Why Have School?

Why Have School?

What a ray of sunshine you are, Slumberjack, on the first day of school.

The short answer, of course, is social control and grooming the next generation into conformity and complacency.

Egerton Ryerson was the dude who brought the public school system to Ontario.

Bullshit kiss-ass info here.

The reasons that the public school system was started in Ontario mostly seem to be that as child labour was used less and less in the 1840s, there was a need to keep the little miscreants off the streets. 

Oh, and Ryerson was the brains behind residential schools. Charming.

cbc.ca article here [3].

Go to a part of the world where there is no school, or where part of the population (women, usually) are forbidden from learning and you might get a different answer.

I know as well as anyone here that our schools are screwed up in a lot of ways, that they are to some degree indoctrination and babysitting  factories. My dad was a teacher too, so I am aware not just of the pressures kids are under, but also teachers. He had a student stand up in his class one day and say "you can't fail me because my parents will just go to the principal and make you pass me".

When our kids first went in I considered it an open question whether we would keep them in, or try to home school. From what I have seen so far, I am pleased with our school, and I feel pretty fortunate that they are in a relatively good one. For one thing the school seems to do as much to promote social skills as it does teaching subjects - things like pairing older kids as mentors for younger kids, teaching values of respect for one another, and looking out for kids who are displaying anger, frustration, and other danger signs.

It's not perfect, and I know all schools are not like that, but I think it is good start, and it is better than having some of those kids who are having problems isolated with just their family.

(edit)

just found this:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/09/07/statscan-.html 

i think the better question would be "how can we change our schools so they actually educate kids without indoctrinating them or grooming them" 

because the idea of schools is a great one, and public schooling is a right people fought for so that rich folks aren't the only ones who can read and write.

the problem is the way schools function and we can change that. 

 @ milo204

Agreed. I think a big part of the problem is that the situation can be radically different from division to division, school to school, and even class to class.

Believe me I am aware of the problem, because I went into this experience as a sceptic, and I am still prepared to pull my kids if they run into situations like some I have heard and seen. We have certainly run into some social and political differences, but frankly I think some of that is healthy.

So far as what goes on between the teachers, our children, and us though, I have no complaints. Quite the opposite, actually. I find the teachers we have had have made an effort to keep us involved in their education and let our children go in the directions they want.

If we want to talk about indoctrination, my grandmother had to go down to the school to stop them from forcing my father to write with his right hand. When I was in elementary school we had to line up and march into class, and they weren't shy about giving a stick across the knuckles, right in class.

School politics is local politics, and a lot of change means not just going to the Ministry of Education, but being prepared to let parents, teachers, principals, and the school board know how you feel (even though I know there are plenty of brick walls to run into there).

Do you propose home schooling as a solution ? Are advanced mathmatics and sciences really important?

Education in modern society is like so many things - a potentially useful thing that the capitalists (NWO-neocons-wouldbe kings call em what you will) have taken over and twisted to their own ends, taking the good true education functions, such as reading and writing and some basic science knowledge, history etc, and woven it into a framework in which such useful education becomes secondary to the primary function - turning out passive citizen-consumer-workers who are used to taking orders from someone in authority and don't ask any hard questions, and do not have any knowledge of a small handful of very important things. Which is why the analogy of capitalism as a cancer on our society is so apt- that's exactly what it is, in so many ways - you could say the same about 'our' governments, which have been surreptitiously taken over and turned against us. If anyone talking here hasn't read a book by a guy called John Taylor Gatto called The Underground History of American Education -  they might find it interesting. It's free online - http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm .

Socializing children is very much a part of any education system. Call it indoctrination or whatever, kids do need to learn the values and mores of their community; they do need training in citizenship - that is, what the community expects of them, and what their roles will be as adults. That's important matter, whether it's taught in a canvas tent or under a tree or in a cement building, whether it's imparted by elders, scout leaders or pedagogues.

When we don't like the political arrangement that the schools are serving, it's the politics we need to change, not the schools. If you changed the curriculum first, what would you change it to? How would you even get consensus from parents and teachers, on what outcome to teach toward? What would happen to the transitional students - trained toward a system that doesn't yet exist? Making the schools value-neutral is not the answer: it can't be done. Human beings live in groups and groups have collective values. If you pull a child out of school and educate hem privately, you're instilling your private values - then, the kids grows up and has to find some way to fit into the world, which may not be easy. (The religious home-schoolers can do it, because they already have an alternate community.)

So, what you need to do is change the political and economic system. The schools will naturally follow. They always have: schools adapt both their methods and their educanational content to the demands of the society they serve. Education is a means, not an end.

Bold added. I disagree, siamdave. Nothing was taken over, nothing was twisted. Those values have always been the role of public education.

In the Ontario context, as in my links above, both the purpose and the meaning of schooling children and young people was clear from the outset. The ideal that we may have about the value of public education is that, an ideal. It's never been practiced.

And history? Really? What did all of us who went through the Canadian public school system learn about Canada's history? Pack of lies, that's what we learned.

Society needs to reproduce itself, and to teach the value of an inequitable society to the new generations. The education system plays that role just fine.

- you seem to have missed the word 'potentially' - and we did learn a lot of good stuff about history and other things, we just had it spun in a certain way, and a lot of stuff we should have been taught was not. Education is good stuff (the capitalists don't waste their time and money taking over bad stuff), and there is nothing wrong with doing it systemically - it just needs to be under democratic control rather than the control of those who use it primarily for indoctrination.

siamdave, I think we're agreeing. Sorry to have framed my response in a disagreeing tone.

Well there's this too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

According to some of the coverage I read and heard, the decisions made in Texas affect some of the textbooks we use here in Canada, no matter what our provincial ministries or local school boards do.

I don't think there is a top-down or system-wide solution that can fix all of the problems;  in fact top-down anything is going to result in the same indoctrination, just with a different sausage-filling. Kids are always going to run into a percentage of teachers who are control freaks. The flip side is that most run into one or two free thinkers too - and usually it only takes one to light the spark.

The good thing is that schools have more potential for grassroots involvement than most other systems, and there is not always a closed door when it comes to dissent. I think there are fewer choices in some rural areas where parents may have no options other than to pull their kids if they hit a wall, but in the city most of us have the freedom to choose the school we want.

- a random act of civility on babble! - very nice, and thank you, insofar as an apology was hardly necessary, but it was big of you to do it - that is one of the things that makes actual democratic discussion work. No problem, by the way, I have been known to be a bit chippy myself. sans later apology too.

- the thing about home schooling is, a lot of those who do this are pretty far right religious - ah - folks who believe their children are not well-enough indoctrinated in certain beliefs in public schools. It's a thorny question to try to figure at what point even a properly democratic state has some kind of right to protect itself by trying to prevent the brainwashing of children in this way. As it's a thorny question for people simply somewhat out of the current box who protest their children being indoctrinated to believe certain very debatable things about Canada as if they were true. That is, of course, a bit easier, as such people can take steps to pretty effectively counter such false ideas, but the kids still have to put up with peer pressure, as children surely do not much care for those among them who do not conform to the pack standards - not so unlike they will be when they are adults ....

The public school system is designed to seperate the cream, "the cream will rise to the top". The public school system has some benefits but yet it has the ability to stifle creativity in many individuals.  People are not all the same in the way that they learn, but the school system is designed to mass produce a certain outcome. If you don't fit the mold you will have problems and you will learn something about yourself that no one should,  "your not good enough". 

The public school system is all about preparing people for the work world and thats where it falls short. The education system should be modified to instruct things like problem solving skills, but  that would go against the grain of what the business world would require. Too many people thinking about fixing things would become a thorn in the side of those who wish to manage.

  "but the kids still have to put up with peer pressure, as children surely do not much care for those among them who do not conform to the pack standards - not so unlike they will be when they are adults ...."

i think this is considered another very important function of schools right now.  Although there are strides being made against peer pressure, bullying and the like, school still serves to prep kids to the idea that you are rewarded for conforming and trying to fit in, doing whatever ridiculous tasks are asked of you by authority, and punished for doing anything else.

You cite two different problems there. One is peer pressure: the demand of kids that other kids be just like them - or else. The other is the demand by 'authority' - by which i assume you mean teachers and principals - to do what the kids is told - or else. I don't suppose those are similar demands, or similarly motivated. So the kid being subjected to those demands must be pulled in opposite directions. Unenviable.

