It has now been almost 50 years since Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram gathered a small group of New Haven, Connecticut, residents in the basement of Yale University’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall.
Milgram, a specialist on obedience, designed his experiment against the backdrop of the Adolf Eichmann trial. In the experiment, Milgram tricked volunteer “teachers” into administering what they believed to be increasingly severe electric shocks to actors whom they thought to be ordinary volunteers when they answered questions wrong. The teachers could hear but not see the recipients of their shocks.
Many continued dispensing shocks despite the begging and pleading of their victims. In short, Milgram showed how ordinary people could do actions they knew to be wrong or immoral in response to higher authority or in order to exercise their own authority. In the half-century since the Milgram experiment, many other psychologists have replicated Milgram’s work or conducted variations upon his experiment, generally with the same results.
Perhaps the Montgomery County Public Schools system and its Board of Education did not consciously set out to reinforce Milgram’s findings, but, more than a year into the COVID-19 crisis, they have essentially replicated the experiment’s parameters by convincing teachers and other childcare specialists to treat children in a way they know is deleterious to their well-being.
Consider the consensus that screen time is extremely unhealthy for young children, while physical activity is important. That MCPS insisted students learn physical education — gym class — sitting in front of computer screens after the system had invested millions of dollars on not only well-aired gymnasiums but also outdoor athletic fields is something no principal, let alone MCPS administrator, has adequately explained. This is even truer for the period after students returned to their classrooms for at least four days every two-week period.
The impact of not only encouraging screen time but also demanding it will have long-term physical and behavioral effects on children. MCPS knows it is acting contrary to children’s interests. Consider, for example, its elementary school curriculum: A section titled “How Parents Can Help” advises, “Monitor the amount of time your child spends playing video games or surfing the Internet,” and, yet, solitary video game time is how teachers reward their young charges within the classroom.
Within younger grades, education is about not only reading and writing but also socializing, learning to behave in a group, and generally understanding how to be a good citizen. In kindergarten and lower grades across the county, teachers and principals refuse to allow children to turn their heads to talk with peers during lunchtime, punish sharing of art supplies, and discourage many recess activities that would encourage teamwork and cooperative play. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average weight for 5-year-olds is less than 40 pounds. Nevertheless, principals and teachers refuse to allow children that age to store their books, supplies, and computers in cubbies or desks even though deep-cleaning only occurs once per week (and is mostly COVID theater since the disease does not transmit easily from surfaces). Instead, they make children carry backpacks sometimes up to one-quarter of their weight each day.
During start-of-year conferences, teachers surveyed how students fared. When parents suggested online emphasis was taking a deleterious toll, they passed comments to principals. At Wood Acres, my children’s school, the principal discouraged honest replies to save teachers from “distress.” This was, in effect, an admission that educators and administrators understood their behavior to be wrong. Teachers and counselors, however, fear for their jobs. Many fear the union. Some principals refuse to speak truthfully to MCPS administration for fear that rocking the boat might affect their own ability to climb the ladder; others without such ambition are content to do as little as possible in times of crisis.
While many Montgomery County residents acknowledge that their children’s teachers are committed— my children’s certainly are — principals are aloof, and counselors have remained silent regarding what has essentially become school-sanctioned child abuse.
It has now been almost four decades since Milgram died. Were he still alive, however, he would recognize in Montgomery County the type of rationalization of abuse that his famous experiment sought in a very different context to highlight.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
