This is a very old observation and in fact, the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system.
From John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'s General Education Board, Occasional Papers No. 1, 1913:
"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science.
We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."
It may not be new, but in regard to education in particular, it is worth repeating loudly and often. I work in the educational governance arena, and am exposed to many discussions that go on at the school district administration level.
It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people.
I was at a conference this fall, with two session at the same time, in rooms right next to each other -- one promoting why the Common Core is the greatest thing ever, the other denouncing it. Both sessions were equally full, and both sessions got the worst reviews of the entire conference, mostly because the people are so conflicted about how to deal with innovation and creativity vs standardization.
It is a problem that is easy to identify, but much more difficult to fix. People are trying. For example, Khan academy is a great resource for independent learning, but even their elementary math lessons are categorized by traditional grade levels.
The best solution I have to improve creativity in the American educational system is to educate the parents. Make sure that all parents are aware of the issues, and make sure that all parents know that the education of their children is not in the hand of their local school district, but in their own hands. They need to understand the pros and cons of all schooling options, and make the right decisions for their children, and include their children in those discussions when they get old enough.
I know this is a huge tangent away from the original article, but this strikes a bit of a nerve with me, and I agree with you that education is an arena in which the issue of creativity is vitally important, probably moreso than in the workplace.
Any educational solution that works within the framework of the existing system is doomed to failure.
Schooling, in its present form, is the greatest lie ever told, I would say.
Education is something that should heavily depend on the individual person. The best way to educate is to self-educate. Then there could be certain gatherings like
free schools (free as in freedom, look them up if you aren't aware) and democratic schools if one wants to study with a group or requires tutoring from an experienced person. Apprenticeship is also something I would like to see make a comeback.
The school system, however, has done a truly horrifying and dreadful act in that it has killed off the desire for people to autodidact, and has convinced generations that it is the only right way. Of course, many people self-educate in their spare time, but they often do not realize it and instead hold faith in formal academics and schooling as the sole credible form of education.
Another fallacy the schooling system has perpetuated is the incorrect equivocation of school and education. They have nothing alike. One is a strict and guided system, the other is the acquisition of knowledge by any means that are possible.
People want to believe they are special snowflakes and the "system" is holding them down. Have you ever heard anyone say "I wanted to be a dancer, thank god the teachers were more interested in teaching me quadratic functions, which is how I ended up being an accountant now, because it turned out I sucked at dancing!"
If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically successful countries have public school systems that go on for years? It's the same tired argument as "Capitalism is inherently evil." Yeah, maybe, except that no other system was shown to be better.
If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically successful countries have public school systems that go on for years?
This is a very narrow and one-dimensional argument. You're assuming that everything is sugary, benevolent and works for the common good. No. Compulsory schooling serves a strategic purpose, it's defective by design.
Replace "school systems" with "retributive penitentiary systems" and you'll see what I mean.
It's the same tired argument as "Capitalism is inherently evil."
Not even close. I do not oppose capitalism in any way, personally.
Yeah, maybe, except that no other system was shown to be better.
No other system has really been tested. There's a lot of alternatives that are applied on small scales and are shown to work just fine (i.e. Sudsbury schools), but they receive little attention and are often deliberately misrepresented.
> If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically successful countries have public school systems that go on for years?
Long compulsory schooling was not a leading indicator of the success of the U.S. We were an outstandingly successful nation back when most people were schooled far less than they are now.
This isn't strong proof of anything about today, but it is at odds with the narrative that institutional schooling is the basic feature that makes a society good.
I have studied Mechanical Engineering as well, and I, on the other hand see plenty of opportunities to use things taught in ME in real life. Might be as simple as "How safe is this plank for me to walk on" (bending moment) to "It's strange that there are cold pockets in this room, what's the optimum positioning of a flow mixer".
But we don't generally think even for a second. People just take a 'common sense approach' to most things, which while good enough for a large set of applications breaks down in many cases. And come on, you're an engineer, you should try to get the optimum solution possible. Obviously, I'm not pointing to you directly but to people in general.
