Some quotes, and perhaps a thought or two on a book from which the article “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” comes from.
“Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables — and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways — network schools steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.”
“If performance within these narrow confines is conceived to be the supreme measure of success, if, for instance, an A average is considered the central purpose of adolescent life — the requirements for which take most of the time and attention of the aspirant — and if the worth of the invidial is reckoned by vicoryt or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine has been constructed which, by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless and fantastic behavior, will certainly dehumanize students, alientate them from their own human nature, and break the natural connection between them and their parents, to whom they would otherwise look for significant affirmations.”
“It [compulsory schooling] divides and classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other, and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying them as “low-class” material. And the bottom line for the winners is that they can buy more stuff!”
This one is impossible not to comment on, considering the truth and sickness of the whole idea. The rest I’ll let speak for themselves.
We are told the main reason to be succesful in school (not necessarily learn) is for the rewards after it that will be more likely graspable. That reward, money…more stuff. Not a stronger family, not more critical minds, not justice or peace, not healthier communities. Money. More stuff. WTF!?
There was always a thorn in my side while at school, and it digs deeper all the time, but now it at least reveals its true self more clearly.
“Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop — then they blame the family for its failure to be a family. It’s like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, and then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.”
“The heart of a defense for the cherished American ideals of privacy, variety, and individuality lies in the way we bring up our young.
Children learn what they live.
Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important; forace them to plead for the natural right to the toilet and they will become liars and toadies; riducle them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale oragnizations are dealy.”
“This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.”
-Chris
Posted by drpoo as Peace Works!, Personal Endeveavors at 10:28 PM PST