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This article reads to me like pastoral romance, with little other than middle class guilt motivating its conclusions. Schools may have been founded to prepare c

This article reads to me like pastoral romance, with little other than middle class guilt motivating its conclusions. Schools may have been founded to prepare children for the factory (that wasn't the motivation in the UK, AFAIK), but that doesn't mean they cannot change in the intervening century, and they certainly have. Etc. Can education be improved? Certainly! However, mass home schooling is not the answer if you want to keep any semblance to current society. Most people have to work to make enough $s, for instance.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
If formal education only impacted our ability to earn a living wage, then it wouldn't be a problem. The article points out in various ways that the impact of our formal education far exceeds that narrow remit. If I was to summarise, I'd say the way we teach breeds disconnectedness and resentment in a way that alters our personal lives far beyond the time at which our time at school comes to an end. Moving forward, I think we should stop the pursuit of education for the sake of creating compliant workers, and let our education reflect that humans can learn more from self-discovery than authoritarian decree. That being said, it'll probably take decades before we can ween our society off the formal education models that are prevalent, the least we can do in the meantime is to make it less authoritarian. This clip from Michael Moore's documentary 'Where To Invade Next' shows what that can look like by looking at the Finnish school system: http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ
- Joof 10y ago
  As an anecdote, I loved reading as a kid. Won awards for reading which is a bit silly in retrospect (we don't give awards to kids who enjoy other media). To this day I fucking hate writing. I used to love writing, but if you want me to write something in 5 paragraph form you can gtfo. Every time I tried new writing techniques I was punished, so I stopped doing it all together.
jschwartzi 10y ago
One of the things we were taught in my teacher preparation program was that formal schooling has changed little in form over the past 100 years. This was brought home by a picture of a modern classroom side-by-side with a classroom from the 1910s. Both had desks in rows or groups and a single teacher lecturing from the front. The modern classroom was more colorful and I'll wager there were fewer beatings, but still very similar.
- noelwelsh 10y ago
  I've recently become interested in pedagogy, and certainly the stuff recommended in the books I've read (which a friend, who works in education, told me was standard, middle-of-road stuff) is much more interactive than I recall as a child and involves relatively little lecturing. If this translates to the classroom I can't say. Look, I'm not saying the way education is delivered in $YOUR_COUNTRY cannot be improved. I very much agree it can be. But what the author seems to be advocating is some romanticised pastoral lifestyle that is unobtainable to the majority, along with a heavy doses of "the noble savage" and other unsubstantiated woo. Home schooling is a luxury. Small classes are a luxury. Tell me something that can actually be delivered to the majority of children. Do some studies to show it works. Then I'll be interested. FWIW, the techniques discussed in my pedagogy books have effect sizes that amount to about a 2 grade level improvement and they typically require less work of the teacher. That's stuff everyone can do---if the school environment allows it.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    "Home schooling is a luxury. Small classes are a luxury" Developed countries are assumed went thru a few decades of economic growth and productivity gains. I think they should be ready for some universal, commonplace luxuries. I think children should be first to gain those.
    - noelwelsh 10y ago
      Sounds good to me. The electorate in general doesn't seem in favour, however.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

If formal education only impacted our ability to earn a living wage, then it wouldn't be a problem. The article points out in various ways that the impact of our formal education far exceeds that narrow remit. If I was to summarise, I'd say the way we teach breeds disconnectedness and resentment in a way that alters our personal lives far beyond the time at which our time at school comes to an end. Moving forward, I think we should stop the pursuit of education for the sake of creating compliant workers, and let our education reflect that humans can learn more from self-discovery than authoritarian decree. That being said, it'll probably take decades before we can ween our society off the formal education models that are prevalent, the least we can do in the meantime is to make it less authoritarian. This clip from Michael Moore's documentary 'Where To Invade Next' shows what that can look like by looking at the Finnish school system: http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ

Joof 10y ago
As an anecdote, I loved reading as a kid. Won awards for reading which is a bit silly in retrospect (we don't give awards to kids who enjoy other media). To this day I fucking hate writing. I used to love writing, but if you want me to write something in 5 paragraph form you can gtfo. Every time I tried new writing techniques I was punished, so I stopped doing it all together.

jschwartzi 10y ago

One of the things we were taught in my teacher preparation program was that formal schooling has changed little in form over the past 100 years. This was brought home by a picture of a modern classroom side-by-side with a classroom from the 1910s. Both had desks in rows or groups and a single teacher lecturing from the front. The modern classroom was more colorful and I'll wager there were fewer beatings, but still very similar.

noelwelsh 10y ago
I've recently become interested in pedagogy, and certainly the stuff recommended in the books I've read (which a friend, who works in education, told me was standard, middle-of-road stuff) is much more interactive than I recall as a child and involves relatively little lecturing. If this translates to the classroom I can't say. Look, I'm not saying the way education is delivered in $YOUR_COUNTRY cannot be improved. I very much agree it can be. But what the author seems to be advocating is some romanticised pastoral lifestyle that is unobtainable to the majority, along with a heavy doses of "the noble savage" and other unsubstantiated woo. Home schooling is a luxury. Small classes are a luxury. Tell me something that can actually be delivered to the majority of children. Do some studies to show it works. Then I'll be interested. FWIW, the techniques discussed in my pedagogy books have effect sizes that amount to about a 2 grade level improvement and they typically require less work of the teacher. That's stuff everyone can do---if the school environment allows it.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  "Home schooling is a luxury. Small classes are a luxury" Developed countries are assumed went thru a few decades of economic growth and productivity gains. I think they should be ready for some universal, commonplace luxuries. I think children should be first to gain those.
  - noelwelsh 10y ago
    Sounds good to me. The electorate in general doesn't seem in favour, however.