Educating for Conformity or Independence?

 Here is a photo of a US student wearing a dunce cap.

According to this article, it was a punishment for acting out and served as a warning for other children. It was used in America as recently as the 1950s. It reminded me of the Maoist-era China cap that poor saps had to wear during their struggle sessions. The Chinese government and the American school system had different ends in mind but they deployed the same psychological principle: using humiliation to encourage conformity.

American schools have banned this practice (and basically replaced it with detention), but I argue they are still designed to promote conformity: School uniforms. Standarized testing. rigid curriculum. Must raise hand to speak. Cannot use the bathroom without permission. Don't even think about microwaving that burrito.

Industrial Conformist Revolution

However, for most of the 20th century, learning conformity was probably a good thing. You get good behavior at the cost of stunting creative development in students. But most jobs were in manufacturing; you want people who can perform a rote task over and over again without thinking about it too much. You don't need creativity on an assembly line; you want people who can follow directions. The structure of public schools was good preparation for most jobs, even if it was terrible for kids who resisted conformity.

The problem with the modern school system is that it is still structured for conformity even though the culture and work environment has shifted. The majority of students who graduated from my high school (class of 2000) do not work in manufacturing; they work in white collar jobs that require more creativity, agency, and problem-solving skills that are never developed in public schools. (I realize that most high school graduates do not go to college, so my experience wasn't typical for the average American but it was probably typical for people who read this blog.)

When I was in school, I was a bit of a daydreamer, which is probably why I hated it. I did not want to learn about things I did not find interesting. 

One summer in college, I worked on a golf course. My job was to mow greens, which you do by making your first pass down the middle, finishing one side, then coming back to the middle to finish the other side. One day my boss stops me after one of the greens. He says, "Come here and look at this," and brings me back to a green I had just finished. I look at it and realize after finishing the first side, I forgot to go back and mow the other half. I can't tell you how often this happened. 

I was terrible at this kind of work because I spent my childhood resisting conformity and it made me really bad at rote tasks. My mind couldn't help but wander and stop paying attention to what was right in front of me. (Thank God I had privileged opportunities that lead me into a career in which my outside-the-box thinking is valued.)

Technological Individualist Revolution

But it isn't just the job landscape that's changed. In Robert Putnam's The Upswing, he traces the rise and fall of what he calls the I/we/I curve. Starting in the early 20th century, we became more and more communitarian and less individualistic. This peaked in the 1960s and then reversed. This upswing in communitarianism coincided with many improvements: less inequality, narrowing of the black/white wage gap, less polarization, etc. But, he writes, there is a dark side too.

“Conformity is the dark tin of community, for communitarianism almost by definition involves social pressure to conform to norms. If the communitarian “we” is defined too narrowly, however, then conformity to social norms punishes dissidents and deviants, whether political or sexual or racial.” 

As we moved into the 1970s we became a more individualistic culture and more permissive of dissidents and deviants. Growing up in the 80s, I remember watching The Neverending Story, a movie about a boy who gets picked on by bullies and hides out in a library reading a book. He gets caught up in a fantasy world in which he is special and valuable, rather than being a loner. I've seen this theme play out over and over again—from Harry Potter to The Matrix—the idea that it's not only okay to be different, it's encouraged. 

In 1997, Apple started their "Think Different" campaign. Movie characters like Tyler Durden in Fight Club and Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites became Gen X cultural icons for thumbing their noses at the sheep who opted in to corporate careers. Ben Stiller wasn't cool, the jobless Ethan Hawke who reads Sartre was cool. Finding your own identity was cool. Why do you think there are 58 genders now? Because no one wants to do the thing that everyone else is doing. 

The Missing Tradeoff of Individualism

In The Upswing, Robert Putnam is transparent in his belief that a communitarian America is preferable to an individualistic America. He acknowledges the tradeoffs of communitarianism (conformity) and he reveals the downsides of individualism (selfishness), but he never touts individualism's benefits.

I love to reference Paul Graham's conventional vs. independent-minded matrix. He's a fairly objective guy, but his writing shows an obvious preference for founders of start-up companies, or independent types. Maybe the tradeoff for individualism that Putnam never explores is that more selfishness leads to better innovation? I tried Googling some reliable data showing patents filed by year. A lot of blogs came up but then I found this at ResearchGate, which has a legit-sounding name:

This is almost too perfect for my thesis. Using patents as a proxy for innovation, we can see that US innovation was flat from 1900 until about 1980. Then it skyrockets. 

If we had continued our communitarian ethos, we might have closed the racial wage gap by now. But we also might not have a 90% effective vaccine for a novel virus. Or affordable Chromebooks and broadband internet that allowed our students to learn remotely.

Individualism is seflesh, yes. But it also means going against the grain and trying novel and unpopular ideas. Sometimes it produces grifters; sometimes it produces geniuses. There has to be some room for both.

Change on the Horizon?

So why don't schools upgrade their model? Probably because there is no incentive. Graduation rates remain high because people still need a diploma to work or enter college, the latter of which is less conformist. You spend 12 proving to admission departments that you know how to follow rules. Then you spend 4-6 years proving to employers that you are unique and a self-starter.

I don't think schools have much of an effect on whether people are conformist vs. independent, I think that's mostly pre-wired by genetics and partially influenced by peer effects. So what does that mean for independents in a conformist culture like public schools? Just that they will be unhappy while they are there. They might be at higher risk of dropping out but the stronger influence will be their biological parents and friends.

I still hope a school choice movement will allow more learning opportunities for different students. But for now I just don't think there is enough urgency to really force a change.