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High Times: Failure of the Current School System in America
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| buddy |
| Did anyone happen to read this article? The problems they detail in there are reminiscent of how I felt during my entire schooling process. Lots of excellent points made, I think. Anyone care to discuss? |
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| djeternal |
| post the article... |
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| whiskers |
| quote: | Originally posted by djeternal
post the article... |
word, i wanna read it too. |
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| buddy |
it was quite lengthy, roughly 5-6 pages, but here are a few excerpts....
"The current school system is a diseased organism. The standard song about school, that it makes good people, good citizens, is easy to believe if you want to believe it, and if you dont look with your own eyes at the mangled mutilated mess that schools turn out"
-John Taylor Gatto (1991 New York State Teacher of the Year)
"'How can the richest most powerful country on the planet have a school system that is, so detrimental to our children", asks Roland Legiardi-Laura (A 25 year veteran of Gatto's 'abnormal teaching style". "The american approach to education is full of anamolies——horrible diet, too many prescribed drugs, corporate penetration of the so called sacred learning enviorment. Kids are looked at as corporate targets. They are being taught math with Hersheys Kisses and M&Ms. Its in the textbooks. While there was no conspiracy to do this, there is a completely uninhibited sense of the mission of schools as having virtually nothing to do with education and a tremendous amount to do with the management of populations"
100 year old sample writings on education:
"The raw products, childre, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails and the specifications for maufacturing will come from government and industry"
-Elwood Cubberly - Standford Dean of Education (1905)
"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another...a very much larger class, of necessity, to forgo the privleges of a liberal education and fit themselves to preform specific dificult manual tasks"
-Late President Woodrow Wilson, from an adress to New York City High School Teacher's Association (1909)
"In his second decade of teaching, Gatto realized he could be a more effective teacher if he simply got students out of the classroom:...Just why is it that we warehouse our children in cell block style classrooms five days a week for 12 years, force feed them a standardized diet of what we think they need to learn, and move it all along with boredom, bells and tests? Has [school] just evolved into an easy daycare?...is [it] really just waste, or even a theft of childhood?"
"Where did our system of compulsory, factory-farm style McSchooling come from? 'The Prussians', argues Legiardi-Laura. 'They were defeated by Napolean in 1806, so they redesigned their country to produce a better soldier (this was the worlds first compulsory education program). In the 1840's, there was an aggressive debate about public schools in [America]. Horace Mann...went to Prussia and reported back on it's system with glowing terms. He proposed the Prussian model of an organized, efficient, compulsory school system, but instead of good soldiers, it would produce good citizens. There was a lot of native resistance. But America was becoming a truly industrial nation and those fortunes——oil, railroads—— needed to protect their capital The creation of large mass schools was designed to mimic the shape sound and rhythym of factories...but they turned out not widgets but children"
"What about the essentials, like reading? 'How to read is probably a 30-day and not a 12-year undertaking. how actually to read. How to read between the lines....'"
"On charge leveled at the homeschooling movement (according to the article, about 2 million American children are homeschooled)is that children miss out on socialization. 'Socialization in schools is horrendous', counters Legiardi-Laura. 'When I went to school, you learned institutional racism. There was unofficial racial tracking. ...I was socialized to be a good consumer, follow someone else's instructions, taught age segregation, all in the personal enviorment of demeaning cliques.
"What one single skill of all the millions avaliable pays off best in American society? Its the ability t ospeak in a compelling fashion to any person you run into. How much energy do schools expend in allowing practices like that? Zero."
This article also details some of Gatto's teaching techniques, his covert subvertness in breaking up the monotony of the school day, some alternative education methods, and counter-arguments vs. counter-points. If you can look past all the pictures of weed, High Times nearly always has great articles; they are usually researched well, provide verifiable facts and quotes, and , if nothing else, provide a different perspective on the way things are. Of course, if you are interested in pot, its a great magazine for other information as well, and the pictures will be no problem :D :D
(sorry i couldnt type this all out, as i said, its fairly lengthy, but this should give us some discussion material.) |
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| Mebot |
hahaah McSchooling.... :D
hmm some thoughtful points.. he makes a good point about the math being taught with M&Ms and Hershey Kisses. I remember my math books had pictures to help you grasp the concept..and mostly it was pics of corporation products, like die-cast metal cars, ballons, toothpick..etc. |
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| TrAnCe CoNtRoL |
| ugh high school was so worthless now that i think back on it. the only thing i learned how to do well was cheat and write fake passes to get me out of school early. |
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| Boomer187 |
For some reason this makes me want to teach in high school. I thought my education was fine. I mean I tried getting out of classes and I did the minimum and it wasn't until my 3rd year of college that I figured out, wait, I just screwed myself out of some good information.
Seems like this article would do a good job of pointing out all the wrongs of schools, but do they offer some viable solutions? I think I know most of the solutions but I wonder if they came up with some new ones.
also I always found it odd that we offer so many high dollar scholarships to athletes yet we hardly offer any acedemic based ones, well until grad school that is. that was the worst, being middle class so I get no grants, not being an athlete so I don't get a free ride, and not having a 4.2 GPA, so I don't get the few scholarships out there. now I am in debt...a lot. |
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| NY1004 |
I actually had a great high school experience. I guess it was mainly because I was in a small specialized program within the school, and so my class had a lot of support from the teaching staff. But yea being in college and hearing from my friends of their horrible experiences in high school has put me on the teaching career path.
Oh and in reference to what you said Boomer about the lack of academic scholarships, I actually landed a really good one my first year or college...and I wasn't an athlete and I was just average in grades. Just have to know where to look. I harassed the Multicultural office and College activities office, and my adviser, for scholarships that they knew about. |
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| MERTON |
| me am guud produck ub pubic skool sistem~! |
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| djSlain |
my math teacher (who is rather old) loves to talk about eveyrthing but the lesson. anyways, we somehow got into a discussion about "dumbing down" american schools.
You are required to have at least middle school pre-algebra to graduate high school.
50 years, u have to have at least calculus to graduate high school.
it's stupid that people can get a diploma for adding 3 + x when i had to study my ass off to get the same promotion. |
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| DJ Sunburn |
| School makes me dumber. I think if I quit school and got into the habit of smoking weed while listening to electronic music all day, I'd be better off. |
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| raynbo |
School!!! Pointless! Urgh! In the last 5 years of my life I think I've managed to retain maybe half a year's worth of material, the rest is repeat, repeat, repeat. And anyway, no one cares. The stuff you really need to know doesn't seem to come from classes and books, or not the ones they want you to read anyway. makes face
Don't get me started on the social situation. |
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