Translate

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Why don't kids like school? Plus the problems with public education, how to fix it, the origins of public schools, & links to additional resources.


You are made to go in at a specified time. You are made to sit down at desks in nice & neat rows. You are made to do work which is to be completed at a specified time, & the quality of that work must be up to a specified level. A bell like that in a factory (which may also be a stand-in for military commands) rings to signal changing to other work types, with set times to do everything. It is common to walk in straight lines. 
Tgo with all of this at the same time, there is a mandatory dress code, negative reinforcement, rules that fail to fully respect our real constitutional rights (particularly with zero-tolerance & restrictions on free speech/expression), an authoritarian structure with little to no real input in decision making, & there is emphasis on silence, order, & most of all, obedience. And all of that is before you are made to do homework.
No wonder why kids hate school so much, & feel like it is a factory prison. 


I'll explain why schools are ran like this later.


How do we fix this?

My idea is to, first of all, be permissive to home education & encourage it. This is to provide maximum individualization of education, to give maximum respect to the rights of individuals & their families. Even PrinceEa supports individualizing education.
(The video directly below is the most important video here, condensing the origins, problems & solutions with education/school into a 45 minute talk.)

I'm sure that someone will say something along the lines of "What if not everyone can afford home education", or "What if there are not enough teachers for every kid?", & as a pragmatic person, if that is a problem, I have a solution to that type of problem as well. 
Second of all, convert all public, or should I say, government schools into smaller, decentralized charter schools, & combine that with school choice. This is so people are no longer bound by geography when it comes to schools, so it no longer matters rather a person is rich & living in the most affluent part of town, or poor & living in the worst part of town; people from both situations have the same opportunity to go to the same school. And school choice would both force schools to both raise standards to compete for students & allow for different educational philosophies. 

I have yet seen a study or statistic piece, or other facts or evidence to disprove of school choice. No amount of mental gymnastics or sophistry will change facts & evidence.

Not to mention how, according to one firm, about 75% of millennials support school choice, & according to the Democratic polling firm, Beck research, about 63% of likely 2018 voters support school choice.

Shorter videos (with importance being least to greatest):








Long videos:




As for what would be the best specific philosophies for schools to run on, that is addressed in the article Better educational philosophies; how do we run our schools & educate our kids better?


I'm also considering the idea of fully privatizing (& deregulating) education.
As for why school privatization in Sweden has failed, read What is the libertarian view of the privatization of Swedish schools?.








The origins of public schools:

The origins of today's government schooling system actually came from Prussia to create more obedient workers & military personnel, with other European monarchies also using forced schooling for the same reason.

Don't take my word for it. Ask Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the creator of the Prussian Schooling philosophy (straight from the horse's mouth!).
 Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished - Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will. - Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty. - Johann Gottlieb Fichte

But wait, there's more!:
Addresses to the German Nation


Some of Quora user Charles Tips' writings on the Prussian schooling philosophy





Much of what I just stated about the Prussian school model can be found on Wikipedia (a site that is NOT friendly to conspiracy-theories), so you do not need to completely take my word for it.

My beef with both liberals & conservatives:

I find it sad that the same supposed liberals who support forced government schooling & love up so much on Horace Mann actually support a system that is fascist (if not authoritarian) & goes against supposedly liberal values such as individualism & peace, not to mention how schools were made in industrial revolution era Prussia to condition people to be obedient workers & military personnel, & today, is still conditioning people to work for the exact same military that works for the corrupt government & the exact same corporations that many liberals supposedly hate. Not to mention how there were industrialists (Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Carnegie, Ford, & more) who wanted government schools with a design that is expressly intended to create obedient workers. Is that really what liberalism & progressivism supposed to bring?

For more details about schooling & peace, read the article How Schooling Leads to War.

Now, here's Quora writer Dennis Pratt's answer to the Quora question Why are schools politically liberal?:
"A Different Master For The Schools
Imagine that the NRA had the political power to “school” our children.

- The NRA opened NRA schools in every town.
- The NRA compelled our children to attend their NRA schools.
- The NRA forced taxpayers to pay for them.
- The NRA created the curriculum for teacher colleges.
- The NRA decided the requirements for teachers to graduate.
- The NRA selected which teachers went where.
- The NRA decided promotions and raises.
- The NRA decided the curriculum for our children.
- The NRA decided what should be in the texts.
- The NRA required students to pledge allegiance to the NRA every morning.
- The NRA posted pictures of past NRA presidents in every classroom.
- The NRA gave days off to celebrate NRA holidays.
- The NRA regularly had NRA speakers at the school.
- The schools tracked NRA news.
- Every student took heavy doses of NRA Civics. 
- Every student learned about the important role that the NRA plays in protecting our freedoms.
- The students memorized the cities in each state where the NRA had its state headquarters.
- Human history was taught through the scope? of guns
- Essay questions often ended with, 
“Describe how guns could solve this problem.”
What Result Would We Expect?



Would we be surprised to find all schools generally pro-guns? Would we be surprised to find graduates of their schools with major gun purchases and with lots of practice firing? Would we be surprised to hear the next generation talk to us passionately about the importance of guns in our life?

