Miseducation and the Authoritarian Mind

John M. Elmore

Historical examples of education — and more specifically, compulsory schooling that is defined and controlled by dominant political, theological, or plutocratic groups — being employed as a tool of hegemony, are numerous and well documented. As I tell my students regularly when discussing and comparing systems of education throughout history and around the globe, it can feel like identifying exemplars of liberatory education requires dedicated and detailed examination, while spotting systems of authoritarian education requires only the casual opening of one's eyes. Education has clearly proven to be an invaluable instrument in the production of despotic systems and institutions. The obvious reason for this fact is that the more rigid and domineering a social system becomes, the greater the perceived need to produce minds and personalities that are compatible, if not welcoming of control and domination. This chapter will consider this concept of authoritarianism and the ways that authoritarian personalities are reflected and fostered in traditional, compulsory schooling via traditional teaching methods, curricular materials and school structure. While I will acknowledge the other cultural institutions and socializing forces which account for a population's levels of authoritarianism (such as the existence of particular political, economic, and theological systems, and traditional family structures and parenting practices), I contend that mass schooling is in the unique social position of assembling the overwhelming majority of a society's young and influencing their development via an extended, and increasingly specific, common experience. In short, even in today's world where the young are continuously bombarded with the messaging of mass media throughout their formative years, compulsory schooling maintains a very powerful influence over the development and validation of consciousness. Changing the nature of consciousness serves as a critical prerequisite to achieving the type of society that we, as individuals and collectively, wish to construct and support. If we seek a more just society, where freedom is sought, protected, and valued — the development of critically conscious, biophilic citizens is fundamental. Therefore, within a volume dedicated to considering alternatives to traditional forms of popular schooling, for the purpose of advancing freedom, an examination of those traditional aspects of school life and structure, which are reflective of authoritarian practices and orientations and can be tied to the development of authoritarian dispositions, seems especially pertinent. In other words, as we attempt to move out of the ruins of traditional schooling, it is important that we first clearly define those ruins and diagnose their failures in fostering freedom in order to produce genuine and affective alternatives.

The Tradition of Miseducation as Control

Critical educators have long challenged the structures, practices, and purposes of traditional schooling. In fact, it is fair to describe critical pedagogy itself as originating first and foremost as a rejection of popular and traditional education methods and the domineering structures and practices they demand. Declaring much of traditional education as anti-democratic, if not outright anti-human, critical educators labor to transform educational spaces into seedbeds for freedom and independent thought. In seeking to manipulate, if not outright commandeer, the role that education plays within the superstructure, we acknowledge that the maintenance of a society's base always demands the development of a specific human character and, in turn, a specific "form of social conscience" — informed by what Marx and Engels (1996) described as the "ruling ideas" that represent the "ideal expression of the dominant material relationships" (p. 61). As Erich Fromm (1941) indicated, there is a dynamic correlation between the structure of human character within a given society and the economic base of that society. In other words, the maintenance of any particular "way of life" requires a compatible, if not mirrored, version of human consciousness and character. Fromm (1941) argued that even intellectuality itself "aside from the purely logical elements that are involved in the act of thinking, [is] greatly determined by the personality structure of the person who thinks" (p. 305). This, Fromm (1941) continued, "holds true for the whole of a doctrine or of a theoretical system, as well as for a single concept, like love, justice, equality, sacrifice" (p. 306).

What Fromm (1956) suggests is that an overt structure, dedicated to the task of shaping the thoughts and beliefs of a populace, is a fundamental apparatus within authoritarian societies. This apparatus allows for an official means of indoctrinating a citizenry — shaping consciousness and human character for the purpose of adaptation. In short, authoritarian social systems do not generate oppressive settings out of thin air but instead are slowly validated in the context of authoritarian nurturing in various social and cultural institutions and practices; they ultimately reflect the dispositions of the people. While one can point to multiple agencies well positioned to nurture the...