Book Notes, Summary and Review: The End of Education by Neil Postman

What's the point of going to school?

I hear that very often from my friends. Well, everyone has their own personal views on this. And so does American educator Neil Postman.

In The End of Education, Neil shares his views on the American public education landscape in the 20th century. Throughout the book, he answers the introductory question of "Why we need to go to schools?". He also explores other important questions, such as "What's the purpose of school?" and "How can we cultivate a better schooling experience for future generations?".

About the Book Title

Please indulge me for a moment as I go slightly off tangent here.

I found it extremely fascinating how the title The End of Education could be interpreted in two ways. And even so, both interpretations of the book still stand:

1. One possible interpretation is it's a declaration that education is finished. That unstructured education may not be as beneficial as schooling.
2. The other interpretation is it's a question on the end-goal of education. What we as a society should include in a quality education?

In the book, Neil touches on both issues. In regards to the first point, he explores the differences between education and schooling in the outset of the book. But of course, it's important to note that schooling and education are not mutually exclusive activities; both activities can overlap each other.

The second point forms the bulk of his book. He spends a lot of time discussing the objectives of schools and the narratives they propagate. I found that Neil offered many valuable insights and suggestions on how schools could remodel their teaching philosophy, such that more students benefit from the education system. I'll write more about this in next few sections.

Alright now, let's begin with the book summary.

Structure of Summary

The End of Education is organized into two sections. This book summary will follow the book's structure (excluding Part I Chapter 4):

Part I:

1. The Necessity of Gods
2. Some Gods That Fail
3. Some New Gods That Fail
4. Gods That May Serve

Part II:

1. The Spaceship Earth
2. The Fallen Angel
3. The American Experiment
4. The Law of Diversity
5. The World Weavers/The World Makers

Summary of Part I

1. The Necessity of Gods

Schooling addresses two main problems: engineering problems (learn how to do something) and metaphysical problems (what to learn).

A serious problem with the public education in the United States of America, and also in other parts of the world, is that schooling fails to address the latter. Most of the conversation about education is now centered around the former. Everyone's discussing and inventing new teaching methods, but few are asking what should schools be teaching.

Metaphysical objectives are vital to our education, because they are the forces that stop us from feeling too demoralized, bored or distracted to learn.

In Nietzsche's words:

He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.

Throughout the book, Neil makes references to these metaphysical objectives as gods (with a small g). These gods are, in Neil's view, narratives that can "give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future".

In other words, Neil is proposing the need for schools to define a clearer purpose for its students to be educated. The mission that schools pledge to model their curriculum after should be pragmatic, illuminating, inspiring, enduring and encompassing.

Without a strong and compelling narrative, students feel disillusioned, alienated and feel directionless in their lives. Isn't this a shared feeling among many students these days as well?

2. Some Gods That Fail

Gods (with a small g) aren't infallible. In the twentieth century alone, many gods have fallen: the god of communism, the god of fascism and the god of Nazism.

The same applies for gods in education.

Two gods are currently reigning over the world of education that are failing:

1. God of Economic Utility: The god of Economic Utility promises the young that as long as you score well on exams, you'll be rewarded with a well-paying job. Its entire narrative is predicated on the idea that the purpose of schooling is to prepare students to be financially independent. Any other activity is seen to be irrelevant and a waste of time.
2. God of Consumership: The fundamental principle of this narrative is that: you're what you accumulate. In other words: the more toys you die with, the more you win in life.

Many students tend to find the god of Economic Utility too dry and uninspiring. Young people have too much pent-up creativity, curiosity and vitality to be attracted to a narrative that reduces their life into a single dimension.

And this is where the sibling of the god of Economic Utility — the god of Consumership — comes in.

Many of us have been conditioned into subscribing to a consumerist lifestyle since young. Just in one day alone, the typical American is exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements. What this means is that media advertisements is one of the most substantial sources of values imparted to the young.