And yes, I do know that there's analysis paralysis situation as well, but a good engineer know where that line is, and to stop just before that line.
When you specify you have "studied in mechanical engineering", is it safe to assume that you have never held a position as a mechanical engineer in a non-educational capacity?
If that is the case, how is your anecdotal observation that you have "never EVER seen anyone use calculus to solve their problem in the real world" even remotely close to relevant?
Furthermore, I have noticed that people have a tendency to conflate "using calculus" with their experience completing homework assignments in their high school/college calc 1 courses.
No, that's not what "using calculus" is, unless of course you're still a student or cannot conceive of a world beyond your own narrow life experiences.
Many of us use mathematics to solve real problems in the real world on a daily basis - and it would be beyond arrogance to suggest that calculus is irrelevant. If you get a chance, pick up the book "Concrete Mathematics" - and "Concrete" is a play on "Continuous and Discrete" math. It's by Donald Knuth and it's a wonderful read. If you're a working programmer or employed in a technical field, you will be better off after understanding how to solve the problems in that book.
Calculus and all derivative mathematics touches more facets of our daily lives than perhaps any other "theoretical" field in academia.
> I've studied in mechanical engineering. I've never EVER seen anyone use calculus to solve their problem in the real world.
Consider yourself lucky you haven't been exposed to process chemistry. Those people have to rely on experimentally discovered equations where fractional exponents are the the norm. Not to mention that the math involved is, to an IT person, counterintuitive at best - and outright opaque at worst.
The impossibly devious math involved in that field was one of the major reasons I switched my major. (The same maths come across everywhere in that field.) It is hard to imagine the joy you feel once you get to deal with discrete, math after spending a couple of years trying to wrap your head around the mental torture of applied physical chemistry.
Actually... it's not really about capitalism. I like capitalism. It's flawed, yes, but everything is and I believe it's the best we've got.
In fact, capitalism, by design, rewards the most entrepreneurial. Our current school system punishes those sorts of people -- its goal is to produce worker bees who do what they're told (I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the education system in the U.S. was designed by a rich business owner specifically to produce workers for his company and others like it... although I'm not entirely sure about that)
Now, that's not to say the school system is inherently evil, either. I do wish it had promoted more creative and entrepreneurial ideas, but it is what it is. I felt pretty aimless throughout school simply because the vast majority of what I was learning really didn't apply to anything in my life until I started learning CS in college (and even then, if I was designing my own curriculum, I'd have done it a bit differently)
Its kind of missing the point to bring up the notion that all the economically advanced countries have public school systems that go on for years, when most of the people arguing against the education system would probably agree that its main purpose is to turn individuals into a compliant, unquestioning, regimented work-force required by such a system.
What's more interesting is whether schooling exists to supply an economic system, or whether it should exist to create a rational, creative, questioning, skeptical, critical thinking population. Is that the measure of a successful education system, or a successful society?
I think the really dangerous thought is not that the people in the schools are special snowflakes held back by the system, but the realization that those at the top are not special snowflakes and are instead propped up by the system. Because then even the very faint illusion of meritocracy as a justification for the distribution of wealth and our current system falls apart completely.
Perhaps a good education system would also have to face the friction between freedom, merit, enlightenment, democracy, and economic output. The US has a strong ideological undercurrent that the earlier factors directly lead to the last. I would argue not only that is it possible that there is in fact potentially an economic cost to a free and enlightened populace, but that such an ideology primarily exists in the US as a social-psychological-bulwark to justify the position of the wealthy. To chip away at such a subconscious connection would lead people to the realization of the dangerous thought I mentioned in the preceding paragraph...
> It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people.
You do realize that the two aren't actually contradictory, right? The adoption of open standards for the web made it more possible for an outpouring of creativity. That's what standardization does.
For a problem you claim is "easy to identify", you haven't even found it.
I think that subjects like math are better modeled as graphs of prerequisites rather than "levels". There are so many discrete areas that you can go into without learning about others, it makes very little sense to categorize math the way we do before college. Even topics like "geometry" or "calculus" are too broad.