Whose pictures would an NRA school display for revering?


So When Government Does This Today, 
What Should We Expect?


When schools are owned and run by the government, on government property, paid for by the government, staffed by government workers, overseen by government, and we have no say in whether our child or our money goes to them, we should not be surprised that they rationalize government control over our lives."

We expect that religious schools will indoctrinate their religion.


Government is just another religion. Yet we act confused when we see government schools producing wave upon wave of pro-government drones. It’s almost like our brains had been programmed not to see a connection. (I wonder when that might have happened.….)

That government schools teach allegiance to the government was no surprise in Sparta, where young boys were taken from their parents and raised in Spartan schools to be fully indoctrinated as warriors for the Spartan state. It was not a surprise when Prussia reinstituted government schooling on the Spartan model, because Prussia was tired of losing wars and wanted to instill blind obedience to the Prussian state. (Just a few decades after the introduction of Spartan schooling into Prussia, tens of millions of young men were willing to become obedient cannon fodder for their Fatherland, enabling the carnage of both WWI and WWII.)


And it was this Spartan-Prussian model that Horace Mann consciously brought over to America to impose on our children:

I get the most sad when I hear people saying that we need government schools to “teach our children about freedom”. There cannot be two concepts further apart. And yet, somehow people schooled in government schools parrot it back.

I wonder how that happened?"

Here's a comment that he made:
The same mechanism would be used to make schools politically conservative. I think I was talking only about the mechanism, and not how liberals, in many instances, won control of the mechanism.

I’ll have to take your comment under advisement. The mechanism of government-imposed, government-run indoctrination camps is available to any authoritarian. Look at the conservative method that Sparta and Prussia used it — to create drone armies happy to die for their leader.

Perhaps it is that in the US, liberals are much more authoritarian than conservatives. I was actually playing around with some political grids, and the old school fundamentalists are much less powerful today. However, there are places (e.g, in the south) where the same mechanism is actively used by the local fundamental conservatives for the analogous outcome. There the question would have to be, “Why are schools politically conservative?”

I had a revelation one trip around the South. I came upon group after group of liberals who were so angry that their schools were politically fundamentalist conservative. I thought that I had an in-road to talk about freedom of choice in schooling — allowing lots of alternatives and parents choosing the best school for their child and their family (always based on their values.) Of course, this would allow these liberal minorities to have a choice for their child which matches their values.

However, and this was the eye-opener for me, the liberals rejected freedom of choice. Instead, they were bound and determined to capture the indoctrination mechanism themselves in order to “save” the children from the values of the children’s parents.

Just so you know, I had a similar result in conservative minority communities who were upset by overwhelming liberal schools!! They seemed to be less interested in “a thousand lights” than they were in making sure all the lights were red, or blue, or whichever color they wanted everyone else to be.

The mechanism is effective, and that’s why we have these great battles over who should control the school experience of my child and of your child. My solution is to allow many different types of schools such that no sub community feels oppressed, but I fear that many people want to oppress. Government run schools are the perfect mechanism. :("

And another comment:
"I find it amazing, Barbara, that the people who are supposed to be teaching our children how to take their place in (what is a business) world, cannot solve the problem faced by every single company, (and by every one of their teeny tiny competitors battling the big monopolists). The only solution that they can come up with is using threats of violence to get their money — artificially keeping out alternatives and forcing parents to pay even when they don’t want the service?

Let’s be glad that a few of the graduates of those schools were able to figure out what seems to be such an intractable problem for government bureaucrats!

If they can’t figure out such a common invariable cost problem, how can we ever expect them to solve the demand problem of serving customers so much better that they don’t want to escape?"

Schooling and Indoctrination:
"Libertarians are quite concerned with government’s intrusion into the raising of our children.

Authoritarians see our rulers as being kind, helpful, and concerned for our children’s welfare

Libertarians see instead indoctrination, separation from the family and its values, submission to state authority, bullying, monopolization, crushing children into one-size-fits-few schooling, and inculcation into anti-wealth creation and pro-wealth confiscation.

A libertarian society would allow any entrepreneur to open up any type of school. It would allow families to select whichever schools they preferred for their individual child. Fees would be negotiated between parents, schools, and, if needed, voluntary charities and private financing. There would be a far greater diversity of schooling approaches that better matched the diversity of children.

Rulers would be kept as far away from our children as possible."


As if all of that wasn't enough, here are some articles from left-leaning media sources which agree that school is prison (this is before even mentioning the school-to-prison pipeline):
How to Break Free of Our 19th-Century Factory-Model Education System
Teaching Totalitarianism in the Public Schools - Huffington Post
School is a prison — and damaging our kids - Salon.com
School Is a Prison — And Damaging Our Kids - Alternet
Why Many Inner City Schools Function Like Prisons - Huffington Post
When School Is An Emotional Prison - Huffington Post
When High School Students Are Treated Like Prisoners - Rolling Stone
When School Feels Like Prison
Why Public Schools Don’t Teach Critical Thinking — Part 1 - Huffington Post


Psychology Today:

And for good measure;
How US Public Schools Have Come to Increasingly Resemble Prisons Instead of Learning Centers - The Free Thought Project

As for the issue of private schools, here are some articles on the topic:
I hate the idea of private schools, but still send my kids to one - Telegraph
Public school supporter Matt Damon admits he sends his kids to PRIVATE schools because they are more 'progressive' - Daily Mail Online
Public teachers send their kids to private schools (various sources)

Please don't bother using the Argument from Moderation fallacy.

