SCHOOLS AS SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

The words "education" and "schooling" are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Education, learning about the particular ways of a group, occurs willy-nilly throughout life at home, in peer play, at religious ceremonies, at work. These informal processes of learning occur in every distinct social group. Young Ponapean Islanders in the South Pacific, for example, learn from parents or neighbors that the quietness of a man is like the fierceness of a barracuda, and they also learn how to shape bark to make a watertight canoe. American children also learn most of the things that equip them to survive in their society — from how to act if approached by a stranger to how to operate kitchen appliances — from the people around them in the course of daily life. The same is true of important parts of education in every group and every society: much of what individuals find necessary to learn for survival and acceptance is taught outside schools.

As the title Schools and Societies suggests, this book is not about education. Instead, it is about schooling, which is the more organized form of education that takes place in schools, and about the consequences of this organized form of education for individuals and for societies. Although schooling is in some ways more limited than education, it has great influence on the members of society. We are on strong ground to limit our scope to the study of schooling, because so much organized social effort goes into the formal education found in schools. It is also much easier to compare what happens in schools in different countries than it is to discuss the truly inexhaustible subject of what happens in educational processes generally.

A related distinction is the one between two academic disciplines: the philosophy of education and the sociology of schooling. The philosophy of education concerns itself primarily with how education ought to be organized and the ends that it ought to serve. Sociology concerns itself with what schools are actually like, with why schools are the way they are, and with the consequences of what happens in schools.

In making this distinction, I do not intend to imply a criticism of philosophy. Asking good questions about what schooling ought ideally to be can make existing forms of social life more visible and clear. For example, the philosopher's idea that liberal education ought to provide a way of experiencing universal themes, such as the qualities of mature judgment, provides a good vantage point for sociological investigations about how changing national interests and cultural traditions shape humanities curricula. Both modes of thought have a legitimate place in the universe of academic study, but sociology is primarily concerned with what actually exists and how it came to be.

Mark Twain's Education on the Mississippi

In Life on the Mississippi, the American writer Mark Twain provides a memorable reminiscence of his apprenticeship to a veteran Mississippi riverboat captain, a Mr. Bixby. Twain's portrait reminds us of the difficulty of learning hard subjects and of what is gained and lost in the educational process. It also raises good sociological questions: Why are so few teachers as effective as Mr. Bixby? And why have schools displaced on-the-job apprenticeships in so many fields?

Like many adventurous boys in the 1830s, young Sam Clemens (Twain's given name) longed to pilot one of the magnificent steamboats that carried the vast assembly of humanity, from roustabouts to fine ladies, and their cargo up and down the great Mississippi. Clemens apprenticed himself to Mr. Bixby in return for $500, to be paid out of his first wages as a pilot. Twain recalls the easy confidence with which he began his ordeal of learning the river. "I supposed that all a pilot had to do was keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that could be much of a trick, since it was so wide" (Twain [1896] 1972: 31).

This easy confidence did not last the morning. Bixby began his lessons by pointing out some landmarks on the river where the water changed depth.

Presently he turned on me and said: "What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?"

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.

"Don't know? Well, you're a smart one!" said Mr. Bixby. "What's the name of the next point?"

Once more I didn't know.

"Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of any point or place I told you."

I studied for a while and decided that I couldn't....

"You — you — don't know?" mimicking my drawling manner of speech. "What do you know?"

"I — I — nothing, for certain."

"By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of you being a pilot — you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down the lane." (Twain [1896] 1972: 48–49)

Thus begins the education of the young Mark Twain on the Mississippi River. Soon Clemens's notebook "fairly bristles" with the names of towns, points, bars, islands, bends, and reaches on the river, for the only way to get to be a pilot is to "get ... [the] entire river by heart" (Twain [1896] 1972: 48). When he has finally completes his apprenticeship on the river, Twain reflects on what he has gained and lost in the effort:

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. ... All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! ... A day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. ... All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. (49)

THE SOCIETAL IMPORTANCE OF SCHOOLING

Schooling is very highly valued by governments and their citizens. One indicator is that schooling takes up a large amount of young people's time. If we assume that the average young person spends 6 hours in school 5 days a week and 9 months a year for at least 12 years, the total number of hours in school between the ages of 6 and 18 is almost 13,000. For the increasing number of people who complete a college degree, that figure climbs to over 17,000 hours of schooling. People who graduate from college will have spent, on average, 1 out of 6 of their waking hours in school from their 6th through their 21st year — and...