Fraud in the Shadows of our Society: What is Unknown About Educating is Hurting Us All

©2022 by Robert L. Arnold

All rights reserved

Print ISBN: 978-1-66786-393-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66786-394-8

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Individual development, learning and the processes that embrace all areas of mentation:

The nature of communication and group development:

The nature of established processes for creating and communicating knowledge with meaning:

Systems evaluation as a strategy for authentic assessment and evaluation, and Systems design as a process of learning:73

Equipment and supporting technologies, materials and services

required for implementation of the CARES Model?

In Summary!

Human Mentation and Mental Health

Changing assumptions and beliefs:

Has our public educational system served our students well?

Conclusions

Appendix A

Appendix B: A strategy for changing public education

Selected Bibliography

Author contributions

About this Author:

Index

Preface

This book, written nearly a decade after a more extensive volume was published, deals with much the same substantive matters – Remaking Our Schools for the Twenty-First Century – A Blueprint for Change/Improvement in Our Educational Systems.

Fraud In the Shadows of Our Society, the title of this volume, contains the central message from the writings of Psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie, MD. regarding the linkage between conventional education and troublesome present-day behaviors.

How we educate in the 21st century has serious implications for us all, defined by what is unknown about the foundations for quality education outlined in these volumes.

This volume attempts to answer the question: What can account for the current state of unrest that has challenged our democratic processes through aggressive tactics that strike fear in us all?

This volume contains detailed analyses of the theoretical bases for quality education that describe what happens or does not happen in conventional schools linked to the present troublesome social unrest.

For those who do not have the time to study the complete text at this time, please go to Appendix A, Fourteen Years of Schooling – A Missing Link in the Discussions Concerning Gun Violence, Mental Health, and the Products of Our Schools

Introduction

How can we explain the origins of behaviors in 2022 found among at least fifty percent of our society that appears bent on disrupting longstanding practices associated with our democratic institutions? To provide a plausible answer to this question this book will show what is not known about educating is related to the present situation, a condition that hurts us all.

The other fifty percent of our population appears to view the members of the disrupters as belonging to a cult-like political party that maintains values rigidly applied, even when faced with contradictory evidence. They appear to have little or no tolerance for ambiguity. Members of that group include many who have struggled with their education and watched a few reap the rewards of the establishment.

These two opposing camps exist in an ideological standoff that appears locked in combat. Each group accuses the other of being ignorant and out of touch with reality. The cult-like group exhibits hostile attitudes and beliefs, typically without logic or validated evidence to support their positions. They exhibit behavior described as anti-intellectualism. Their personal orientations seem to approach much of life’s experiences from a negative orientation built on isolated ideas that are seldom if ever related to others. As frustration mounts in the lives of many, they take up arms and act upon deep seated hate and intolerance.

The accusing group is viewed by members of the cult as being untrustworthy, condescending, prone to talk and talk without action, hypocritical, elitist, arrogant, rigid, and affluent, and they are believed to be in control. Most importantly, the cult-like group believes the accusing group is also bent on destroying this country as they believe it to be.

The opposing views of these two groups have in common what is related to the education they received. Individuals are motivated by frustration with their personal lives, unable to meet the challenges faced within the complexities of life that exist in the present. They are feeling unsatisfied with finding satisfaction in their existence, and each group blames the other for the situation, never considering its relationship to their shared conventional educational experiences.

Both groups resort to reincarnating the past or living in the fantasies of the future, frustrated with their inability to solve the problems of the present, a key concept regarding challenged mental health.

Both groups distinguish themselves with a limited vocabulary expressing their frustrations with cursing and frequent use of the f—— word. Neither group appears focused on the reasons for their behavior, nor have they acquired the skills for conflict resolution.

Psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie, MD directed attention to a relevant thought worth considering.

In general, the degree to which learning depends upon repetitive drill is a measure of the degree to which guilt, anxiety, anger, and repression, whether conscious or unconscious, are blocking the assimilation component of education. The result is widespread ignorance.

Since our conventional schools feature repetition as a key part in its strategy for learning, that fact provides a useful clue for examining why individuals are not satisfied with their lives.

To find a plausible explanation it is intended in this writing to introduce the reader to relevant theories or belief systems that are likely unfamiliar. Theories are beliefs that define the facts as perceived. Those beliefs can be based entirely on a faith that truth is represented by others and cannot be experienced directly. Many beliefs are based on unexamined traditions simply passed down from others.

