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I agree that students of all grades are indoctrinated to obey and comply. And that this is rooted in the establishments explicit desire to create ideal assembly

I agree that students of all grades are indoctrinated to obey and comply. And that this is rooted in the establishments explicit desire to create ideal assembly line workers. But this analysis seems really muddled, confused, and all over the place. He liberally attacks conservative politics, yet fails to make a case which supports his assertions as to who is to blame. I'd also disagree with his assessment of California as having had the best educational system in the world. Wow. Really? Or his assessments that the problem is enrollment freezes or reduced funding. Many other countries do education cheaper, and more effectively. I'd also argue that public education has, for nearly a century indoctrinated students to be compliant and obedient. This isn't a new thing. But this is the reason my wife and I will be homeschooling our kids. Not out of a desire to indoctrinate them or whatever, but to save them from being indoctrinated to be docile and subservient. I want our children to be free thinkers, confident in themselves and capable of living outside the box effectively.

wturner 10y ago
Personally, the feeling imbued from my schooling in California is one of neglect and indifference. "Indoctrination" assumes some kind of educating was happening at all and would have been a step up actually.I'm speaking of the formative middle and high school years.
jgord 10y ago
I wonder if there are stats on how many hours per year students at public schools spend lining up or waiting in line. Can we measure the impacts of 'disobedience' - what is the penalty at various levels of school for refusing to line up (maybe this is less of thing in the US than in UK-style schools)? You could also study the value of repeating back the exact words of the teacher and correlate that with grade performance or good behavior ratings. It may be immoral to do these experiments, but there should be some way to measure the amount of time on control vs learning happening in public schools. There are many valid reasons to homeschool - wanting a first rate academic education, having children think for themselves, removing them from artificially controlling and overly magnified peer pressure, to better match learning rates and styles, avoid negative expectations of your cultural demographic, solve bullying or drug problems that cant be resolved through other means, focusing on a musical instrument or elite sport etc. I'm not sure how best to address the converse problem - homeschool parents who _do_ seek to indoctrinate their children without giving them a wider view of societal norms. But I think its possible that parents can do that anyway, even if children _are_ attending school. I guess all parents [ and teachers ] do this to an extent, imparting a few bad memes along with the good ones is unavoidable in practice.. but hopefully averaged out by meeting other people. Maybe thats why things like travel and reading fiction and going to a distant university are so valuable - you get to compare your memeset with other peoples.

wturner 10y ago

Personally, the feeling imbued from my schooling in California is one of neglect and indifference. "Indoctrination" assumes some kind of educating was happening at all and would have been a step up actually.I'm speaking of the formative middle and high school years.

jgord 10y ago

I wonder if there are stats on how many hours per year students at public schools spend lining up or waiting in line. Can we measure the impacts of 'disobedience' - what is the penalty at various levels of school for refusing to line up (maybe this is less of thing in the US than in UK-style schools)? You could also study the value of repeating back the exact words of the teacher and correlate that with grade performance or good behavior ratings. It may be immoral to do these experiments, but there should be some way to measure the amount of time on control vs learning happening in public schools. There are many valid reasons to homeschool - wanting a first rate academic education, having children think for themselves, removing them from artificially controlling and overly magnified peer pressure, to better match learning rates and styles, avoid negative expectations of your cultural demographic, solve bullying or drug problems that cant be resolved through other means, focusing on a musical instrument or elite sport etc. I'm not sure how best to address the converse problem - homeschool parents who _do_ seek to indoctrinate their children without giving them a wider view of societal norms. But I think its possible that parents can do that anyway, even if children _are_ attending school. I guess all parents [ and teachers ] do this to an extent, imparting a few bad memes along with the good ones is unavoidable in practice.. but hopefully averaged out by meeting other people. Maybe thats why things like travel and reading fiction and going to a distant university are so valuable - you get to compare your memeset with other peoples.