Émile Durkheim once described education as a moral enterprise—a social institution tasked with transmitting the collective values of a society to the next generation. It was never just about math or grammar; it was about building citizens, sustaining cohesion, and reproducing the social order. But today, something feels broken. Not just in test scores or funding gaps, but in belief itself. The public no longer trusts the school.
The Erosion of Institutional Faith
Schools once functioned like secular churches: spaces where the young were initiated into the moral consensus of the collective. Today, that consensus is frayed. Partisan battles over curricula, banned books, and cultural representation reflect a deeper truth—there is no longer a shared vision of what education is for. Is it college prep? Job training? Character building? Ideological battleground?
Durkheim warned that when a society loses its moral center, its institutions begin to wobble. Education, once a pillar of stability, now mirrors our fragmentation. Parents, teachers, students—all feel alienated, suspicious, overburdened. The institution is still there, but the faith is gone.
School as a Site of Anomie
What happens when the very system meant to prepare individuals for society no longer seems to reflect that society’s values? Enter anomie—Durkheim’s term for the moral vacuum created when social norms collapse. Students are asked to compete, conform, and perform, but the payoff grows more uncertain. The social contract—work hard, succeed, belong—is now a meme. Even teachers feel it: burnout, disrespect, low pay. Authority without legitimacy.
Many students disengage not out of laziness, but out of disillusionment. They don’t believe in school because school no longer believes in itself. It has become a bureaucratic sorting mechanism masquerading as community.
The Marketization of Learning
Public schools increasingly operate under the logic of capitalism: metrics, competition, branding. Charter schools, school choice, and standardized testing reframe education as consumer service rather than civic duty. Durkheim would balk at this shift. Education, for him, was sacred: not in the theological sense, but as a site of collective moral investment.
But what moral world does a test score represent? What values are transmitted when funding depends on performance and not need? When students are clients and teachers are content managers, the school loses its ritual force. It becomes merely instrumental.
Reclaiming the Moral Project
To recover belief in education, we must recover its purpose beyond utility. Schools must become places where shared values are cultivated—not imposed, but wrestled with. This means reimagining curricula to foster dialogue, not dogma. It means treating teachers as cultural workers, not disposable technicians. And it means viewing students not as future labor units, but as moral and social beings in formation.
Durkheim knew that society is always being made anew, and that education is one of its primary workshops. If we want a more cohesive, just, and humane future, the school must again become a sacred space—not of doctrine, but of deliberation.
See also: The Anomie of the Influencer: Selfhood in the Attention Economy
