Personality Dynamics of Public Education in America
In this essay, Dharma Dynamics is applied to the personality analysis of an abstract group, the American public school system. The presentation is done in the broadest sense simply because it makes things easier to see. Thus, from a societal perspective, the system is viewed in thermal terms with a focus upon the efficiency (of the work generated by the system) as observed by the value of its end product.
The first order of business is to take into account the environment within which the system of public education functions. As a general rule, our American society, as complex and multidimensional as it may be, can be deftly defined as any other -- an aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
Like all communities, our American society supports and projects a unique, idiosyncratic identity and behavioral character. And within that persona, a system of free public education has become inextricably woven into the historical fabric of the nation. If we peer into that personality conglomerate we can readily observe the prowess of public education from its ability to distinguish its importance among other competing energy sources at play within the American psyche.
For a long time, the personality of American public education proudly, rightfully claimed an immense success story. Within the US, opportunities for high school graduates to attend college and go on to post-graduate work dramatically accelerated after WW2.
During that time, any changes to the foundational system of public schools apparently blended with little or no resistance into its established history and practice. Adaptability to change worked to increase the efficiency of the system. Predictably, this resulted with an improved final product, one with greater value.*
All dynamic personality analysis begins with the recognition of the ceaseless thermal interplay of dharma and entropy within the psyche. These are the primal forces within human consciousness that influence all manifest behavior. The life process, evolving through time, innately generates an idiosyncratic projection of the normal, homeostatic character for the operative personality system. That holds true for an individual, a group, and for a society.
Nothing was ever specifically written down among the early creators of public education in America. It developed as a localized educational architecture, a social system constructed from community consensual agreement. Everything rested upon the implicit respect for the Public Trust between the people and their locally elected officials. The rationale that justified the agreement was that a formally enacted system of public education would perpetually benefit the general welfare of the whole community.
“Instructional styles and the nature of the curriculum were locally determined. Teachers themselves were expected to be models of strict moral behavior…By the mid-1800s, most states had accepted three basic assumptions governing public education: that schools should be free and supported by taxes, that teachers should be trained, and that children should be required to attend school.”1
This neatly defines the basic attributes of any community’s system for public education in America today: local governance, the community (those to be served and the tax base), educators, and (of course) the students. The first two supply the input energy available to the system. Educators perform the work and thereby project the countenance and character of the system’s efficiency as assessed by the expected value of the end product -- literate, well-educated students.
As noted above, public education since those early beginnings has certainly come a long way; and each public school district was established, first and foremost, to serve the evolving primary and secondary educational needs free for every child within their representative community. Although sources and data vary, there are roughly 16,800 independent public school districts in the US.
Over time, and as communities grew in numbers and needs, most school districts codified governance with rules and regulations interspersed with malleable interpretations of the public trust. Community involvement generally read as something akin to a Parents’ Bill of Rights and Responsibilities statement that basically conformed to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.
About fifteen years ago, it was deemed prudent by policymakers to initiate Common Core State Standards into the American public school system along with required national and/or state standardized tests. It didn’t take too long for the evidentiary data from that strategy imposed upon the system, coupled with community follow-up and appraisal, to prompt serious questions regarding the end product, the educational proficiency of students by grade and subject.2 Understandably, academic proficiency reflected the value of the curriculum students were receiving; and of specific concern was that of high school graduates’ preparedness for college-level material.
Then, five or six years ago or so, and without changing course with Common Core, some school districts began another newly codified iteration of policy changes to their educational systems. Part of this new social direction was to disincentivize and homogenize individual merit by systematically lowering the academic standards required of primary and secondary school students.
This was a unilateral decision made by one of the energy sources to public education. Administrators thought it ideologically expedient to obfuscate the well-documented data regarding the continued decline in academic performance of students in their districts.
Parental awareness bred an increasing frustration and angst that now fervently criticized the failure of their district administrators to provide the critical thinking skills deemed necessary for a quality, foundational, K-12 education. The unintentional consequence of those (social) policy changes produced a definitive fracture of the public trust.
Direct community input grew as evidenced by greater attendance of concerned parents venting their resentments at local PTAs and scheduled administrative school board meetings. These community behavioral events exemplified the initial thermal stirrings testing the homeostatic tolerance within the psyche of their local systems’ personalities.
It happened quickly and for the most part under the radar; however those unsettling social policies and curricula had become ubiquitous in American public education. Community reactions intensified with impassioned, contentious questions and fierce criticisms of local school systems as more national data evidenced the further decline of student proficiency in virtually all subjects at all grades.3
The importance of the issue escalated rapidly among many media resources reporting on the dysfunctional behavior erupting at local school district meetings. The argument became so contentious and numerous around the country that it eventually prompted the House of Representatives to intervene with the subsequent passage of the Parents Bill of Rights Act of 2023.4 In its most fashionable, non-committal, political way this Act, although it acknowledged a national issue and attempted to alter the course and countenance of public education, failed and did little to ameliorate the ongoing tensions constantly erupting at the local community level.
It’s hard to tell whether parents were more upset with the new policies and curricula or that their input to the decision-making process had been intentionally ignored. It is noteworthy that both variables contributed to wasting energy that was available for useful work. That wastefulness naturally increased the degree of entropy within the districts’ systems. Then, as a collective aggregate energy feed, it caused the thermal guardrails within the American psyche to be breached beyond their normal, homeostatic tolerance precipitating a highly charged national issue.
