Nine Assumptions of Schooling and Twenty-one Facts the Institution Would Rather Not Discuss

Spinning Globe ^ | John Taylor Gatto

[Clintonfatigued]

I'll start off bluntly by giving you some data I'd be shocked if you already know. A few simple facts, all verifiable, which by their existence call into question the whole shaky edifice of American government compulsion schooling from kindergarten through college and its questionable connection with the job market. The implications of this data are quite radical so I'm going to take pains to ground it in the most conservative society on earth, the mountain world of Switzerland. You all remember Switzerland: that's where people put their money when they really want it to be really safe.

The Swiss just like us believe that education is the key to their national success, but that's where our similarity ends. In 1990 about 60% of American secondary school graduates enrolled in college, but only 22% did in Switzerland; in America almost l00% of our kids go to high school or private equivalents, but only a little over a fifth of the Swiss kids do. And yet the Swiss per capita income is the highest of any nation in the world and the Swiss keep insisting that virtually everyone in their country is highly educated!

What on earth could be going on? Remember it's a sophisticated economy which produces the highest per-capita paycheck in the world we're talking about, high for the lightly-schooled as well as for the heavily schooled, higher than Japan's, Germany's or our own. No one goes to high school in Switzerland who doesn't also want to go to college, three-quarters of the young people enter apprenticeships before high school. It seems the Swiss don't make the mistake that schooling and education are synonyms.

[Clintonfatigued]

This is a facinating article on real education as opposed to schooling. This author has a knack for shunning managed debate and thinking outside the box.

In the process, it supports homeschooling without specifically arguing for it.

[Tax-chick]

bttt

[zipper]

"In a 2003 study conducted by UNICEF that took the averages from five different international education studies, the researchers ranked the United States No. 18 out of 24 nations in terms of the relative effectiveness of its educational system."

http://kapio.kcc.hawaii.edu/upload/fullnews.php?id=52

And President Bush's answer is No Child Left Behind? Just an extension of previous bad ideas-- more government substandard schooling/political indoctrination.

1. Social cohesion is not possible through other means than government schooling; school is the main defense against social chaos. 2. Children cannot learn to tolerate each other unless first socialized by government agents. 3. The only safe mentors of children are certified experts with government-approved conditioning; children must be protected from the uncertified, including parents. 4. Compelling children to violate family, cultural and religious norms does not interfere with the development of their intellects or characters. 5. In order to dilute parental influence, children must be disabused of the notion that mother and father are sovereign in morality or intelligence. 6. Families should be encouraged to expend concern on the general education of everyone but discouraged from being unduly concerned with their own children's education. 7. The State has predominant responsibility for training, morals and beliefs. Children who escape state scrutiny will become immoral. 8. Children from families with different beliefs, backgrounds and styles must be forced together even if those beliefs violently contradict one another. Robert Frost, the poet, was wrong when he maintained that "good fences make good neighbors." 9. Coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power.

[Dick Bachert]

In 1978 or so my wife and I came to know a young woman named Patty. She
was a devoutly religious young mother who'd become more devout when her
husband and father of her two small sons aged 2 and 6 informed her that he
was leaving. In dire economic straits, I offered to let her stay in our
former home in Chamblee -- which was not rented at the time – rent-free until she got back on her feet. She had been clandestinely home schooling the 6 year
old for about 2 years using very well done Christian course materials from
an organization in Texas the name of which escapes me. The lad had recently been tested and had placed at least a year ABOVE his chronological age. As required by the government school authorities at the time, she dutifully apprised the authorities of his scores.

For reasons which would become clear in a moment, Patty had been harassed by the DeKalb County school authorities for about 6 months and, by the time she moved into the Chamblee house, had been -- unbeknownst to us -- ORDERED to put the 6 year old into the nearest government elementary school or suffer the consequences. Because she wanted the boys to be educated Christians, there was no way she was going to do that and she told them so.

At approximately 2 am one morning, a loud knock on the door announced the
arrival of the aforementioned "consequences."

Dressed only in a nightgown, she was confronted by several burly police officers who thrust an arrest warrant in her face. With the now awakened 6 year old watching and the 2 year old wailing in the other room, she was handcuffed and led out the door to jail. She was tossed into a large cell with a couple of hookers and a junkie who spent much of the rest of that morning vomiting in the corner. The two young boys for whom the educational authorities professed such great concern were just left AT THE HOUSE -- ALONE! Patty was later told that the bureaucrats from Children Services who were SUPPOSED to accompany the cops were late and, in their haste to get this dangerous miscreant behind bars, the cops just missed the fact that the Children Services people were, well, missing. The CS folks showed up an hour later to find two terrified kids, one of whom had just seen his mother hauled off in cuffs.