This quote, or maybe ones similar too it, have been cited as the "basis" of our school system, and it's not inconceivable to me that people with those motives helped get our public schools off the ground.
But is there any evidence that such ideas are actually influential in today's schools? I'll bet that most teachers, if shown your quote, would retch.
Maybe I'm lucky (at least, lucky enough to be affluent), but I don't think that my kids are discouraged from being creative at school or in quasi-school activities such as their music lessons.
But is there any evidence that such ideas are actually influential in today's schools? I'll bet that most teachers, if shown your quote, would retch.
I assume you have read John Taylor Gatto's works before. In particular, you might be interested in his most recent: Weapons of Mass Instruction.
I don't know how exactly you would gauge their influence. It's certainly much more prevalent in certain countries (the USA and the major Western European forces, where the idea of modern compulsory schooling originated in the first place: Prussia), compared to say, Eastern European countries. The national psychology has always been different there, and after being ravaged by communism, the school system is quite chaotic and ineffectual, though the EU and other powers are trying to enact change (not necessarily for the better).
In any event, just look at how the classroom model of schooling works these days: intense focus on rote memorization, adherence to ritualistic and often obsolete or pointless standards, very bureaucratic operation and government, a fanatical concern with and faith in the grading system, standardized testing as the be-all-end-all of education and so on.
Then depending on the country, schools are used to instill nationalistic and other forms of propaganda, be it in the history textbooks or throughout the entire atmosphere of the classroom. Typically most states do this, though the exact level and subtlety depends on the individual nation.
The teachers would likely retch, but they're just as big of pawns as anybody else. They're not meant to know. They're told to serve a seemingly benevolent purpose in educating the nation's youth, and they must obviously comply with whatever they're given if they'd like to keep their job.
Prussia was an eastern European country. Most of it is now Poland, some of it Russia.
Modern education is less indoctrination than industrialized daycare.
Grading systems at least have some hope of removing some of the biases inherent other forms of judging people, which tend to come down to social markers (the way you speak, dress, who you know) and perpetuate elite prejudicial advantage. Similarly uniforms: they're a social equalizer for people from a poor background.
Grading systems (at least in their contemporary form) are no more effective, because the grader can be very easily manipulated or show bias themselves. That and it's just a very flat method of measuring progress. It's systemic, ruthlessly bureaucratic and typically within the context of standardized testing.
Social equalization was no doubt one of the motivations behind uniforms, though it's also likely a symbolic tool to foster groupthink and a superficial cloak of egalitarianism. There's many different ways to show your influence and being of a higher class than through mere clothing.
Popular? It's been getting more attention recently due to the work of various authors, but the vast majority of people still see compulsory schooling as an irrevocable necessity.
The vast majority see compulsory and free schooling as an unmitigated good.
The "it's only there to make you conform and obey the elites" meme is certainly getting more popular, but its so far from the aims of educators (and the politicians that continue to fund it) that it's about as well grounded and believable as chemtrails, the illuminati or other conspiracy theory.
That depends how you look at it. One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward.
I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it. If I am bored by a project, I still do it. I am lucky that I generally enjoy and care about my work, but some days like everyone, I am working for this abstract, monthly reward.
Exams were like that - you liked some subjects, and read them willingly. Others, you never saw yourself using, but you worked at them to get grades, because grades bought you a salary.
You also probably learned to fear the future. I know I do. More than studying at French because I needed that grade, I studied at French because not getting that grade might mean not going to college, might mean not getting a middle class job. And then... what? I didn't know. I didn't know any non-middle class people.
It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends).
I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy?
The left of philosophy (Marx -> Baudrillard) wrote about how we had fetishized symbols over real things. There is some truth in that, but seeing it has... value, only where it informs our actions. In Silicon Valley, young employees trade their 20s for money, one 12 hour day at a time. The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow. Where were they trained to do that?
All I'm saying (and really all I'm saying) is that I disagree that suppression of individuality and creativity are key goals of education.