In order to subscribe to the god of Consumership, one has to earn more money. As such, people start to subscribe to the religion of Economic Utility, in order to fuel their consumerist lifestyle.

The gods of Economic Utility and of Consumership work closely together. Collectively, they develop a grand narrative that persuades us into thinking that our identity is centered around our jobs and material possessions.

On the surface, both narratives combined seem alluring to undiscerning youths. But deep down within, they recognize how unfulfilling and uninspiring such narratives are.

3. Some New Gods That Fail

Another rising contender in the world of education is: the god of Technology.

Educators often fall prey to the god of Technology, more often than students. Teachers tend to focus more on the means of education than its ends. Thus, they may utilize technology as a way of supplying more information to their students.

But more information is the last thing these students need.

What students truly need is an improved narrative that gives them a reason to learn. Technology should help educators to forward a better conceived narrative in schools, than to perpetuate and to aggravate the current failing narrative.

Summary of Part II

1. The Spaceship Earth

Local problems have a global impact. What Neil suggests, therefore, is that we need to confront each problem collectively as a global community, rather than passing it on to the local community.

Schools, in Neil's view, need to cultivate interdependence and cooperation amongst their students. We could even use the youthful vigor as an asset to the students' schooling experience, by encouraging them to partake in value-adding community activities.

2. The Fallen Angel

I make mistakes.

You also make mistakes.

Everyone has made and will continue to make mistakes. Even if we think we know something, what we know may be wrong. And even if it's right, it's limited in its scope and its applicability.

All of us, including our teachers, are fallible. But we can learn to correct our mistakes and redeem ourselves. We ought to accept that we are an error-prone species and put down our hubris and dogmatism.

A central problem with how we're taught and raised is that: we quickly justify and defend what we believe. We don't consider the possibility that our beliefs are imperfect and may be improved upon with other people's input.

Rather than think of teachers as truth tellers whose role is to make students smarter, wouldn't a better definition of their role be to make students less dumb?

3. The American Experiment

Discourse is an effective means to resolve conflict.

When people stop arguing with one another, bloodshed will likely occur. Just look at the American Civil War or any other wars. Large-scale suffering will arise if we don't provide a safe platform to facilitate and to resolve these conflicts.

By teaching students to argue, we teach students to convey their points of view and to resolve conflict through a more civilized means. In the process, we also invite our youths to discover what questions are worth arguing about.

4. The Law of Diversity

Opening ourselves to new ideas, new knowledge and new cultures, we can learn how differences contribute to increased creativity, vitality and unity.

Diversity, however, doesn't equate to a complete lack of standards or irresponsible relativism. Instead, it's an advocate of the growth and malleability of standards that transcends the differences of gender, religion or any other social constructs.

Cultural diversity can be expressed through a myriad of ways: language, religion, custom, art and artifacts. These are possible means in which our youths can learn how to become more open and accepting of new ideas, new standards and new ways of living.

5. The World Weavers/The World Makers

Language is an organ of perception.

Through language, we see the world as one thing or another.

We can even create new worlds using language. Languages not only construct concepts about the events and things in our world, but also tell us the types of concepts we could and should construct.

By learning the story of language, as well as how language shape our senses of perception, our youths can create more powerful, durable and inspiring narratives for their schooling journey.

Wrapping Up

Books on education have always sparked an interest in me. Even then, I would've taken days to plough through such books.

But not in the case of Neil Postman's The End of Education — I devoured the whole book in less than a day.

Reading this book was such a pleasurable yet enriching experience. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Part I of the book, in which Neil outlines some of the uninspiring narratives that our schools are still propagating today. Mind you, this book was published in 1995. That's 27 years ago.

As a former teacher and soon-to-be University student, this book shed light on many issues I'm personally intrigued about: the global education landscape, the purpose of schooling, how our schools can provide a better education for students and so on.

The End of Education is a must-read for anyone who is even vaguely interested in education-related issues.