BUILDING FOR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY - Kennedy Bibliothek

as the mainsprings of science. Instead the world is studied exclusively
at second or third hand, through the literature, sciences, art and music
of others. In the few instances in which the resources of the city are
used directly they tend to be places like museums or art galleries, themselves
institutions, places to which fragments of the real world have been
transported, labelled and put up for exhibition after being removed from
the actual and living contexts which gave birth to them.(1) Only in very
rare cases do the resources of the city turn out to be workshops where
students can participate and make things, or artists' studios where students
are encouraged to paint or sculpt.
14. Of course many teachers will say that students at secondary or high
school levels "are not to be trusted" in environments of this kind, because
they might do something irresponsible or "silly". And they are probably
right, because the students they are referring to are near the apex of the
educational pyramid and have already had some years of training in the
mistrust of their own personal sensitivity and self-expression, and of the
self-expression of their friends, families and peer groups around them.
As a result of years of institutionalized training, in which patterns of
conduct and processes of thought have been imposed, the student has lost
his sense of direct personal responsibility. "Being a citizen" is today
a result of training and conformity, rather than the assumption of broader
and broader responsibilities based on direct interpersonal relationships
and feelings.
15. It is ironical that this phase of education takes place during what
we call "the formative years". In other words, the years in which our
attitudes and drives are developing most rapidly is when the pyramid narrows,
and when education is at its most institutionalized, controlled and
simulative.
Education and Middle Class Sameness
16. As we have said, the goal of education in most countries is to enter
its human products into the middle class mainstream. The successful
1) Simon Nicholson, Director of the Oxford Research Unit in Great Britain's
Open University, has drawn the distinction between inert and inventive.
"The inert person reads other people's books, becomes able, within
limits, to criticize and understand the work of others, and watches performances
by others, such as, for example, watching one-way TV. Contrasting
with this, the inventive person writes books, generates ideas,
cooks meals, has theories, makes art, and shapes and builds the environment
that is his or her own. In theory we all have the chance to be
either inert or inventive, but in practice our physical, social and
political environment conditions most of us to be inert." Children as
Planners, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England, April 1974.
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