#it's so. infuriating thinking of if i had education from a more developed country.. i'm naturally intelligent.

[awed-frog]

Hey, I saw your post about unschooling and have a question. I'm training to be a teacher and enjoy it an awful lot. I have a great deal of respect for the profession and think it's an important job but have seen a number of Americans share horror stories about school- how they wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the summer holidays 17 years after leaving school thinking they'd forgotten to do their homework, talking about how school has no merits but to prepare children for a life of /1

work under capitalism and that fear is the underlying mechanism which makes the whole operation work and the school to prison pipeline. Now, I don't dispute that there are things we could do differently. (I also have no affiliation to the US and think of it mostly as a failed state but that's a separate issue.) But? am I insane to think that free and compulsory schooling is a good thing? Cause it's the only way to get mass literacy and therefore... access to art, critical thinking, history....

Hi, first of all kudos for training as a teacher! What a great job, congrats!

As for your question, yeah - it’s a complicated issue, and the one system I know well is my own, so I can only offer a half-assed opinion here, but if you’re insane, then so am I, because compulsory education for a number of years (ideally up to sixteen)? Yeah, that’s definitely the way forward.

Now, obviously there are some parents out there who want to (or need to) homeschool and do a great job, but I believe that’s a very small minority, and that homeschooling should still be monitored in some way to check that kids are okay and are actually learning something.

Beyond the obvious, which is access to basic literacy, I believe there are two big reasons why good, free and compulsory education is absolutely fundamental:

It shows kids their family is not the entire world and the way they do things at home is not universal. For lucky kids, this ‘simply’ means learning more about others, discovering other point of views, and learning to relate to different people; but for unlucky kids, it’s 100% necessary to get them in contact with the outside world so they can see what their parents do is not normal and hopefully teachers can also realize those kids need help. The idea a random adult (because if you have biological children, you’re literally that: a random adult, nobody ever checked to see if you’re fit to raise kids, and in some countries nobody asks if you need help either) can keep a child at home for eighteen years or more, strictly control their access to the outside world, and tell them whatever about anything...that’s terrifying, tbh, and 99% of the time people who actively want to do this do not have their child’s wellbeing in mind.

Another thing is that even in superficially non-abusive situations, the decision not to follow a normal curriculum can have devastating consequences. As flawed as it can be, school is meant to give you an idea of all the things you can possibly learn and help you understand what it is you’re good at and interested in. But as an unsupervised parent/teacher, or - even worse - an unsupervised faith-based school, you get to decide from the start what matters and what doesn’t, what a kid should be learning and what should be ignored. In the long run, what this means is that you’re making it more difficult for your child to leave you - and I mean, this is difficult for any parent but something every child must at some point do. So a homeschooled kid, or someone who grew up in a strict religious or ideological web, ends up being 100% dependent on his family or community for a job. If you’re taught no literature, no math, no basic science (and if you’re told universities are sinful, or government propaganda, or not for the likes of you) - how the hell are you going to survive in the world without your family? So this is a subtler form of abuse, but abuse nonetheless. And public school, for all its faults, gives a fighting chance to every kid to have the life he actually wants, and not the one his parents chose for him. 

So, yeah, I would change a lot about schools and as a hormonal new mom I’m daydreaming about homeschooling my kid in a darling little home-made classroom full of kittens and terraria (and hopefully move to the country and raise goats and forget about society entirely, because look at this mess), but I still believe compulsory education protects children and helps children to develop their full potential. This is why it’s so infuriating to see American Manichaeism at work on this issue - how the reaction to a bad system is homeschooling, unschooling, religious schools, and not teaching kids at all (I know I mention this, like, once a week, but I’m still shocked by this new idea Black kids shouldn’t learn math because math is now violence or something). Bad systems need fixing, but the very opposite of a bad system is not necessarily a good system. And what’s dangerous rn is that social media are connecting all sort of extremists to one another, so a common response to those unschooling problems I keep seeing are more insane parents chirping ‘Oh, don’t worry, my son is 14 and doesn’t know the days of the week! Just plays COD 24/7, but it’s fine! He will learn the alphabet when he’s ready!’ and that’s terrifying, it’s honestly so easy to fall into a hole these days and just keep falling, I was talking about this the other day with my partner and how I truly miss the days we had facts, you know?, real facts you could base an opinion on and have an argument about, whereas now 90% of the heated discussions I have with people is just us throwing links at each other and if you want to believe kids are better off living upside down inside a giant teacup, I’m sure you can find an ‘expert’ who’ll support that view and statistics you can use and entire communities offering tips on how to build giant teacups and ‘My toddler loves his teacup! Here is how to customize it so it won’t look girly!’ and my God. 

(Man I hope we’ll all be alright, what a dystopic timeline this is turning out to be.)

Anyway never mind all this noise, you’re doing the Lord’s work doing something you’re passionate about and helps people to boot - my only advice would be, remember to listen to kids who have trouble with school because very often teachers are people who loved school, so it’s important to understand what ‘bad students’ go through and take the time to help them as much as possible. But really, that’s it. Getting rid of formal education helps no one but billionaires and profiteers and bad, bad people. 

#ask #school #education #the us is one weird country #i mean there would be a point 3 #about nation building #but americans aren't ready for that #so we'll just need to keep it a secret