School reform
Jul. 31st, 2004 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drscottVarious discussions with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nashobabear and items in the news had me looking at Joanne Jacobs' excellent blog on educational reform issues, where I discovered John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education has been put up on the Web. His major point is that public education as we know it is oppressive, demeaning, socially damaging, and retards actual education. He does not posit a conspiracy to implement this system of social control, but suggests that it suits a Leviathan state to cripple its subjects by indoctrinating them in boredom and submission.
Here's a few of his Web-available writings:
A Short Angry History of American Forced Schooling
The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
The Underground History of American Education
While I don't agree that things are as bad as he states, reading this material is a useful antidote to the constant praise for public schools, as if education were like some commodity that can be purchased and injected into children if only enough money were spent on it. I am already sympathetic to his point of view because I suffered severely in public schools -- not only the usual tortures of bullying and abuse, but also from the forced study of things I was uninterested in which constantly broke the natural flow of learning about other topics I was curious about.
nashobabear and items in the news had me looking at Joanne Jacobs' excellent blog on educational reform issues, where I discovered John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education has been put up on the Web. His major point is that public education as we know it is oppressive, demeaning, socially damaging, and retards actual education. He does not posit a conspiracy to implement this system of social control, but suggests that it suits a Leviathan state to cripple its subjects by indoctrinating them in boredom and submission.Here's a few of his Web-available writings:
A Short Angry History of American Forced Schooling
The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
The Underground History of American Education
While I don't agree that things are as bad as he states, reading this material is a useful antidote to the constant praise for public schools, as if education were like some commodity that can be purchased and injected into children if only enough money were spent on it. I am already sympathetic to his point of view because I suffered severely in public schools -- not only the usual tortures of bullying and abuse, but also from the forced study of things I was uninterested in which constantly broke the natural flow of learning about other topics I was curious about.
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Re: Public vs. Private Education
Date: 2004-07-31 03:56 pm (UTC)But having two ideologies (Church and State) contending over how to best cripple young minds doesn't mean the public version should be tolerated. At first parents, and then children themselves as they mature, must take responsibility for the education of the young.
I do realize that many people think any support for alternative education means funding church schools, and is thus another battle in a two-sided culture war, but I say let diversity bloom and let parents decide how educational money is to be spent. Some poor souls (like you) will have to endure religious training they don't want, but many, many others (especially in those powerless groups Bob is talking about) will find they can get a real school for their child rather than a juvenile detention facility.