Anti-bullying efforts by administration have not been notably successful, as far as i know. And bullying is only the most obvious, not the most effective or pervasive, form of peer pressure. What do you propose to do about it that would work better? That would allow the non-conformist student greater freedom and security?

As for authority, you might find that a lot of teachers don't feel they have enough. They can reward a compliant student with high marks and peraise, but how, exactly, can they punish a student for refusing to do the assigned task? Low marks and censure - but the kid who doesn't care about his work doesn't care about that, either. Teachers have no other recourse. They can neither disciple nor throw a disruptive student out of the classroom.

What would be your alternative to 'ridiculous' tasks? What would work better than reward and punishment to enhance student performance? Or is poor performance a good thing? In which case, how do you tell whether they've learned the subject? Should they learn the subject at all? If not, where should kids be all day instead of school?

It's a complicated problem, isn't it?

Look at the student - teacher relationship in any human community at any time in history and you'll see young people expected to respect and listen to their teacher.  Why ?

 - on Green Island, we have different ways of doing most things, including education - for those with a rainy day and looking for something better - Green Island Chap 22 The Hunter River School http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland/ex/gw22a.html

I think that the two problems aren't really that far apart.  One is dealing with adult authority (hierarchy) and the other basically kid authority due to a hierarchy as well and the patterns are similar.  Peer pressure works because of power relations within in the group, a single kid or group of kids determine what's acceptable and what isn't and hold the authority to enact the social and sometimes physical punishment if others don't comply.     A teacher can throw the kid out of the classroom and kids can throw other kids out of the the accepted group.  A teacher can give praise or negative feedback and so can the kids in charge.  

I think that's part of the irony about bullying and peer pressure.  As adults we want it to stop and kids not to do it but they're pretty much just mirroring much of the adult behavior that surrounds them in this culture.   

ElizaQ,

Do you know the rules governing a teacher's use of authority? It's mostly paperwork. You can't touch them, can't yell at them, can't ridicule them, can't make them stand in the corner, can't even suspend them without a formal trial. Kids over 6 are not a bit intimidated by teachers. Kids over 13 often threaten teachers with physical violence. Depending on the school district - different threats apply in upscale schools ("My father will sue your ass...!") While the peer pressure is completely outside of the administration's - and adult society's - control, unregulated; can use all forms of intimidation, force and humiliation learned from popular entertainment.

Also, different outcomes are desired by the adult hierarchy (order, neatness, high SAT scores) and the peer community (gang and/or ethnic unity, or just some kind of fashion instituted by un-grown-up adults outside the education system: entertainers, usually). While adult society is certainly responsible for both the culture and the methods teenagers take on as their own, adults have little or no control over how these things manifest in the school setting.

And, of course, none of that begins to answer the question: What do you suggest as an alternative?

I wasn't really talking about specific outcomes but more a comment on the general pattern or dynamics of power relations within a group.  Of course there are more specific differences and desired outcomes within each group.  Sometimes as you've pointed out they can be at odds with each like for instance adults wanting high scores or academic outcome where within a specific peer group strong academic showing could be a negative.   Neither is just about blaming adults as responsible or adults controlling it.  My main point was that adults have these sorts of patterns and power dynamics in social groups as well.   Kids aren't doing anything a whole lot different then what happens in the adult world. Specifics yes, patterns no not really.  We're talking the basic levels of human social dynamics.    Even groups that are considered non-conforming whether self-identified as such or labeled that way by others have elements of conforming within the specifics of that group.    Adults I think just have more options open to them in terms of the wider world where kids have a much smaller world to have to deal with. They're stuck, for the time they are at school with a much smaller pool of people and options and therefore these basic sort of social and power relations can manifest themselves much more acutely and for the kid feel much more acute because of the smaller 'bubble' so to speak and sometimes with what feels to them like less options for escaping it.      

I just think that it's important to recognize that what kids are doing in regards to things like peer pressure and other social power dynamics within the peer group are just the kid version of what happens in the broader 'adult' world.  

As for what to do about it. Good question. I'm not even sure that it can be changed altogether beyond trying to instill basic principles of tolerance, compassion, civility, caring, equity between different people, dealing with specific acute manifestations (like bullying) and helping kids with the emotional and social tools for dealing with it.  As well as the adults in the scenario not supporting it directly or indirectly.  Like the school adult culture not obviously favoring certain groups over the others for instance and giving those groups more social power.  Like in schools where the 'jocks' and the 'cheerleaders' are the be all and end all of who or what the school is and not only getting  constant praise but special treatment as well.   Maybe I'm just a bit cynical about it because I haven't seen the 'adult' world (generalized) completely conquer or overcome these sorts of dynamics either so to expect their to be some sort of overarching solution or alternative in kid world, without some overarching change in adult world, is bit of of pipe dream.    

Yes, of course. Humans come into the world with nothing - no knowledge, no skills, no power, no physical capability, even to survive. So, of course they depend on adults, are house-trained and socialized by adults; eventually emulate adults. That's biology.  When societies are stable, it all works pretty well - a bit of rebellion here, some allowances there, some established mechanism for coping with intra- and inter-generational friction.

Right at this moment in our history, we have a problem of changing direction. The system we've been supporting the last half dozen generations is failing: no longer serving the needs of the population. One symptom of system failure is increased internal conflict; a struggle among various factions for supremacy. Unfortunately, another symptom of the system going bad (before its failure became evident) was an increasing acceptance - indeed, social approval for - adults who refused to grow up. Like pop stars and sport stars and tv stars: people who are unaccountably rewarded for playing. (There is a whole dynamic behind that, how cultures in decline invest more and more in mass entertainment, but never mind for the moment.) Those immature adults become very accessible, very attractive role models for the young.  Another symptom is decreasiong self-control and increasing emotionalism - which leads to violence - throughout society, and is especially seductive for young males. (Which is its purpose, and that's another factor in the breaking down of the social order.)

Anyway, you see what i'm driving at. Society is a complicated organism, in which parents, teachers and students are all parts, none with any real power to change the course of the society's history. Not by themselves. 

If we could figure out where we want society to go, instead of where it's going now, (which is to hell in a handcart.... imo)  then we could aim the various components of the educational process in that direction. And "we" could do that, because parents and teachers, schol trustees and administrators are all capable of cummunicating, and i think all - okay, most - do have the children's welfare at heart.

As a starting point we should acknowledge that "Learning is not the product of teaching.  Learning is the product of the activity of learners." -John Holt.  Teaching methodology is mostly about figuring out how to make kids want to learn.  Giving them control over their own education and making schools free and democratic institutions, as opposed to carceral and tyrannical institutions, might be a good start.

When?

I mean, before you can participate in a democratic process, don't you need to know what democracy is? So, at what age, and by what method, do we teach this?

The Toronto District School Board is considering paying poor students to stay in school and getting good grades. The idea was floated Sunday by education director Chris Spence on the social networking site Twitter.

Spence wrote: "Should we pay kids in our more disadvantaged communities to do well in school? Perhaps, as a part of a poverty reduction scheme?"

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/18/toronto-cash-for-grades.html#ixzz15fJNFkj2

We could mash this thread up with the "Asians/University" thread for a win:  pay the lazy, party-hearty Canadian students to study.

Normal 0

Floating the idea is okay, because it will generate discussion that, in turn, might produce some useful result.

Actually paying kids for tests and grades is a terrible idea, for several reasons.

Who says higher standardized scores translate into jobs? Only if the jobs exist in the first place, and are open to poor youth in the second, and the youth are both aware of the jobs and motivated to apply, in the third.

It rewards the kids who find test-taking easy, and punishes the ones who don't - who lack confidence or have been badly taught in the past, or need extra help. In fact, rewards the lucky who already have an advantage and further handicaps the unlucky.

It does nothing for the quality or aptness of the teaching in those schools. If there is available money, spend it on books, paints, musical instruments - all the teaching materials that make school better for a wider variety of aptitudes. Spend it on counselling and safe havens. (We don't like to say this, but many children in poor neighbourhoods are abused, neglected, have parents who suffer from emotional problems or addictions, live in substandard conditions, have never been properly nourished, lack basic coping skills....) Spend it on track shoes and soccer balls. Spend it on language enrichment programs. Improve the schooling, and the students who want to stay will benefit.

