As the new school year approaches, there are lots of concerns over Coronavirus spreading through schools. While the virus isn’t dangerous to children, it is potentially dangerous to those they might be in contact with, such as grandparents and other relatives with high-risk profiles.
This has caused lots of scrambling.
How can we continue the current school arrangement when schools are and always have been a giant pathological petri dish?
If we abandon the current paradigm of grouping children by age in small boxes, how will they get “socialized”?
How will our children learn without school?
This pulls the mask of public education part of the way off, so of course I think it’s a great opportunity to pull it all the way off.
The truth is that our education system is not built to “educate” per se, rather, education is one of many products produced jointly through schools. Here are some of the other products:
- Welfare – Schools offer direct welfare benefits (free lunch/breakfast, counseling, even child care and medical care) as well as a point-of-sale for the extended welfare system administered by social workers.
- Organized sports for those who want to / have the skill to participate
- Arts and Music for those who want to / have the skill to participate
- Political/cultural indoctrination – This was the explicit purpose of the Prussian model that our system is based on, and this purpose is talked about explicitly in teacher preparation programs. The role of schools is to make “good citizens.” What that means is up to the establishment, which is now run by leftists, hence the erosion of cultural identity in America
- Money for the Democratic Party – Paid for through union dues, which are paid out of teacher salaries, which are paid for by taxes, the public school system is a method by which money is taxed and given to one political party – the Democrats. About 90% of the money the CTA (the union in California) collects is given to the DNC. Dues total close to 1,000 dollars per year per teacher.
- Social Conditioning – The structure of school is designed to condition children to follow rules, obey authority, and seek social status rewards. This is explicitly what “socialization” means in the Prussian system – not learning to make friends, which happens during the 45 mins of free time kids have in a day.
- Providing jobs to the Clerical class – Teachers, administrators, etc. are almost all college-educated. Schools provide additional jobs for this part of the middle-class that would otherwise not be available.
There are more, certainly, but that’s a good list. If you pay attention you will realize the majority of arguments for schooling (especially in light of when alternatives are proposed) are not about education, but are referencing one of the other products of schools.
So, if the current system is a health risk to the population, why not rethink what schooling means in its entirety? If you did away with schools, would you automatically lose the other products produced jointly? In some cases, you would, but that would be desirable. In other cases, individuals and communities could easily provide alternatives.
I was a teacher in public schools, private schools, and colleges for more than 10 years. Now I teach people how to write and be creative:
I pulled my kids out of the local Catholic School a few years ago because it quietly started looking like what you described above. It was only a matter of time before it converged into social justice group think. We home school now and have for a couple years Now I feel like my family is far better equipped to deal with the brave new Corona world. Speaking of which, I hope that your recovery is going well. God bless.
The unfortunate reality is that private schools are locked into the public school paradigm and materials due to things like accreditation. Home school is the only real alternative available, and I don’t think it has to be that way. Even Catholic schools get into the same problems.
David
The most postive outcome of the pandemic has been to awaken parents they make very fine teachers and teaching something is all that tough.
Second there’s a growing #fundthekidsnotthesystem! sentiment growing in America and some Anglophone provinces in Canada. That’ll be the ultimate revolt of the middle and working classes against the effete elite.
Watch this fight be a ferocious one.
When one makes the claim the “schools are run by leftists”, the best followup would be to produce proof. Not saying you don’t have proof, just that I never seen official sources.
I worked in schools and universities. Leftists were 8/10 of employees at public school. When I taught at the university level I was the only person on the right in the department faculty, and probably 50% were avowed socialists. My proof is my experience, and the fact that the union donations are public. Every single teacher in CA donates 900 dollars to the Democrat party per year, whether they want to or not, because the leftists are in control. The proof in the pudding is in the eating.
You can google studies as well, but they aren’t that reliable. Just like journos, educators lean left heavily.