Patty was ultimately brought to trial under the Georgia Truancy Statutes. Her pro-bono attorney tore the school authorities to shreds and hers has been called THE case that opened the floodgates to home schooling in Georgia. Once they had all the facts, the jury didn’t take long to acquit her. I’m proud to have played a small part in that.

At Patty’s trial, a previously overlooked aspect of the government schools was put into sharp focus for those paying attention: The Director of Instruction for DeKalb County testified that the then current 7 hour school day consisted of an average of approximately 3 hours or less of instruction. At that time, Patty was devoting 4 to 5 hours a day to direct instruction.

He also as much as admitted that the REAL reason they wanted ALL these kids in school was the $3,000.00 per kid per year (I’m sure that number is higher in 2001!) they then got from the state and federal government. Empty seats = lost funds. As in most things, follow the money.

Patty home schooled these two boys through high school.

And how did the boys turn out?

One is now a physician and the other a budding journalist.

But that now seems to be the norm for the growing legions of home schooled kids – which most likely explains why the NEA and the government school folks feel so threatened. For what it’s worth, a home schooled kid won the last National Spelling Bee.

Thomas Jefferson believed an EDUCATED PUBLIC to be the cornerstone of the system he and the other Founders TRIED to leave behind. He would NOT, I feel certain, be a big fan of the current government education system. If he returned today, he’d home school his children just as he did before.

Dick Bachert
6-2001

[GSlob]

Any solution to the current educational system failure will have to include the return to [or introduction anew of] the rigorous streaming [segregation] by intellectual ability - i.e. to having separate and by design unequal educational streams, say, 5: retardees, dullards, normals, brights, and the gifted. There ought to be a mechanism for transition between adjacent streams, say, test-based. This would require, as a minimum, a radical re-interpretation of the Brown decision. Otherwise the slowest and the dullest [to say nothing of the disruptives] will inevitably drag everybody down to the lowest common denominator.
Once upon a time [and long ago] in a faraway realm, I was observing a school for the gifted: 12-13 year old children were doing [in their heads!] visualization exercised like figuring out the intersection of 5-dimensional hypercube with something else [forgot what it was- it was ages ago] equally exotic and complex. This was possible because, and only because, the class was composed exclusively of kids with IQ>140 - and their instructor was a junior professor from university, not your run-of-the-mill product of teacher college - in whom trying to visualize a hypercube would induce a self-perpetuating hiccuping.

[GSlob]

exercised=exercises

[Clintonfatigued]

Actually, the American public schools have never been all that good. They were never, at any time, bastions of academic excellence.

A major reason they are worse now is that those who are most unfit for and/or unwilling to be in school are not allowed to drop out, which was not the case many years ago.

[GSlob]

Well, the school I was observing had selective competitive admission - and was sucking out the "cream of the crop" schoolchildren from a pretty large area. There were several such schools, all associated with major universities, but such schools were few in number and they were widely distributed geographically. Most other schools [at the "normal" level] were not particularly good, either.

[FrogMom]

He doesn't mention in his article the sexual abuse of children at the hands of teachers/school personnel. It seems as if we read about a new case weekly. How many go unreported?

[wintertime]

Any solution to the current educational system failure will have to include the return to [or introduction anew of] the rigorous streaming [segregation] by intellectual ability - i.e. to having separate and by design unequal educational streams, say, 5: retardees, dullards, normals, brights, and the gifted.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sorry, GSlob, but what this does is create a caste system with the upper levels of intelligence developing an overweening sense of self-importance.

The most natural place for a gifted child to educated is in the HOME. Tutoring in a few and very limited number of subjects might be needed if the parents are not capable of teaching them.

My own homeschooled kids were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. The benefit of this is that they immediately matched wits with young adults who were top in their fields. This gave them a almost instant and realistic overview of the true talents of others working in the upper levels. Isolating children by confining them to hot houses of "gifted" programs robs these very bright children of the ability to interact with other mature scholars, gain a realistic assessment of their own talent, and leaves them with a unrealistic opinion of their worth.

By the way, 2 of my children finished a B.S. in mathematics by the age of 18. One of these earned a masters degree in math by the age of 20.

The oldest of the 3 is a highly gifted athlete. He chose accounting. Despite a heavy training and travel schedule, and a 2 year church assignment in Eastern Europe, he will earn his B.S. in business at the same age as his contemporaries. By the way, as a result of spending 2 years in Eastern Europe, he returned home completely fluent in Russian.

