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It seems like the primary purpose of school is to make sure kids have been well trained to sit still and follow the rules, learn how to jump through societal ho

It seems like the primary purpose of school is to make sure kids have been well trained to sit still and follow the rules, learn how to jump through societal hoops, and have a place to be for parents who can't/won't deal with them all day. How much can a teacher really do, trying to enforce all this and get across a subject to 15+ kids in a room, who have various degrees of motivation (sometimes none) to want to learn anything? It seems like there must be a better way to help kids acclimate into adults and give their parents a break/opportunity to work.

pdfernhout 8y ago
One alternative I suggested around 2010: "Towards a Post-Scarcity New York State of Mind (through homeschooling)" https://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html https://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-... "New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not."
bitwize 8y ago
Sitting still, following the rules, and jumping through societal hoops are all critical life skills for that cushy job adding to the world's pile of webshit in JavaScript. So in some sense schools are doing the job of educating the young to prepare them for adult life.

pdfernhout 8y ago

One alternative I suggested around 2010: "Towards a Post-Scarcity New York State of Mind (through homeschooling)" https://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html https://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-... "New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not."

bitwize 8y ago

Sitting still, following the rules, and jumping through societal hoops are all critical life skills for that cushy job adding to the world's pile of webshit in JavaScript. So in some sense schools are doing the job of educating the young to prepare them for adult life.