They may well be outcomes. They probably are, and that's sad and we should certainly not be content with broken educational systems. I just don't think that's anyone's aim, perhaps just a miserable side effect.
>> Where were they trained to do that?
I'm not sure, I seem to have skipped those lessons. But then I'm one of those people that periodically takes several months off to go travelling.
Johann Fichte, Alfred Whitehead and Ross L. Finney are some thinkers off the top of my mind that were influential in shaping the compulsory schooling system.
Intent is something many people are willing to brush off as mere conspiracy theory, but it is present. Hanlon's razor does not necessarily apply to political contexts.
I'm not sure what bearing an 18th century philosopher has on anything much. I find philosophy as a discipline to be rather self important and contribute little but linguistic sophistry to most debates.
That said I have heard of Alfred Whitehead, and his opinions on education (if he did indeed influence the forming of early compulsory/state education systems) seem so far removed from any idea of suppressing creativity and individualism that I'm not sure why you'd drag him out to support your point.
I'm not familiar with Finney.
Hanlons razor would apply to the wider situation regardless - you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
Whitehead's opinions on education were somewhat mixed and eclectic, but an individualist he was not. He noted the pivotal importance of getting people to perform arduous tasks and conditioning them through education, as well as the teacher as this godlike authority figure who is the sole guide of a child's education. An anti-autodidact. In many ways, he promoted the master/slave dialectic.
you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
That's the thing. It wasn't really nefarious to them. The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there.
Woodrow Wilson himself had this to say in 1909:
"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
Near as I can tell, the mainstream K-12 curriculum today resembles what Wilson would have considered to be a liberal education. Lots of math, science, reading, writing, history, etc.
>> The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there.
The 'Upper Class' have nothing to do with it any more and what some people said well over a century ago has extremely little bearing on the aims of modern state education.
>> "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
Which he said over 100 years ago, and which again bears absolutely no resemblance to what we have now.
You were asking within the context of the relevant time period.
That's when the seeds were planted, and they continue to grow today. Charlotte Iserbyt provides a fairly decent timeline and compendium of relevant documents related to the shaping of the compulsory schooling system in the USA, entitled the deliberate dumbing down of america. Despite a few conservative biases in her writing style, the documents outlined are self-explanatory.
>> You were asking within the context of the relevant time period.
No, pretty sure I was deliberately not asking about it within historical context, because the aims of those people 100 years ago are not really relevant to the aims and goals of the continuing system, IMHO.
One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another
this is entirely appropriate, and has nothing to do with industrialization. to have a mate, raise children, and prosper, you need to be able to respond to the needs of at least one other adult, one or more demanding children who are incapable of satisfying their own needs, and tohe ability to do these things in an environment over which you have relatively little control.
It's all very well to complain about abstraction and what Marx dubbed 'the dull compulsion of economic relations,' but you might as well complain about the fact that your personal creativity is still constrained by the reality of your body's needs for food and sleep, no matter how much you resent stopping what you're doing to make a sandwich.
Likewise, I really don't like the fact that my dog tends to wake me up around 6am, but it's not because of any ideology; if I ignore his entreaties by refusing to get out of bed then sooner or later he'll end up peeing on the floor. I mention this very prosaic example because of the lessons of Zen Buddhism (a philosophy dedicated to the identification and avoidance of unnecessary abstractions) is that while meditation can free you from illusions, it's not going to free you from the basic necessities of living in the world.
That was a very long way of saying "I do work for my employer so I get paid". School doesn't teach you that, hunger does; even without school, you'd still need money to live, and even people who drop out of school have jobs (unless they're rich or run their own businesses).
While the tax code may use a different definition for clarity, having a job is still technically running your own business in every other way. What is interesting is that while there are an infinite number of ways to make money, the vast majority of the population all choose to run their business in the exact same way (single client, set working hours, defined pay schedule, etc.). Is that business model chosen because it is the most efficient way to run a business, or is it because they learned to run their business that way from an external source, such as school?
I'm not sure we can garner any meaningful data from dropouts as only 8% of the population (in the US) drop out of the public education system, and I expect you'll find that the majority of them drop out in their later years, after already spending many years exposed to the system.
