With so many state governments’ budgets now under severe strain, there are serious discussions about how to cut state funding to public education. Hopefully, the schools themselves will become only a memory of a less-enlightened past. FULL ARTICLE by Gennady Stolyarov II
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/13146/the-anti-educational-effects-of-public-schools/
{ 56 comments }
Very good. I found myself comparing notes with my own public school experience. It is remarkable how consistently schools can be relied upon to suppress even the most insignificant acts of independent thinking. I was also struck by the references to how schools teach children to like or dislike others based only on the most flimsy, arbitrary grounds of whether they went to public school A or public school B. Seems this is “education” is exploited very well later in life when it comes time for our state to demonize the next target of the military industrial complex, or sanctify our newest murderous totalitarian ally.
In regards to the School Spirit section, doesn’t the same type of thing happen in private schools? Doesn’t most of what was written also happen in private schools today? This article may hold more merit if it compared it to private schools, in my opinion.
Most the private schools are still regulated and dictated to by the gov. Not to mention that after 100+ years of public schooling people expect schools of all sorts to conform to the public school model even if it’s an abysmally bad model. A lot of whats wrong with the American education system has nothing to do with what type of school you’re looking at, “child” labor and minimum wage laws that limit opportunities for employment, and truancy laws that mandate young people waste thousands of hours locked up in schools (generally one specific school, regardless of it’s merits or lack thereof) are both examples of how our young people, from early childhood until the age of 16-18, are forbidden from being anything but docile dependents upon their parents or (worse) the state. We mandate they be children until 18, encourage them to remain childish until the age of 22-28 with subsidized attendance at hedonistic “resort” universities, then we wonder why everyone’s so childish and unprepared for the real world.
BTW, I firmly believe that what we call childish is really better termed adultish, and believe that children would not behave in silly manners if their guardians didn’t both punish their natural, non-silly behavior, and set such a good example of silly behavior (though much more advanced than children can emulate, of course, and done in a way so as to hide its sillyness from other adults).
Agreed. i went to one of those universities, and i was absolutely blown away by what a hedonistic place it is. Complete waste of 3 years of my life, not to mention the previous 12. I’m in med school now, which, fortunately, is more useful.
The nature of private schools in the status quo is largely determined by the public schools. Not only must private schools conform to certain government guidelines when it comes to curriculum, but the college admissions process is not compatible with anything too drastically different from the public school model.
So most private schools end up emulating the public schools. If they fostered independent thought, their students would no longer be marketable.
What are the government requirements that private schools must follow? I understand that some things must conform for college entrance requirements (which is a problem), but are there other issues where the hand of the state directs private school action?
One important aspect of this is that private schools want to be accredited by an accreditation agency/committee selected and specially privileged by the government. And those accreditation entities impose a wide variety of requirements and standards to receive their accreditation.
Such accreditation is not to be gainsaid: It is key to applying to (government-accredited) colleges and universities which, in turn, are key to fulfilling the (government-mandated) jumping-through-hoops schooling required for entering innumerable fields of work requiring a government license: e.g. law, medicine, dentistry, chiropractics, physical therapy, nursing, dental hygiene, psychotherapy, marriage & family counseling. Ad nauseum.
By the way, there is no issue to be had with private, voluntary accreditation or certification. (That’s just a private organization saying whether it approves of some educational program for whatever purpose that organization has a concern with.) What is being discussed here are government imposed restrictions on schools so they can be marketable — or even legal in some jurisdictions.
All schools whether be private, vocational, public, college, etc follow a compulsory type of education or have some element of compulsory education. There is no way to get rid of it in a short amount of time. The best option imo would be to eliminate compulsory education laws and tax-payer funded schools, so it would save consumers time and money.
Holy crap, I hadn’t realized how much of this is similar to my experiences.
You’ve put your finger on it. I’m just out of high school. Your story could have been told by me, except I wasn’t on the math team ;-p.
