PARTISAN REVIEW
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Yet it is the very nature 'of institutions to prevent the teacher from
risking such exposure. Traditionally, a teacher has commanded respect
and attention by virtue of the authority vested in him by the institu–
tion. He could assume that the student would adhere to the rules of
learning and behavior established by the institution. Working within the
institution is comfortable for both teacher and student, even when the
student resists its pressures. Anyone who has tried to teach in a situation
where none of the normal assumptions about the relationship between
teacher and student are in operation will understand the desire to get
back to the old protections. Even students are made uneasy and dis–
trustful when they are freed from institutional regulations.
It
becomes
difficult for them to focus their angers or direct their energies when the
ordinary pressures of authority, deadlines, grades, examinations and uni–
versally applicable strictures are gone. The institution protects its work–
ers and, simultaneously, protects itself. When a teacher exposes himself
to the dangers of freedom, he also exposes the institution ; any willing–
ness to break down conventions must seem a direct threat to the white
educational structure.
If,
for example, the Boston Public Schools can–
not fairly assert "a measure of control over the course of study" within
each classroom, then the Boston Public Schools will tend to lose their
authority in other areas - in curriculum, reading lists, placement of
personnel, even in teaching of ideology. The institution will become open
and decentralized, inconsistent and subject to the vagaries of each of
its members.
And that, of course, is at the center of the difficulties of American
education.
It
isn't even a matter of whether the present Boards of
Education are bad but of whether any institution is compatible with the
proper
aim
of education. For most of the radical critics represented in
this volume, open and decentralized institutions are precisely what are
needed. But if open and decentralized, they will have considerable dif–
ficulty operating at all, handling the massive problems that come with
the commitment to educate everybody. Is it possible to rely on different
communities and schools to determine the qualifications necessary for
good teachers? Is it possible to attend to the problems of all the stu–
dents without dissolving into chaos if there are no citywide regulations
governing teaching and behavior? Are there enough people around who
can do the job without the guidance of the well-trained few in the
central office? Who is going to determine what the steps toward proper
education are? Is that determination to be left to the idiosyncratic imag–
inations of individuals? Paul Goodman's answer suggests how far the
violation of educational traditions might go in the breaking down of the
institution: "We can, I believe, educate the young entirely in terms of