A better use of money for motivation might be to institute all kinds of prizes, from scholarships for the academically gifted to apprenticeships for the differently abled, trips to historic sites, nature hikes, camp for kids who made the biggest effort; tors of museums, art gallery, science center for special projects; concert and theater tickets for excellent deportment; books, board games and cd's, art and craft supplies... lots of prizes for lots of achievements, so that every kid has a shot at something that will enrich their learning experience.

Rich Gibson,

John Taylor Gatto,

Bowles and Gintis,

Paulo Friere,

Howard Gardner,

the BCTF website,

there are plenty of resources for lefties to look at educational issues.

The political right NOWADAYS is mostly focused on cutting funding to education, privatizing it, testing students to the point that they're driven out of schools, attacking teachers and their unions, carrying out the Shock Doctrine - such as in New Orleans after the hurricane - with such terrible consequences, assisting corporations in their colonization of classrooms, decreasing public space in general, and so on.

When the Nazis established a puppet regime in France in World War II, almost the first thing this regime did was to attack French teachers. "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". Hatred of educators has always been a hallmark of the political right. This applies particularly to hatred of educators that put the interests of children first.

And most do.

It was only really with the humiliation of watching Soviet spacecraft and cosmonauts blasting off into space ahead of them that the USA put so much attention into scientific education for the cold war purposes that that education was put to.

The grim reality of a pillaged educational system, as in the USA, is the awful future that awaits our own educational systems here in Canada if we don't fight back and defend this ... one of our most sacred of all democratic institutions.

They like to accept union wages but denounce unions for other people and citing excessive pay for workers who don't deserve them etc.

In the US it's a case of those who can't do, teach. And those who can do and should teach aren't paid enough.

For rightwing ideologues, education is another one of those expensive public services that needs defunding, defaming and privatizing. And then they can really focus on churning out widgets from class rooms and according to exact specifications.

Oh darn, another thread I missed earlier but I can't help but comment as I have mentioned before on Babble my opinion is the whole school system needs to be bombed and started over again.

First don't measure student performance.  Just teach or provide opportunity to learn.  If the child is not learning then it should be examined why.   You don't have to measure on a scale to see how much percentage a child has learned to know if there is a problem.  Look at it, is it the subject, is it the teacher, the home environment, the peers, the way it is being taught.  Are there behaviour issues that need to be addressed before a child is taught the skill or skills (trying to teach a child that says no is like trying to feed an anorexic person - they want that control you can't make me learn, you can't make me eat).  Then come up with a solution.

Second relax the damn standards.  Kids have to go into grade one reading or else they flunk term one (oh sorry, it is a progress report for term one now, likely because the standards are so high they didn't want to give grades for the first term).  My mother was a primary teacher.  I learned to read at 3, my brother was 7.  Some kids just aren't ready at a certain stage.  If they are ready then teach or expose, if they are not have realistic expectations of when they should be doing something before deciding it is a problem.

How do you know if kids have learned?  Because they can do, they can apply their knowledge.  You don't need to grade or measure or pick out specific tasks that a child does when they are 7 and can pick up a book and read it.  Look they can read.  Prior to the final act when kids struggle you know it, you can see it when they are trying to do something and just can't.  When they are ready to learn something and it just isn't coming to them.  They get frustrated, upset, they keep trying and it's not working.  Any subject can be brought forth in something of interest.  Someone really likes Italy.  So plan a trip.  Have them read about places to visit (reading, history), figure out a timetable to visit places (time, measurement, distance).  Figure out what they need that will be different (social studies).  The list can go on.  After they have learned about Italy sit and talk with them, ask them about the different aspects and how they came to their conclusions.  You will see relatively quickly what they understood and what they didn't.  Even better go on the trip with them.  If there are parts they don't want to do or parts that are not enjoyable either change it to make it enjoyable figure out why and you will see where they are stuck.

When someone is stuck it is not a bad thing, as the school system likes to point out with it's grades and pass fail system.  When someone is stuck it is an opportunity to problem solve, for the teacher, the parent and the child to figure out what to do next.

The last statement is about "enhanced" performance.  Why is what is good enough for the kid not good enough.  Why do we have to make them better?  Some years I learned absolutely nothing.  Other years I learned 2-3 years worth of stuff.  Such is the ebb and flow of life.  My child right now is 6 months old.  He is not crawling, he is not rolling over, he hates tummy time.  He sits okay but not as well as other babies and up until two weeks ago could have cared less about toys though other babies his age were playing with toys ages ago.  I do not care, I am not worried.  Even though these are the building blocks of all learning and everything he will learn is going to be based on what he picks up in the next 2-3 years I don't care.  He is walking like a 10-12 month old right now (ie hanging onto people), he is extremely social and can communicate better than a lot of 2 year olds.  I am not overjoyed at his enhanced learning in these areas just as I am not concerned about the areas he is behind in.  He is learning at his own level.  He is happy, he is smart and he is showing no signs of frustration, anger or upset in the learning process.  I am fairly well versed in development (as teachers should be) so if there is a serious problem I would spot it or if there were issues that he was experiencing I would spot it.  I work with kids with special needs and I hear time and time again, I just knew that something was wrong.  I just knew in my gut.  People have got to learn to trust not only their gut when they know something is wrong but their gut when they know something is right.  So many parents are so worried about if there kid is measuring up, if they are as good or better than other people's kids.  They lose focus on if their kid is okay because they are so focused on if their kid is another kids okay.  Why is there such an emphasis on getting better, being better.  Oh yeah because people have been indoctrinated into thinking that people are only valuable when they do better than what they have done before or others have done.  And they are only valuable when they do good on one scale that all kids are compared with when there should be a hundred scales or a thousand.  Or none at all.

People lose the forest through the trees.  These things that the kids are learning are not tasks in and of themselves, they are building blocks of much larger tasks.  Instead of teaching a task and being so focused on learning the task in one specific way the focus should be on the entire task.  How is this student going to get to the larger task.  I don't care if a child learns to read with phonics, with site words, with animated alphabet.  It is the reading that is the final task.  People get caught up with, well he can't sound out a word.  Well he can sight read 1,000 words maybe he doesn't need to sound them out anymore because he can take words he knows and just put them together.  Oh but we would like him to sound out words.  Focus on the goal and realize that the smaller tasks may help lead them to the larger goal or they may not.

Kids learn, just expose them to the information and they naturally learn but people think kids have to be tested to make sure they are learning the right things in the right way in the right order in a right amount of time.  All beliefs passed to us through the school system.

I think the better question would be "how can we change our schools so we can educate ourselves, the adults about the each child in the system".

According to Mel Hurtig's 1990s book, Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids, there are reasons why kids from better off families have a head start on reading and writing and overall development by as early as kindergarten. Their parents are able to afford to surround them with stimulating environments and provide them with learning experiences most kids in poor families tend not to have. It could be the difference between having access to reading and writing materials, or visiting an outdoor gardens or a zoo. For some kids their first real learning experiences don't begin until kindergarten instead of pre-school or a family vacation or whatever. It's all about life chances as Marx described and as Malcolm Gladwell tells people today.

This is a bit of a misnomer.  If you are talking about parts of the world where there is no school because of poverty and family situations where the family themselves have no access to higher education concepts of course the child will never achieve higher education concepts.  But herein lies the rub.  It is not up to us to take the child away from the family that is just not capable of passing on the information because they don't have the higher learning concepts (or are not passing it on because they don't have the higher level concept that all people are equal and have an equal ability to learn and achieve something in this world) it is up to us to educate the family so that they can learn the higher level concepts themselves and pass this learning onto the their children.

It is the belief of the school system that learning needs to take place by people who are smarter than the family and have the specific steps and strategies that are correct to teach the child A=B=C that the family doesn't have.  I mean the family teaching or helping to teach the child to get to C is not going to work because they don't have the A=B bit that the school does.

What you are talking about is not the cause but part of the equation.  The X factor is the true cause.  The kids are not learning properly not because there is no school.  In fact the reason that there is no school is the same reason that the kids aren't learning at the same rate as other areas with schools - it is because of poverty (which is a huge factor to school success and a huge factor to the number and types of schools available) these kids are not learning to the same extent of other children.  Go figure, this is a concept I learned in sociology.  I was never tested on it and it was only briefly touched on yet it was a concept I heard and thought hmmm, interesting, I will look into this X factor thing and I did.  I probably spent more time looking into causality and X factors than I did on learning the material for the course that I was tested on.

Totally disgusting Snert.  What is with these snipes at the poor?  Chris Spence has a decent idea, why don't you critique that?