Re "set working hours": I think a lot of it goes back to early Industrial Age, when blue-collar people worked a lot more than now, as much as 14-16 hours/day. Most of their life was work, there wasn't any structure around it, and they worked for a single factory (the same factory, it didn't make sense to move around, or maybe there was only one factory in their town). Set working hours (limited at 8 hours/day) were a limitation imposed by the workers (or unions) against being over-worked (8hrs/day is much better than 14-16hrs/day). In most countries, this is still established by legislation.
Re "defined pay schedule": In some fields, you can get paid by a percentage-based commission (real estate, car sales, middle men in general, actors, movie directors etc). That's not always practical, and some employees prefer a fixed monthly salary (versus the insecurity of a percentage).
> One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward.
Really? That is what you got out of schooling? If so, I am sorry for you.
Let me tell you what I got out of schooling.
- An appreciation for the English language and the many ways in which it can be used.
- An understanding of the beauty of mathematics.
- A cynical realization that history was written and controlled by Old Dead White Men.
- Basic knowledge of the arts. (Not enough, budget cuts are quite unfortunate!)
- The ability to think critically about a problem and apply any of a multitude of problem solving or analysis techniques to its resolution.
- An appreciation for the beauty of nature.
- Knowledge of the human body.
- Knowledge of biology and genetics.
And that was just my public school education! I went on to college and learned far more!
I will readily confess that roughly 50% of schooling is a waste of time, but that is because students are not being pushed hard enough, rather teachers will assign one book to read over the course of 2 months! Of course this all changes once one goes off to college, where all of a sudden 150+ pages of reading per class per week can easily be expected!
> I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it.
Quite unfortunate. I am in the privileged position of only having to work on things that I love, I have a manager certainly, but he respects that he has hired me as a professional and he trusts in my judgement as to how I go about solving problems.
> It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends).
I can imagine it. I'd be bored shitless. I happen to love what I do for a living. Is it work? Sure technically, in regards that I get up, get in my car, drive a few miles away, park my car, and step into an office.
But honestly? I count everyone I work with as a friend. There is a smile on my face from when I step into the office to when I leave. There is a grand sum total of 0 things in this world that I enjoy more than what I do for work each and every day.
> I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy?
I feel angry that he is selfish and is thinking only of himself! There is so much that can be done to improve the world. If you told me he left his job that was of little to no societal value, and went off to help others around the world, then I would applaud. But to go off and do nothing but laze around? What good is that, to have the sum of one's life measure up to not but self indulgence.
> The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow.
The reward is impact! Change! The reward is having millions of people use what one has created! Programmers are artists, and our audience is the world! Every day a million symphonies are played out, and a thousand more sonatas written to be performed in the morrow.
2) The educators' intentions may be good, but the results are much more important.
3) The politicians do not fund things, they appropriate money from tax receipts.
4) There are many defenders of the public school system who justify it on the basis of creating a 'shared experience' for the citizenry, which sounds quite collectivist. Why would singing national anthems and pledges of allegiance be so common in schools around the world, if not for statism?
5) The government schooling system has historically been used as a tool of oppression against minorities; it would be naive to believe that politicians and bureaucrats suddenly stopped using the schools to achieve their ends .
1) They are free at the point of access, we all pay for them. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point this out as it's a useless distinction
2) Not when we're talking about the subject we're actually talking about they're not. I quote from the OP - "the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system". That's what I dispute. It may well be an outcome, and that would be bad and should be changed, but it's disingenuous (to say the least) to ascribe this as a motive.
3) The politicians decide what to fund out of the public purse, yes. Again, useless distinction
4) Is collectivism evil in and of itself? I don't subscribe to this view in the slightest, in case you were wondering, and I've only ever heard a few left-wing talking heads claim that that is what we should be trying to do with schools. Personally I 'justify' it by observing that education is given to people who otherwise would not get it for a variety of reasons, and having a base level of education throughout society being a very Good Thing.