I think it’s often hard to criticize education in communities because the good is mixed in with the bad–as you point out a great many teachers and programs do care about the intellectual stimulation of their students. I know a lot of my class shared a lot of the sentiments you expressed here (the debate team and pep rallies, for instance) but nobody really voiced them because it’s hard to speak out for change against well-liked and good-meaning members of the community. This is an excellent example of the sort of criticism I think could, if articulated, begin to bring change in communities.
Richard makes a good point on the good mixed in with the dross. . I too ( IN SOuth Africa in the 1970s) had th ebenefit of a handful of motivated and dedicated teachers who taught in parallell: we got the official line – the curriculum – together with coaching on feeding the examiners what they wanted to hear – and mixed in with that, we got the really valuable stuff : what lay outside – and gave the lie to – the official curriculum, and inspired nurturing of curiosity. Looking back, I have tremendous respect for those few teachers . They took deep personal risk by opening our eyes to the world beyond the Apartheid state ( and opened themselves to criminal treason charges under that oppressive regime) , and they also gave us the tools and techniques to manage our daily relations with the majority of their colleagues, the peddlars of bureaucracy , conformity, and mediocrity.
as someone whose name escapes me once said: I managed to get an education despite my schooling, not because of it.
The article also rings true to my experience with public school. It is very hard to compare public and “private” schools in modern times. There are so many regulations, taxes and “incentives” that it does not really matter if you go to a private school versus a public school. If you send kids to a private school, you wind up paying out your own pocket for a public education. Home schooling may truely be the only real choice left, but even then you are forced to teach your kids the same balogny. Home schooling does get your kids physically out of school and perhaps allow you some freedom to also give your point of view, but if the state feels you are “falling behind” then they may force you to send your kids to school.
Remember a totally private school would be free of state interference all together, being able to teach what they want, with the kids being able to be free of state indoctrination. We do not live with these choices today….. Unless you want to go to prison and/or have your kids taken away.
I did home schooled all my children because of the issues raised in the article. One thing I observed is that if children are around adults, they act adult. The more they are around children and the more children they are around, the more childish they act. Home school kids generally do not have to have green hair, sneak cigarettes or use “like” over and over again in their conversation because there is simply no one to entertain, impress or compete with in being childish.
Modern schooling is based on conditioning, not teaching, therefore independent thought is discouraged.
i have a question. did you have any problems ‘socializing’ your kids? Did you keep them involved in the community so they met people and had to work with others? i was just wondering because i was thinking about homeschooling one day. thanks in advance.
This seems an honest question (usually questions about “socializing” are not honest) so I’ll give you a brief answer. We kept our children involved in many outside-the-home activities. Soccer leagues for example, with players of all ages and outside the primitive “school spirit” atmosphere of public schools. Some church activities are OK, but excessive church involvement carries some of the same risks of psychic repression that the public school does. A large family is also helpful. I took my children with me whenever possible doing real adult activities, not just family entertainment. The point of the socialization is to teach children to think of and relate to others rather than growing up with a narcissistic spoiled “only child” attitude, where they are the center of the universe.
If you look at the history of compulsive state education, who started it and their original intent you will find two roots: socialism and behavior modification. Thus when someone speaks of “socialization” they do not mean, as we might think, community, but rather socialism and conformity to the hive mind through conditioning.
Thanks, i appreciate it. Yeah, it was a completely honest question. I just referred to socialization because that’s how critics of homeschooling always refer to it. thanks again.
My wife and I homeschool our children. Perhaps we’re lucky, because the region where we live is rife with homeschoolers, and there are many, varied organizations (with regular activities) of homeschoolers available. Our children have many homeschooled friends, though a lot of driving around is entailed. And there are plenty of homeschooler classes in special subjects that can be taken. (E.g. my son takes a homeschooler chess class; my daughter takes a homeschooler hip-hop dance class.) An online Yahoo group exists for parents to publicize when they’ve organized a field trip for homeschoolers.
