Why Education Is Useless

Chapter Six: Utility

CHAPTER SIX Utility WHAT'S THE USE? It is one ofthe most famous educations, or miseducations, in the modern Western world. Under the tutelage ofhis father, adevoted follower ofthe Utilitarian philosopherJeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill was made a striking example of the possibilities of educational progress. No matter what allowances we make for the differences between curricula then and now, it is safe to say that Mill learned more as a preteen than most students today know by the time they have completed college. He began the study of Greek at three years of age, Latin at eight. By the time he was twelve he had explored geometry, algebra, and some calculus, and his readings in philosophy, history, science, and other fields were extensive. His exceptional achievements were meant to show what the average child might expect to accomplish ifsociety were organized in accordance with Benthamite principles ofreason. For the time being, though, he was a prodigy, perhaps even something of a monster. Like the creature stitched together byVictor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's 1817 novel, he was the product of a scientific experiment; later in life he would be dismayed when he found that others had looked upon him as a "manufactured man:'1 Whereas Frankenstein's creation suffered from paternal neglect, however, for better or worse Mill was almost continually under the supervision ofhis father. Readers of Louisa May Alcott's Little Men (1871) may recall the dire consequences suffered by Billy Ward, who was also raised to be a prodigy oflearning. Collapsing under the pressure, he emerged from his nervous prostration a sweet but dimwitted lad. Almost a century later Daniel Keyes would present a variation on this admonitory educational plot in Flowers for Algernon (1959), which was made into a popular movie, Charly (1968). In this case a scientific experiment turns a retarded janitor into a man so brilliant he is able to detennine that the experiment is flawed and he will return to the condition ofabject ignorance whence he came. Recent years have seen many other variations on this theme, as in the profoundly creepy 1994 movie, Forrest Gump, based on a novel by Winston Groom. In this cinematic fable the protagonist has no prehistory of superior or even average intelligence, and so the plot can cut directly to its moral: "Stupid is as stupid does." Narratives such as these testifY to a characteristically modern unease with education. Learning is perceived as having become a new element in society, an ominously transformed power, once it came to be allied with science and social engineering. Dumb Gump, for instance, serves symbolically to displace "the best and the brightest," such as Robert McNamara, and to heal with his simpleness the carnage into which their technocratic calculations led the United States in the Vietnam War. Naturally , these narratives tell of other things as well, such as the scariness ofcertain "big men," or fathers, as opposed to the redemption that might be had through sentimental maternal figures, but a concern with the implications of education is the most distinctive motivation in their design. Michel Foucault's argument in Discipline and Punish (1975) that schools in the modern world bear a telling resemblance to prisons, asylums , clinics, and military barracks elaborates upon the insights developed less systematically in these products ofpopular culture. Mill's collapse did not come as early as Billy Ward's and was not as complete as Charly's, but it was serious enough. As detailed in the fifth chapter of his 1873 Autobiography, 'A. Crisis in My Mental History," it began when he was twenty years old, in the autumn of1826. Hitherto he had been a docile and hardworking student, and he had followed his father's lead in taking Benthamite principles as his own. His goal was to be "a reformer ofthe world" by introducing the felicific calculus, the criterion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, into political questions.2 The result would be to rationalize society in its every aspect. Thoughtless appeals to authorities, traditions, intuitions, and other false idols would be dismissed in favor of the demand that one determine the value of any act, policy, or institution by reference to its consequences. Society would then be governed by a form ofempiricism, a logic ofcause and effect, and could look forward to progress of the sort represented by the advancing disciplines ofmodern science. If acts, policies , or institutions could be demonstrated to be doing more harm than good to...