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The Perpetual Crisis: Early and Modern Ideas on 

Education 

 
“No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of the youth” 
—Aristotle, Politics, VIII 

 
 

Guillermo Farfan  
 
 
 

  
n underlying belief on the positive relationship between educating the young, on the one 
hand, and the economic, political, and cultural survival of a nation-state, on the other, 

seems present in virtually all modern and modernizing societies in the world (Chabbott & Ramirez, 
2000). In the United States, this belief takes on many forms, but chief among them is the idea that 
education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) plays a vital role in the health and 
preservation of the country as a whole (Holdren & Lander, 2012). This belief can be justified, to some 
extent, by how reliant we all have become on the products of STEM disciplines. A democratic society 
in which large numbers of people are dependent on using these products but are otherwise unfamiliar 
or uncomfortable with the scientific and technological principles behind them is arguably setting itself 
up for failure. 
  

Nonetheless, contemporary arguments in favor of STEM education often employ narratives that 
are not novel but instead resemble certain philosophical antecedents. Hence, my interest here is not 
whether justification for the belief in the fundamental role of STEM education is necessary or 
sufficient for how we function as a society. Rather, what I wish to call attention to in this essay is how, 
in advocating for more mathematics and science education, national leaders often make use of a trope 
not unfamiliar to the Western philosophical tradition: education as the solution to a societal crisis. 

 
I will use three short historical readings to illustrate my point. First, I will show how Plato’s The 

Republic and Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education could be read, inter alia, as elaborated responses to a 
critical societal problem or threat the author wished to resolve. I will then sketch out how STEM 
education developed in the United States, paying attention to how it has been officially defended. 
Finally, I will contrast and critique the similarities and differences between these narratives and give 
some reasons for being critical of them at the end. 
 
The Crisis in Plato’s The Republic 

 
In ancient Greece, the paideia was an early curriculum for elite young males which included 

military training, horse riding, athletics, singing, playing an instrument, and reciting Homer (Griffith, 

A 



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2015). Completing the paideia was the mark of a ‘civilized’ man and ensured entrance into the 
political and economic activities of a small, Greek polis (city-state).  

 
By the 5th century BCE, the rise of participatory governments and other aftermath effects of the 

Greco-Persian wars significantly changed the face of Greek education (Raaflaub, 2015). The needs of 
growing city-states could no longer be met by the traditional curriculum, and soon many cities were 
flooded with iterant teachers—called Sophists—offering every kind of education to those who could 
afford it (Wolfsdorf, 2015). 

 
Although the work of the Sophists was of great significance to the democratization and 

internationalization of education in classical antiquity, it also contributed to a leadership dilemma 
since anyone with a modicum of education could now sway the assemblies and courts that made up 
the body politic of big democratic cities such as Athens (Hatzis, 2017). There was also no agreement as 
to what sort of education democratic leaders should aspire to, whether in rhetoric, law, or military 
history; consequently, collective decision-making was inconsistent and occasionally disastrous: 
ostracism and even death of prominent generals, failed and expensive campaigns in Sicily and Egypt, 
and the massacre at Melos are a few of the instances where the crisis of Athenian leadership was 
severely felt. 

 
The Republic, one of Plato’s main works, is set against this socio-political background. One of its 

major themes is the establishment of a strong and balanced society that will nurture the right kind of 
happy and just individuals according to reason (Lane, 2006). To do this, Plato suggests a curriculum 
where all men and women—remarkably, for the time—are educated in music and gymnastics. 
Mathematics, literature, and dialectic were reserved exclusively for those chosen to be guardians and 
rulers of the city. As such, the education that Plato had in mind for the city’s leaders would not only 
instill courage but also nurture reason (Collins, 2000). 

 
As noted earlier, the crisis for Plato was that education in his native Athens was nothing of that 

sort. The city that had condemned his master Socrates to death was also the city which had allowed 
various political and economic interests to compete and outdo each other, producing programs of 
education that were not concerned with truth, but with the appearance of truth, and where men saw 
the advancement of their careers in political influence and honor as their ultimate goal. In Plato’s 
eyes, the Sophists were major culprits in this, and he thus positioned himself (and Socrates) squarely 
as their enemy: Socrates claims that he knows nothing and refuses to be paid for his advice—in direct 
opposition to how Sophists operated. And again, unlike the Sophists, Plato’s Socrates does not believe 
that truth is relative to whatever the circumstance needed it to be; instead, truth resides in the 
unchangeable, immutable world of Forms (Lane, 2006). 