And, as with anybody, soccer leagues, chess clubs, acting classes and other activities are always available. My daughter spends many hours each week volunteering at a nearby petstore which specializes in selling rabbits and rodents that have been gotten from rescue shelters.
Now, how all this might play out if one lived out in the boondocks, I don’t know. But should compulsory or socialist schooling exist to help those who’ve chosen to live in relatively isolated locales? I hardly think so.
Excellent article Mr Stolyarov. I read a little while back a phrase that may resonate with you:
“I never let my schooling get in the way of my edcation.”
You clearly haven’t and good on you!
This article was absolutely excellent. I always thought the concept of “school spirit” was irrational and, for the development of the student, utterly pointless. When I was banned from selling four-leaf clovers in the fourth grade, I was extremely annoyed; I couldn’t see what harm I was committing. I learned, however, from the experience one thing: in middle school, when I sold bubble-gum to fellow students, I kept my activity beneath the radar of administrators. I also snuck off during middle school to eat in the media centre on various occasions. I could go on. Suffice it to say, this article really struck home for me.
Yours,
Alex Peak
I’m all for private education, but I can’t help but feel that this article goes astray in making the case against public schools. Really, restrictions on where you can eat lunch are unbearable affronts to autonomy and personal responsibility? Perhaps the author was simply trying to till new ground in an area where others have already written extensively, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
I’m just out of high school. Maybe you don’t remember what monsters teenagers become when you arm them with food and trap 500 of them in the same room for forty minutes, but I certainly do.I don’t know about you, but “unbearable” would be an accurate word to describe my lunchtime experience. I was absolutely miserable having to eat in our loud and unruly cafeteria my freshman year until I discovered that I wouldn’t get caught if I just skipped lunch and broke the rules to go hide in our orchestra storage room during lunch time. I didn’t each lunch at school for three yearsAnd it is certainly a restriction on or “affront to” autonomy, no matter which way you look at it. So combined, that would make it an “unbearable affront to autonomy and personal responsibility, for me at least.
The article doesn’t go astray, it’s spot on about what is happening in some high schools, at least.
Similar to skipping lunch, there were those of us who skipped using the restroom for the whole school day, due to not feeling safe in restrooms. I can only wonder what negative effects that had on our bladders, not to mention the impact having to hold it in all day had on our ability to focus on learning..
(Graduated HS this year)
I skipped going to the bathroom in schools as much as possible, but that is mainly due to the fact I avoid going to the restroom at all in any public place. I can count how many times I’ve gone to the bathroom outside my house in the past year: six. I can guarantee you that it makes your bladder stronger, not weaker. It is possible to hold ones bladder for more than 24 hours without pain if you train yourself not to pay attention to it outside of certain areas.
For those who haven’t seen “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, it’s worth the watch just to see how school is portrayed in such a negative light. On the bathroom topic, the main character goes into the bathroom and realizes there are not doors on the stalls. Why is such humiliation required? It’s basically his first year in middle school. His older brother says he’ll never survive, and will be homeschooled in no time. It’s kind of a kid’s movie, but very instructive for adults as well. All the bad stuff–the peer pressure, or peer torture, social ostracizing, etc. Sitting on the floor in the cafeteria because nobody wants to sit by them, and so on.
Thats why I never ate lunch in teh cafateria in HS. Even though we went ‘allowed’ anywhere else. I had a teacher who let us sit in his room during lunch. Plus the security was a joke so it was laughably easy to sneak out and get Starbucks or whatever.
Your article equates to, “Gravity sucks.” Parents are responsible for their children’s education. School is what you make it. You did inspire thought and I love the comments, thank you.