Snert, this comment is anti-poor and minimizes/makes fun of racism. Stay out of this thread, and stop making comments like this or you will be suspended.

I'll go, but not before taking a quick moment to clarify:  my comment about "lazy" students had NOTHING to do with the poor, and everything to do with the overall tone of the thread I referenced, in which posters were suggesting that non-Asian students just needed to pull themselves by their bootstraps.  I'd clarify with regard to making fun of racism too, but I honestly have no idea where that's even coming from.

Actually, i'm with you most of the way. Teachers should be allowed to teach - every individual student, in individual ways - instead of do paperwork half the time and try to keep order among too many kids the other half.

I have a whole elaborate educational system in my head, which would probably work for most of the kids, most of the time - which is more than this one is doing right now.

But this is the one we have and it beats all hell out of no public education. You can't take one basic institution out of a society and change it to suit some quite different society - like taking one of the zebra's legs and substituting a cheetah's. It all has to work together; it all has to change together.

School...feh!

I suffered through K to 8 showing up most days to recieve an absolutely substandard education from a bunch of singularly unpleasant nuns and their badly underpaid and bitter minions.  That's where I learned to despise school.  In high school I was in 9 twice and 10 three times without ever actually passing grade 10.  By the end I was truely phobic and rarely showed up.

Got a high school equivelency in a one semester course at a community college, which qualified me for university, where I eventually graduated with reasonably respectable marks, thus demonstrating IMHO that high school was a complete waste of time.  For me education was always a pretty autodidactic process, totally unrelated to school.

Schools introduce a curriculum of state approved subjects that are designed to produce nothing more than human subjectivities who are bound to the state through conditioning. The classroom itself is a microcosm of the wider society, where everyone is led to believe at the earliest age possible that the environment constitutes a level playing field where success is wholly dependent upon the degree of effort applied. The ones who achieve the expected level of understanding within this system of merits and rewards are granted passage to the next stage of life, without ever being prompted to consider the ramifications and reasons with respect to the status of the absent ones who may have began the same journey with them years ago, but have since fallen out of competition. Most will carry the lessons learned from these incubators as templates with which to model the remainder of their existence as they take up their careers and lives.  Some of them become political leaders for the very structure that supervised their development.

I'm glad to see that you did not let school get in the way of your education oldgoat.

One of the greatest challenges of the school system is that students have very unequal educations during the first five years of their lives. The starting line is certainly staggered.

So is the rest of it. Compare the schools in rich and poor neighbourhoods, at any level, or public schools and religious ones; there is a lot of variation. They do all have one thing in common, though: they teach you to read and lead you to the front door of a public library. If you are lucky, as i was, they also give you access to some very good teachers - adults who show you ways of thinking, ways of learning, ways of perceiving the world, that you might not have come up with alone. We can improve universal education, sure. But let's not be too hasty about abolishing it. What's the alternative?

Absentia, who was speaking of abolishing public education and providing an alternative? I certainly wasn't.

Seems to me a good educational issue around which those on the political left could unite is the issue of corporations in the classroom. I see that the Province of Quebec has, for example, banned advertising to children under 13 and i presume that includes the classroom as well.

What with the deliberate underfunding by conservatives, liberals, and others misanthropic neoliberals who hate children, the stampede of the  introduction of new - and invariably proprietary - software and technology in the classroom, and the corporate efforts to privatize ever more public spaces under capitalism .. this would seem to be a no-brainer.

A society that doens't protect its young doesn't deserve to live. And our current capitalist moloch doesn't protect children. It predates on them. A more complete denunciation of capitalism, short of its tendency towards war and mass death, is hard to imagine.

I didn't mean to imply that you had.

Refuge said blow it up and start over - which has some merit, imo. And the thread title suggests something very like. But no practical alternative has been brought forward.

What sort of neoliberal thinking is that? Why would you want to bl*w up a public institution other than to make it private? Or is the idea to "wait for the smouldering ruins to clear" before having to bother answering that question?

I don't see any difference, in practice, between such a view and the view of the child-haters. Maybe you should read what happened in New Orleans where the public system was "bl*wn up" (using the Shock Doctrine that Naomi Klein wrote so eloquently about) and see the horrific consequences of that. 

If we want to get into misnomers and paradoxes, I would say that a formula for free thinking is as good a contradiction in terms as there is. And it is doubly-contradictory because it assumes there is one way of learning.

There are alternative methods out there, and alternative-thinkers within the system, so I don't think it is a matter of re-inventing the whole thing . Neither do I expect though, that a person is going to learn to really think in school, and speaking personally, I probably learned more from school through its bad examples than from its good examples, which is itself a good form of education (it is certainly more memorable).

Frankly, I'd be satisfied if schools were successful in providing everyone with basic literacy and other subjects, and keeping an eye on people's social skills, and possibly having the resources on hand for those who want to do more (although we do have libraries and other places for that).

Yup there are plenty of "alternatives" just across the border. Charter Schools, religious schools, other private schooling, and so on, for starters. It's done phucking wonders for the educational levels of US students. Just look at the data. All sorts of children have been "left behind" thanks to the child-hating legislation in the US. And so on.

Alternatives are typically supported BY the public system, especially for those who "fall between the cracks". That's because the public system has a mandate for ALL children - not just those lucky enough to be ahead of the rest, or rich, or both.

Alternatives within the context of a strongly supported public system? Hell yea. Otherwise, fuggetaboutit.

@ N. Beltov

My point was that there are progressive alternatives and ideas out there, so it is not as if we need to reinvent something new.

I understand what you are saying, and agree with part of it. But it has nothing to do with what I was talking about - except that I think there are limits to what can be provided in a school environment.

I am not sure why you implied that I might be referring to religious schools, but you are quite mistaken.

(edit)

To be clear, when I mentioned social skills I was talking about an initiative in our kids' school to promote respect and self-esteem, and deal with sexism, racism, homophobia, bullying, and other forms of violent and negative behaviour. When I was in grade school the main social skills we were taught was to line up and march into class, and that we would be struck if we didn't follow orders.

A generation before, my dad would have been forced to write with his right hand if my grandmother had not stepped in.

It is far from perfect, but I think some improvement has been made.

Forced "right handedness" is not enforced, AFAIK.

It's true that's there's still some of that "lining up and marching" but from what I've seen, it mostly has to do with showing respect for other students, and teachers, not making a lot of noise in the hallway, etc.. For very young children in primary education, lining up, holding hands, and so on, is a way to keep the children safe ... especially when they're outside, etc. They're also easier to count - which is important.

Are you forming your opinion about the present system based on your sometime unhappy experience in the past? Be careful about that.

Actually I wasn't unhappy at all N. Beltov, and that is not properly any concern of yours, nor is it relevant to this conversation. I don't speculate on whether you have had enough coffee to drink this morning, so perhaps we should just stay on topic.

The point I was making is that school in the past was definitely a bit more authoritarian and backed up with physical force than things are today. Yes, if my grandmother had not stepped in the teacher would have done her best to beat left-handedness out of my father. And I think that although the system we have is far form perfect it has improved.

And regarding an overhaul of the whole system, I think it is more important that students leave with the ability to read and do math (something school SHOULD be able to accomplish but is not) than trying to force upon them the ability to think. That second goal is something a lot of students will get, and which some teachers do inspire. And personally, I would like for schools to foster free thought as much as possible. But you're never going to be able to enshrine it as part of the curriculum, and it doesn't do much good when the whole system is falling apart so badly that kids are leaving school unable to write.

They are leaving unable to write because there is not enough support to help them enough to learn these basics. And other social factors as well, far beyond the ability of the schools alone to address. Why blame the messenger?

Basics like reading and math are great. So is being able to survive in our current, highly technologized society. So is developing a capacity to deal with the truckload of partisan talk - called advertising - that children are increasingly bombarded with. Shall we ignore all that?

"Forcing" upon students the ability to think is a very revealing turn of phrase. Do you have the same venom towards teaching students to think for themselves? To detect partisan messages and distinguish them from statements of fact?

Helping to develop citizens, not zombified consumers, who think for themselves is one of the most noble aims of any educational system. This goes beyond political sectarian views, etc. It is only the most reactionary, anti-intellectual, neocons, Conservative politicians, religious fundamentalists, and other misanthropes who are hostile to to this noble aim.

Where the frack are you coming from? Good grief.