 
Similarly, Plato presents the education of the city’s leaders in Books II-VII of The Republic chiefly 

as an alternative to the errors in leadership among Greek poleis of his time. Through the cultivation of 
reason, the philosopher-king and her guardians will be equipped to lead their subjects in a manner 
that is above all rational: they will know how to avoid unnecessary wars (375c), they will know what is 
true from what is false (376d), they will put the needs of the city first before their own (412b ff), they 
will have no need for material accumulation or gain (415e ff), etc. (Bloom, 2016). Only when men 



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and women in leadership are able to live their lives according to reason, free from worldly bondage, 
will the city and its inhabitants experience true happiness and justice (Natali, 2000). 

 
Although it is not entirely clear to what extent Plato’s fears of a crisis of leadership were 

justified, nonetheless, it provided the perfect backdrop to contrast his solution of a universal and 
socially stratified education against what was in offer at the time (Wolfsdorf, 2015). His views on 
education fit very well his larger philosophical agenda of seeing the city as a reflection of the soul, 
moving it away from temporal and ordinary matters and towards the ideal and perfect Forms. 
 
The Crisis in Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education 

 
In the 18th century, the nation of France was at a crossroads. Many Frenchmen at the time 

welcomed the reign of Louis XV as a return to peace and prosperity that has all but disappeared 
during two long and debilitating wars of the preceding century. Many others, however, grew 
disenchanted with what they saw as excesses of the monarchy and the Church, principal institutions 
of the Ancien Régime (old order). 

 
When the Genevan philosopher and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau moved to Paris to try his 

fortunes in 1742, he encountered an educational system that was divided between various religious 
orders, whose core business were producing clergy, and the state, which encouraged the training of 
bureaucrats, merchants, and doctors that populated the ranks of the bourgeoisie, or middle-class (Bloch, 
1995; Riley, 2001). 

 
There was no shortage of criticism for the old educational system in the years prior to the 

French Revolution, though it was less clear what should take its place. A popular view among 
philosophically minded people was that education should be used to subdue personal interest in the 
service of national regeneration (Gill, 2010). Rousseau, however, believed that such a solution would 
produce nothing but unjust men. For even if a reasonably stable social order could be established, 
with toleration, fine manners, sophisticated works of art, and high-minded laws, in the end it would 
be all a charade, because underneath all of that men will still manipulate, exploit, oppress, and eat one 
another (Melzer, 1980). 

 
The crisis Rousseau was responding to in Emile, then, was not the necessity of taming human 

nature but the need to replace an educational system that corrupted the nature of man. Nothing was 
more symptomatic of this system than those individuals (which Rousseau identified with the 
bourgeoisie) whose only concern with education was to protect and perpetuate their own way of life. 
For Rousseau, these people were weak-willed conformists who were directed by the whims of their 
desires and the whims of their culture’s desires (Jonas, 2010). Not surprisingly, much of what happens 
in Emile takes place far away from the influences of the Ancien Régime and the people who lived in it. 

 
As a result, a major premise of the book is establishing a system or environment that is 

conducive to self-motivated learning: a child should have as much freedom to explore as possible (p. 
43ff), should seek to learn from first-hand knowledge rather than books (p. 109ff), should be 
introduced to subjects only when he is ready to take an interest in them (p. 169), should be allow to 



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use his intuition when solving geometric problems (pp. 145-146), etc. (Bloom, 1979). In Rousseau’s 
eyes, children in the traditional educational system were taught too many things before they were 
ready to absorb them, and they ended up learning nothing that was useful. Rather than producing a 
student capable to repeat the ideas of others, education should produce a person who can think on 
his own and judge accordingly (Melachrinou, 2012). It must be noted in passing that this applies to 
male students only; the education of women was an entirely different matter (Israel, 2012). 

 
For these reasons, and unlike many of his contemporaries, Rousseau was wary of public 

education: Emile’s education is individual education, entirely customized and overseen by his all-
knowing tutor (Rosenow, 1980). The traditional education offered by the state and the Church, where 
students were grouped in classes and told what they needed to know, is written-off by Rousseau for its 
failure in balancing personal interest with mutual dependence (its greatest achievement, the 
bourgeoisie, Rousseau clearly despised). In its place, he proposes a radical new pedagogy that will 
make not only free-thinking men but men capable of giving back to their community.   
 
The Rise and Fall of STEM Education in The United States 

 
From the time of colonial America to the early 1800s, most children and servants were taught 

rudimentary arithmetic and other basic facts about the world at home; only in New England could a 
handful of public schools be found. At the higher level, college education was focused on learning 
classical languages and matters of religion: of the nine colonial colleges, only Harvard required 
proficiency in arithmetic in 1726 (Willoughby, 1967). 

 
As the pace of innovation and economic expansion brought by the industrial revolution of the 

mid- to late 19th century continued to accelerate, the value of a scientific and mathematical education 
increased (Franceschetti, 2000). Some progressive ideas, such as attending to how children think 
mathematically, also started to catch on (Sinclair, 2008). Elsewhere, the use of statistics and the 
scientific method to persuade policymakers and the public about the virtues of free, universal 
education became more and more commonplace (Klein, 2003). Importantly, these developments 
often went hand-in-hand with a sense of national opportunity, the natural outcome of the United 
States becoming a world superpower (Engel, Lawrence, & Preston, 2014). 

