Having been raised on a hippie commune, without the government indoctrination, I am able to see the wisdom of keeping your children out of the school to jail pipeline, and the disadvantage to teaching your child to mindlessly listen to the person at the head of the class speaking.
We need new schools which teach critical thought, we need new teachers who will instill into children the ability to think critically and make best guesses without regret, knowing that intuition is strong and often right.
This is inspiring and educative
from experience, the smarter you are, the less you want to do manual labor
because you consider yourself too smart for that
unless you find a way to earn money without labor (steemit, yo) then brains are counter-productive
That's not true. Manual labor (especially working the land) is essential to the maintenance of a healthy soul.
I think you're right that we need alternatives to government schools. Do you have any resources you could share to provide good examples?
Montessori, Waldorf, home-schooling, other private schools, a combination of public schooling and supplementary home schooling.
Thank you for the examples. I'll check out Waldorf.
I went to a Montessori for a few years and I wouldn't highly recommend it. I feel like certain expensive private schools can be more elitist than educational.
I went to a Montessori school between kindergarten and 2nd grade, and I believe it served me well in comparison to what I would have gotten out of public schools. In NY state public schools in the U.S., at least the Montessori education I received between those grades left me about a year ahead of where public schools were in 3rd grade. This is purely anecdotal of course, and vague memories at that. It may be that there is a good deal of variability between the quality of different Montessori schools, or that my experience was the exception to the rule, but I wouldn't write off Montessori schools so quickly.
My daughter got her education through the Waldorf Schools, I am somewhat uncomfortable with the religious portion of their education, by and large it is good, they put an emphasis on time outside, and teaching to the child where they are.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education
Waldorf and Montessori schools are good alternative sources of 3rd party schooling. My girlfriend was Waldorf/home-school educated, and while I haven't personally observed the process, I can attest to the results. Those systems seem to be highly effective at creating people with a strong moral/ethical foundation, and an appreciation for nature and being.
But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed...They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.
Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it... It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club. ~George Carlin
I've been taught in secondary schools in the UK and France and the differences in teaching were interesting. This is a few years back. While questions weren't discouraged at any point, there was definitely a hint of attitude from the teachers of "How dare you question what i'm teaching you, we only have an hour and I need to rush through the syllabus because we're already way behind because I've lost 20 minutes trying to get you little shits to sit still and pay attention".
In the UK it was particularly brutal for teachers at times where teachers would have breakdowns on a daily basis trying to do their jobs. The French school had a lot more control over its students, however the conditions that we were working in was nothing short of anti-social and led me to depression.
Once I reached A Level and Undergrad things were entirely different because teachers actually could teach without having to deal with disruptions constantly so there was much more one to one time and encouragement for questioning. Especially in university, I was constantly being told that in order to achieve the highest marks one would have to not just cite others research but to explore it and give their own opinions and reasons and even carry out your own primary research.
Going from that university environment back to an environment such as at home or the workplace where you have people who have been taught and living by the code of ranks and eldership to which if you dare ask a question it is treated as a personal attack on the individual is frustrating to say the least.
That's my own experience, but from hearing from teachers teaching at the moment I hear that the attitudes of students has changed. If you weren't actively causing mayhem for the teacher then you were considered odd. But from I hear that has now changed to where students are way more polite and respectful and this is more acceptable to fit in, but kids are still very socially reserved and afraid of sounding stupid to their peers.
I only finished uni last year and it's one of the main things I noticed was so many students lack of confidence to even engage in a dialogue. In any lecture, workshop, seminar it would always be the same few students who would take advantage of asking questions. There were plenty of students asking other students how to do things, but professors would have to work really hard to make them feel comfortable enough to ask a question. You're paying hundreds by the hour for a seminar yet because everyone is too afraid to sound stupid the seminar is an hour of silence.