Well clearly you can think for yourself N. Beltov, but I have to wonder how much you use your reading and comprehension skills, because that fiery condemnation and stirring call to duty had nothing whatsoever to do with anything I wrote. In fact, you are accusing me of the exact opposite of what I said.

I thought I understood this idea pretty well. Apparently not. Perhaps you could explain how I should have "properly" understood your meaning.

Read my second-last sentence in #51.

Like I said, people should learn to think for themselves, and I think it would be good for schools to make that possible as much as they can. But critical thinking is certainly not something that can be forced or taught out of a book; it is something most of us have to learn from experience, and some people are most comfortable doing what they are told and NOT learning that part of education.

My point is that school is not designed to be the best place to learn free thinking - at least not as part of the standard curriculum. Plenty of it happens subversively, fortunately, and I don't think that is going to change much. But trying to standardize it isn't something that I would think would be too successful. You are always going to wind up having someone's spin on what "free thought" is.

And the fact is that the more basic job that is not being done - specifically reading and basic comprehension - is probably the most important cornerstone of free thought. If you don't have the words, how far can you get?

Don't know about other provinces but fostering the 'ability to think' is actually enshrined in the curriculum.  Critical thinking, applied thinking etc are integrated within the language and literacy curriculum in Ontario.     Whether it's taught this way by every teacher or taught well by every teacher may be a question but it is there and is expected. 

N. Beltov:   A fairly comprehensive set of quidelines and expected outcomes around "Media literacy' is also part of the language curriculum from K-8 as well.  They include working with different media (technical aspects) as well as analysis of media, messaging, advertising how it works etc etc.   Again it might be not covered that much or not very well by different teachers but it is there. 

ElizaQ

Yes, I hear you. And I presumed we were talking more about political and social awareness rather than basic analysis, though of course one follows on the other.

As you say, the degree to which it is really taught comes down to the teacher. I was lucky enough to have one or two good ones.

And really it only takes one to make the difference.

I had not been aware of any child-hating in this thread. Lots of criticism of the education system as it is now - being geared toward producing good corporate drones rather than actualizing each student's potential. And moving more in that direction with every textbook and computer, every vending machine and advertisement that enters our schools. Most of us don't like that trend.

I'm not a fan of private school or religious school, myself, but neither would i forbid it. Home-schooling or co-op might be a good option for some children who don't fit well within the system. (Gifted and poor, is what i'm thinking of at the moment: being a sensitive kid in a tough school with no music or art program could be a pretty awful experience... There may be other reasons, such as physical frailty.) Yeah, i think creative alternatives could and should exist; that smart, caring people ought to be consulted and that communities ought to be involved in solving these problems. 

Blowing it up is just a figure of speech, meaning radical change.

perhaps you should read more of Paulo Freire, 6079_Smith. Critical thinking is the heart of his teaching methodologies. And he had better results, using his approach, that the orthodox "reading and writing and rithmatic" crowd had with theirs. Seems to me you're just regurgitating some old, worn out, false dichotomies.

Yeah, probably you're right N. Beltov. Thank you for setting me straight. And I should say you have quite the teaching style yourself.

Sounds to me like you should start your own school, or at least get on the board where you can show us how we should be doing it right.

Some links worth investigating include ...

Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

BC Teacher's Federation on Social Justice [63]

Marxism and Education [64]

The Little Education Report [65]

The one above is Canadian. Rich Gibson is an American with some good links, like ...

Rich Gibson's Rouge Forum [66]

Rich Gibson - Education for a Democratic Society [67]

and, of course

OUR SCHOOLS, OUR SELVES [68] associated with Rabble. ca supporter, founder ... the CCPA. Hoo-rah!

@ N. Beltov

Thank you. Interesting links.

I think there are a couple of important distinctions between formal schooling and critical thinking (and political awareness in particular). First, grade school may be a good place to learn critical thinking, but it is hardly the only place and definitely not the best place. I would venture to say that you get a far better lesson in critical thinking by experiencing or seeing injustice than you ever do in a classroom. Besides, you don't need to be literate or educated to have a sophisticated understanding of injustice and oppression.

Secondly, the politics that shape our schools are the same politics that shape our government and the rest of our society. You have political goals? You can bet that there are others there with their own agenda. The only difference is that you will notice (if you have ever been to many school board meetings) that the bad ones throw their weight around even more, I suspect because they realize they are big fish in a very small pond.

Basically, I am not expecting an overthrow of our educational system, and frankly, I am pleasantly surprised that there has been as much positive change as there has been. Even so, I think the real work of teaching students to think for themselves and see things from different perspectives will always be done by the minority of teachers who do find a way to do that work over top of the regular curriculum.

Another important point to remember is that anyone who thinks that education begins and ends at the school doors is at a distinct disadvantage. I don't expect more than the basics from school because in my mind it is the foundation (or perhaps the mortar) - not the whole structure.

To see school as the place where all political awareness is learned is no different than seeing it as a factory that churns out workers. It's just differently-shaped widgets.

I did notice in Freire's wiki listing that his most subversive act - since it is the crime for which he was arrested, accused of treason, and deported - was to teach people the "orthodox" skill of reading and writing. Those generals may not have understood class analysis, but they certainly recognized a more fundamental threat when they saw it.

You mean like this?

Perhaps the criticism many are expressing here of the current political indoctrination of students is not so much a criticism of indoctrination, per se, but that students aren't getting the right kind of indoctrination.

Way to cherry pick a sentence out of context.  So you disagree also that Canada teaches it's student's lies? 

Very Freirian. Or Marxian. Or both.

Freire also empowered his students or empowered them to empower themselves. It was reading and writing with a purpose. And that purpose was to change their world for the better, to become truly subjects in their own lives. This was the radical part. There were plenty of literacy projects in Brazil at the time - but Friere's success scared the Generals.

Learning to think for yourself, being empowered citizens rather than passive consumers have to do with more than "indoctrination". They have to do with what sort of society, what sort of "democracy" we want, whether we play an active role in social life or whether "our betters" decide these things for us. it's about way more than the content of learning; it also has to do with putting a beat down on banking concepts of education. See, for example, Freire. 

It's been a pleasure reading your analysis N.Beltov.  Thanks for sharing.  I hadn't heard of Freire before.

- given the extremely misplaced faith most people seem to have in the mainstream media - including most 'progresesive' types in the CBC, one would have to wonder somewhat about how well things like 'critical thinking' or 'media literacy' are actually taught. I suspect there is something of an indoctrination going on here - "Our media are just about the best in the world - but boy, we sure need to think critically about media in countries like Iran or China or other places we don't like..." and etc.

There was an incident in PEI in the 80s or thereabouts when a language arts teacher tried to show his students a film about fundamentalist religion in the US (he had already shown one from 'their' side explaining what wonderful well-meaning people they all were - the second questioned this view) - the principal (a fundie himself) said no way, and eventually the teacher got fired. At one point the principal said something like "These kids are in high school and they'll think what they are told - they can think for themselves when they get to university.'

But of course, if you are well-conditioned to 'think' as you are told by the time you get to university, the chances of your breaking out of that pattern are pretty small - and it showed at UPEI, where I went, with the desire of the students to memorize and regurgitate, and the uncertainty and even fear most showed when a certain environmental prof expected a bit of thinking.

An English teacher there, when I wrote a short essay explaining why I thought I should not have to take a course in remedial grammar when my English was fine and there were other courses I'd rather be using the time for, gave me a D and told me my job was to do what I was told, not question orders.

The kind of 'critical thinking' fostered in at least one Cdn university - and I expect, from the lack of awareness and apathy evident across our great nation, in many others.

for RP and others who may be interested in reading more about Freire ...

Biographical Information and general comments.

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was a Brazilian educator and founder of critical pedagogy. Freire could be described as being both a Christian and a socialist and saw no contradiction between these views.

Godonoo: Paulo Freire's philosophical stance is made up of a configuration of existential thought (i.e. humans in the process of building), phenomenological thought (humans building their consciousness as intentionality), Marxist thought (humans living in the drama of the economic conditioning of the infrastructure and the ideological conditioning of the superstructure) and Hegelian philosophy (i.e. every human, as self-consciousness, is part of the common experience, until s/he raises him/herself towards Science, through dialectics, so that what is "in itself" comes to be "in itself and for itself").

Godonoo: Freire's thinking flows from his life experiences and it is a synthesis of many strains of thought which do indeed lead him to the conclusion that education must lead to political liberation.