[wintertime]

In the process, it supports homeschooling without specifically arguing for it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Homeschooling is the most natural, healthy, and normal way to raise a child to adulthood. Yes, of course we will need to institutionalize some children. This is sad. We need orphanages too but no one would ever say that it is the best way to raise a child.

It is time that homeschoolers stop defending homeschooling. Instead we should be asking some pointed questions:

Please explain again why it is healthy or normal to corral children in same aged packs to be herded about like sheep to the sounds of bells?

Just exactly why is bullying and alpha girl shunning good for your child?

So,,,please explain to me how you are going to protect your child in school and on the bus from brutality and sexual abuse?

Are you certain that your child's teacher is not sexually using him or her behind the school auditorium stage?

Is it normal or healthy to frustrate the slower children or bore the brighter children with material that is not at their level?

Please explain again. Why isn't government schooling child abuse?

[GSlob]

Very few parents are at the level necessary to homeschool the kids from an example I was observing many years ago. Thus some pooling of their resources would be both desirable and necessary - and what you will end up with would be a private equivalent of the same school I observed.
And as for "upper levels of intelligence developing an overweening sense of self-importance" and forming a caste - Murray and Herrnstein wrote their whole big and beautiful book "The Bell Curve" about this very topic. They put it better than I would ever be able to. Suffice it to say that the importance of "upper levels of intelligence" is impossible to exaggerate - it is the most precious long-term resource mankind [and any large society in it] has. Besides, it is a renewable resource.

[JimRed]

Patty home schooled these two boys through high school.

And how did the boys turn out?

One is now a physician and the other a budding journalist.

One out of two ain't bad! Where'd she go wrong on #2?

< /sarcasm >

[wintertime]

Suffice it to say that the importance of "upper levels of intelligence" is impossible to exaggerate - it is the most precious long-term resource mankind [and any large society in it] has. Besides, it is a renewable resource.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

And I still hold that the best place to educate these very bright children is in the home. As they mature they can match wits with serious adults and young adults in their talent areas.

Yes, you are correct. Our current generation of parents were so ill-educated themselves that they are incapable of homeschooling. This is too bad. It is too bad that not all parents are good parents and some of their children find themselves in orphanages.

While an argument can be made for public funding of education ( I disagree) there is NO good reason for government to be owning and running the schools that provides this education. In a privatized system of universal K-12 education it would be parents, principals, teachers, and possibly the students themselves who would be designing the venues that deliverer institutionalized K-12 education.

I trust parents, teachers, and principals in private settings to do what is best for both the brightest and the slowest ( and every level in-between) than I do any government bureaucrat.

[Fzob]

bfl

[308MBR]

Let's not forget the drastically increased time and effort spent towards self-esteem exercises, PC influenced "history" courses, healthy injections of white guilt, courses on "tolerance", sexual education and various other forms of "navel gazing" since the early 1960s.

Combined with the general dumbing down of critical courses like mathematics, language and science, as well as removing competition between students through grade inflation, affirmative action, and social promotion, it's no wonder we're spending all this money for far worse results.

Don't have kids unless you can educate them yourselves or send them to private school. Also, if your kid does go to a PS, don't think it's any different than any other because they are all de-facto owned and operated by the NEA/AFT cabal.

[usmom]

Any solution to the current educational system failure will have to include the return to [or introduction anew of] the rigorous streaming [segregation] by intellectual ability

You are absolutely correct. Nobody wants to address this because we are supposed to be politically correct and say that everyone is equal and can succeed equally if just given and equal education. This is just not so. I also believe that many kids would be happier and more productive if they would be streamlined into pursuits more in line with their abilities and interests (i.e. skilled trades for young men who enjoy physical labor or working with their hands, arts for those so inclined, etc...) What we have now is a systme where everyone, regardless of ability or interest, is assumed to want to go onto college and go into academics or desk jobs. I think this is why you have such a large drop-out rate. At some point these kids just say 'this isn't me, this isn't what I want to do'. And you know what? If at 16 they would rather be working in a trade, then I think everyone would be better off for it. One size does not fit all.

[usmom]

It is time that homeschoolers stop defending homeschooling. Instead we should be asking some pointed questions

I homeschool and feel like I am on the defense so much of the time that it wears away at my confidence. Even when people compliment my children on their behavior/knowledge, they quickly follow it up with 'but what about (insert socialization, friends, test-taking, etc...) They are just unwilling to ever admit that there is another way to educate children other than government school. Sometimes they point out how much schools spend per child and say they must be doing something with all that money to give them a great education Hello? Ever heard of teacher's unions/free health care/pensions for life at 55? I think what it really comes down to is an inability or unwillingness to think outside the box.