 
Although such enthusiasm was dampened somewhat during the 1930s, the aftermath of World 

War II brought new attention to the American educational system from both federal and state 
governments. A major impetus for this came from outside the United States: the launching of Sputnik 
in October 1957 created both paranoia and concern that the Soviets had beaten America into space 
(Vinovskis, 1998). The next year, Congress approved one billion dollars—worth roughly 9 billion 
today—for the National Defense Education Act, or NDEA, to help American students compete with 
their Soviets counterparts. It was the first of a series of policy initiatives (many of them spearheaded by 
scientists, not educators) that directly involved the federal government in all levels of American 
education for the first time.  

 
The changes brought by the NDEA could be seen at local schools in the form of lab kits, 

overhead projectors, and educational films; gifted students were handpicked for upper-level courses, 



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and matching funds for mathematics, science and even foreign languages abound (Abramson, 2007). 
Incidentally, it was also during this period that the idea of a national, standardized assessment of 
students led to the creation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP) and the many 
aptitude tests that followed. 

 
By the early 1970s, however, interest in mathematics and science began to wane. There was a 

sense among some politicians and academics that the United States had entered a period of decline, 
and even a longing for another Sputnik to boost education and innovation again (Abramson, 2007). 
The rise of Japan in the 1980s provided such an opportunity to develop STEM education around the 
idea of national security (Thorsten, 2012). The most famous and influential document from this 
period was the widely circulated report, A Nation at Risk, which in 1983 challenged Americans to 
return to the basics in education and to focus attention on student academic achievements (Vinovskis, 
1998). Written by the National Commission on Excellence in Education at the behest of then 
Secretary of Education, Terrel Bell, the report asserted: 

“…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising 
tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people [...] If an 
unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre 
educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of 
war.” (p. 9) 

Although not the first such national report (that honor goes to the Higher Education for American 
Democracy in 1947), it was significant in its demand for increasing mathematics and science education. 
In its wake, the leading organization of mathematics education in the United States, the National 
Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), published Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School 
Mathematics in 1989. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) likewise 
produced the Science for All Americans (1985) and Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1989) in an effort to 
standardized science education. 

Without diminishing the importance of having a consistent and informed STEM policy and 
curriculum, the narrative structure found in A Nation at Risk set a template for many reports that 
followed: an ominous threat is identified (pp. 9-10), past failures and warnings are named (pp. 11-13), 
proposals to remedy the situation are put forward (pp. 15-16), evidence is marshaled to defend the 
viability of said proposals (pp. 17ff; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). Even 
the titles of some of these reports are derivative: Before It’s Too Late (2000), Rising Above the Gathering 
Storm (2007), etc. 

Public figures, likewise, are not strangers in using dire language when defending STEM 
education efforts. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, occasionally made references to 
Sputnik and to the idea that rival nations (e.g., China) are outpacing children in the United States in 
both mathematics and science (e.g., “for we know that the nation that out-educates us today, will out-
compete us tomorrow;” Nagesh, 2011). John Holdren, then director of the President’s Council of 
Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), made similar remarks when advocating for 1 million 
more college graduates in STEM fields (Holdren & Lander, 2012). More recently, the Trump 



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administration has singled out the lack of high-quality STEM education as a critical problem facing 
the nation (United States Department of Education, 2019). Secretary of Education Elisabeth DeVos, 
in fact, has stated that mathematics and science education in the United States has stagnated, though 
she blamed the previous administrations’ policies rather than efforts by foreign nations for the 
situation (Stahl, 2018).  
 
Early and Modern Education: Contrast and Critique 

 
What do these narratives have in common? On the surface, the characterization of education 

appears distinct in these three historical accounts. For Plato, education (including mathematics 
education) is a state-run affair that is subordinate to the search for first-principles, or Forms, which 
alone guarantee a just and contented society (Knorr, 1981). In contrast, Rousseau puts his faith in the 
rational and moral education of the individual, rather than on the state or any other institution, to 
sustain society (Rosenow, 1980). Lastly, American education is concerned, at least in principle, with 
extending the same learning opportunities to all communities and age groups (Noddings, 2018). 

 
Yet, even though the issues Plato, Rousseau, and the United States government were responding 

to differ, there is also a sense in which education is seen as a remedy against some societal ill 
(Melachrinou, 2012). In the case of Plato, it was the Sophists’ free-market approach to education that 
posed a threat to the principled, elite culture embodied in the paideia (Curren, 2000). Rousseau, on 
the other hand, was afraid that the noble virtues of the past—such as charity, courage, and self-
reliance—would disappear under the pressure of the Ancien Régime and bourgeoisie values (Melzer, 
1980). Modern American anxieties are attached to the idea of the nation slipping into global 
irrelevance (Herman, 2019). These threats are as much part of the narrative as are matters of strict 
pedagogy. 

