descendants and their communities.
Finally, it is a consequence of this utopian vision of public education that there is a tendency popular in political circles and among opinion leaders to “educationalize” various social and economic ills. Even as public education is excoriated for its apparent failures, the expectation is that education will ultimately deliver the grand solution at some point in the future. This provides a ready made excuse to not actually do anything in the present to meaningfully confront real problems. It doesn’t help that even the most expensive and sweeping investment in education is cheaper than the most minimal attempt to deal with the hard consequences associated with entrenched income inequality, systematic racism, diminished competitiveness and individual alienation. Public education is, for too many politicians, what alcohol is to Homer Simpson: the cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems.
We can escape this utopian trap. Let’s start by recognizing that many of the demands made on schools are often fundamentally unreasonable, and then let’s give our schools a break. As we consider the future, we need to be realistic and grounded. We need to understand that while there is much good that can be done, there are limits to what public education and teachers can achieve in and for the world.
It is deeply and tragically ironic that the majestic school building that Andrew and I were looking at and that embodied so much optimism for the future was dedicated in 1913. Less than a year later, the guns of August would sound and the future would never be the same. Still, more than a century later, the school resounded with play, laughter, conversation and learning. There is some redemption in that.
