The problem stems from the belief that someone other than you can
educate you. They just can't. To promote the idea that it is a
school's job to educate someone is at best delusional, at worst
downright dangerous. I feel that in order for a school to be
useful at all, attendance has to be voluntary. And yes, let's
face the fact that 99% of our kids wouldn't be there if they
weren't forced. And the other 1% is just nuts, and possibly not
interested in education at all, but rather some outward signifier
of attendance, such as a diploma. As Plato said, "Nothing of
value comes from compulsion." Of course we all have to do things
we don't want to do, but consider this:

I recently took a class, at a school no less, in glassblowing.
Imagine the idiocy in making a person who didn't want to do that
sit through the class. Because of the nature of glassblowing,
the amount of "sit-down" instruction (sit there and listen to the
teacher talk) was minimal. That is because rational people are
aware that you learn by doing, not listening to someone talk
about doing. Of course info can be gleaned from listening to
others, but a skill cannot be directly learned that way. Even
calculus is learned by doing.

On 11/03/09, often wrote:
> On 11/03/09, teacher wrote:
>> Not education, but school. Those are two totally different
>> things.
>
> I've thought a lot along these lines. If you want to think
> more along the same line, read John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us
> Down. A Place Called School is also a good read but not a fun
> one.
>
> I think some schools are complete bunk. I think most schools
> are pointed in the wrong direction. Education is of course
> valid, enlightening, worthy and good but few schools seem to
> be about education really. Many of our school policies seem
> to run counter to learning.
> If for example schools were really to be about learning, why
> do we have so many kids in each school and in each class? I
> came to think it's just a lie to say that schools are about
> learning. If they were, we would have designed school
> differently than we did.
> School is some process contrived to contain kids each day and
> any learning that happens there is wonderful. But yes,
> school, not education seems to have a lot of bunk in it.

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