ea38c64e   
   XPost: alt.alien.visitors, alt.alien.research, alt.paranet.abduct   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy   
   From: GM@ga7rm5er.com   
      
   On Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:46:02 -0700 (PDT), Sir Arthur CB Wholeflaffers   
   ASA  wrote:   
      
   >The United States of War Criminals By Mickey Z.   
      
   "I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan,   
   and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in   
   boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the   
   kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the   
   same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense,   
   that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something   
   real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know   
   much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning   
   more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored   
   as they were.   
      
   Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has   
   spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the   
   whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why   
   they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might   
   expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and   
   interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are   
   themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs   
   that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they   
   are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon   
   the children. Who, then, is to blame?   
      
   We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was   
   seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the   
   head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence   
   again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The   
   obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and   
   people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if   
   possible. Certainly not to be trusted. That episode cured me of   
   boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass   
   on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however,   
   I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and   
   childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often   
   I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of   
   this trap.   
      
   The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate   
   opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to   
   discover that all evidence of my having been granted the leave had   
   been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I   
   no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of   
   tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school   
   secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my   
   family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally   
   retired in 1991, I had more than enough reason to think of our schools   
   - with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both   
   students and teachers - as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I   
   honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience   
   had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way,   
   too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we   
   could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and   
   help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We   
   could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity,   
   adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by   
   being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids   
   to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he   
   or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.   
      
   But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in   
   thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the   
   more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our   
   schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in   
   the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn   
   things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they   
   are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush   
   accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child   
   behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not   
   one of them ever really grows up?   
      
      
      
   Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced   
   schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year,   
   for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so,   
   for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a   
   rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that   
   banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable   
   number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year   
   wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right.   
   George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham   
   Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products   
   of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a   
   secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally   
   didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like   
   Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie   
   and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even   
   scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people   
   who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at   
   all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good,   
   multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily   
   married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant   
   was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.   
      
   We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of   
   "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling,"   
   but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a   
   financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find   
   a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of   
   compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why,   
   then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What   
   exactly is the purpose of our public schools?   
      
   Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the   
   United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much   
   earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)