The applied system of public education and its unique character within American society should not be thought of as distinct entities. They are but two variant manifestations of inherent psychothermal phenomena born of the same group psyche. Initially they both arise idiosyncratically in human awareness as personality formulations; then manifestly projected into the environment (the community) by consensual agreement.
That projected action of creating a public school system displays an evolved, cognitively assessed persona that is equally rooted in practicality and utility as it is in law and the public trust. These are the foremost factors of account that determine the guardrails of thermal balance within the American psyche of public education. It is within the psyche of each created school district, there in its distinctively binary nakedness, that we are witness to the integration of the actual with the abstract. These are the rudimentary elements that determine the work efficiency of a public school system.
The Role of Dharma in American Public Education
There is an extraordinary matrix of variables that contribute to the projected societal personality of public education. National news media indicate that its current persona trends toward increasing behavioral disorder. This indicates that the degree of psychic entropy is on the rise as the function and finesse of dharma is in decline.
Though it has yet to violate the rules of the definition, whether entropy is a bona fide force of nature is still a topic of debate. The same can be argued of its psychic complementary partner, dharma. Interestingly, all psychological theories of personality development assume the interchangeably of psychic energy and psychic force. Dharma brings them into unity.
Dharma plays a very special role within the psyche of public education. It guides the integration of morality within its personality substratum, the student-teacher relationship. Indisputably, this is where the rubber meets the road.
The inherent interplay of dharma and entropy within the group psyche determines the strength and durability of the trust so firmly established between the community and the “trained” teachers. The universality and importance of this bond between student and teacher is irrefutable. The strength of that bond is what underscores the consensual approbation initially granted to the greater Public Trust.
Teachers are the countenance and character that project the efficiency of the school system. Their work represents the integration of ideology and methodology into the educational regimen. Obviously, that functionality significantly influences the value of the end product, the academic proficiency of students. The student/teacher relationship is a psychothermal synthesis of the actual and the abstract and simultaneously provides the self-reliant heartbeat for the life process of public education in America.
Therefore, analysis of public education begins with educators since they are the direct link with the public trust. They are the only ones who can bring about the changes required for a return to an expected normal function for the system of public education. Otherwise, and this may take many years, American public education will cease to exist as alternative systems are created to replace it. The options of private and charter schools, school voucher programs and the rising popularity with home schooling are the initial signs of public education’s potential dissolution.
Behavioral change always begins psychodynamically within the individual, then by collective progression to the group psyche. One-by-one, educators need only come forward with sincere intent, independent from administrators and the community, to realize** how their collective actions had resulted in wasting so much available energy to their system. Only they have the first-hand knowledge of what caused things to become so dysfunctional and chaotic and allowed things to get so far out of control.***
The onus on teachers is a personal, introspective challenge that requires tremendous individual discipline and dedication to achieve even tiny portions of the goal. Ultimately, it is a self-imposed behavioral agenda that confronts one’s narcissistic tendencies, power-driven desires and formidable external forces. Nonetheless, what can be accomplished on an individual level must be attempted if public education is to be salvaged.
Manifold individual successes will naturally affect the personality development of local school districts which in turn can eventually feed collectively into the national persona of public education. The potential strength and probity of that cumulative behavioral effort will go a long way to regain some of the public trust in the system of public education in America.
* * *
*See “The Energy Dynamics of Group Personality”
Positive changes, those consistent with previous group behavior, integrate affirmatively within the group psyche bordered only by its existing homeostatic guardrails. The system’s basic work and efficiency is retained if not improved with the change(s), and continues to support the group’s initial ambitions.
Negative changes work to impede and restrict, or even shut down, the prevailing energy system. These types of adverse decisions will disrupt the homeostatic balance within the group psyche beyond what was deemed reliable energic tolerance.
**See Glossary: Realization: This is how we come to know:
***From Building Block #3, “Entropy & the Psyche”
Specifically, cognition directed to the cause(s) for entropy within a system, either mechanical or psychological, can lessen the degree of entropy. This action of intentionality increases psychic clarity and serves to expose creative potential(s) to further improve the function or efficiency of an existing system.
2. There is an overabundance of information online regarding student proficiency standards and actual results through time. Beginning in 1999, I worked seasonally with one of two outfits in the US that was contracted to evaluate and score those nasty standardized tests that states administer and students (and many parents) abhor. My employer ran both day and evening shifts and employed dozens to work on multiple projects from several school districts located in various states. During my tenure, I’ve worked on 4th & 6th grade reading/comprehension, 4th & 5th grade math, 8th grade English & and 10th grade biology projects among others. Those of us who saw and collated the raw data all agreed that proficiency of students’ applied abilities for basic apprehension and comprehension in all subjects declined markedly as the years passed.
3. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades and https://realclearwire.com/articles/2023/09/06/leading_the_charge_on_civics_education_977625.html
4. As of this writing, the Act is currently stalled in the Senate. These parents’ rights include:
Review (and make copies of at no cost) the curriculum of their child's school
Meet with each teacher of their child at least twice each school year
Review the budget, including all revenues and expenditures, of their child's school
Inspect books and other reading materials in the library of their child's school
Address the school board of the LEA (local educational agency)
Receive information about violent activity in their child's school
Know if their child is not grade-level proficient in reading or language arts at the
end of 3rd grade.
(For more information check out Congressional H.R.-5, passed 3/24/23)