"In terms of actual pedagogy, Freire is best-known for his attack on what he called the "banking" concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. He notes that, "it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power" (Freire, 1970, p. 77) " (Wikipedia entry)

Secondly, Freire wrote about the necessity of a deep reciprocity characterizing the teacher-student relationship. ""Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously students and teachers" (Freire, 1970, p. 72). Freire wants us to think in terms of teacher-student and student-teacher - that is, a teacher who learns and a learner who teaches - as the basic roles of classroom participation. " (Wikipedia entry) The educator must be humble enough to be inclined to relearn that which they think they already know through interaction with the learner.

Godonoo: Paulo remains a father of philosophy, whose reflections assist scholars in explaining the process of humanization which educators confront on a daily basis. Paulo Freire did this by encouraging scholars to reflect on our ontological vocation as subjects in the process of humanization. Freire reminds us of the presence of ideology in all thought and thus, the need to expose these ideologies in out, educational enterprises.

Some concepts from Freire:

Godonoo: Above all, the emphasis that Freire places on dialogue as an essential tool in his methodology and as a criterion for assessing the oppression or openness within a given political structure is evidence of the extent to which Freire esteemed inter-subjectivity.

Godonoo: The term conscientization and the attention that Freire pays to human states of consciousness have often exposed him to the charge of idealist, a dreamer who seeks to change social reality by a simple change of human consciousness. It is fair to say that reflection upon one's consciousness and group consciousness is an essential feature in Freire's thought and methodology.

Godonoo: It Is significant to stress that Freire's constant probing of human consciousness and appearances led to the discovery all over the globe of the social conditioning of consciousness and the power of thinking subjects to act on their own behalf.

From Godonoo, passim. Reflection on his experiences and education , on every job he undertook, was always linked to action and characterized Freire's entire adult life. We could say that the emphasis on reflection in the learning to become teachers is a Freirean idea. In this case the action is to become good teachers. Freire was already a good teacher. Etc.

"... the only way to ensure that you are truly free to think for yourself is to practice intellectual self-defence. The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire called this conscientização, which he defined as "learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality." "The Importance of Intellectual Self-Defence", Clay McLeod, p. 15, Social Justice Newsletter, BCTF, Winter 2009.

There are many educational institutions around the world named after Freire: at UCLA, in South Africa, Spain, Malta, Finland and, of course, in Brasil. He has been compared to the Argentinian revolutionary and doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Poems were written in Freire's honour. Prosper Godonoo in a Tribute to Freire's influence on African scholars quotes the following:

Ode to Paulo Freire "This Path Less Trod"

Let it be known
That here walked a man.
Steady in gait
The world his zone.

Clear of purpose,
He trod through the fire
Gathering wisdom,
Disdaining the mire.

Let it be known
That here passed a man
Riding the storm,
Bolts in his hands;

Slaying the myths,
Laying low the veil,
Exhorting the truth,
Unhinging the nail.

Let it be known
That here came a man With
shield and sword,
Cutting through stone.

Our knight came with light,
Showing ways less hard, He
stayed the course through On
this path less trod.

General Comments:

1. We live in a society in which it is controversial to be an advocate for social justice. When we think about it, this is actually quite strange. "It may seem ironic that one has to advocate for social justice, but one cannot assume that an idea or cause will be embraced because it is just, fair, or compassionate. We as a society often put self-interest and personal gain ahead of compassion and the communal good." (Teaching for Social Justice, p. 5)
2. Freire addressed this problem head on. It was his belief that education is not neutral. "It either served to help children conform to society's norms and culture or it could "become the 'practice of freedom', the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in and transform their world." (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) " quoted in handout "Using the BCTF social justice lens to focus our work" .
3. It ought to be said, and said very clearly, that it is probably easy for a teacher to imagine that they are applying Freire's ideas when, in fact, the opposite is the case. Related to this is the mistaken idea that Freire's ideas can be reduced to methodologies that can be applied in some routine or automatic way in the classroom.

Freire's influence on current curriculum:

student involvement in the creation of their own curriculum. Freire's teachers enter into a dialogue with their students, find out what is important to them, and facilitate discussion and learning. " Friere's teachers are mirrors who reflect the students' reality rather than pedagogues who impose their own, often meaningless or irrelevant, reality on the students." Sluyter, p. 20
A Freirian-inspired video curriculum for at-risk high-school students. Describes a three-year pilot project, in a high school on a Navajo reservation, using a video curriculum based on the philosophy of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Discusses the philosophy, development, and implementation of this curriculum. See references Squires & Inlander.

Quotations:

"Silence is the prime indicator of oppression." quoted in Teaching for Social Justice, p. 5

"Each day be open to the world, be ready to think; each day be ready not to accept what is said just because it is said, be predisposed to reread what is read; each day investigate, question, and doubt"
(Politics, p. 181).

For Freire, it was essential "to read the world before reading the word". "The question for me was how to put these two kinds of 'readings' together... Why am I hungry today? Because I don't have food. Why don't I have food? Because I don't have a job. Why can't I find a job?... Each question proposes another, and in providing different kinds of answers (the learner) begins to unveil the raison d'etre for certain kinds of phenomena." (Otchet)

"There is no text without context," he insisted repeatedly. Using "generator words" which express the learners' "actual language, their anxieties, fears, demands and dreams", Freire rooted reading in daily life, critically discussing the meaning of a word before analyzing it as a "graphic symbol". (Otchet)

And those are all political questions (i.e., what political doctrine does one want taught in schools?).

Thanks N.Beltov.  Very inspiring.  I need to read that over a few more times.

The truth is not a political doctrine.  What's wrong with asking for that and then letting the cute young uns' make up their own mind.

Yes, a doctine of empowerment versus a doctrine of passivity, for example. It's more than ideas but also what is done with those ideas. And it is also about "whose" ideas.

If a person only understands banking concepts of education then all this may sound very alien. Freire is now very mainstream, in fact, since the technology available to young people makes the monopoly of knowledge by teachers highly doubtful. The radical and democratic heart of Freire is something that many are uncomfortable with; the idea of empowering illiterate people fills many, and not just Brazilian generals, with fear and concern. 

Too bad.

 I have limited experience to what is actually taught vs what is expected to be taught though during the next few years I'll be getting a better idea (at least one school) due to a project I've started to work on, where part of it will be occuring in the classroom with a variety of teachers and grades.  One of the main things I have to do is work with the current curriculum.  It's been quite interesting so far and have been quite surprised at some of things that are in there and how it's set up.  It's quite different then when I was in elementary school. 

 While I don't doubt that some teachers might just be teaching that "our media is the best in the world' if they did just that they wouldn't come close to meeting the expectations and outcomes that are outlined.   The 'media literacy' component of the language curriculum covers way more then just msm news media.  It looks at all types of media and part of it is working with media as well as creating and working in various forms of media including the internet.  For instance I chatted with a couple kids about how they use the net (grade 4 and 5s) and they informed me that the net is good to get info from but you have to be careful and know what you're reading because of bias and some sites are just trying to sell you things and those aren't always that great for info cause you know when people are selling stuff they try to make it sound really, really great and sometimes just make stuff up."  I asked where they learned this and they looked at me funny and said in school of course "duh".    That is a form of media literacy. 

Another component is technical media skills.  In one of the classes I worked with when something is happening that they want to record two students are tech volunteers for the day.  Their job is to take pictures and then upload them onto the computer and organize them.    The teacher also works with her students to create information posters for some of the events that happen in the school.  It was pretty neat to watch that process occur.  Not only did they learn about how to convey information and what information was important they also learned about things that were happening in the community.  

I know another class spent time during the recent municipal elections looking at the information that the different candidates put out.  Teaching kids to learn and think about things like rhetoric, substance vs fluff and how political information is conveyed through print and visual mediums as well a generally just becoming aware of the political process and what issues are being talked about in the political arena in their community. 

Literacy Foundations in BC, for example, can be found here. See also the pdf directly. [83]

@ N. Beltov #65

I'm not disagreeing with that; I know that real education is a lot more than basic skills

My only point is that if you had to break down the functions of a formal school system I would say those basic skills are probably the most important part - certainly the foundation of everything else - and when we have kids leaving school not being able to read there is a much more basic problem than encouraging them to think and interpret. That, I think comes a bit more naturally for those who are so inclined.

By contrast, seeing discrimination and injustice will teach you a lot of things; it will not teach you long division for when your calculator batteries run out.

