> In the Study Hall, elder students help more junior ones <
I taught for many years in urban high schools. And a study hall assignment was something to be dreaded. Because it was usually elder students taunting and teasing the more junior ones.
Monitoring that room was like monitoring a prison on the brink of a riot.
Oh, and appeals to administration did no good. Their main goal was to keep suspensions down. That’s how they earned their bonuses.
So know you know one reason why urban test scores are so low.
the rest of us got dentition.
Must admit, I’m actually somewhat surprised that you didn’t list Voltaire and Diderot among the Hall of Shame bit, since I’d argue their damage to education was far more severe than even that of Rousseau’s mis-education policies (to say little of the guys who came afterward).
For example, according to Yale headmaster Timothy Dwight in 1798:
“About the year 1728, Voltaire, so celebrated for his wit and brilliancy and not less distinguished for his hatred of Christianity and his abandonment of principle, formed a systematical design to destroy Christianity and to introduce in its stead a general diffusion of irreligion and atheism. For this purpose he associated with himself Frederick the II, king of Prussia, and Mess. D’Alembert and Diderot, the principal compilers of the Encyclopedie, all men of talents, atheists and in the like manner abandoned.
“The principle parts of this system were:
“1. The compilation of the Encyclopedie: in which with great art and insidiousness the doctrines of … Christian theology were rendered absurd and ridiculous; and the mind of the reader was insensibly steeled against conviction and duty.
“2. The overthrow of the religious orders in Catholic countries, a step essentially necessary to the destruction of the religion professed in those countries.
“3. The establishment of a sect of philosophists to serve, it is presumed as a conclave, a rallying point, for all their followers.
“4. The appropriation to themselves, and their disciples, of the places and honors of members of the French Academy, the most respectable literary society in France, and always considered as containing none but men of prime learning and talents. In this way they designed to hold out themselves and their friends as the only persons of great literary and intellectual distinction in that country, and to dictate all literary opinions to the nation.
“5. The fabrication of books of all kinds against Christianity, especially such as excite doubt and generate contempt and derision. Of these they issued by themselves and their friends who early became numerous, an immense number; so printed as to be purchased for little or nothing, and so written as to catch the feelings, and steal upon the approbation, of every class of men.
“6. The formation of a secret Academy, of which Voltaire was the standing president, and in which books were formed, altered, forged, imputed as posthumous to deceased writers of reputation, and sent abroad with the weight of their names. These were printed and circulated at the lowest price through all classes of men in an uninterrupted succession, and through every part of the kingdom.”
Granted, most of this is more predicated on his role in creating the French Revolution, but it still has a direct tie to education and the sabotage thereof of the concept with #4 and #6, especially when in point 4 of the plan, Voltaire and his ilk apparently did the same thing Gramsci did during the 20th century and infiltrated the French Academy, which at the time was considered the most literate institution out there, and take it down from within to reduce the literary society to being little more than a mouthpiece of his, not to mention an outright indoctrination center. This bit is especially important to note given not only the crappy bits of university education as a whole where they’re currently little more than indoctrination centers with “tenured professors” talking about and praising sixties-era free sex in a Chaucer course, for example, but also something that Richard Rorty stated where he claims the jobs of University Professors is “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own” and “escape the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” And if American Thinker (https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/11/how_the_academic_left_elected.html) is to be believed it’s that degree of mis-education and indoctrination by the education system, and by the likes of Rorty, no less, that are directly responsible for the likes of Barack Obama being elected, and what’s worse, the students’ Conservative parents unknowingly paid for this by even SENDING them to college to be brainwashed. And Voltaire as well as Diderot (and possibly several other French Enlightenment people) were directly responsible for this. Now do you see what I mean by Voltaire and Diderot’s “contribution” to education being even WORSE than Rousseau’s? Those guys deliberately sabotaged it to try and make France atheist overnight, and boasted about it (Voltaire even bragged that the Bible will be forgotten in a century).