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On Education: Division of

Labor: Divide and Conquer


Gatto Fuller Rousseau Dewey
Dreikurs Whitehead Weisel

R. Buckminister Fuller (1895-1983) attributed much of his inventive genius to


the fact that he was a generalist, striving to synergetically integrate ideas
from many diverse disciplines into a harmonious whole that was not only
novel, but efficient, beautiful, and environmentally friendly. He often wrote
and lectured about the limitations of our present educational system. From
his essay: "Education Automation," I learned that our present educational
system is geared towards specialization, which often leaves the solution of
society's most pressing problems to those least able to solve them. How this
came to be is explored below.

The famed mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-


1947) joined Harvard University at age 63, after teaching at the most elite
institutions in England, such as Trinity, Cambridge, University College,
Imperial College of Science and Technology, among others. He noticed that
as Harvard University expanded, it was being organized on a pattern different
from the schools in Europe. Americans "apparently" liked the idea of
"specialization" and thus the higher centers of learning were organizing their
graduate schools into different specialties.

Whitehead observed that the best and brightest students were being
deliberately selected for further training in these new specialized graduate
schools. But, as these students/professionals became more and more highly
skilled in their particular specialty, he pointed out that they became less and
less effective in communicating with students/professionals in other fields.
For example, have you ever noticed the difficulty in discussing a problem, say
an illness, with a doctor, the expert specialist? One reason is the language,
because each specialty develops its own language, or "jargon." Another
reason is behavioral. Probably the first word a child learns from a parent is
"No!" In school, you most likely were trained to be obedient and to
"respectfully" listen, and not to question the "expert." Because of this
method of child rearing, you learned to suppress some of the many questions
you may have. Even the experts fall for this one, and they learn also not to
question work outside their own field. How many times have you gone to a
public lecture, and after the expert finishes and asks if there are any
questions, and no one asks any? I mean, this is your opportunity to question
the expert! Well, this inability to communicate between disciplines can lead
to serious problems.

Whitehead realized that many of society's most important problems are


multidisciplinary in nature. For example, such problems include preserving
the environment, population control, or the allocation of scarce resources. He
felt that individuals having the generalist style of education, who had a broad
knowledge of the basic concepts of every field, as favored on the European
continent, would be better prepared to solve these kinds of problems, rather
than the specialist, with all the accompanying communication problems and
whose views outside their discipline in any case would be necessarily
subjective, and therefore more prone to error. .

However, Whitehead carried his reasoning one step further, and what he said
next came as a surprise: he said that in the partitioning process, by default,
you have inadvertently created two classes of people, "bright" ones and
"dull" ones, to use Fuller's terminology. And since the prime intellects have
been culled and guided into the specialties, it is left to the "dull" ones to
solve the problems that are multidisciplinary in nature. It "appears" that we
have created an educational system that fails to provide the proper training
to solve a civilization's most critical problems. Fuller termed this
"Whitehead's dilemma,"

Fuller expanded upon Whitehead's observation, by giving this particular


example. He classified business owners in this second tier of people. While in
school, they were not selected to be among the intellectual elite. But they
are good people, and they see all these different innovations being made by
the scientists, and figure that there is money to be made here. So they are
the ones to assemble a team of specialists, scientists and engineers, to build
and manufacture something new, such as the automobile. But they notice
that automobiles don't run very well over open fields. They need highways to
run on. The automobile is just half of the solution to the problem of "high-
speed highway transportation." But being specialized in making automobiles,
and not knowing much about other fields outside of making automobiles,
they find themselves facing the same obstacles as the specialists they
employ. They know they need highways for the cars to run on, but they
cannot possibly afford to build them. If they had to include the cost of
building these highways into their business model, the cost of a car would be
astronomical. So how come we ended up with this costly solution?

Fuller said what happened is that the business owners turned to yet a third
tier of people, even duller than themselves, for an answer to the highway
construction problem! These are the politicians, who know little about
science, engineering, truth or costs, but who have the gift of gab, who tell
the Populus, if you vote for me, I will have the government build the
highways for you! No one in this group of people had even the slightest
appreciation of the possible hidden costs in such a decision. It never crossed
their mind. And the general public was just as ignorant. But, did you know
that even as expensive as highways may be, in the grand scheme of things,
it's just a drop in the bucket? Consider the hidden costs of how much we
spend militarily to defend our access to oil supplies in the Middle East! Or the
hidden costs of health care due to breathing foul air? Or even the loss of
beauty of not being able to see a blue sky? Some people don't even know the
sky is supposed to be mostly blue, and that red sunsets are something
ominous. You have to read the accounts of early explorers to know what
sunsets were like a hundred years ago.

Shouldn't a generalist, competent in many fields, be asked to evaluate the


total proposed solution? Actually, we all need a more generalist type of
education, so we can better evaluate the possible solutions. This is what
alarmed Whitehead about our educational system. No generalists were being
trained for this role. The best and brightest were being trained for the
specialist role. In Fuller's words: "One of the great mistakes that society has
been demonstrating in our last century has been that of leaving the most
important problems to the men who are bankrupt in creative thinking ability."
Its a massive case of "the blind men and the elephant," each completely
convinced that they know what the solution is, but none really having it, and
it is also a "tragedy of the commons," where costs are not apportioned
appropriately.

Even the partitioning process, which actually starts in grade school, has
hidden costs! (just read the short story: "I am not a turtle"and one
commentary on Gifted and Talented programs). Indeed, creating dull people
is just an artifact of the selection process! A matter of discouragement, of
learned helplessness. Evidence of a lack of care. A result of the hierarchical
structure of present day organizations, not only educational, but of the
military, business, industrial, and religious.

