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Photo Credits:-
Penguin & Books
(OpenClipart-
Vectors, Pixabay)
Kids
in Canoe
(StockSnap, Pixabay)
Broken Wall
(aitoff, Pixabay)
Dark Planet
(doreen_kinistino,
Pixabay)
Traditional Myanmar
(sippakorn, Pixabay)
Smarter Education??
(Screenshot of Christopher Cartwright, 4 July 2022 tweet)
Get Outdoors!!
(sasint, Pixabay)
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10+
Reasons Why I Dislike Conventional Education 
- 1.
Age segregation: Modern schools separate
children from adult life and group them by age. In most traditional
societies,
children live and work alongside adults, and they play and learn in
mixed-age
groups of children. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017)
- 2. Hierarchical ranking and
competition: In modern
schools, students compete to be the best, and are ranked by their
performance.
Many traditional cultures are more egalitarian, and consider overt
competition
or ranking to be bad manners. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017)
- 3. Hierarchical control:
Modern education is
normally organized in hierarchical authority structures, where the
teacher
controls the child, the district and state control the teacher, and
increasingly, systems of national standards and funding control the
state.
Traditional learning is often non-coerced, and the child is frequently
free
from direct control of her moment-to-moment choices and activities. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017)
- 4. Separation from nature:
Modern schools usually
require children to be indoors for most of the day. Children in
traditional
societies typically spend much of their time outdoors in the natural
world, and
develop an intimate knowledge of their local ecosystems through their
daily
activities. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017)
- 5. Restricted physical activity:
Modern schools
usually require children to be sedentary and quiet for many hours each
day.
Children in traditional societies are generally free to move about,
talk,
laugh, etc., and are physically active both in work and in play. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017)
- 6. Text-based rather than
experience-based
learning: Most learning in schools is based on
de-contextualized knowledge
encoded in written form. In most traditional cultures, children learn
most of
what they know through hands-on experience and participation in
community life.
(Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017;
also see #14, #18)
- 7. Direct instruction:
School learning relies
heavily on lecture and direct teacher-controlled instruction. Learning
in
traditional societies is more often initiated by the child through
observation,
experiment, play, and voluntary community sharing of information,
story, song,
and ritual. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017; also see #14, #18)
- 8. Age-based
“standards” and the invention of
“failure”: Modern schooling creates
standards of learning based on
chronological age and then talks in terms of failure or disability when
children do not meet those standards. Traditional societies generally
have a
more flexible approach to child development, assuming that a child will
learn
when she is ready, and that variations in the timing of learning have
little
importance. (Carol
Black, posted 7 April 2014, accessed 9 October
2017)
- 9. Teachers Too
Stressed = their Mental Health is Poor.
As at 2019, over two-thirds of UK teachers say their job has
adversely affected their mental health. Watch this 1½
minute animation! "It takes a village to raise a child"
(African proverb). We need a group
effort rather than individuals.
- 10. Where is the
Love (Part 1)? “We’ve bought into the idea that education
is
about training and “success,” defined monetarily,
rather than learning to think
critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose
of
education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp
the
vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management
techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a
civilization
is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself
to
death.” (Chris Hedges, Empire
of Illusion: The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle)
- 11. Where
is the Love (Part 2)? “An
absence of love
within a family or a relationship is taken as a sign of something
having gone
very wrong... We could say an absence of love means a school may coach
children
to pass a set percentage of tests, rather than helping them learn how
to live.” (AL Kennedy,
posted 27
September 2013, accessed 15 February 2019)
- 12. Where is the Love (Part 3)? “Why
should I be studying for a future that soon
may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future? And
what is
the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly means
nothing
to our society?” (Greta
Thunberg, Swedish climate activist)
- 13. Politics.
"Governments didn't educate
and vaccinate to be nice. They needed the masses to be useful." (Yuval Noah Harari, BBC, posted/accessed
28 April 2017; also see #17, #19)
- 14.