Beliefs or theories that are supported by empirical evidence obtained through a logical process of linking together the relevant parts of systems is the approach taken in this treatise in finding plausible answers to the question of the day.

Given misunderstandings concerning the differences between theories and hypotheses begins the process. Reputable theories or beliefs are conclusions that have been tested through experiences and accepted as truth.

Hypotheses are ideas not yet validated; alternative possibilities are still being considered in the process of seeking their acceptance as belief.

Everyone’s past experiences often forgotten have evolved into the formation of a unique constellation of attitudes, values, beliefs, and personal orientations reflected in personality. Years of schooling have played a major role in shaping those dimensions for better or worse.

Since compulsory attendance was initiated in 1852, most of both groups have attended conventional schools, many for twelve to fourteen years or more. It cannot be denied that present problematic behavior is related to what has happened or has not happened in those schools. Neither group has engaged in an in-depth analysis of the practices they have endured, especially those that occurred at the elementary levels. This treatise will view the experiences of early education through the lenses of reputable theories.

Early education is assumed to provide the foundation for schooling in the twelve or more years of formal education. Its accumulative effects over those early years must be understood as a foundation for obtaining plausible answers that explain the possible origins of present-day behaviors.

Plausible answers hinge upon a critical analysis of what is and has been offered in schools and what its cumulative effects have been on the psychological well-being of its clients. This analysis requires acceptance of the facts as defined by reliable theories, applied to the analyses of four pertinent topics outlined here, emphasizing what is known that can be verified in personal experiences and in the experiences of scholars who have studied these relevant matters in depth: to wit:

Individual development and learning, including a full range of dimensions of mind that influence the quality and quantity of learning.

The nature and processes of communication within and among humans, and the processes of group development that can enhance the quality of communication across a range of group participations.

The nature of knowledge and the processes of coming to know found in the dynamic disciplines within six interrelated categories or realms of meaning.

The role of systems thinking in education, namely, treating systems design as a process of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for authentic assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.

Psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie MD places blame for personal frustrations on a compulsive work drive, an unconscious motivation that can result from education and become the tail that wags the dog.

Look around and you will see people scurrying about with a full agenda with little time for reflection, feeling compelled to participate. Many are working multiple jobs. Cocktails or other drugs seem to help temporarily to alleviate the stress. Need for these drugs often becomes intensified and the results are sometimes fatal.

How is this work drive manifested in the elementary school? Students are required to attend a school that becomes a routine, repeated daily, mornings and afternoons, five days a week, for at least one hundred eighty days, for twelve or fourteen consecutive years.

For the past twenty years, this routine has almost entirely been mandated from above by those who are remote from the classrooms, who exhibit rigid allegiance to traditions that remain unexamined.

How has this been received by students? The answer has become embedded in many popular jokes. Many students don’t much like going to school, but educators view the challenge as building character. Students do look forward to seeing their friends after their summer break.

Look at what happened during the recent pandemic when on-line instruction was required. The students appeared to suffer separation anxiety, missing a face-to-face contact with their teachers. Most students were dependent on the teacher for directions. Self-reliance was seldom an option.

Many students have experienced some form of bullying by their peers in response to the practices experienced in school, often reinforced by parents, or by their teachers who are forced to insist on mindless compliance with mandates and traditions.

The 2020 national report card for academic progress, as measured by standardized tests at the third grade through the eighth, reveals approximately 75% of the student body is failing English and mathematics, and they perform even worse regarding history and geography. The percentage of competency as measured by the tests in New York State averages out to be approximately 56% are rated as incompetent.

How is this rationalized by educators? They claim the tests are invalid.

These tests are valid if they measure what they are designed to measure. Are they reliable? Yes, if they consistently measure what they are purported to measure. The question is, what are they designed to measure? Is that valid? My seventy plus years as an educational reformer suggests the answer is NO!

This is a snapshot into what is happening or not happening in conventional schools, experiences that begin in the home, followed by the formal pre-school, the elementary and middle school grades, carried forth throughout all their educational experiences.

This treatise will delve deeply into the details regarding selective highlights. This analysis will focus on what contributes to individual frustrations in coping with life and what can prepare individuals to transcend the challenges encountered. As each updated theory is explained and applied, plausible answers to the question posed will be revealed along with ideas about what to do about the problems.