And when it comes to our social and political systems, school is probably one of the ones where we can have the most direct impact if we choose. Parents can be in the classroom if they choose, talk to teachers directly, get on the parent council, the school board, take their children to another school, home school, or simply keep engaged with what their children are learning and expose them to what is missing or needs to be corrected.

I know it is not quite as easy in isolated areas where people can't simply take their kids somewhere else, but the fact is if you aren't teaching your kids then it is not the school which is failing and indoctrinating.

Also, I think it is good to expose kids to progressive political ideas, but it is more important that they also learn to think and choose that for themselves. I would be kind of disappointed if my kids grew up to be young conservatives, but if that is what they choose it it still better than having them wind up a carbon copy of me and not understanding why.

skhoolz=failz

emergent self learning=WIN

Its time to destroy the prussian model folks, its on borrowed time, also see this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

PS Beltov you forgot Illich, the original deschooler

It's hard to have much to say against teachers in public school doing the things you describe - but the kids they turn out are the ones who later face more serious indoctrination in high school and through the mainstream media. I suspect most teachers are well-meaning, and think they are doing a very good job, but they're a central part of the indoctrination stream too, unfortunately, even if unwittingly - they are a central part of instilling the 'assumed' things that later are beyond questioning - Canada is a great democracy. Economics is complicated and best left to experts - but our experts are really, really smart people doing the very best job for Canada and we really don't need to worry about them. Our government is the best in the world. The media are to be trusted - they are a central part of our great democracy, and really look out for 'our' interests. Things like this that simply never get questioned by most people in later life, that they learn to not question from their very first days in front of the television, and then through public school, and even in university. For instance the example you give, about kids being taught to question what they read on the internet - that is fine of course, and useful - but why aren't they told at the same time that the Canadian media is owned by very wealthy people, and the interests of very wealthy people are somewhat different than the interests of ordinary people, and sometimes you need to look in other places besides the mainstream media for other points of view that might be important? Perhaps because the same people that spread spin and gatekeep through the MSM are the same people who control political parties, and thus control the policies of what gets taught - and not taught - in the education system. Most of it is fine - but there are a few very glaring, and very important, things not taught that should be.
I have a lot more here, if you're interested in getting out of the rabbit hole - They're Building a Box - and You're In It  http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.htm . It would be interesting to see what the reaction would be if you approached any of the 'authorities' you answer to and suggested anything along these lines.

The link doesn't work for me. 

Also why are you assuming that I'm in the rabbit hole or is 'you' a general you and about generalized people in rabbit holes and not directed specifically at me.  Not annoyed or anything, just curious as to where the assumption comes from.   I find the authority comment interesting as well.  What's to say that I'm not actually one of the 'authority' figures that's been asked to come in and help change and develop some ways of actually changing the ways and whats of how education happens in the school.  :)   Part of that process though is getting an understanding of what is already expected to be taught (curriculum) and what and how it's already being taught without falling into a trap of just assuming it's this way or that way already and pushing forward with something not based in reality. 

Fixed link:

http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.html

Thanks Unionist.  I should have realized it just needed the 'l'.  

Here's another take on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

As I said, I think we have plenty of ideas and alternatives to choose from.

Though again, I think the important thing is not so much overhauling the whole system to make it serve our purposes (which isn't likely to happen anytime soon, and certainly not quickly) but looking after those people in the system who do inspire kids to think. And of course, doing our own homework.

Fortunately you don't have to change the whole system. It only takes one.

If we were working on it I would agree with you however I deal with the school system on a regular basis and they are not interested in change, not even on a small level.  I have had to fight to get even a teacher to send home the work that will be done the next day in class so that one of the kids that I work with who can learn with his tutor but can't follow the same lesson when it is taught to a group.  This would enable him to be able to learn what the other kids will learn the next day in the group, because he has been pre taught the lesson, he would start to understand how to listen in a group and then allows him to follow up with the worksheets the teacher hands out instead of being pulled away from the class to be taught again.  They finally agreed after two years two months ago and since then we received 3 sheets.

I see a definite lack of wanting to change and this is with a teacher who is great, she is enthusiastic, cares about the kids and is very experienced at teaching the masses so her kids get good grades.  Yet she can't get the support to be able to do the right thing for the one kid.

I do not want to make it private.  Just the opposite.  Some good quality private schools such as Waldorf have systems which work for every child, world wide.  Even in South Africa during the aparteid when white children and children of colour went to the same school and currently is in Israel with a similar situation.  This should be available to every child publicly funded. 

This is my problem.  Kids think, they may not learn to read, or write or do math but they do think in ANY situation and how they think is influenced by their surroundings, which for more than half of their waking hours at this point is school.  If school just taught reading and math, then I wouldn't care.  It is what they teach beyond that that is the reason I think that the school system should be bombed (and yes I did mean that metaphorically) and replaced with another system that "thinks" better.  The school system itself thinks like this - it is good to test well and bad to test poorly.  You are a good and worthwhile person in the eyes of the authority figures if you can report well back what has been reported to you and what they want to hear.  If you are good at social skills that is noted but not important A's in a classroom are much more important.  You don't have time to learn individualized things about a topic because there are 30 children who need to pick up A,B,C so you have to do extra work on top of A,B and C to be able to learn what is of interest outside of that.  These are just a few things and if you think I am talking about the student I am not, I am talking about the teacher (if you read it as the student please go back and read it as the teacher is a good and worthwhile person if etc).  This is the system and the reason that the above statements read the same for the teachers and the students is because these things are the system that they are exposed to and everyone starts to think like the system.

Ever hear the saying any man can be a father it takes a Dad to bring up a child.  Any school can teach reading and math, it takes a real education system to be a community to a child (and teachers etc).

You say some children are more comfortable doing what they are told but unless you see the alternative you are speaking only of children in the current system, go to an alternate system and see what their students who like doing what the are told are doing and thinking.  I agree with you that schools are not designed to be the best place to teach free thinking but that doesn't mean they themselves can't be an environment to foster free thinking by being free thinking themselves.  Imagine if teachers were in an environment where they were allowed to think freely and teach in a way that made sense to them (both in methodology and things like class sizes), being able to read and write would very easily follow and if it wasn't working for a kid it would be easily adapted to that child when you brought in the proper resources.

If you think a child's ability to think critically is enshrined in the literacy program I beg you to look at what is actually being promoted.  The system itself wants teachers to be able to grade such papers, true critical thinking would be pass/fail (either they did the work or they did not or if they are looking at a thesis, everything revolved around the thesis or it did not) not well this idea is better than that idea that is put across when grading is involved.  It is much easier to site and answer questions on mainstream ideas because they fit into a typical framework but if you are thinking outside the box your grade will be lower because you aren't following the grading syllabus.

Critical thinking is also hampered by introducing concepts to early promoting propaganda.  My mother was so angry they made canadian explorers  part of the province wide ciriculumn in grade one.  She said what am I going to do, say this is Jaques Cartier, he came and slaughtered the FN.  If you have thought these explorers were cool people from grade one when you get to be of the age you can understand what truly happened you will already have been indoctrinated and critical thinking will be harder.  Same goes for media.

I don't know if critical thinking skills are best taught by the school but I do know that exposing a child to a school system that is critically thinking itself rather than the one right now (that is not critically thinking/ free thinking) is more important than directly teaching it. 

BTW I don't think the school should be overhauled for political reasons to answer political questions I think it should be overhauled to allow for the system to provide an environment of adaptability to every student, to critically think about itself and be open to new ideas so it can use the critical thinking.

In a social context (as opposed to the context of the natural sciences), determining what is "truth" is inherently a political question.

@ Sven

Good point, and I agree. Though I would add that in the context of free thought, truth is also a subjective and personal question.

My points came about due to Sven @ #63 using Maysie's post @ #9 and taking it out of context to dispute that we're taught lies about history.  You can call that subjective all you want.  I ain't having no truck with it.

@ Revolution Please

Actually I wasn't speaking to your dispute so much as the general issue. Excuse me if it sounded like I was.

Although there are some clear and factual truths it is up to each person to determine his or her own values. There is no free thinking without that.

- a bit of both, I guess...