So you think the increase in high-school drop outs, the increase in school violence, the future of children being dumb down every decade is the result of poor parenting? That doesn’t make sense. The statistics speaks itself, academically we are worse then we were 30 years ago. It’s not the students failing the school system, it’s the schools failing the students. Ron Paul said it best “public school these days are crime infested, drug infested, it’s an armed fortress”. I’m pretty that’s because of poor parenting right?
We can’t avoid gravity, but we avoid change public schools.
bolweevil
“Your article equates to, “Gravity sucks.” Parents are responsible for their children’s education. School is what you make it.”
I moved my family to a new school district in February when I changed jobs. My thirteen-year-old stepson had been struggling but passing his classes in the previous school (due to boredom and lack of motivation, mainly). Knowing that he would not do his work on his own and would not be honest with us if he were falling behind, my wife and I called the new school, asked for his teachers to call us back, tried to get them to give us some idea of what assignments he was doing and what he was falling behind in, and got nothing for our troubles but five “F”s at the end of the year.
So no, I refuse to take responsibility for for that failure and find your comment personally offensive in that regard. The teachers at the previous school were at least willing to take a moment of their time to try to help when we asked. We were willing and able to help my stepson, but the staff at the new school ignored our pleas for information (it is much older and probably more bureaucratized).
Next year, he will be homeschooled, which is a financial burden but is actually a huge relief to him to get away from all of the nasty, brutish behavior he had to deal with on a daily basis and that I remember all too well.
You seem to ignore the possibility that parents and socialized education can bear responsibility for the state of education. The article was directed to one part of the problem. It is not necessary for the article to address all factors of this issue.
And currently public school is what is mandated.
Mises is not your personal livejournal to post articles about how much more attention jocks got from the school than the nerds.
This is embarrassing to read on Mises. It should never have been posted as is. I don’t think there is anyway to salvage the article. Just delete it.
It’s representative of government failure in education – perfectly relevant.
Sovy, your point has no merit. He committed only 3 sentences to that out of the entire article, and I thought he made his point as to why that made little sense. You on the other hand can do nothing but make an ad hominem attack.
Don’t blame him for not being taught reading comprehension in the public school he went to.
I had some similar feelings, but I thought it had some merit and should have been published.
Socialist secondary schools routinely put more emphasis on extracurricular sports than on intellectual achievement, and that’s irrelevant to a blog concerned with private property and free exchanges?
Great article, very good analysis. I shared your experience of soviet education and can confirm that there were no school spirit phenomenon at least in Soviet Estonian schools. But certainly there were other idiocies, bluish-gray uniforms with red kerchiefs being one of them (we were suppose to be future members of communist party).
Peter Gray writes on somewhat similar topics on his excellent blog Freedom to Learn
I loved this article.
If anything, Mr. Stolyarov has pulled his punches.
There are aspects of public schools that are far more degrading. For instance, at the public school I attended, students were required to ask for permission to leave the classroom in order to use the bathrooms. It is common courtesy that a person might apologize and excuse himself when leaving a lesson or meeting in order to attend to his bodily functions. But requiring a student to ask for permission under threat of punishment is outrageous and disgusting.
Worse still is when such permission is arbitrarily refused.
In my middle school you had to pay real money for the privilege of using the rest room. Each student carried a small log book that was used to sign you in and out by the teacher plus it was timed and dated to make sure you were not going to the rest room “too much.” Not to mention the slots were limited. Use up all your slots and, well…hope you have a strong bladder.
Lost the Log book? $4 to replace it*. No log book? Go in your pants.
*They were flimsy little things that the school printed up for no more than a dollar each. So the school turned a tidy little profit each time some poor student lost it, forgot it at home, or ran it through a clothes washer.