So where did this idea of specialized training originate? It originates with the
concept of "division of labor." We attribute the idea to Adam Smith, because
he explored its ramifications in great deal in his well known classic, "Wealth
of Nations." Unfortunately, no one really reads his book, and his intentions to
inform have been subverted. After the first couple of pages, everyone puts
the heavy tome down. I dare say, most put the text down after reading just
the first sentence! Here it is:

"CHAPTER 1

Of the Division of Labour

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the


greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere
directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour."

Now, one of the reasons why we put the book down, is because we are so
familiar with the production process. It starts with our schooling, and almost
everyone has had experience with factory style work. Our entire
manufacturing enterprise is predicated on the myth that Adam Smith
advocated "division of labor."
Noam Chomsky read the entire book, and states "Adam Smith is very well
know for his advocacy of division of labor. Take a look at "division of labor" in
the index and there are lots and lots of things listed. But there's one missing,
namely his denunciation of division of labor." So Adam Smith denounces
division of labor! Where is it, then? In my edition, I found it begins in Book
Five, Chapter 1, on page 340. It appears most of the experts fell asleep
before getting this far. Here is what Adam Smith says:

"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater
part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of people, comes
to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But
the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by
their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing
a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same,
or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to
exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which
never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and
generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible to become
for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not
only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but
of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of
forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of
private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is
altogether incapable of judging,......"

Aha! This is the key! And this bit of information is being used very effectively
against you. Manufacturers don't want you to know too many steps in the
process of making something. Why? Well, here are a few reasons: You can be
trained to do the task in a few hours, or a matter of days, so its cheaper. This
also makes it easy to replace you, like an interchangeable part. And so, if you
are not obedient, then they just fire you! The threat of unemployment is just
another way for the boss to control you. And, if you knew all the steps, then
you could just go out and start your own competing business. What
manufacturer wants that?

So, how did the educational system get set up this way? Well, part of the
reason is to copy the factory production model. But, what about Harvard
University? As Fuller explains:

"At Harvard just before World War I-and this was the time when I was having
my little troubles there-the dilemma Whitehead was talking about was
developing in a very interesting way. What Whitehead didn't ask was how
Harvard could afford those graduate schools. The fact is that neither Harvard
nor any other university has ever operated at a profit. Certainly, schools,
colleges, and universities don't have surplus earnings accruing which they
can reinvest. Establishing graduate schools wasn't something private colleges
could do on their own. The explanation is that the graduate schools were
given to Harvard and the other leading private universities.
The next interesting question is, who gave them the graduate specialty
schools? Well, the people who gave Harvard the schools were primarily the
partners of J. P. Morgan and Company or they were men who were the
founders or presidents of companies whose boards were run by J. P. Morgan.
J. P. Morgan or his partners were at the time on the boards of nearly every
important, powerful company in America. Morgan or his associates were also
partners in the great unseen syndicate of world commerce mastery up to
World War I. "
...
"Now, if you were world master, you would not be at all worried about being
displaced by a dull one. You would only be apprehensive of and on guard
against the bright ones. There is the old strategy of "divide and conquer."
Anticipatory "divide and conquer" is more powerful than tardy "divide and
conquer." The old masters, then, in order to prevent themselves from being
displaced from their great ocean mastery deliberately went to work taking
the young, bright ones as they came along, and divided them up
anticipatorily into non-self-integratable specializations, which made them
completely innocuous as challengers to comprehensive grand-strategy
thinking and practical-affairs integration. The bright ones thus became
subject to integration of their high potential only at the masters'
command......"
"....The local politician was a man ( a king, or whatever) put into a position of
strength by the great masters who themselves remained scrupulously
invisible. They preferred to remain invisible. The more invisible they were the
longer they could stay master. No challenges would arise, because there was
nothing visible to challenge. Secrecy was one of the greatest of the tools of
the old masters...."

John Taylor Gatto has also investigated how the public school system was set
up. He found that not only was J. P. Morgan involved, but also Andrew
Carnegie and John Rockefeller! Indeed, by the turn of the 20th century, these
three owned nearly everything, and so capitalism was essentially dead, a
victim of its own success. To keep things going, Carnegie proposed and
helped implement a new system of pseudo free enterprise, which was based
on schooling and education, those excelling at their specializations being
given licenses to lead comfortable lives.

So now you know some of the forces working behind the scenes in politics, in
war, in any large enterprise. It all makes sense. But such closed hierarchical
systems are inherently unfair. We could be much happier in an
nonhierarchically organized open system. One thing we need to do is
examine and formulate a new system of beliefs, and then teach them to our
children. I'm trying to do this via my Malama Learning Facility.

References:
Chomsky, Noam (1996), "Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian,"
Monroe, Me: Common Courage Press, pp. 19-21, 27-31. 185 p.

Fuller, Richard Buckminister (1979), "Education Automation," in "R.


Buckminister Fuller on Education, edited by Peter H. Wagschal and Robert D.
Kahn," Amherst: U. Mass. Press, pp. 56-63. This book is a collection of all of
Fuller's explicit statements on education spanning the period between 1963-
1979. His essay "Education Automation" was first published in 1962.

Gatto, John Taylor (1991). "Dumbing Us Down, the hidden curriculum of


compulsory schooling," :New Society Pub. 104 pages. A paperback collection
of many of his essays.

Smith, Adam (1776), "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations," reprinted in Great Books of the Western World, vol 39,
Chicago:Encyclopedia Britannica, pp. 3, 340

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