state education reinforces state domination
teach the children ignorance and reliance and they will happily vote themselves into servitude because it feels like safety
for those worried that the removal of public schools and their replacement with systems of free and unfettered choice might result in “some students not learning” i have a video for you.
this is what we are competing with.
about halfway through, 2 UCLA students working together cannot name the capital of the united states. they try valiantly for “does it not have one?” hoping to get lucky.
oof.
they then rattle off the names of the 3 kardashian sisters by rote.
double oof.
this is the system we’re trying to outperform. that is its output. and these are not even the dregs. those 2 young women are in full 4 year college in a top state system.
sure, it’s not all of them. i’m certain that many, probably most kids know these answers. but watching the product of compulsory education guess “2” when asked “what’s 2 X 2 X 1?” in the longer version of this video beggars belief.
of course, there are smart kids that learned stuff. but was it really down to the schools or would the bright, motivated kids have learned anyway in almost any system and is there just nothing academic you can do with some percentage of students even with 12 years of mandated attendance?
because it sure looks to me like there is a sizeable population that simply does not gain or retain even the most rudimentary basics of education and this is validated by a great many studies. (it’s part of the argument from “the case against education” that really hit home with me.)
these people did 12 years of grade, middle, and high school at a cost of ~$180k to taxpayers. they cannot name the US capital or the ocean on our east coast. they cannot do simple math that could reasonably be expected of a 3rd grader.
in all seriousness, how did ANYONE get through an educational system in excess of a decade and not know this? how did they get diplomas and move on to college? and how are we to take this credentialing and alleged standardized testing seriously if cases like this are slipping through the cracks?
how can one be left failing to question just what these students actually did for a dozen years and whether their schools in any way served their education?
is this really a system we’re comfortable leaving in the hands of those who have done nothing but lead it in the wrong direction consuming ever more money to produce ever less efficacy by opposing any and all attempts at accountability?
sorry guys, but if these are the standards, then the standards are too low.
and this lapse of expectation has flowed through to everything.
consider: these are top policy makers and former politicians.
they literally have no idea how anything works and in the unlikely event that they did, they probably would not tell you.
are these students equipped to know that?
and yet folks like robbie write about “the system,” teach at top universities, and reach the highest levels of government.
this gang is passing itself off as an informed intelligencia fit to lead and to dictate.
and schools are telling kids to trust them.
these people are mathematically and economically illiterate.
they do not even know how simple things like debt work.
honestly, i cannot even parse the presumption behind the word salad of nina’s second sentence.
but imagine how it plays to someone in debt who cannot multiply 2 X 2 X 1.
this stunning incomprehension does not stop them from being university professors and state senators.
it’s seriously like watching “idiocracy” on endless repeat.
and we’re producing students that cannot realize it.
these are the people who would make the policies that drive your lives and livelihoods.
these are the clerics of the governance and educational priesthood.
how many more lessons are you going to need?
we have created a technocratic ruling class growing ever more powerful, ever less accountable, bottomlessly politicized, and endlessly incompetent.
and they have refashioned schools in their own image, producing frightened, indoctrinated children lacking in capacity for critical thought and for self-governance.
and if we are to regain our civilization, this is where we must push back.
the schools have become the induction path to big government and regulatory serfdom. it’s a long con, a thing “bigger than oneself” in which to believe and a wubbie to make them feel safe while telling them it would be too scary to fend for themselves.
and if you get them young, you can teach them to like it.
artist’s rendition: “free school milk program.”
“let us regulate you, cosset and protect you, and run the great complex affairs of state that you need not trouble your pretty little heads about it. it’s for the collective good.”
seductive pablum for “the commoners” and justification for the elevation to power and privilege of “the betters.”
it’s an opiate for the masses with a built in system to co-opt the bright and ambitious for the more leviathan wraps its tentacles around the endeavors of the private sector by erecting standards, regulation, subsidy, penalty, preference, and mandate, the more everyone must play its game and not their own.
and the longer this goes on, the more deeply the systems become ingrained with ever more plunder and ever more exalted justification for such takings. schools become the factories where the rubber meets the road on instilling systems to glorify totalitarian structures of plunder and predation by the state.
this is what they were designed to do.
and it’s working.
and so the question becomes: so what are you going to do about it?
and the answer can be boiled down to two words: “become brave.”
of all of the pieces i have written, this one conveys the message that really needs to be heard:
the deadly seduction of the safety state is that its existence generates a need for it. those who have always lived under such a regime know nothing else and fear other ways. we speak much here about “becoming ungovernable” but such sentiments are often misconstrued.
