Submitted by AlexanderReidRoss in Anarchism
Compulsory state-enforced education is simply mass psychological abuse that creates an obedient labor force for the capitalist class and prepares children for a lifetime of the state's monopoly on violence and crushing of dissent.
I'm unsure about the source but this comment about narcissistic parents and how the system enables them is relevant:
The reason that schools don't prepare people to become good parents is simple:
- Public schools are government institutions.
- Bad parents produce broken people.
- Broken people are easy to manipulate and control.
- Government leaders like it when their subjects are easily manipulated and controllable.
- Government is nothing but a ponzi scheme: What better way to get an inexhaustible supply of unaware, uncritical dupes than implementing methods that ensure the populace becomes the worst parents possible?
Those in power won't educate you to get them out of power. It is designed to produce economic units to produce, consume and be subservient.
Knowing this it falls upon us to educate ourselves.
People learn in unique ways. I find the school environment beneficial. I also think that it's really good for children to be in a school environment as I was not given that right growing up in my teenage years. Because of this denial, I grew up as a shell of a human being which I have had to work on a lot.
When I was living in nature the feral children had no school. They learned useful skills, but at the same time they wanted to learn things like math, and reading and the parents simply didn't have a lot of time or resources to teach them those things. I learned in a childhood education textbook that was part of my friend's curriculum for her teaching credential that children who thrive often do so because they are raised by the community. This is why many Chicano children beat the odds and move on to higher education. Children learn from being able to associate with others and develop new experiences. It's really important that children are exposed to many different things, and what better way to expose them than through school.
Things are not white or black. While our school systems can stand improvement, school is good. School is a good good thing. Knowledge is power. There are certain things you just can't learn on your own. Many things require interaction in order to grasp.
School is kind of like the Saturn archetype. Anyone can do the things that they want to do when they feel like doing them, but results come to those who do the things they want to do when they don't feel like doing them.
People who run marathons often train until it hurts. A lot of people do this by hiring a coach. Teachers are kind of like knowledge or education coaches. They can be.
Also, someone said above about all the computers and tablets in the classrooms now... that's how it is in star trek. Technology can be used as an advantage.
When it comes to physical skills, we've accepted that the age at which a child starts walking, has little to do with future abilities. Maybe the kid who walked at nine months will be an awesome athlete, but they could just as likely be a total klutz or absolutely ordinary in terms of athletic abilities.
Yet for some reason, we can't apply this thinking to mental aptitude. If Frank is reading at age four, but it takes Rachel until age eight to really get it, Frank gets shuffled into Gifted and Talented Programs, while Rachel gets put in remedial programs. Even though it's entirely possible that when both kids are thirteen, they are reading and functioning at more or less the same level.
We all know that children learn at different rates and often in spurts; what they don't know now, they may suddenly know a few weeks from now. A one-size-fits-all rote learning system does not, in fact, fit all and damages everyone, even those who come the closest to fitting it. Therefore, too often, we see this reoccurring situation in classrooms: there are some of the kids who are getting the lesson, but there are also some who are bored to tears, because they already know this stuff and can't we move on, while there's another group silently crying, because they did not get the previous material, so they don't understand this stuff.
Anyone who has been around a kid knows that they are learning machines. Kids are constantly asking questions, because they are filled with natural curiosity and want to understand the world around them. You really don't need to make them learn: if they want to learn, they will use whatever means at their disposal to learn more about something they're interested in. Really all they need is support and materials.
Our model was based around a factory-type model, where children are the bottles and as they head down the line, they get more liquid poured into them, until they are full and ready to be sent out. Of course, there are several obvious things wrong with this metaphor.
There has been a pointed change in the education culture of the USA over the last couple of decades. The idea of using a zero tolerance policy with children is beyond absurd and should be against the law. The indoctrination aspects of school have always been present because the chain of command, but now the extent that it is pursued is brutally crippling in nature. There is an off kilter emphasis on rules and order versus exploration in development, and these sick displays of power go beyond simply streamlining the education experience for the children. These measures reach into the child's home and threaten many households. There is much more at play than indoctrination. Children that have too much fun are quickly reprimanded and very often they are referred to evaluations for behavior problems that end up being "diagnosed" with a disorder that requires big pharma to fix. These are the results of a decaying capitalist society - blanket solutions that wage war with individuality, zero tolerance for the developing and inexperienced, an arm of the state imposing its will on parents and attempting to control them too, privatization, increasing costs for degraded quality, and a general tyrannical approach where rules mean everything while double standards are fair as can be. Children are grouped together by age and their natural talents and interests mean nothing as to what they learn or how they are taught. I can not think of a dumber way to group children than by age. Why not group them by their interests? If children were grouped by their interest or by what they are naturally best at, and then those common interest were catered to, we could see something really radical happen. We would see talents reach new levels and human potential excel.
The arts are always shuffled to the bottom of the deck and given the least funding. They are always the first casualty when its time to make cut backs. Yet they have steered humanity just as much if not more than anything else taught at school. The arts have seemingly always been used as a method of retaining control. Every pope had a favorite artist, and the rulers decide everyone else's taste, and now they control how expressive children can be. Imagine if the arts were paramount to the other subjects ram rodded down children's throats.
Capitalism is intent on controlling all mechanisms of expression. It requires people to be sheep consumers that follow fads and get their taste from authority figures as to what is and isn't good or bad expression. Thats the only way it can have a monopoly on culture manufacturing. The seal of authenticity from a culture authority must be present on the legally obtained copy or else everyone will know you are a weird black sheep that needs to stay away from the cool kids at the Friday night football game. The quarterback is in the top 1%.
dele_ted wrote (edited )
Here in Denmark, school has now become mandatory for kids as young as six years old, and kids in kindergarten are being given iPads instead of outside play and social interaction.
At six, kids will be tested, forced to sit down all day long and listen to a teacher, forced to learn the alphabet and mathematics... That's fucking abuse if you ask me.
Children should be allowed to develop themselves, and in that age, development comes very naturally through play and social interaction. Don't send your own fuckings kids to school when they're six years old, that's insane. Don't buy them iPads and school laptops at that age, what the fuck has gotten into the parents? Your child will become a dysfunctional tool incapable of complex emotions, critical thinking and happiness. They will be addicted to authority and their school iPad, and will never be able to live their life without someone holding their hand and guiding them through.
/rant