Personally, I never noticed the effects of forcing kids to be stuck in a lunch room every day for 30+ minutes until my senior year when to regulate the schedule (something that needed done badly, seeing that all the interruptions made it impossible to learn) we instituted something known as “Panther Time” (school spirit here, though it probably failed to garner any). Basically, if you had a “D” or lower in any of your classes you had to stay in for 30 minutes each day. They only checked your grades once every 3 weeks, so the academic benefit they are looking for there failed. About half of the time I was out (since grades fluctuate randomly if you don’t pay attention to them and only try to learn), and when I was out, so was about 50% of the school, though mostly made up of people who would then use their off-campus ‘privilege’ to leave so the school was empty. I had no real reason to leave. The restriction for it was Juniors and above. My sister always left though. Then, after the Panther Time period of 30min. was over came the lunch period of 30min. This caused the cafeteria (which we called the Commons) to be filled with hundreds of people. I found the six or seven I was looking for, and after some of them got food (parents never giving money for food caused me to give some of them money every once in a while), we would go to a secluded hallway. Every two months or so we’d have to move because of noise levels, but otherwise it was an escape from the crowd. The people I hung out with (all of them freshmen oddly enough) hated being in the commons surrounded by so many people. One of them was scared of being in small places (I cannot recall the paranoia’s full name) and the rest just felt miserable in it. Luckily they opened the gym during lunch and this alleviated a small part of the problem. Still though, I do not believe that any of these freshmen ever learned a thing that year. I mostly used school as a social convention and augmented my learning by using class time or out-of-school time. And of course we have classes that are being cut because only 90% of the minimum (like 18 kids) want to take it and they cannot find 2 more. Oh, and that wouldn’t happen if the 11% reserve of the district budget was actually used. Seriously…for every nine dollars we give the school, they hold one and do nothing with it, even when the money can obviously be used to benefit people who want to learn, or at least want a better selection of classes. Oh, and class selection is a joke. I went to a different school as a freshman, and I had seven classes of the same length we have six classes at the one I went to the other three years with one class being a programming class. The only high-tech class (since those Computer Apps. are just ‘How to use Microsoft’) we had was a web design one which was only offered one year and only taught design principles from ten years prior (and that every book I had read said not to use!). I even asked why there wasn’t seven classes, and the response was that the state only paid for six. The good news is that crime (true crime, drug selling was frequent) was very low.
Schools don’t work for academics. They work at putting people in boxes. Since I live to create weird situations and see what unfolds, I entertained myself in this box, but it must be punishment to others.
It was interesting when I was in highschool. Not say the pledge, fine. Not do the homework, fine, just be quiet in class.
But when I sat down for the School Song, _that_ caused trouble!
Seriously, homeschooling is very easy and far less expensive than public school.
How many hours do you work on the school’s homework anyway? Just do that same amount with your kid doing what’s interesting to them, they’ll learn more and faster!
Yet, at least where I am, you pay property taxes (and thus, fund the public school) whether you use it or not. All the homeschoolers still pay for public education – what a nightmare!
I enjoyed reading the article, but I am not really bothered by as much of what goes on in public school as some here. Obviously the author and many others are able to succeed despite what can sometimes feel like an active effort to prevent success. You could even argue that these early experience gave many of us early insight into the incompetence of government institutions. There might be parents out there that want their child to have a certain amount of structure. There might be parents that want their kids to be able to have the chance to participate in athletics. There might be parents that pick the school because of the quality of a music or arts program. The problem comes when the local governments have a monopoly on providing these services that everybody pays into, which makes it harder for the types of kids who don’t buy into a lot of the standardized fare being shoveled to them to find the type of learning environment that would work. So the parents who want to send their kid to a school that has pep rallies for the debate and math teams don’t have any options if they can’t afford private education.
That being said I largely agree with the conclusions of the article that compulsory education is one of the biggest obstacles holding us back from real reform.
Thanks Gennady for the article. It prompted good responses from young thinkers.
I would add that, in my opinion, the root of the problem with “public education” is simply that a third party has inserted itself between the voluntary sellers and the purchasers of educational services. Government takes money from everyone, sooner or later and by threat of force if necessary, then buys “education” for some of us. Were the government somehow to become unable to perform this particular “service” I seriously doubt that we would get any dumber than we are now!