A focus on the concepts of Psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie MD is found throughout this treatise due to the school’s obvious relationship to human growth and development with implications for learning and mental health. Having served for a decade as a member of a board of directors of a county-level mental health clinic, and President of the county’s mental health association, I have come to recognize the relationship between the conduct of education operated from limited insight about the dimensions of mind, and the consequences which prompted the following observation by Kubie:

Education will continue to perpetuate a fraud on culture until it accepts the full implications of the fact that the free creative velocity of our thinking apparatus is continually being braked and driven off course by the play of unconscious forces. Educational procedures which fail to recognize this end up by increasing the interference from latent and unrecognized neurotic [rigid] forces – (emphasis added).

These unconscious forces result from an individual’s past experiences that have been formed into unique sets of attitudes, beliefs, values and personal orientations with life and the world. Those personal traits are actualized through unconscious motivations.

Since these motivations are unconscious, they happen without conscious awareness, they are reflected, however, in our verbal and non-verbal language which if analyzed would reveal aspects of its happening.

Responses to today’s problems lack appreciation for the role of self-understanding, which must become central in the conduct of education, especially important in the early years. Without it, there can be no wisdom or maturity.

What progress have we made in solving

these problems?

The Epic of America, by James Truslow Adams, was published in 1931, the year I was born. The mission of his book like mine explains events that may account for the behavior of the citizens of this country. I have attempted to explain the origins of experiences offered in schools that may account for the behavior of citizens in 2022.

Using a broad brush, Adams pieced together the simultaneous events that contributed to situations in 1931. As I read this book, I found myself needing to be reminded the author was describing 1931. I have lived through the ninety years since its writing and from my perspective much of his description could be mistaken for 2022, differing in vocabulary and degrees of concern.

Adams tried to show how some of the scars our country were obtained, quoted here for your contemplation.

How it was that we came to insist upon business and money-making and material improvement as good in themselves; how they took on the aspects of moral virtues; how we came to consider an unthinking optimism essential; how we refuse to look on the seamy and sordid realities of any situation in which we found [find] ourselves; how we regarded criticism as obstructive and dangerous for our new communities; how we came to think manners undemocratic, and a cultivated mind a hindrance to success, a sign of inefficient effeminacy; how size and statistics of material development came to be more important in our eyes than quality and spiritual values; how in the ever-shifting advance of the frontier we came to lose sight of the past in hopes for the future; how we forgot to live, in the struggle to ‘make a living’; how our education tended to become utilitarian or aimless; and how other unfortunate traits only notable to-day (in 1931) were developed.

In 1949, I began my mission to reform the way in which education in 2022 had become increasingly utilitarian, ninety years since my birth as the youngest of twelve raised in the household of a nearly self-sufficient farm in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Early experiences within an irrelevant education, at least as related to my farming experience, prepared me to take on the mission of reforms in education, especially public elementary education.

Adams comments on the status of education in 1931 relates to those that exist today.

Our training and education had [has] not fitted us to solve the new problems. The folkways and life about us, which properly constitute a large part of training, had [have] all been on the side of individualism, ruthless competition, money made quickly by any method, disregard of law and of the social results of individual acts. We learned patriotism," but not good citizenship. Woodrow Wilson came close to the mark when he said in 1907, You know that with all our teaching we train nobody; you know that with all our instructing we educate nobody.

Prospects for achieving the American Dream were [are] remote at best. If we are to achieve a richer and fuller life for all, they [we] have got to know what such an achievement implies. We can look neither to the government nor to the heads of the great corporations to guide us into the paths of a satisfying and humane existence as a great nation unless we, as multitudinous individuals, develop some greatness in our own individual souls.

Do educational experiences have the potential to alter these deficiencies?

In 1931, Education, by which we had thought to keep the electorate competent for self-government, was [is] breaking down because we had [have] no scale of values and no real objective in our educational system. For the masses, at its best, it had [has] become a confused jumble of book learning that gave them neither values to strive for nor that knowledge and intellectual training which might have been of help in understanding the complexity of the forces with which they had [have] to deal intelligently.

Do any of these facts not pertain to today’s situation?

Adams concluded:

"The prospect is discouraging to-day, but not hopeless. As we compare America in 1931 with the America of 1912 it seems as though we had slipped a long way backwards. But that period is short, after all, and the