I believe that de facto it is the goal, but not that it should be.
Cultural transmission is to some rather large extent unavoidable,
not just in schools, but in life in a community. To operate in
the community, you need to learn to use its tools, recognize its
norms (though not always conform to them), participate in its
cultural formations (activities, texts, media, institutions),
master some of its roles, etc.
I suspect that the inevitable amount of cultural transmission
in this sense of enculturation is also the optimal amount, and
that to the extent that parents, schools, governments, etc.
try to impose more by special coercion (there is a certain
amount of coercion in the unavoidable channels as well), the
result usually is to attempt to control the distribution of
cultural resources, norms, etc. so as to benefit a small
group in the community which has the power to coerce in these
ways.
The minimal transmissive goal of education that I would accept
is to provide access to the specialized tools and resources
of the community, but _as resources_, that is as optional, and
to be used within some critical perspective that recognizes
alternatives. There is a great difference between the imposition
of culture and giving people access to culture as a resource.
Granted that every resource is networked into entanglements
with norms, values, social relations, etc. To choose to use
a resource is to enter, hopefully with eyes open, into these
entanglements. And granted also, that no choice is free, because
of the entanglements that led us to the making of a choice in
the first place.
If we compare 'acquisition', i.e. some notion of the way we
become en- or ac-culturated by general participation in a
community with 'schooling' or 'teaching' in formal institutions
that are designed for this purpose rather than fulfilling it
as an inevitable side effect of some other social function,
then I believe we will see that what is taught in the name
of culture, officially, (i.e. curriculum) bears very little
resemblance to what one would learn, or to what one actually
needs to know, in participating in the activities of the
community.
What happens when we subsitute a coercive curriculum for
participation in communities is that a limited and biased
and unrepresentative subset of culture is promoted by
schools, while vast areas of the lived culture of the
community are rendered invisible or derogated. This is as
true of education in science or mathematics, as it is of
education about history, literature, or language. Not to
mention all the domains of culture that have no official
curricular names, even in travestied form.
Let me end here just by reminding people that I do not
believe that ours is a society in which participation in
community activities is sufficient to become an expert
practioner of some important specialized activities. For
those one does need some sort of special initiatory
activities, which schools can provide in the manner of
giving access to the needed conventions and resources.
JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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