“We should, however, give to our children a vision of the possibilities which lie ahead and endeavor to enlist their loyalties and enthusiasms in the realization of the vision.”
– George Counts, Dare the School Build a New Social Order?
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As I’ve just finished immersing myself in John Gatto’s powerful arguments for unschooling – the crux of which is that compulsory education is not to be seen as a lever of change, but as a fundamental imposition – I thought it was time to revisit what is perhaps the second most powerful (behind Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed) call for educational social reconstruction that I’ve ever read: George Counts’s 1932 pamphlet “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?” While I’d read this years ago, I’d never written about it, while I’ve written at least two or three times about Freire. It was time.
Although it’s not nearly as long as Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Counts’s work is powerful, lucid, beautifully written, and direct. He begins by outlining the stakes that the country faces, the tremendous and grinding economic deprivation of the Great Depression. Then he moves on to chastising teachers, on the one hand, for their hitherto passive political role, and – famously, scandalously – the “child-centered” educational progressives who prioritize the individual comfort and security of their positions (and their children’s) over meaningful political engagement and care for the less privileged:
“The weakness of Progressive Education thus lies in the fact that it has elaborated no theory of social welfare, unless it be that of anarchy or extreme individualism. In this, of course, it is but reflecting the viewpoint of the members of the liberal-minded upper middle class who send their children to the Progressive schools.”
He also (again, famously) tells educators that they must no longer be afraid of indoctrinating their students. Except that he backs away almost immediately from the word “indoctrination,” tending to use the softer word “imposition” in the rest of the essay. Counts’s argument is a familiar one: there is no such thing as true neutrality; everyone is propagating some social and political vision; to pretend otherwise is ignorant at best, deceptive at worst:
“I am prepared to defend the thesis that all education contains a large element of imposition, that in the very nature of the case this is inevitable, that the existence and evolution of society depend upon it, that it is consequently* eminently desirable, and that the frank acceptance of this fact by the educator is a major professional obligation. I even contend that failure to do this involves the clothing of one’s own deepest prejudices in the garb of universal truth and the introduction into the theory and practice of education of an element of obscurantism.”
Instead, education must embrace a new, more politically active role in the social reconstruction called for by the urgent and pressing problems of the Great Depression-era U.S.:
“If Progressive Education is to be genuinely progressive, it must emancipate itself from the influence of this [upper-crust social] class, face squarely and courageously every social issue, come to grips with life in all of its stark reality, establish an organic relation with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny, and become less frightened than it is today at the bogies of imposition and indoctrination. In a word, Progressive Education cannot place its trust in a child-centered school.”
Furthermore, all education involves a degree of “impositioning” students because all education involves the deliberate shaping of living beings, and all cultures must pass along their traditions, their languages, and their customs to the young. This isn’t bad, Counts reminds us, but natural and even liberating to children who for Counts, apparently echoing Dewey, only develop as beings through socialization:
“There is the fallacy that man is born free. As a matter of fact, he is born helpless. He achieves freedom, as a race and as an individual, through the medium of culture.”
The extreme Rousseauians among the child-centered educators are being hypocritical in demanding that children be subject to no guidance whatsoever (and of course, Rousseau himself merely controlled and delayed – not prevented – Emile’s eventual entry into cultural and social life). Echoing Dewey, Counts reminds us that all cultures must pass along something to their young.
What I like most about Counts’s essay is here, at the heart of it: A challenge to educators not only to take an active role in shaping society, but specifically to step up and outline their own specific vision of education. Because education, as Counts reminds us, always contains some vision, and laying back and going with the flow is tantamount to avoiding responsibility. Counts is a wonderfully clear writer, who has a way of “cutting through the crap” to identify how empty the vision of many educators really is:
“Other vigorous opponents of imposition unblushingly advocate the ‘cultivation of democratic sentiments’ in children or the promotion of child growth in the direction of ‘a better and richer life.’ The first represents definite acquiescence in imposition; the second, if it does not mean the same thing, means nothing.
Several times in this fiery essay I found myself appreciating what I read as Counts’s sense of humor, particularly as he chides the child-centered progressives:
“I believe firmly that democratic sentiments should be cultivated and that a better and richer life should be the outcome of education, but in neither case would I place responsibility on either God or the order of nature.” Later he has a particularly funny passage in which he chides the professoriate for their head-in-the-clouds equivocation on important social issues.
Counts call for educators’ to take the lead in social reconstruction is all the more urgent because of the desperate times the country is in – a call that feels timeless and modern:
“Our major concern consequently should be, not to keep the school from influencing the child in a positive direction, but rather to make certain that every Progressive school will use whatever power it may possess in opposing and checking the forces of social conservatism and reaction.”
And:
“Under ordinary conditions the process of living suffices in itself to hold society together, but when the forces of disintegration become sufficiently powerful it may well be that a fairly large measure of deliberate control is desirable and even essential to social survival.”
Indeed, Counts also believes that schools should be especially focused in their efforts because American schools, while certainly a lever for social change, are but one – often minor – lever:
“A moment’s reflection is sufficient to show that life in the modern world is far too complex to permit [molding children to a single pattern]: the school is but one formative agency among many, and certainly not the strongest at that.”