“ungovernable” does not mean “ungoverned.” first and foremost, any who would aspire to such a state must become self-governing. and self governance is learned.
children who lack the skillset and perceptions that come with growing up through free play and self discovery, of finding your own way, creating your own systems with peers, determining your own aspirations, and settling your own disputes without recourse to external authority will not be self-governing. they will be reliant and that dependency will fashion lifelong chains by which they will be bound to authority.
worse, they will be taught not only to need them, but to crave them.
they will be placed in adult situations without having become adults and he who cannot handle his own interactions will positively beg to be ruled.
and to avoid this outcome and erect systems that select away from it, we must re-discover our courage.
play structures used to look like this.
and kids were left to play on them unsupervised. at school.
they were ENCOURAGED to do this.
how many parents are getting flat out palpitations looking at this right now?
now consider the possibility that this fear and not those monkeybars might be the greater problem.
there is an allegory here for the whole of our society.
we keep trading liberty for claims of safety.
how do you think that’s been working out?
to retake schools from the state and fashion them into institutions that can create real people capable of self-determination and self-reliance is going to take more bravery than many people seem to realize.
and we must find it.
you cannot manage to “preventing all bad things from happening.” that’s not a recipe for growth, it’s the path of decline.
without falls, no one learns to climb unaided. aspiration and achievement involves risk and sometimes failure and failure is a great teacher and a molder of character. “everyone gets a trophy day” is killing us and so is fear of mistakes, hurt, and hardship.
if the answer to every dispute is to yell for mom or the teacher or the state to come and settle this, you’re never going to become autonomous. you’re never going to become an adult. you will live as a ward of whatever authority pertains and lack the critical faculty and fortitude to laugh robert reich off the stage.
you’ll be a willing participant in the fracas of laying claim to grievance and entitlement to get “more free stuff” and “have somebody else pay” as the state hands out goodies to good children who repeat its liturgies of subjugation most proficiently.
and i think we really need to see the whole picture here.
consider the risk of adopting “you must trust us to determine the course of your education because it is not safe for you to determine your own because bad things might happen” as the base justification for selecting the systems in which your children will spend 14-15 of their most formative years.
consider what this says about our mettle and of our mission.
consider the false promises and phony “safety” it provides while inculcating dependence and deference.
and now weigh his against the “risk” of some people using free choice in a fashion you may not like or a few bad outcomes.
the assault on educational choice always comes from these safety-staters grabbing at and sensationalizing edge cases. and we must become inured to it and able to stand up to it. or nothing will change.
they are preying upon politicians being too afraid to own a system that “let little johnny learn crackpot conspiracy theories” or “left jennifer doing home study of astrology.”
and yeah, that might happen.
but look what’s happening now.
imagine the howls of the anti-school choice statists if they found two high school graduates in a freely selected program who could not name the US capital because they had concentrated on kardashian studies.
and yet they seem oddly able to weather this storm themselves as their own system spits out such product.
and that may well be down to us and our failure to demand better and to rock the boat for fear that we may be asked to captain it.
perhaps it’s time to lead by example and get brave enough to accept and own our freedom and to tolerate mishap and failure that we might build schools capable of teaching self-reliance and instilling this value and practice into the generations to follow.
after all, if we are too fearful to take the reins and the blame and the credit that comes with them, how may we ask it of the children much less wrest it from those who currently sit in stultifying sinecure?
perhaps what we truly ought be afraid of is actually our fear itself for while the bravery of self-determination may seem fraught with perils, consider the alterative…
This is why our kids didn't go to school. We homeschooled, they did stuff - survival school, climbing Kilimanjaro, duck and deer hunting, sailing and scuba camps, working, paying for their own stuff, laundry, etc. We got them out of college with no debt by sticking to state schools. (One did an apprenticeship instead of college.) We went dollar for dollar with them on a car, paid cash, and they all had those cars for a good long time (7-10 years!). I told them, "We are NOT the Cosbys - you're not moving back in! You'll eat ramen and peanut butter like the rest of us did." They're wonderful (adult) kids!
Way too many people in this country are allowed to vote.