326 THE PROB LEMS OF EDUCATION ARE NOT GE NE TICBut it is just right for testing dogged motivation for rote learning and
regurgitation, valued not for its intrinsic worth as socially useful learn-
ing, but as a means to an end. In that tedious grind, as Berliner and Glass
put it, schools come to assume “that learning must be incentivized, and
issue rewards and punishments to this end... [so that] students are mo-
tivated to perform, either by avoiding sanctions or garnering positive re-
inforcement from their teachers. School then becomes not a place where
creativity can fl ourish, but a place where creativity is extinguished.”^9
In a chapter in the Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning (2011), J.
Scott Armstrong notes, likewise, how “tasks are oft en of little interest to
students, feedback focuses on content (facts) rather than skills, and ap-
plication is seldom addressed. Motivation is based on extrinsic rewards
and punishments in a competitive environment.”^10
Most teachers do their best, against the institutional grain, to instill
some social relevance into the pro cess. But “subjects,” especially math
and science, become notoriously diffi cult and laborious in the context of
the school curriculum. In his best- selling work, Dumbing Us Down: Th e
Hidden Curriculum of Schooling, John Gatto shows how even reading and
writing are made more diffi cult than they should be.
More than anything else, the pro cess depends on the preconceptions
of learning ability borne by pupils and their parents, and the motivation
and parental push that goes with them. Th at it involves students’ cram-
ming by rote- memorizing has turned preparation for the Scholastic
Aptitude Tests (SAT or, in the United Kingdom, SATs) into a highly
lucrative commercial fi eld. Many private companies and organ izations
now off er test- preparation and revision books in the form of easily re-
membered chunks (or “Bitesize,” as the BBC revision website puts it).
Little won der that pupils are turned off in droves. Surveys confi rm that
large majorities of pupils in school are bored most of the time, lack con-
fi dence, feel there is no point in working hard at school, do not enjoy
school, and do not feel valued. It is hardly surprising that so many end
up believing that they simply do not have the genes or brains to learn very
much. In Amer i ca, 9 percent of school- age children are now diagnosed
with attention defi cit hyperactivity disorder. Th ere might be a connection.
However, the pro cess is being exposed for what it is in two contradictory
ways.
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