"Truth is truth, even if no one believes it. A lie is a lie, even if everyone believes it" - Anonymous.

I've seen liberals who don't like public schools being referred to as government schools, as if to make the concept sound better. But let's look at the reality;
"The building you're sitting in was built by, & owned by, the government. All of the people who work in this building, from the teachers to the custodians from the coaches to the front office staff, all of these people work for the government. They're government employees. Their paychecks are written by government. The people who decide what you will steady every day, they're government employees. The people who decide what textbooks you'll use. They're government employees. And it is the government that compels your attendance. These schools then are owned, operated, & staffed by government. So... they're government schools!" - Yankee Prepper.


I also find it sad that supposed conservatives (& some libertarians, from reading through comments sections on the internet) talk all the time about freedom of speech, expression, & being politically incorrect, but do not object to school dress codes & some even support school uniforms. Gonzales High School in Texas that even offers students who violate the dress code the option to wear jumpsuits as an alternate punishment (at least there is limited choice in the manner).
Conservatives (& libertarians) talk all the time about government overreach & lack of respect for the constitution. It seems that many do not realize that kids going to school is not just reading them to go to work, but rather, conditioning them for life. So few conservatives talk about how prison-like school is & many do not speak out against arbitrary rules & punishments. With such an authoritarian institution like school (especially with strict rules of many schools in Texas), what do they expect?

And in actuality, schooling has helped ruin entrepreneurial spirit & create generation snowflake, people who are scared of the real world. Essentially, students get validation through virtue, which is shown through obedience, which fosters intellectual & emotional dependency. Hence, why we have virtue signalling, with people seeking external validation instead of self-actualizing, leading to collectivism, the group mentality, & virtue signalling.
For example, when someone talks about a low-brow, safe topic such as how much they hate racism, that comes from them seeking external validation, to be socially accepted.
This is all talked about in the video below from 50:51 to 1:02:48.

If you want some conservative sources about how schools are like prisons, here's some examples from John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute. Infowars also has commented on the issue.

I'm sure that someone would say something along the lines of "By attending school, you agree to its policies" or "Students & their parents sign a contract stating that they agree to the school's policies", almost as if it is a choice as to rather or not to obey school policies. This is not a true choice, considering how if a kid fails to attend school at a government specified time, they &/or their parents would be arrested, & disobeying school policies would get said kid in trouble, all the while neither the kid nor their parents had a choice in which school the kid goes to & the family does not have enough money to send move or send the kid to a private school or home educate the kid. This is little different from an organized crime forcing businesses into paying money for "protection racket". The video below articulates this type of issue better.

The thing that I see with both sides is that they have no problem with government policies as long as they're the ones in charge. This reminds me of the Winston Churchill quote “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”

And both mainstream sides are still in the old school paradigm, still trying to measure "success" by standardized tests, which in reality, do NOT measure success.










By the way, I'd like to mention a few things that I've read about the Montessori educational philosophy. In 1936, Montessori said "Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education", & has written a book called Education And Peace.
It's also been said that Montessori was not liked by the Italian Fascist regime because she is interested in developing unique individuals instead of people who are simply followers. 


Links: 














And as a bonus:



If you have anything to say, even (& especially) if you disagree, please comment below.



Quora user Charles Tipsother writings in chronological order from newest posted or edited to oldest:


How has the modern US educational system failed to prepare students for the "real world"?

Should U.S. education policy & standards be managed at the federal, state, or local level?

How can we solve the problems with public education in America?

Why has there been a breakdown of education and critical thinking in the U.S.?

Who is most responsible for the American educational system over the last 30 years? Liberals or conservatives?

Why do so many conservatives think schools are teaching kids liberal values?

How should the US education system best prepare students to engage in the democratic process?

How can people be genuinely self-confident if their entire lives they're conditioned to obey authority, whether it be parents, professors, or workplace superiors?

What factors prevent progressive educational ideas from becoming the new norm?

What should fiscally Conservative parents teach and say to their kids to counter the effects of U.S. education?

What causes smart, well-behaved children to underachieve?

What is the best age for kids to go to preschool?

How do you make the most out of the broken "education" system in the United States?

When did schools start implementing homework as a regular activity in education?

I'm looking for schools similar to Peninsula School (Menlo Park, CA) in Los Angeles. Would something like Play Mountain Place be similar to the experience? What are similar schools in LA?

Do homeschooled children lack social skills and emotional intelligence?

How would a pure libertarian government sustain a civil society? How would segments such as health care, education, & criminal justice function?

No comments:

Post a Comment