Sometimes a new idea is at once so big, so simple, and so obvious that it seems strange that I’ve never noticed it. After reading Leigh’s post about Neil Postman, an author I’d never read, I picked up a couple of Postman’s books at the library last month. The End of Education [book review] triggered an awareness for me of cultural mechanisms that Postman called narratives, which might be likened to worldviews with a storyline and, according to Postman, have the power of gods over our perceptions of reality. The power of cultural narratives to define education explains many problems I see in the classroom.

These narrative-gods are entities that prescribe rules of conduct. They help us imagine a future as well as construct a history. They give meaning and purpose to our lives. The importance of cultural narratives for education, Postman said, is that they are shared.

There was a time when American culture knew what schools were for because it offered fully functioning multiple narratives for its people to embrace….Among them is one that goes by the name of the Protestant ethic. In this tale, it is claimed that hard work and a disciplined capacity to delay gratification are the surest path toward earning God’s favor (p. 13-14).

Focusing on the importance of narratives to schooling, Postman said that “What makes public schools public is not so much that the schools have common goals, but that the students have common gods.” (p. 18).”

Whether or not there ever were truly functioning gods with the power to adequately define schooling for most people is a debatable point. The need for a common narrative, however, seems entirely reasonable if we expect common outcomes for all students.

We humans have our symbol-creating power to thank for this god-making power. The power to create symbolic forms is what enables us to construct meaning through language, art, music, dance, gesture, etc. Cultural narratives are a means for us to create meaning. How ironic, I think, that the gods we create come to dominate us by overwhelming our ability to perceive the world directly.

During the past century, our gods have been under attack. The god of Faith has been challenged by the god of Science, The god of Self-reliance has fallen victim to the god of Corporate Responsibility. The god of Liberal Democracy has been wounded by the gods of Market Economies and Consumership. The battles for narrative primacy present a crisis that is turning people around the world toward tribalism and fundamentalism as we seek to recover lost meanings and values. What this means for schooling is that problems of relevance are not technical but metaphysical. The vital question for educators is not How, but Why.

What students need to engage is not a method, but a reason. Our solutions for making education more “effective” will at best benefit only those who share the sanctioned institutional vision. For the disaffected and disengaged, our technical advances and pedagogical refinements seem irrelevant and contrived. Alienated students see through our ruse and recognize the conceit for what it is. All must pay homage to the god of Economic Utility. Education, according to this narrative is a means to gainful employment. Productivity, efficiency, and organization are the values this god requires. The god of Economic Utility is the source of educational standards and accountability, the 2 Commandments of modern schooling. The god of Measurement is child to the god of Technology, the source of all Power and the Supreme Authority of our age.

Postman’s book doesn’t name all possible gods. New gods are born constantly, pounded-out of acetate and silicone, they are offered up to us for our approval on screens, in newsprint, and in shop windows. I’ve added some of my own here. Most teachers, I think, have observed that some children learn the prescribed lessons in school, while other students seem to learn only lessons about schooling itself. They learn that schooling is inflexible and unaccommodating, boring and irrelevant.

The End of Education isn’t a eulogy for public education. In this case ‘end’ can be taken to mean ‘goal’ or ‘result.’ Recognizing the need for new gods, Postman proposes a few. His list isn’t exhaustive but does offer a hopeful starting point for recreating a shared vision. Without going into detail about Postman’s list, I would say that any attempt to suggest solutions seems to me merely one more desperate How aimed at resuscitating the faltering Why. Not wanting to be entirely cynical, I think that new gods are possible and likely, but they are not going to arise from a conscious collective effort to create them because that’s not how they are born. Gods are born out of chaos and confusion. People rush to them for salvation. They appear when we find ourselves on the cataclysmic brink, or they insinuate themselves silently like snakes. I believe that the birth and adoption of gods that will serve us will require awareness and resistence to the suggestion that somehow we are going to teach our way out of this mess unless that teaching is about the mess itself. In short, I think the gods currently in ascendance will first need to fall.