This is a very controversial subject as the opinions about it differ like night and day from one person to the next.
In the following lines I will present my viewpoint of the situation.
A school is an institution where students (or “pupils”) learn while under the supervision of teachers.
I’ll begin by saying this: the current public school system is destroying many lives. Of course, there are schools that make an exception from this, but the general system is designed to do just that, to destroy lives and to create mindless servants. I know this first hand, because I’m young and I’m part of the public school system.
What determines me to have such a negative opinion about it? There are a couple of reasons:
1. The current school system forces children to grow absurd.
“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own part and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does. [...] Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.” – John Taylor Gatto
2. It doesn’t teach the children anything about themselves. And self-knowledge is the only knowledge with a long lasting value.
“‘Self-knowledge’ is commonly used in philosophy to refer to knowledge of one’s particular mental states, including one’s beliefs, desires, and sensations.” – Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
The absurdity of the schooling system
I’ve been a “good” student for only 4 years out of the total of 12 years of schooling that I’ve followed until now. Only for four years I’ve obeyed the system and did my best to achieve a high “rank” in it. Then it came to me that what the system was teaching was irrelevant for me. Worse than that, it was irrelevant for my whole life. And school is supposed to help children do good in life. How can it do that when it is irrelevant to it’s purpose? Scientists aren’t trained in science classes, politicians aren’t trained in civics classes, writers aren’t trained in English classes. School has become a big mechanical institution without a conscience. I see it as a big swamp through which many are forced to pass in order to end up many steps behind their starting point. When a child goes to school he’s at the A point in life and heading towards B. After getting out of the compulsory schooling system, he’s at -A.
Before a child goes to school it has an ability that is more valuable than anything he could learn in there. The child has his imagination, his most prized possession which Einstein considered to be more important than knowledge. What happens after the child enters the compulsory school system? His imagination is punished, restrained, slowly replaced with filler knowledge. He is taught to obey rules and orders, memorize facts that make no sense in the world unfolding around him and then graded for his ability in those disciplines.
What do grades represent? They represent that a certain unique child had his mind in a certain place at a certain moment of a certain day. This is just as relevant as drawing a conclusion about my personality from the way that I pressed some key on my keyboard while writing the second character of the third sentence in my 50′th post on this blog. It’s both irrelevant and absurd.
“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its “homework”.” – John Taylor Gatto
Regarding the invasion of privacy I must say that I’ve done my homeworks only until the fifth grade. After that I almost never did my homeworks again. I know, I was a “bad” student, but as strange as this may sound, now I’m happy that I was that way! My life would have been completely different if I chose to be the obeying type. It may have been different for better or for worse, I don’t know that, but considering that I love what I am doing right now I think I’ve made the right decision and chose the right path.
Everything that I’ve learned about life, universe and pretty much about everything, isn’t knowledge gained in school. It has been a self teaching process, I did it because I enjoyed it, because I chose to engage in it. And it is this self teaching process that really educates and adds to the value of an individual. This makes you independent.
The lack of opportunities to gain more self knowledge
All my years in the compulsory school system haven’t taught me a thing about myself. I needed to break free in order to discover and learn what I truly liked. I believe that the children who do good in school and manage to discover themselves are exceptions of the school system. The main purpose of the school isn’t that, it is to mechanize thinking and leave the children without a sense of self – which derives from self-knowledge.
Robots think mechanically, they don’t have a sense of self and are easy to control. School children are programmed much the same way.
I always loved what Mark Twain had to say about schooling and education:
“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.”
Instead of a conclusion
The purpose of this post is to try and raise yet another small alarm signal in the world. As much as some of you might respect the school institution, so far I think it has created more useless and dependent individuals than performing and independent ones.
These are only a few of the effects of the poor schooling system worldwide.
However, it’s a good thing that today many private schools have emerged and people have the possibility to send their children to school systems based on other beliefs, with different values than the ones “experts” agree on.
For more information about the topic you should read the “Why Schools Don’t Educate” speech held by John Taylor Gatto while accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990.
