Sure, but would you agree that state run public education is the current default solution, in countries like Australia, the U.S., etc.?
Your point is accurate re: historical perspective, but don't you think you have to take that in context? From a historical perspective, children have been brutally exploited, especially from the poor and middle-class.
The ultimate question is who is responsible for educating their children? Historically it's never been the state. Government run education went hand in hand with the industrial revolution-- it's designed to create a reliable (and pliable) workforce. By this point the public education complex is just one more oppressive power structure motivated primarily by self-preservation.
The word socialize seems to have been co-opted to mean institutionalize. The top-down authoritarian school system is completely antithetical to Western values of freedom of expression and voluntary association. The Prussian model, from which state education systems are based upon, was designed to produce subservient citizens who will do as they're told and not make trouble by thinking for themselves. The state education system acts as a corporate subsidy for producing an obedient working class.
The history of state education, especially in America, is pretty dark. John Taylor Gatto, former teacher of the year in New York several times over, has written extensively on the history of education and it's worth reading his books to understand why state education seems so bad -- basically because it's working as intended. Our current education systems are damaging our children's emotional and intellectual independence, and do not serve the hopes and wishes most parents have for their children's education.
Voluntary options to state education should absolutely be celebrated, and parents should have the freedom to choose how to educate their own children.
I totally agree. Thanks for putting your perspective out there. It is indeed an assault on kids. Where I come from, school is mandatory. I think there is an obligation of the government to ensure that school can continue, with the same level of quality as perviously.
In America we've had decades of various people attacking public schools. So to look at the state of public schools and saying this is how things are, well you're ignoring a broad history of American conservatism taking objection to public schooling.
No, I'm arguing that forced schooling in general is an unethical act, on par with communist indoctrination, and there should be no government run schools at all
I sincerely do not understand what you are talking about. I, and I assume also you, have just read about an education system where boys aged 7 are separated from their parents, underfed, whipped, beaten and basically forced into sexual relationship with older men. How do any of these horrors compare in the slightest to what is happening in any 21st century western public school?
I know that my experience was most likely more idyllic than most, but which outgrowths of modern public education (active shooter drills, windowless rooms, zero-tolerance policies?) make you hold it in such low regard?
I don’t understand how this is supposed to relate to the OP. The OP claims that education was always about social control and domestication of children (so that they may become domesticated adults). I guess it’s a bad thing that public education is not working out in America, but that’s just a worse outcome for an already bad model—the classroom was poisoned to begin with.
The idea that education as we know it is an unalloyed good—as long as we fund schools enough and appreciate the teachers etc. etc—is just false.
To be clear, I haven't attempted to argue against public education existing. (If it seems that way, it's a failure of communication on my part.) The State is not a contaminant whose influence on small children should be avoided at all costs.
But they're not an unmitigated blessing whose opinions should supplant those of parents in all cases either. So I think that it's really good that people have the option to send their children somewhere that isn't a public school system (including a private school or homeschool, possibly even with vouchers). That's a simple, useful check on its power -- and explicitly seeking to remove that check with the goal of changing the way children think is Kinda Creepy or worse. We don't need no thought control...
If you don't see why anyone would disagree with making state schooling a compulsory activity, then your understanding is far too narrow to engage in a discussion of this nature.
If that is implemented, coming generations would be well civilized and well behaved as it eliminates many societal problems.
Oh boy. Not even wrong.
See: Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, Compulsory Miseducation by Paul Goodman, anything written by John Taylor Gatto, John Holt and A.S. Neill.
It's also trivially disprovable by mere observation.
Public school is like public housing: You only use it if there are no viable alternatives. A few places here and there the rich have their own public school with carefully drawn districts to keep out the undesirables, but even those are communist propaganda wards.
Public school is big business though. Lots of unions, lots of public employees, lots of text book manufacturing, whoever makes the desks, fixes the school buses, HVAC systems, you name it.
Even if the education itself wasn't outright propaganda and otherwise dysfunctional, public schools are mental misery for many. Self-important, entitled, arrogant, but otherwise useless staff and teachers. Don't subject children to prison-like treatment.
It would be very interesting to go back to the 1940's and see what was being taught in the German schools.
I'm in favor of public education - my three kids went to great public schools. But there is no perfect answer that works in all situations, all times and all places.
Although I agree with your arguments, you forgot one or two things:
Public schooling in Germany is near pure chalk and talk. This kills the natural motivational learning-by- playing habit in most of the children very effectively. The approaches of Waldorf, Montessori, etc are far better. Although not perfect.
Public schooling transports the state propaganda. Although in nowadays Germany, it is more propaganda by ignorance than by direct indoctrination. Or did you learn about direct democracy, non-fiat money, self-administration in school?
I'm not against public schooling in principle but its current form is baffling. We expect kids to spend 1/4 of their entire life in an authoritarian system where they have no autonomy and then we throw them to the wolves when they become adults.
Teaching children in a state-run public education system about discerning propaganda is not high on the state's agenda, since propaganda is an effective tool. The public education system exists to mold the minds of children to become tools of the state.
Your point is accurate re: historical perspective, but don't you think you have to take that in context? From a historical perspective, children have been brutally exploited, especially from the poor and middle-class.
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