5) It's also verging on conspiracy to ascribe nefarious aims and goals to every person involved in education.
1) "We" do not all pay taxes, and I want to point it out, because I am being forced to finance a system which I do not believe in.
2) The OP said that 'suppression' was a goal of the system, not of each individual actor; you were addressing the teachers, and I was saying that they are participating in a dangerous broader system.
3) It is not useless to point out that politicians pay for nothing; if they were paying, I would not care how the money was disbursed.
4) Please address the nationalism and statism which is evoked by the anthems and pledges at schools; how does this help the children better their lives?
5) If there have never been "nefarious aims" in the public education system, why did Brown sue the Board of Education? I am simply reciting history, do you disagree with the history? Or do you disagree with my conjecture that all "nefarious aims" may not have disappeared when Little Rock was desegregated?
1 & 3) Oh noes! The evil taxman! We all pay for things we disagree with, but I prefer we do that than have no commons at all. Feel free to disagree with this but you're basically walking into "Public education is bad by definition" which is not something I'm here to argue. I'm really only saying that I don't think it's anyone's aim.
And no, we do not all pay taxes, some do not because they are as poor as dirt. It's an awesome facet of modern society that they are not condemned to stay there by lack of access to education, nor by parental indifference to it.
2) I do not believe that it is the goal of educators, nor of others that operate or support the system. I do not believe that even if it was set up to do that by some bad evil people last century it is a key goal now. This is the root of my argument. It may be an outcome, it is not a goal.
4) We don't do that over here in communist UKia, because it's weird.
5) I have no idea who Brown is, or anything about Little Rock beyond it being where Bill Clinton came from, sorry. Not american.
For 1), I think the GP meant "free as in freedom", not "free as in beer". Taxpayers pay for school, but everyone is allowed in (I do agree with you in your interpretation).
My eldest's year 1 [5 -6yo] teacher had a phrase "do it first time". She drilled in to the pupils the necessity for absolute and immediate obedience to her demands.
I find that sort of behaviour abhorrent as it denies the individual the right to express their own will. Yes, some conformity is required in order to make school work but certainly not to that level - this is a common trait throughout [many] schools in the UK.
Indeed I was lecturing a 4yo this evening, with some trepidation, as to why absolute obedience of an authority figure is not essential to welfare and can cause the loss of much that is of value. "There must be a good reason for Mrs. REDACTED to make that rule, otherwise it's a bad rule.".
You're presenting a complete straw man argument and you're incorrectly trying to make a reductio ad absurdum by comparing these views to mythical pop culture conspiracy theories.
It doesn't seem to me like you're well versed into the actual arguments presented by authors and thinkers who write on the inherent flaws of compulsory schooling.
>> You're presenting a complete straw man argument
??
I'm responding to this -
>> the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system
Which AFAICT is unsupportable and certainly not the stated intention of any of the people I know in education, nor does it seem to be the intention of the politicians who continue to keep the system funded. How is that a straw man? I'm arguing against what you actually said!
>> It doesn't seem to me like you're well versed into the actual arguments presented by authors and thinkers who write on the inherent flaws of compulsory schooling.
There are all sorts of flaws in schooling, compulsory or otherwise. We could probably take the whole weekend just writing out a list of the ones that spring to mind without serious study.
That doesn't mean that suppression of creativity is the goal of the system.
So what is the intended effect of forcing you to do things that you do not want to do and emotionally abusing you if you fail to comply, every day? How can you teach someone agency by traumatizing them if they attempt to exercise it?
The US school system sounds like it has systemic problems, and may have bad results. But to say that the whole aim of the system and those in it is to kill creativity and individualism is ludicrous.
>> "how do we make students do what we want and perform the way we want"
I've never, ever heard it put that way by people pushing educational reform or by educators themselves. "How do we help children learn better?", that one comes up quite a lot but is rather different.
>> I have NEVER seen the question "how do we encourage students behave in ways that we do not expect".
By acknowledging that not all children learn well in lecture/"traditional classroom" formats and doing something about it. But that would undermine the system.
