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Perfect is the enemy of better. There is huge room for improvement in our education system, but that doesn't mean we'd be better off with nothing.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
There's nothing about perfection or relative improvement here. Traditional schooling is simply not an adequate model for education, but rather persists as a quasi-day care environment for occupied laborers to drop off their children to. We probably would be better off with nothing. For one, abandoning compulsory public schooling will lead to an explosion in democratic, free, Sudbury and other alternative school models, as well as decrease the regulatory capture for homeschoolers and unschoolers. We are at a far better position than ever before in history to suitably practice autodidacticism on a mass scale, potentially with decentralized study groups, apprenticeships and democratic schools existing to augment and pool one's skills. Private universities will still exist and be able to focus more on research and less on being High School 2.0. Not to mention such an arrangement would be more organic, in the sense of not constraining people to the uncanny artificial environment of public schooling, which does not mirror any other oft-seen real life institution. It's an odd syncretic chimera of its own.
zaphar 11y ago
Which is not what the poster above was saying at all. Public schooling is a necessity because not everyone can afford to homeschool or hire a personal tutor for their children. That point is not under dispute. However denying parents the input of their far superior knowledge regarding the workload their child has as well as implying (intended or not) that the homework situation does not need improvement is denying the very real problem that kids are stressed and overworked. Some as early as kindergarten. One perfect valid grass roots solution to this is for parents to push back against the school. And unless schools start changing it's the only solution available to parents of those stressed and overworked children.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

There's nothing about perfection or relative improvement here. Traditional schooling is simply not an adequate model for education, but rather persists as a quasi-day care environment for occupied laborers to drop off their children to. We probably would be better off with nothing. For one, abandoning compulsory public schooling will lead to an explosion in democratic, free, Sudbury and other alternative school models, as well as decrease the regulatory capture for homeschoolers and unschoolers. We are at a far better position than ever before in history to suitably practice autodidacticism on a mass scale, potentially with decentralized study groups, apprenticeships and democratic schools existing to augment and pool one's skills. Private universities will still exist and be able to focus more on research and less on being High School 2.0. Not to mention such an arrangement would be more organic, in the sense of not constraining people to the uncanny artificial environment of public schooling, which does not mirror any other oft-seen real life institution. It's an odd syncretic chimera of its own.

zaphar 11y ago

Which is not what the poster above was saying at all. Public schooling is a necessity because not everyone can afford to homeschool or hire a personal tutor for their children. That point is not under dispute. However denying parents the input of their far superior knowledge regarding the workload their child has as well as implying (intended or not) that the homework situation does not need improvement is denying the very real problem that kids are stressed and overworked. Some as early as kindergarten. One perfect valid grass roots solution to this is for parents to push back against the school. And unless schools start changing it's the only solution available to parents of those stressed and overworked children.