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Compulsory education that assumes each kid is a uniform widget to be produced is a terrible way to develop people. People think so little of children and their

Compulsory education that assumes each kid is a uniform widget to be produced is a terrible way to develop people. People think so little of children and their capacity to learn, engage, and understand that they compel them to spend some of the most dynamic years of their life learning about things they don’t care about that they promptly forget in adulthood. Kids are natural learning machines and we murder that natural curiosity and capacity for mastery through school. I think there are better ways. We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. Democratic schools like Summerhill, Sudbury or unschooling are good starts. Kids at those schools have control over their schedule: if they want to keep a more structured schedule, they can, if they want a more relaxed schedule, sure. Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline. At the very minimum, ending age segregation policies at schools would be a good start for more dynamic learning.

zozbot234 5y ago
Compulsory education is not about developing kids as people. It's glorified daycare.
- GPerson 5y ago
  I generally agree with this, and I also think it implicitly serves a few other purposes in addition to being daycare. High school gets people used to the idea that they will spend their lives following a schedule and producing things. It also promotes the idea that we live in a community and teaches us about interacting with one another; (probably not in the most effective way). There’s also an element of teaching us about or maybe indoctrinating us into a particular system of work/reward which our society is supposed to operate under.
908B64B197 5y ago
> We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. > Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline. That's admirable.
wikidani 5y ago
>judicial system for administering discipline while I don't agree entirely with you, this is something I would love to see implemented. The disciplinary measures usually taken in schools are never consistent and always done in a case to case basis so, I never thought they could ever be fair

zozbot234 5y ago

Compulsory education is not about developing kids as people. It's glorified daycare.

GPerson 5y ago
I generally agree with this, and I also think it implicitly serves a few other purposes in addition to being daycare. High school gets people used to the idea that they will spend their lives following a schedule and producing things. It also promotes the idea that we live in a community and teaches us about interacting with one another; (probably not in the most effective way). There’s also an element of teaching us about or maybe indoctrinating us into a particular system of work/reward which our society is supposed to operate under.

908B64B197 5y ago

> We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. > Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline. That's admirable.

wikidani 5y ago

>judicial system for administering discipline while I don't agree entirely with you, this is something I would love to see implemented. The disciplinary measures usually taken in schools are never consistent and always done in a case to case basis so, I never thought they could ever be fair