This is acknowledged, as is parental choice. You don't have to send your kid to that kind of school or to any school at all, but you do have to educate them.
I struggle to find this unreasonable.
The people (via the state) fund a particular model, it's true. And you'll never catch me arguing it's not full of all sorts of flaws, but I would still dispute that suppression of individuality and creativity are even a minor goal in state education, let alone a primary one.
> You don't have to send your kid to that kind of school or to any school at all, but you do have to educate them.
Sounds reasonable on its face, but the reality is that if you try and homeschool you will face all types of resistance from the educational establishment. Tellingly, you will encounter that resistance from public primary schools (many colleges love homeschoolers). This is because the primary goal of the system is to strengthen and reinforce itself. This is so that it may have complete power to create generations of people who contribute to making a strong country through work and capitalism.
This purpose may be good or bad, I leave that judgement as an exercise to the reader. But let's not pretend that any of this is done in the best interests of children.
Do you think it is criminally negligent for a parent to bring up their child without any education whatsoever?
Do you think the state should intervene to protect criminally neglected children from their neglecting parents?
Most people I know, myself included, would say yes to both questions, and therefore the establishment of compulsory education is at least in part directly intended to benefit the children. Education is shown to be one of the very few reliable indicators around the globe of both individual and societal prosperity. How we educate is always up for debate.. should we educate is typically not.
Being educated is the default state of being. An education is literally available everywhere, and kids especially seem to get excited about the process. Parents would have to explicitly set up an environment to prevent their kids from receiving an education of some kind, which, I agree, would be troubling. How realistic is that kind of environment though? Aside from that, it really is just a question of how.
No, no it isn't. Look around the world. Ignorance is the default state of being and continues to be the state of being in a lot of places.
>> An education is literally available everywhere,
You and I have different definitions of education.
>> and kids especially seem to get excited about the process.
Some do, some do not.
>> arents would have to explicitly set up an environment to prevent their kids from receiving an education of some kind, which, I agree, would be troubling. How realistic is that kind of environment though?
Very. Watch your cartoons and shut up.
>> Aside from that, it really is just a question of how.
It's really not, it's a question of giving access to learning to kids whose parents can't afford to educate them or don't care. There are a lot of these folks. In the days before mandatory education kids were put to work to support the family, social mobility was close to zero and... well it was Victorian. Compulsory education has been a huge step forward.
Well, you could start by forcing children to sit still (!) in the same room every day, lecturing them about things that they do not care about, forcing them to do things that they do not want to do, finding ways to shame them if they do not obey, and then insisting that this is what education is and what the process of learning looks like.
That would be one way to teach them not to seek education.
No, to believe that the current system is a deliberate form of torture might show that you have some scars from that time in your life that could do with talking out. I didn't say (or even imply) you were mad.
And you didn't have to be there, your parents had a choice like everyone else's.
No, scars imply you were wounded and you still bear marks. Nothing more.
It is an attempt to pass off your reaction as not legitimate, yes, because it's not. I'll say it again - you didn't have to be there, nobody was forcing you to be in that classroom, that was your parents choice. The only choice they didn't have was not to educate you at all.
--edit-- Further on the scars thing - in your first post in this thread you explicitly talk of emotional abuse and deliberate traumatisation during your schooling, I'm not sure why you would think my suggestion you talk to someone about this is so offensive?
>> But let's not pretend that any of this is done in the best interests of children.
Ummm, yeah it is. Without education they, individually, will find it very hard to thrive in our capitalist system.
Again, I struggle to see this as a bad thing. Yes - one of the goals of the political classes in establishing a perpetuating a compulsory education system is most likely to be economic.
I'm not sure I understand how "people who contribute to making a strong country through work and capitalism" are necessarily devoid of individuality or creativity.
(--edit-- I agree that a lot of systems do end up becoming very focussed on self preservation and expanding their reach, look at the military and police. Education is in no way immune from this, I still don't think that suppressing individuality and creativity are key goals of the system though)
From John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'s General Education Board, Occasional Papers No. 1, 1913:
"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science.
We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."