RE: Kids Learn Naturally. Why Compulsory Schooling is Unneccessary and Even Harmful (A "Case Study" with My Son)

[lenskonig]

I have thought about this for a number of years. I was really glad to read this post.

Just one question: what do you mean by "[private schools could do it 1,000 times better if] the free market in education were allowed to function"? Wouldn't this disenfranchise people who can't afford it and perpetuate elitism?

Everything apart from that is my kind of thinking, particularly the quotes from John Holt.

Thanks!

Comments

[canadian-coconut]

I have read about how private schools work so much better than public schools in parts of Africa.
The tuition is really, really low, and they run on a budget less than half (maybe it was a quarter) what a public school runs on,
yet the education is outstandingly better than public schools.
The thing is, that government run projects seem to always go way over budget and do a poor quality job.

[lenskonig]

What do you think it is specifically that makes state schools poor? Homogenisation perhaps?

[canadian-coconut]

It's at least partly because they feel that they don't have real competition. Most people will keep using the 'free' education/baby-sitting.
So their jobs are secured whether or not they give a satisfactory performance.

[lenskonig]

What about testing? Do you think there's a way to get rid of it?

I had a passenger in my Uber recently who told me about an awesome-sounding system called Waldorf education.

[canadian-coconut]

Definitely, if they wanted to get rid of testing they could.
Finland did it!

Jeremy Stuart: Yeah, it’s totally dysfunctional, and you’re absolutely right. It seems to be, More testing, then. The school day needs to be longer, then. These measurements aren’t stacking up to our expectations, so let’s add on more layers of work and stress and homework to make those scores go up. As if somehow those scores are the measurement of what learning is.

In fact, it’s completely the opposite. There’s been so much research done and available out there about other countries who have implemented things that are really effective.

Finland, for instance, is the big one that everybody looks at these days. In Finland, you don’t start school until you’re seven. And they also do not organize subjects into neat little packages or separate them out from each other. They’re very integrated.

There’s also no homework at all, period, until you’re a teenager, and then it’s very minimal. And there’s also absolutely no testing until you’re a teenager, and then there’s only one test, one standardized test that all kids of teenage years take. They also get 75 minutes a day of recess, as opposed to 27 minutes in the US. Their school days are far shorter.

There’s no measurement or grading for six years, and they spend 30 percent less on students than in the US, and they outrank 65 other countries in performance results. It blows my mind to read those statistics and then hear things like, Well, we need longer days, or, We need more testing, or, We need more grading. It’s just completely the opposite direction of where we should be going.
https://chriskresser.com/rhr-unschooling-as-a-cure-for-industrialized-education-with-jeremy-stuart/

[kafkanarchy84]

Thanks for your comment!

Privatization would ultimately open the possibility for higher quality, lower tuition schools. Just as in the field of healthcare, less violent (tax-based/mandated) government intervention generally means better, more community-based care, and greater affordability due to less bureaucratic overhead, and, well...compassion.

People used to be able to go to any hospital in the past and receive care, whether they could afford it or not, because doctors actually believed in the Hippocratic oath. Now folks are being robbed blind and made unable to afford healthcare as a direct result of government interventions such as "Obamacare," etc.

Basically public schooling now is unethical as it is funded by stolen money (taxes) and ineffective, inefficient, and detrimental to healthy development in children because it is not based on research or science, but on a state agenda to create docile, non-critical order followers.