Episode 48 - School sucks, the nature of compulsory education versus respectful and effective pedagogy

6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling http://www.theonion.com/content/news/6_year_old_stares_down_bottomless What if children really knew what they were being dragooned into? "Public education" is group think writ large; "This is what we're supposed to do"; adults erroneously believe it's "good for socialization" Schools as prisons, basically forced "socialization" It's HOW you're taught that does the harm The Student as Nigger: Essays and Stories by Jerry Farber http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030301studentasnigger.html "...imagine what the effect must be upon our apt and impressionable minds of a twelve-year course in servility. Think about it...What is it that they're teaching you? Twelve years pitted against your classmates in a daily Roman circus. The game is Doing What You're Told." The insanity of forcing people (either big people or little people) to learn things The Comprachicos by Ayn Rand (in "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution", pp. 41-95. Signet, 1975); government school "socialization" leads to gang warfare and loss of conceptual thinking and objectivity http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/learning.html Choice quotations: http://www.stormy.org/edcompr.htm Ayn Rand and her thoughts on Rational Education by Michael S. Berliner http://tinyurl.com/8ylvr8 "Learning" by memorization rather than conceptual integration doesn't foster enlightened and healthy minds; it's dire and hopeless and soul-crushing "Public education" can't be rationally defended, but educators do have their rationalizations... Since "public education" is coercively funded, we can expect the aftermath--such as mass servility and obedient payment of property taxes Jerry Farber's "IF IT WEREN'T COMPULSORY..." http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030301studentasnigger.html "It would be well if we stopped lying to ourselves about what compulsory schooling does for our children. It temporarily imprisons them; it standardizes them; it intimidates them. If that's what we want, we should admit it. There's not much point in going on about this. If you've somehow missed reading A.S. Neill's Summerhill, you ought to go out and get it." http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School http://www.amazon.com/Summerhill-School-New-View-Childhood/dp/0312141378 Parents and other adults are much better able to create educational environments that cater to the varying interests and abilities of children, and kids should be free to pick and choose as they see fit Delayed adolescence courtesy of governmental schools Trashing Teens: Psychologist Robert Epstein argues in a provocative book, "The Case Against Adolescence," that teens are far more competent than we assume, and most of their problems stem from restrictions placed on them. by Hara Estroff Marano http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070302-000002&print=1 The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen by Robert Epstein; Ph. D. http://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Adolescence-Rediscovering-Adult/dp/188495670X Being able to conceptually integrate in an objective fashion is the hallmark of maturity (and the teenage brain has this capability) John Holt's five points on effective tutoring and learning (on page 202) http://books.google.com/books?id=oRk28eZoYNkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#PPA202,M1 Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better by John Caldwell Holt (John Holt) http://books.google.com/books?id=oRk28eZoYNkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#PPP1,M1 How individualism is stamped out by the system; one only creates resistance and problems by trying to control other human minds Successfully nurturing individual young minds via student-centered and self-directed learning is key In addition to stopping their coercive behavior, government school educators need to alter their pedagogy, particularly who's in charge Case in point: Project-based learning A choice quote from the teacher in the video below: "As long as they defended their answer, then that's what I want" Picturing the Possibilities - Project-based Learning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFt6qW0Pb4c Some choice "school sucks" videos by kids: School Sucks, Rants Rule (6:02) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlRv7Ky7bgE School Sucks! (4:48) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3SKC6zi2UA&NR=1 school sucks (2:14) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6JfP4qJ2A Vouchers--promoting the illusion of freedom within a coercive paradigm Intrinsic motivation is key, which is impossible within a compulsory system; modern pedagogy discourages rational self-interest, as does our collectivistic culture; Dirty Dancing with The Fountainhead... Those who equate being selfish (i.e., concerned with oneself, or self-interested) with being antisocial are merely projecting their own antisocial views on those who are respectful; promoting coercive education and statism isn't social or virtuous True socialization entails independent people coming together with mutual interests, trading value for value, just like anything else in the marketplace We need to see beyond the coercive monopolies that have blinded us from amazingly beneficial possibilities in education (and the rest of the economy) bumper music "Schools Are Prisons" by the Sex Pistols http://www.sexpistolsofficial.com/  http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/window/media/page/0,,1726210-4679121,00.html to comment, please go to http://completeliberty.com/magazine/category/91697