Excellent article. Two thoughts spring to mind:
1) We libertarians ought to stop routinely using the expressions “public schools” and “public education,” which only honor the statist rhetoric geared toward buttressing the system of socialist government schooling. (Actually, the word “socialism” was created with statist rhetoric in mind — the idea that government ownership and compulsion makes society more social — but it can still be useful because of its shock value.) “Public” just means available to general access (e.g. reading this website), which is a highly misleading way to describe the coercive, thieving government training camps.
2) At my “public” high school, in the early ’70s, we were considerably freer to roam the hallways and open spaces of the campus during lunchtime, though only the cafeteria and library kept their doors open. (Later I discovered the bridge club, which allowed you to be into some teacher’s classroom, but only if you played bridge.) The library was a good place to read or do schoolwork, except that eating in there was strictly forbidden.
Sir, you have written an interesting post. I admire your zeal for scholarly pursuits. I also admire the detail with which you have articulated all that you believe to be negative about your public shool experience. I would suggest to you however, that a true scholar would look not at what is obvious to anyone as presented, but to the paradoxical opposite in order to integrate potential solutions to the problems you have described. It’s very easy to bash something (in this case, public education), but it’s not so easy to synthesize improvements or solutions.There are many elements to public education that work; and perhaps could work very well with a bit of tweaking when viewed with an open mind by truly integrative and scholarly thinkers. We all had our stresses with the traditional model and pradigms of industrial public education environments, and as a teacher I do all that I can to correct them, but simply bashing and creating polarity between differing points of view advances nothing.You appear to be an intelligent, thoughtful and articulate individual; one who could positively influence the education reform that is necessary and welcome in the world today. You have your thesis, not sure about your antithesis… and looking forward to more synthesis. Education needs your mind.
“It’s very easy to bash something (in this case, public education), but it’s not so easy to synthesize improvements or solutions.”
Sure it’s easy. Simply privatize all public schools, and don’t force the private schools to deal with unions (i.e. the NEA), so that parents can send their children to the school of their choice, without having to effectively pay twice. The public school system is not tweakable. There is a systemic problem, and the only fix possible is a systemic one. The only thing that could fix it is fair competition, which is the one thing that the current public school system does not permit. The answer is easy; level the playing field by making sure that some schools do not get the unfair advantage of a tax revenue stream, while others do not. (And I don’t mean give private schools a tax revenue stream as well.)
Sean Grainger wrote:
“I would suggest to you however, that a true scholar would look not at what is obvious to anyone as presented, but to the paradoxical opposite in order to integrate potential solutions to the problems you have described. It’s very easy to bash something (in this case, public education), but it’s not so easy to synthesize improvements or solutions.There are many elements to public education that work; and perhaps could work very well with a bit of tweaking when viewed with an open mind by truly integrative and scholarly thinkers. We all had our stresses with the traditional model and pradigms of industrial public education environments, and as a teacher I do all that I can to correct them, but simply bashing and creating polarity between differing points of view advances nothing.”
Grainger writes as though Stolyarov was writing a book about education. Actually, libertarians have written a great deal about education and its reform, whereas Stolyarov was simply building on that material, pointing out some particular aspects of the socialist secondary schools.
Here’s the “solution”: For the government to be 100% out of the education business. (There’s even a libertarian organization called the Alliance for the Separation of School & State. I won’t link it here, lest I be thought of as spamming — just google it for yourself if interested.) No government schools or other “educational” services. No vouchers or subsidies to private educational enterprises. No government accreditation. No licensing or government-certification of educational institutions. (Tax deductions? Of course I oppose all taxes — the euphemism for State theft — but deductions are routinely used by the State to manipulate societal functions: witness what happened to health insurance. Tough issue.)