You seemed to be talking, here and earlier, about the way we are supposed to believe things work in our society - everybody doing their best, for the best good of all, etc. The high school civics course stuff. I am one of those who do not believe this idealistic type scenario - I think it is a bill of goods, actually, as we are being controlled by a wealthy elite for *their* good, not 'ours' - the struggle for some kind of real democracy was making good headway until the 60s or thereabouts, but since the neocons got serious about taking over in the 70s, we've been pushed to the edge and aren't far from going over. They can't talk about this openly, of course, so the lies about what they are doing must be maintained. Countless individuals are, of course, doing their best - but the system is designed to divert all efforts into something harmless to the neocon control of everything. The *real* point of school is not to create intelligent, aware, engaged citizens, as they tell you, that's about the last thing wouldbe feudalist lords really want, it is quite the reverse - to create citizens who can't actually think that well at all, who are quite used to the idea of going somewhere every day and doing what they are told without asking questions, who believe and obey the 'authorities' without asking any hard questions, etc. Children are taught that the way to get approval from the teacher is to do as they are told, without asking (unsolicited) questions - you have that attitude well-instilled in you during 10-15 of your most formative years, when the 'blank slate' of the new human brain is getting programmed, and it gets pretty hard to break away and actually start thinking for yourself and questioning the 'assumed' values you have absorbed during these years when you get out of school on your own. There are always exceptions, of course, and always will be, but the rulers can deal with a few misfits as long as most people are properly accepting of the way things are and do as they are expected. The discussion is long and full of caveats, of course, and many teachers are certainly good people doing their best to teach with no idea that they are part of the indoctrination of children, which is why I suggested the book, where I get into these things in some detail.

- I guess the kind of thing you were talking about is the kind of thing I expect a consultant of some sort would be asked to do, after which s/he reports back to those who hired him/her and they decide what they're going to do. I would also think that if you were one of the education-related 'authority figures', you would not need to get a first hand look at what is expected to be taught, you should know that kind of thing already ...  I always stand to be corrected, of course, no offense intended.

At the risk of being accused of 'spamming' again, I have written a book called Green Island in which I offer a fictional version of the way I think a true 'social democratic' kind of society would be organised - the main chapter where I get into some detail on education is here - Hunter River School http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland/ex/gw22a.html .

School District officials are trying to come up with new strategies to deal with bullying of Grade 9 students at Saint John-area high schools.

District 8 schools are adding new measures this year to better protect Grade 9 students from incidents of so-called "rookie-ing" or hazing.

The initiations can range from marking the letter "R" for rookie on someone's arm or face to committing physical assault.

Keillor Irving, a Grade 12 student, said the controversial tradition is intimidating for students new to high school.

"I've seen kids come in completely covered from face to neck, in permanent marker, and that's sad," Irving said.

Irving said the situation seems to have improved at Saint John High this year.

He credits that to the new staggered start to classes with Grade 9 students getting a full day by themselves to adjust to their new environment.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/09/16/nb-high-sch...

absolutely agree!!!

Children who immigrate to Canada after the age of nine are far more likely to drop out of school and never go back, a new study suggests.

Researchers looked at the census data of more than 100,000 new Canadians who immigrated before the age of 18.

The study showed a link between educational achievement and the age at which a child learned English or French.

Miles Corak, a University of Ottawa labour economist, led the study. He says children who came to Canada before the age of nine performed well in school - in fact they often did better than their domestically born peers.

We can't

No it isn't

No it isn't

You're right, Mike.  Public schools are a terrible idea.  Let's return to the days where literacy is reserved for those who can pay for it.  Let's make sure that the next generation of kids are not only not indoctrinated, but completely ignorant as well.  That'll fix it.

Don't teach kids to read, teach them to question what they read

I love George.  He does irreverence so well. 

I suppose I'm being picky here ... but there's more to the late George Carlin than that and I think you know it. His genius, like the genius of many before him, was also in telling the uncomfortable truth while making the audience laugh. Shakespeare had his fools say the wisest things. Great comics like Carlin are what I'm tempted to call "masters of contradiction". Anyway, if Carlin was a teacher then he would have been a Frierian (Paulo Friere) ... of that I have no doubt. And he would have been a great teacher.

Because they're so literate and un-indoctrinated by the time they leave high school. Public schooling produces the type of subject that power requires for the functioning of society. Essentially the power [economic, government, corporate] taxes the population in order to direct the proceeds into state run organizations who's task is to turn out loyal, obedient, barely literate subjects, who start out in life at the earliest possible age fearing and depending upon the representatives of power, the teachers, principals, superintendents, and in a mostly bygone era, the sisters, brothers, priests, bishops and their counterparts etc, that had previously run these institutions.  The classroom represents the jail cell, and the detention room represents an area of solitary confinement away from the general population. The conditioning is so pervasive, that we see it as the right of everyone to be equally immersed into the same K-12 mind conditioning program regardless of the outcome. And leftists are so loathe to criticize public education because most of the positions engaged in these tasks are unionized.

@ SJ

Or you could take exactly the opposite interpretation from that - school is a perfect place for kids to learn about oppression because it has so much power over them. 

Or more accurately - HAD. In that respect, I might say  kids aren't getting quite as good an education nowadays (at least not in our kids' school) because there is virtually none of the humiliation, intimidation, discrimination and violence nowadays that I saw on a regular basis as a kid. 

Did I enjoy it, and would I want any other child to go through it? Absolutely not, but it was an important education. 

I recognize all the dynamics you are talking about (who doesn't?) but it is far from the most important factor. Schools aren't the same from division to division or even from classroom to classroom. What you describe sounds a lot like a PInk Floyd album I heard once, but not so much like what I see in our school. 

In fact, I'd say it is far more of a problem that some administrators don't keep enough impartial order, and instead let themselves be swayed by parents who happen to get in their faces the most. Kids are not stupid, and they realize that schools only have so much power over them, and that in many cases they are going to get passed through the system no matter what they do or do not do.

And also, contrary to the notion of school as all-controlling, in reality it is a system stretched to the breaking point by underfunding, yet dealing with more students who are ESL and special needs (a very GOOD thing, but one which should be given the proper resources). About a quarter of the instructors  in our school on any given day are volunteers like myself. If there was a secret meeting to train us in how to brainwash and manipulate I must have missed the memo. 

We put our kids into the system with the understanding that we might take them out at any time. Frankly, I am keeping a much closer eye on the possibility of bullying from other students than I am on evil teachers. I am not saying bad teachers don't exist, because I know they do, but the reality is not quite as you describe it.

We could interpret schools as being the perfect place to learn about oppression, if that is what schools were actually doing.

Schools reflect the society, just as the society imposes itself upon any other institution, public or private.  The fact that schools are somewhat better nowadays, but not entirely, at removing disruptive influences from the more important work of producing docile subjects, is in itself a reflection of increased incarceration rates and sprawling prison systems that we see outside the school walls.  Places are set aside everywhere for non-conformity.

No, they're not exactly all the same, but the curriculum in every case is approved by a central educational department of government, which like every other arm of government, are themselves extensions of the economic power. 

I suspect they hold them annually....in conjunction with news media organizations, advertisers, government and corporate officials, etc.

Even home schooling requires the approval of government.  It just makes you responsible for delivering the approved curriculum at home, complete with examinations verified by the education authority.  It's the narrative of school that requires questioning and evaluation...the approved narrative that power permits and insists upon its transmission to young minds.

Hmm...

Well never mind that even in my day, we had no problem going beyond the set curriculum, even in subjects like history and literature. 

And never mind that any students who want to think for themselves (and believe it or not there are teachers who provide that inspiration) are free to go to the library or go online and take charge of their own education.

I am afraid I don't understanding what problem you have with learning reading and writing, mathematics, science, and even the rudiments of critical thinking.

Because if homeschooling is just as bad I assume it's not the requirement of keeping set hours and a certain order that you find most offensive.

And sorry, but to say that you don't like a curriculum simply  because it is set by the government is not reason enough. 

Frankly, I am glad my kids get the chance to socialize with other people who don't have the same values and approach to things as we have at home. Even more than the curriculum and the regimen, it is the best preparation I can think of for life in the real world.

But what other kind of world is there?

The cloistered one.

I'm not saying that I don't think school should be as supportive and progressive as possible, but there is also value in being exposed to people who have different ideas, and different ways of doing things, since that is a challenge that most of us will have to learn how to deal with sooner or later.

I'm a huge fan of public schools and more diversity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=BFa&list=FLaPBuZZTrmsCeq5_X3sNmFA&lf=plcp 

Changing Education Paradigms - Ken Robinson 

one of my many favs

Closing for length.