Where is the Testimony? "The work goes best when you draw
on
participants' own personal experiences, not their opinions. Opinions
invite
argumentation. Telling about experience invites listening. Opinions
tend to
bring on conflict, whereas shared experiences tend to elicit curiosity
and
empathy. When participants move from experiential testimony to opinion,
bring
them back, knowing that most schooling discourages testimony." (Peggy
McIntosh, ‘Some
Notes for Facilitators on Presenting My White
Privilege Papers’, dated 2010,
accessed
9 June 2020; also see #6, #7, #18)
- 15.
Where is the Flow? Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence
(Chapter 6) advocates Flow
as a new model for education. Flow is about finding skills or knowledge
that a child spontaneously engages in. That state of flow is mildly
ecstatic and thus very motivating. In order to sustain the flow
requires slightly challenging your ability. This is the seed for high
levels of attainment. Flow and its associated positive states are the
healthiest and most natural way to teach children, '...motivating them
from inside rather than by threat or promise of reward.' It avoids the
boredom, anxiety, emotional dysfunctionality and coercion of
conventional education.
- 16.
Gender issues.
Schools are either mixed-sex or single-sex (only boys or only
girls). Traditional societies will have aspects of both of these; most
of the time, mixing
happens [see point
1]; there
may also be times of separation
when traditional gender roles are learned. As adults
are present throughout all this in traditional cultures [see point 1], sexual
harassment and abuse are easily handled - unlike modern
schools (also see here).
This fluid approach to gender is authentic
socialisation.
- 17. The risk of being a lifelong slave of Evil = The need to Unschool.
If you have been conventionally schooled, you will have been
brainwashed by many oppressive forces. These include: patriarchy
&
authoritarianism, sexism & misogyny, racism
& privilege,
consumerism & capitalism.
You need to demedicalise!
Free yourself from the dominance of competition
as the only way to be, and move far more to cooperative and win-win
ways in your life. You will need to unlearn many things and it is a
Herculean task. [Also see #13. #19]
- 18. Lack of Imagination (& Thinking for Self, Problem Solving). Consider: (1) Prof. Feynman (8 July 2022 tweet):
'When your "education" limits your imagination it's called
indoctrination. Those who cannot think for themselves are truly lost.
Education should be a rewarding experience which allows you to think,
imagine, question, doubt and solve problems.' (2) Albert Einstein:
'Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
Imagination encircles the world.' and 'The true sign of intelligence is
not knowledge but imagination.' [Also see #6, #7, #14]
Does conventional education
and the internet make humans smarter?
Or do we need to deschool, decolonise, demedicalise, etc.?
(Screenshot of Christopher Cartwright, 4 July 2022 tweet
with his sarcastic humour 'So fun')
- 19. We do not nurture responsible and compassionate Global Citizens.
"My dad is a teacher and he always felt very frustrated by the western
education system – he used to say that the two most difficult
things a human being ever learns how to do is how to walk and how to
talk. Yet from day one at school, you’re taught to sit down and
shut up. But if you think about what we actually need to be teaching
children, which is how to be a contributing member of society, then
there are really only two things that you need to teach them: empathy
and curiosity." (Oliver Jeffers, children’s author, who grew up in Belfast and lived through the Troubles, quoted in The Guardian, posted and accessed 9 October 2022; also see #13, #17)
- 20. Conventional education shapes a Non-Consensual, Abusive Society. "School is a very non-consensual place." (Lindsay Dukes, sex therapist, paraphrase from a 23 January 2024 lecture, Bath, UK)
[So school is not social. It's not about socialisation. It’s
teaching our kids to be non-consensual. It's shaping a non-consensual,
abusive society. How fucked up is that?]
Resources
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Also see:-
Natural Education
Natural
Education Advantages
Natural Family
Living
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10+
Reasons Why I Dislike Conventional Education
