Spinal Fire Scientia Est Potentia

What’s The Point?

Counting is a miraculous invention. It allows us to make an abstract representation of the universe and then analyze it separate from its original context. When it comes to education, we use this invention in order to measure a student’s knowledge. This is done via a process of assignation of numbers to snippets of various subjectively chosen bits of knowledge. What affect does this have on the epistemology practiced in our schools?

The history of points is fascinating. Nobody knows who was the first to treat knowledge in this fashion. In my research, I’ve been able to compare methods of instruction before and after the turn of the last century in order to pinpoint a particular time period where knowledge began to be abstract and countable.

Teaching, before the turn of the last century, was essentially a combination of rote repetition and written analysis of classical work. After the turn of the century, classical works were amalgamated into treatises that would eventually become the modern textbook. These early books listed the important points that students should remember began to treat knowledge in the abstract self evident manner that suggests that points were being used to count it.

During this time period, between 1890 and 1930, one of the most massive educational reforms in the history of the United States was taking place. All across the nation students were being required by law to attend schools that were subsidized by local, state, and in some cases federal funds. The overall education programs themselves were being removed from sources of local input and were transferred to programs that came directly from giant foundational think tanks like the Rockefeller Foundation.

John D. Rockefeller tells us the mission of his foundation and of the goals of its educational programs.

“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”

This thinking guided the transformation of education by influencing some of the most powerful people in the nation. For example, President Woodrow Wilson stated, "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

In 1918, Benjamin Kidd, a member of the Education Trust, which was composed of foundation representatives from Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association, said, "school was to impose on the young the ideal of subordination.”

This zeitgeist is captured in the theory of knowledge promoted by the concept of points. Counting knowledge as abstract snippets subjectively chosen and uncritically examined by anyone except to count them, trains students to unquestioningly accept authority. Points are a tool of social conditioning that minimize internal reflection and emphasize externality of curriculum.

When points are used in the classroom they are meaningful symbols that extol external locus of epistemology. A student earns points to build toward a value judgment that is given from the outside by either a teacher or some other evaluating agency. This process is exemplified by quizzes or tests that are based off of the book. Points are earned by repeating all of the major prefabricated statements that capture the amalgamated knowledge of experts. There is no room for ethical or moral interpretations and there is no motivation for internal processing. In fact, internal processing is often detrimental with such a system. Teachers instruct students, as a test taking strategy, to pick the first thing that comes to their mind and try not to over think the question. That obfuscates the conditioning.

When points are used to turn knowledge into an abstraction, any meaning derived by the student is delegitimized in favor of a greater externally derived meaning. This occurs because the assignation of point value is determined from the outside by the teacher or by some other agency. This process removes a student’s motivation to make personal use of knowledge and emphasizes the greater decided upon use. The end result is to disconnect a student’s creativity from the knowledge and direct the individual mind toward the known and accepted. Innovation and competition are crippled by this process.

Lastly, points are earned by following a linear process that is set from the outside and builds toward a desired result. This is antithetical to the process of solving real problems that have unknown variables and outcomes. Therefore, the earning of points through the solving of pseudo-problems becomes more about following the proper directions then an actual process of discovery.

In conclusion, one can use points to count an epistemology that is impressed upon a student from the outside. They can claim that knowledge has been metricated, but this runs counter to the very definition of education and knowledge. Knowledge is the acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience, and/or report. The Greek root of education means to draw out. The idea that we can pour knowledge into students’ minds and measure it like measuring a bucket of water, negates a students’ ability to internally process the information. Therefore, the use of points should be seen as a tool of social conditioning and a method of promoting uncritical thought. It is a by-product of a factory school system that was designed to turn out workers, not independent thinkers.