"The fatal conceit" is a liberal one, both in connection with the Democratic Party of the United States, which views government as a proper means of change, and would invest state power with the role of implementing change.
The fallacy is liberal in the general sense, because inherent in the folly that the human intellect (itself a fatally conceited abstraction) can make things better than they are (conforming to nonsensical, rational norms), its practitioners always seek change, forever chanting the Hindi mantra, "Not this, Not this," until it sounds more like, "Tax this! Tax this!"
No class of liberals is committed to this laughable — though ultimately dysfunction and dangerous heresy of reason than public school teachers.
Not surprisingly, most teachers toe the liberal line in lock-step with the Left-wing Liberal, Statist Status quo agenda.
They are the product of an extended education, in truth voluntary segregation from reality, in which they still deal and discuss second-hand ideas divorced from trial and error.
They are employees of the state, they receive generous salaries and pensions from the state, and the take prime picking advantage of state coffers. In California, for example, nearly all the revenue incurred from the Lottery goes to eduction. Beyond that, all the financial overlays that supply and benefit teachers stream from the third-party called "the taxpayer", who is seeing less return on his dollar for the substandard education which his children are receiving.
How does this "fatal conceit" factor into the deleterious and dysfunctional education of our young people?
Every day, teachers trudge off to work, complaining about the shabby treatment that they endure from students, parents, and administrative staff. Often, teachers kvetch about their kids, complaining bitterly about the most oppositional students (most likely those who are the brightest and hence less compliant). With falling state revenue forcing school districts, schools, and staff to endure deeper cuts, teachers live in chronic strain: will they be next to be laid off? The pressure is maddening, with pacing plans, state and federal standards, standardized test which may make or break a teacher's long-term stay at a site.
Yet why do teachers put up with it? Because they believe that they are making a difference, and they are not about to let the dream that they nurture as children in public school and throughout their post-secondary education and training be dashed away with one unflinching gaze at uncompromising reality.
They believe that education "should work", they are mortally indoctrinated, or at least passive participants/adherents to, the "fatal conceit", yet within the context of young people and their future.
The general self-congratulating rhetoric goes something like this within the minds of educators:
"Yes, if we can get these kids to settle down, if we could only get them to be more respectful of teacher, if we could get them to listen, to understand that we have wonderful things to tell them, then they will share the same beaming appreciation of learning which we have."
Most teachers, at least the first few years, are like the "true believers" in a totalitarian state. They are convinced and convicted by the party rhetoric (in this case, the alliance of graduate instructors in teaching credential programs and laer the teacher's union) that they can make a difference in a child's life, that they can help those poor ghetto children see the light and find meaning in their lives. Such suppositions, upon greater scrutiny, are both laughable and offensive.
Why is it that so many teachers have lost sight of the true meaning of "education"? Are we not commissioned, at least in theory, to draw out from young people the vast potential that they possess? Have we bought in to the bell-curve B.S. that genius is uncommon, a rarity like a diamond in the rough? Genius is as common a dirt, yet students are organizationally treated as akin to the very ground we walk on, empty of hopes and dreams, bereft of initiative and creativity, requiring diligent care and commotion by top-heavy minds convinced of their own greatness.
"This Should Word" makes sense when building a car or running a business. A human being, if you don't mind my saying, is a diverse infinite wonder, in whose heart God has placed eternity — not a machine to be tinkered with then set loose like a crappy happy-meal toy. In the life of a student, there is nothing that needs to be worked on, but rather worked out, and that at the prime behest of the students and his parents.
"This Should Work," is the guiding fraud that inures teachers to keep on keeping on, believe that some student, or handful of students, will get "something" from their efforts in the classroom. Most students, however, are not buying into this nonsense.
I still remember my last day of student teaching, when one class had become so unruly that I was resigned to making them copy a page out of the textbook. Honestly, I think that they learned a lot more copying a page than hearing me rant for five hours a week. Just before I left the campus, my mentor teacher (tried to) comforted me: "Don't worry, Arthur. You had to be tough on them. They thought you were mean (one kid told me they couldn't wait for me to be gone), but they will look back on what you did for them five years from now, and they will appreciate what you did for them."
The truth? I ran into one of the better-behaved students one year later. When I greeted him, he looked away, then muttered, "We were a really bad class."
So much for the true believer that was me. I wonder, though, how long it will take for more teachers in the profession to realize that drill and kill does instill will or thrill? When will teachers wake up to the fact that the handful of students whom they have influenced were already self-motivated, self-respecting students, and that the vast majority of pupils that they put up with more likely enjoyed putting the teacher on the spot, or at least finding creative ways to resist the monotony of compulsory education thrust upon them?
This fatal conceit, read idealized or arrogant depending on the depth of cynicism to which a teacher has descended, is impoverishing the souls of many: students, parents, teachers. Perhaps administrators and upper-level district officials permit themselves to feel some gratification. They have succeeded in perpetuating an empty myth which keeps the public coffers pouring in taxpayer wealth into their heavy pockets.
For them, it is not a questions of "this should work," but the certainty, that for them, public education as a public racket, indeed "this does work."