Finally, after combatting the argument that education should not be used for imposition, and after another fiery section imploring teachers that they in fact are the right agents of change, Counts – to his everlasting credit – spends the final section of the work outlining his own specific political vision that he believes schools must promote in order to, in his view, revitalize American democracy. This is something that I particularly appreciate in a writer – the courage to say straightforwardly just what he wants us to do. You could say that Counts is the exact opposite of Henry Giroux.
Counts’s view is basically that the U.S. should adopt socialism. American democracy is in danger of becoming meaningless because of the vast economic inequality during the Great Depression which he highlights in memorable prose. The sheer poverty of many Americans is particularly galling to Counts in light of our collective material wealth and our immense productive capabilities. The answer is no longer to leave economic coordination to the whims of the market but to transition to central planning and public ownership of industry: “Ignorance must be replaced by knowledge, competition by cooperation, trust in providence by careful planning, and private capitalism by some form of socialized economy.”
This he sees as not only the best way to ensure material equality but also to preserve meaningful democracy:
“The fact cannot be overemphasized that choice is no longer between individualism and collectivism. It is rather between two forms of collectivism: the one essentially democratic, the other feudal in spirit; the one devoted to the interests of the people, the other to the interests of a privileged class.”
Most strikingly, Counts tells us that not only must the ruling classes be made to relinquish their property, but that it may require a “revolution” to do so. Not only that, but he comes uncomfortably close to sanctioning violent means: “ . . . [A]ccording to the historical record, this process has commonly been attended by bitter struggle and even bloodshed.” It is hard to tell whether Counts is actually advocating revolutionary violence or merely warning against violent backlash from threatened property owners:
“Ruling classes never surrender their privileges voluntarily. Rather do they cling to what they have been accustomed to regard as their rights, even though the heavens fall . . . There is little evidence from the pages of American history to support us in the hope that we may adjust our difficulties through the method of sweetness and light. Since the settlement of the first colonists along the Atlantic seaboard we have practiced and become inured to violence. This is peculiarly true wherever and whenever property rights, actual or potential, have been involved.”
Either way, Counts realizes that he is painting a very dark picture.
Counts ends his essay by imploring teachers to get to work enacting this socialist vision:
“The teaching profession, or at least its progressive elements, should eagerly grasp the opportunity which the fates have placed in their hands. Such a vision of what America might become in the industrial age I would introduce into our schools as the supreme imposition . . .”
Above all, he ends by reminding us of the importance of educators in articulating a pedagogical and political vision. Until we do so, we have no right to complain about the efforts of others:
“ . . . We are scarcely justified in opposing and mocking the efforts of so-called patriotic societies to introduce into the schools a tradition which, though narrow and unenlightened, nevertheless represents an honest attempt to meet a profound social and educational need. Only when we have fashioned a finer and more authentic vision than they will we be fully justified in our opposition to their efforts.”
I appreciate how straightforward and honest Counts is about his goals. As I mentioned, he is very direct about the form of government he wants us to assume, and he is unusually honest about using pedagogical indoctrination (or “imposition”) to achieve this goal. It’s hard for me to think of any educational theorist who is so open about this point (other than Plato). I vastly prefer Counts’s directness to, for example, the endless complaint of Henry Giroux, or the – in my view – hypocrisy of Paulo Freire. Freire in particular bothers me because at heart I think his political end goal is similar to Counts’s, but Freire is anything but open about this. He seems to call for independent thinking, so long as it bends toward a classless society.
Yet Counts’s work brings up several important issues. For one, it brings up the question, of course, of whether indoctrination is an *effective* educational strategy; the question – is Counts’s work advocating real propagandizing and reeducation – or just a strong emphasis on teaching values? – is debatable, I think, despite his strident rhetoric. Meanwhile, his social reconstructionism is such an interesting counterpoint to the child-centered Romanticism that he so memorably chastises. One the one hand, the Romantics *don’t* always offer a realistic vision of education beyond the veneration of development for its own sake. But on the other, social reconstructionists, in their zeal to deliver “imposition” are just as guilty as any essentialist of prioritizing the curriculum instead of the child – of failing to educate individuals-as-individuals, with all that is missed in those scenarios.
Then there is the question of who decides just what the social vision is in social reconstructionism? Counts seems comfortable with the idea of a socially planned economy; one wonders whether he is comfortable with a centrally planned political system, too. This is surely the natural end point of a society with a central idea around which efficient indoctrination is oriented. This is in contrast to the Deweyian progressive experimentalist philosophy that sees schools as, if not the places where deliberation takes place, at least the training grounds for the public deliberation in adulthood when it actually does.
As an interesting end note, Counts’s views about social reform changed dramatically following the revelations in the 1930s of Stalin’s purges of Soviet professionals. Although Counts continued to be an outspoken critic regarding economic inequality, he decisively turned against communism in general and violent, undemocratic reform more broadly. Later, he wrote, “The forces of democracy cannot cooperate or form a united front with any totalitarian movement or party, however loudly it may announce its devotion to the cause of democracy” (from Ravitch, 237).
Still, Counts’s famous work still remains as one of the most direct and powerful challenges to American education that I have ever read. Education must outline or clarify its educational goals, and more importantly, to decide upon the correct methods in attaining those goals. I’ve never read a writer who pushed more strongly for pure indoctrination (at least not in an American setting) and for pure political reform via education. His work is something all educators must weigh and consider, even if their own conclusions are radically different.