Piwo
25
23
Piwo has not written any posts yet.
Piwo has not written any posts yet.
Unschooling is more than fine. It is the only sensible approach to education. 4 papers may not be enough to understand the subject. You repeat a great deal of false claims mass-produced by the system or by the power of parrot-like peer reviewed research biased by career or financial interest. Here are the sentences based on inveterate myths of schooling: "excellent empirical evidence that early years education", "functionally illiterate people have difficult lives", "improvement in cognitive capacity and teaching the ability to make abstract, logical deductions socialization aspect", etc.
Also: "improving impulse control" has many negative sides effects. In the end, without "impulse" you lose your love of life, incl. love of other people. Russian peasants did not have access to the Internet.
Last but not least, imagine your feelings if someone put you to jail and said: "I just reject your claim that prison is that unpleasant". That's a failure of empathy
If someone says:
"If you've spent much time around kids aged 6-14, you'll understand that their freedom is the actual true enemy. Many of them spend every moment making life harder for the adults around them"
I say:
"If you've spent much time around school-damaged adults, you'll understand that they lost the comprehension of the word FREEDOM. Many of them spend every moment making life unbearable for children"
Amazingly, commandeering child's mind, time and life are legal in 2021. We have not evolved yet.
The ultimate solution to good education is rich culture to which a young brain adapts. As for the computing device, there is only one in the equation: the brain. Culture is just data. Teaching is programming. Exploration and adaptation are based on computing. If you want a smart kid, let her compute the reality on her own!
What you say is exactly the mythology created by the system of schooling and adult controlled education. It is based on ignorance of brain science, and results in serious health and mental damage to millions of children. "Kids are not fully developed" stands at the core of the problem. Young brains are perfectly structured to adapt to the modern world using the same or better learning algorithms than those employed by the adult brain. We destroy those algorithms at school and generate an impression of ineptitude that deepens the problem. When communism was failing, communist tightened controls to get closer to perfection. So do schools. "Kids start out with many desires" fails... (read more)
To say "schools existed for millennia" is monumentally misleading as it brushes away the problem of coercion of compulsory schooling. Instead of using the all-encompassing term "school", you can then be more accurate by speaking of the Prussian education system, i.e. the cancer of modern education:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
"Chores" can indeed be totalitarian unless they come from natural necessity or contract. There is a world of difference between "I must clean up my room because it is hard to move around", and "Mom says I must clean the floor because aunt Betty is coming" (implying "I do not care about the floor, and even less about Aunt Betty witch"). A contract might say: "You will get your $3 allowance if you make sure garbage is never piling up".
An arbitrary ban or limit on XBox is also totalitarian. Limits could come from contract, e.g. "I will buy you XBox as long as you promise never to play after 7 pm".
Google for Sugata Mitra, and do not be swayed by the "school lobby" that found lots of (petty) holes in the Hole. Basic idea behind Mitra reasoning is correct as evidence by decades of experience of democratic school. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_invasive_education
Why would a kid need a direction on what to study? With access to modern technology, all she needs is just to look around and make choices? Did you hear of Hole in the Wall experiments. Bottom 20% may refer to socioeconomic conditions, but for kids with access to the web that concept starts volatilizing and a poor kid may outstrip the privileged one. The idea of "needing direction" is born at school when kids are lead by hand for many years and never learn how to navigate life on their own. That directionless free choice is their best lesson
If your parents coerced you to live with them against your will, I condemn that. Children should have the right to walk away if they did not feel good at home. This practice also has a rich tradition. Did you see a chimp chasing its baby in a jungle and yelling "get back to the nest, you little snot"?
Your answer indicates a confusion between rights and duties in society. Your life with your parents was your right and probably a choice, or at least a necessity. For most children school was made into a obligation/burden. While life imposes constraints on your living condition, governments coerce children to learn against their will. Life with parents has millions of years of evolutionary tradition among smart animals. Going to school is a recent invention that is Stalinist in nature. Analogy between school and prison is excellent for this is exactly how many if not most children feel. On the other hand, in a healthy setting, kids would not move out from their parents early for sheer convenience of being sheltered and pampered and taken care of.
Compulsory schooling is a violation of human rights, and no utilitarian claim can override. The parallel with slavery is striking.
If you are 19, you have a better standing in this discussion. If you liked school, you have the right to underestimate the damage. Perhaps overtime, with some analysis, you will realize that most of your smarts and knowledge come from your own work and passion, and the impact of school was minimal or perhaps even a distraction. You need to realize, however, that in a global picture you are a lucky outlier, esp. at this age. Defendants of the school in your age category are a minority, and recruit mostly from Straight... (read more)