Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy

ISSN: 1550-5170 (Print) 2156-8154 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujcp20

School sucks: Desire

Kyle A. Greenwalt
To cite this article: Kyle A. Greenwalt (2016) School sucks: Desire, Journal of Curriculum and
Pedagogy, 13:1, 35-38, DOI: 10.1080/15505170.2016.1138255
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2016.1138255

Published online: 18 May 2016.

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Date: 24 May 2016, At: 09:03

JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY

2016, VOL. 0, NO. 0, 13
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2016.1138255

School sucks: Desire

Kyle A. Greenwalt
Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

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School sucks. And blows.

Does school suck? And if so, does it also blow?
In asking these two questions, I want to acknowledge that schooling does disparate things with our desires. I take for granted that schooling operates to both create desires among children and give space for their release. That schooling acts to
concentrate desire and disperse itthat it both sucks and blows.
In seeking an opposite for the sucking of desire, then, I propose that we also
consider the way in which school blows. Like the head of the spent dandelion
that most every child nds so irresistible, schooling also takes our desires and
blows them away in the most random of manners, allowing them to drift hither
and thither, unanchored and unrealized.

School blows. Just ask Plato.

Like the prisoner in Platos cave, students in American schools have their necks
and legs bound so that their gazes are directed at a series of rotating objects. Whatever desires they bring to schoolto love and be loved, to grow and to change, to
be happy and to live deeplyare not often acknowledged.
What constitutes a good life is rarely talked about either. Sexuality, creativity,
and service; family, friends, and comrades; vocation, leisure, and dream time
these are the elements that make up our daily existence and toward which school
might direct the prisoners gaze. Yet they almost never do.
But unlike in Platos cave, the prisoner is not completely bound. She can turn
her head to see her fellow prisoners. She can also turn her head around and witness
the teacher, the gatekeeper of shadowy images. Between the rotating cast of curricular objects, peers, and teachers, the prisoner has a lot of material onto which her
desires can be projected.
But never for very long. And rarely in a way that would lead to the deepening of
desire. In this way, schools do very little to provide us with an education in our
own desires. For if, as Jim Garrison (1997) asserted, we become what we love,
CONTACT Kyle A. Greenwalt
greenwlt@msu.edu
sity, Erickson Hall, 620 Farm Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824.
2016 Curriculum & Pedagogy Group

Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State Univer-

K. A. GREENWALT

then we need help in distinguishing between what we desire and what is truly
desirable. School might play a bigger part in shaping desire toward those most
desirable endsand, indeed, in recognizing the very limits, if not the essential dysfunction, of desire itself.

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School sucks. But dont ask the captive.

So school blows. Yet this is not the whole story. For there is another sort of damage that American schooling does, one more akin to sucking and concentration
than blowing and dispersion. Call it the Stockholm Syndrome of schooling. We
tend to fall in love with our captors.
Our society is somewhat obsessed with the sexuality of teachers. Thats at least
in part because teachers are assumed to be role models for the development of
proper gender identities (Blount, 2005).
There is some truth to that. Desire is not on hold in school. Though the curriculum and organization of schooling make it hard for children to educate their
desire, desire will nd an out. Too often, because of the way we have organized
school, that out becomes the teacher.
During the 19th century, social reformers took hold of an already existing institutionthe schooland sought to make it compulsory in order to spread their
messages to a captive audience. Clearly, they were successful.
In 1837, one of these reformers, Horace Mann, became the rst Secretary of the
Massachusetts State Board of Education. Mann did many things in this role, but
one of his most striking successes was to feminize the teaching force. Women,
Mann (1843/1957) reasoned, were not only a cheap labor source, but were naturally tted to the type of moral education that a massively changing society would
require!
Manns desire was to remake the classroom after a particular type of home life
one based upon a sentimentalized maternity, where love can always triumph over
the public and masculine forces of competition, emulation, merit, and hierarchy (forces which, to his credit, he severely disliked and believed should be
excluded from the schools).
And so love entered into the discourse of teaching. A good teacher loves her students. She makes her classroom into a home. Like a good mother, she sacrices for
them, enduring long hours of isolation, low pay, and little public support or recognition. Students, in their turn, should love their teacher. From her, they would
learn the values that would sustain a more virtuous republic.
A great idea. For after all, what could possibly go wrong in this scenario?

Dream a little dream of me

Schools mostly try to avoid the question of desire. But they cannot escape it altogether. Their very organization makes it that way.

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JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY

But can a teacher really love the children under her care, in a way, as Horace
Mann hoped, that was better than parental?
Probably not.
Going to school in my pajamasor even worse yet, nakedis a dream I have
had many times in my life. In this, Im pretty sure Im not alone.
If such a shared dream does in fact exist, it is a unique testimony to what schooling has done to our desires. Universal, compulsory schooling is not an ancient
institution. It has not entered into the collective unconscious through its approximation to some powerful archetype.
No. If such dreams are common, it is because the experience of schooling is
nearly universal. So, apparently, is the underlying desire that we can achieve intimacy in that space: union with a signicant other, in an institution that promises
love but cannot deliver it.
In this way, our dreams speak to us a profound truth. School sucks. And dont
forget it!

Contributor
Kyle Greenwalt is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan
State University. He studies the school curriculum by exploring teacherstudent relationships
and the factors that have shaped such relationships over time. Kyles forthcoming book, Home/
schooling, is published by Sense Publishers and explores themes relating to the moral and emotional well-being of children, parents, and public school teachers.

References
Blount, J. (2005). Fit to teach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Garrison, J. (1997). Dewey and Eros. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Mann, H. (1843/1957). Seventh annual report to the Massachusetts board of education. In L. A.
Cremin (Eds.), The republic and the school: Horace Mann on the education of free men. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press.