I’m sorry to read that you imagine socialist schooling can be fixed. Every generation there are educational reformers saying that if the schools would just do this or that, things would be hunky-dory. (The latest big one is “No child left behind.” Remember Bill Bennett in the ’80s? Max Rafferty in the ’60s? Hyman Rickover in the ’50s?) It’s always the same: fantasizing intellectuals, and politicians seeking cover from the in-built failure of State-controlled “education.”
“Hopefully, the schools themselves will become only a memory of a less-enlightened past.”
A triumphant corporatism has sent most everyone on an opposite trajectory, with no reversal in sight:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/7d5ec0278e/megan-fox-is-hot-for-teachers?rel=player
These Hollywood crusaders really made a horror classic about our national daycare system (unwittingly, of course).
lol
Mpolzkill you always manage to find an entertaining, yet relevant, link.
I have seen many of the stories described in the article first hand, particularly things in the School Spirit section. The entirety of our high-school assembled to see off our cross country team, who were going to the State Finals. Unfortunately, this cut the time of an important chemistry lecture by about 15 minutes. I believe that recognizing the hard work of students is important… but, 2 weeks before the CC team went to their state final, several boys from an academic club placed very high in a Midwest-wide competition. The only reason anyone ever knew about it was because those boys got to skip class.
Although much of the article was accurate, parts of it struck me as naive. For instance, 5 year old children in elementary school probably are not concerned with “directing themselves toward learning and independent interaction with the world.” Furthermore, the article describes an ideal environment for those who are actually willing to learn. Many, many, many high-school students are more focused on events taking place in their home environment: things like poverty, children, and abuse. These problems aren’t rooted in the educational system, they’re rooted in our culture. The educational system is trying to respond by creating a “motivated learning environment”, where students can escape from their daily woes. Schools do so with mascots, rallies, and athletic events, all built in a disciplined mindset. It is an attempt to “rescue”, not an attempt to “educate”. Re-tooling the system in a way that would focus purely on high-thought education would alienate the great majority of students. Though I do not wish to stereotype or make blanket statements… many people my age simply quit when things get too rough. They just drop out. They wouldn’t get “an early start in the business world”.
Unarguably, the education system in our country needs to be redesigned from the ground up. We need a system just doesn’t try to please everyone, and accomplish nothing in the process. Then again, who knows… after all, I was manufactured in the same system that I’m criticizing.
It’s easy to point out the flaws in most public schools. Almost everything about them is in need of improvement. But if you ask most teachers, the first problem is that the parents now don’t do a good job of preparing their kids for school. Basic stuff, like respect. Like preparing to take the teacher seriously, to listen and absorb information, to understand that learning the basics is important to their success in later life… in fact just to learn to sit still and not act like they’re at play time. Kids now, compared to fifty years ago, are little savages unsuited to being educated. So the teacher has to waste the first two or three years just trying to get the kid to face the front of the classroom and not keep up a conversation with the kid one seat over. People attempting to teach such children assume they have to be entertainers, just to gain a bit of eye contact. No wonder it’s a mess.
So why don’t we just write off the whole experiment in public schooling? Think of all the money we’d save, just by home schooling our own perfect darlings and letting the rest of the savages out there do whatever they do with their kids!
The reason we spend that money is not to teach our own children, but to teach the children of others. Our kids have to live in the world all those other kids make. And if it’s just an ignorant jungle with no common value system being shared by society at large, there’s no community. And we all have to get burglar alarms and car alarms, and spend our days guarding our stuff from the barbarians. Because the experiment called civilization has failed, from lack of enthusiasm for the task.
Schools are intended to prepare us for later life, by civilizing the barbarian and making him tractable for useful and productive labor, as an essential cog in the wheel of our national economy. I think that’s a task worth trying to get right.
Great Post! I really couldn’t have said it that well…….great opinions.
Ah the state of education… So in trouble… What kind of extracaricular activities do you think really make a difference??
Great post AND dialog… Lots to think about here…
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