 
But is this emphasis on threats and crises completely unwarranted? In hindsight, the mistakes 

made by the Athenian leadership cost them their hegemony over much of Greece. Rousseau was 
certainly not the only one dissatisfied with the French old system in the years leading to the French 
Revolution. And almost by any metric, the United States is lagging behind other nations like 
Singapore or China in STEM education. If there is any truth in the old maxim that it is better to be 
feared than to be loved, then perhaps framing things in terms of crises in order to mobilize people 
into action is not such a bad idea. 

 
However, in my view, there is a danger in relying too much on fear or a ‘crisis’ to rally support 

and get things done, particularly in education (cf. Herman, 2019). The urgency of solving a crisis 
might inadvertently favor quick solutions over deliberating on long-term ones, inclining people to 
overlook possible consequences in an effort to get results. Let me illustrate this point with one final 
example. 

 
After years of sounding the alarm about America’s failing in education, in December of 2000 

then-upcoming President George W. Bush called for a bipartisan summit to overhaul the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). A legacy of the Johnson’s administration, the ESEA was signed 
into law in 1965 and revised several times after. But Bush’s vision for the law was far more ambitious, 



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calling for an expansion of the federal role in education not seen since the Sputnik era (Klein, 2015). 
The proposal was spearheaded by Rep. John Boehner and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy who, alongside 
members of the House, the Senate, and the White House, met regularly to work out the details. 
However, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the pressure to get the proposal 
over the finish line suddenly doubled (in the words of former Secretary of Education Margaret 
Spellings, “we had to strike while the iron was hot;” Samuelsohn & Vinik, 2015). The final proposal 
was presented to then-President Bush on January 4th, 2002—just over a year from its conception—and 
signed into law four days later. It became known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. 

 
The most salient feature of the NCLB was the idea of withholding federal Title I money to any 

school that did not demonstrate yearly progress in mathematics and reading. States were required to 
test students grades 3 to 8 every year, and at least once in high school. Consequently, many teachers 
began to “teach to the test,” spending less time to cover other subjects like social studies or the arts in 
order to increase standardized test scores (Hanley, Roehrig, & Canto, 2012). By 2010, however, it was 
clear the law had become so unpopular and controversial that the Obama administration had to waive 
most of its provisions (Klein, 2015). 

 
Now, there were certain things in the NCLB (and its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act 

or ESSA) that are commendable: it sought to help historically disadvantaged students, it instilled a 
sense of accountability from states and schools, and it gave credibility to having national educational 
standards (Turner, 2015). But the NCLB failed to achieve its larger objectives, and it is clear in 
retrospect that part of the reason why is that it was rushed. 

 
This case, I hope, elucidates why I see acting out of fear or in crisis mode as risky in practice. It 

makes it easy to overlook an important philosophical question: Assuming the government is a major 
player in spreading educational equity, what forms of discourse are acceptable for the state to use in 
achieving its educational goals? 

 
In The Republic and Emile, Plato and Rousseau were free to shape the narrative as they saw fit—it 

is clear that their “solutions” were meant to be considered as philosophy and not as workable and 
sensible educational programs (Bloom, 2016). The education of children in the United States, on the 
other hand, does not afford one such luxury. 
 

Conclusion 
 
This paper aimed to call attention to the idea that the portrayal of education (in particular 

STEM education) as a solution to a social dilemma or crisis has precedents in the Western 
philosophical tradition. It showed, briefly, how a historical reading of Plato’s The Republic and 
Rousseau’s Emile highlights the ways their authors used education as a response to societal threats they 
saw as critical. Similarly, in attempting to promote STEM education, American officials oftentimes 
frame its importance in terms of national security. On this reading, the fear of an imminent crisis is 
used to mobilize support. Finally, I offered a few reasons why I think it may be a bad idea to lean on 
such a strategy. 



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To be sure, there is more to Plato’s The Republic and Rousseau’s Emile than fears of society 
collapsing under the Sophists or the bourgeoisie, and for that reason, both these works deserve the 
attention and critical consideration they have enjoyed to this day. I believe the same could be done to 
reports like A Nation at Risk, or the history behind the NCLB, which may contain lessons of 
philosophical interest. Given that education is always caught in a moment of transition—between the 
culture it wants to preserve and the culture it wants to become—there is much to be gained by putting 
old and new ideas about education in critical dialogue. 
 

 
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Address Correspondences to:  
Guillermo Farfan  
Doctoral Candidate in Learning and Cognition 
Dept. of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems 
FSU College of Education 
Email: gjf14@my.fus.edu 

 
 
 
 
 

mailto:gjf14@my.fus.edu

