In “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” Mr. Gatto fills us in on what children are really being taught in compulsory school:

1. Confusion:  ”Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending, for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.”
2. Class Position: “My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at least endure it like good sports. If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly policies itself into good marching order. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
3. Indifference: “I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do.”
4. Emotional Dependency
5. Intellectual Dependency
6. Provisional Self-Esteem: “Our world wouldn’t survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that a kid’s self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged… The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials.”
7. One Can’t Hide: “I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance… There are no private spaces… no private time… I assign a type of extending schooling called ‘homework,’ so that the effect os surveillance, if not the surveillance itself, travels into private households.”

In “The Psychopathic School” Gatto points out some of egregious (but ultimately obvious) problems with compulsory education:

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 live and the synergy of variety; indeed, it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.

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 in the sanctuary of your home, demanding that you do its homework.

When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.

In “The Green Monogahela” Gatto describes his first foray into education as a substitute teacher. He soon learns of Milagros, a girl in the class of bad readers despite obvious skill. When he takes his case to the administration, he is not met with excitement and thanks, but rather with indignation:

“You have some nerve, Mr. Gatto. I can’t remember when a substitute ever told me how to run my school before. Have you taken specialized courses in reading?”
“No.”
“Well then, suppose you leave these matters to the experts!”
“But the kid can read!”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you test her, and if she isn’t a dummy, get her out of the class she’s in!”
“I don’t like your tone. None of our children are dummies, Mr. Gatto. And you will find that girls like Milagros have many ways to fool amateurs like yourself. This is a matter of a child having memorized one story. You can see if I had to waste my time arguing with people like you, I’d have no time left to run a school.”

The administrator not only open criticizes Mr. Gatto’s intelligence, but immediately accuses the girl of fraud rather than having any curiosity whatsoever… And is it surprising? Among the many other horrid conditions of the schools he taught in, Gatto noticed a significant lack of curiosity and interest:

“…the inexplicable absence of conversation about children among the teachers (to this day, after thirty years in the business, I can honestly say I have never once heard an extended conversation about children or about teaching theory in any teachers’ room I’ve been in)”

Dumbing Us Down is an excellent work with many other lessons besides the few I’ve shared here. I would definitely recommend reading it (it’s actually quite short) if you are at all interested in school reform.

Our mind, as it is, would not be able to do what the child’s mind does. To develop a language from nothing needs a different type of mentality. This the child has. His intelligence is not the same kind as ours.

It may be said that we acquire knowledge by using our minds; but the child absorbs knowledge directly into his psychic life. Simply by continuing to live, the child learns to speak his native tongue. A kind of mental chemistry goes on within him. We, by contrast, are recipients. Impressions pour into us and we store them in our minds; but we ourselves remain apart from them, just as a vase keeps separate from the water it contains. Instead, the child undergoes a transformation. Impressions do not merely enter his mind; they form it. They incarnate themselves in him. The child creates his own “mental muscles,” using for this what he finds in the world around him.

This, to me, has two very immediate and very important implications. The first is that currently both parenting and education methods do a great deal to stunt and mar this process. The second is that children who are brought up with this principle in mind will prove that extremely bright, curious, precocious children are not an aberration, but rather the natural, normal state that the child is compelled towards.

Until a handful a decades ago, the most important portion of a student’s development was considered to be university. There he received “higher learning,” there he was prepared for the world. Younger children were all but entirely ignored as curious, learning beings. But now we know better, and vague stabs at applying this knowledge in shown in the form of preschool classes. This, however, is not good enough. A different kind of mind needs a different kind of education. And to Montessori, and myself, this implies a complete abandonment of the educational principles currently supported. Montessori writes of the role of parents and teachers:

The discovery that the child has a mind able to absorb on its own account produces a revolution in education. We can now understand easily why the first period in human development, in which character is formed, is the most important. At no other age has the child greater need of an intelligent help, and any obstacle that impedes his creative work will lessen the chance he has of achieving perfection. We should help the child, therefore, no longer because we think of him as a creature, puny and weak, but because he is endowed with great creative energies, which are of their nature so fragile as to need a loving and intelligent defense. To these energies we want to bring help; not to the child, or to his weakness. When we understand that the energies belong to his unconscious mind, which has to become conscious through work and through an experience of life gained in the world, we realize that the mind of the child in infancy is different from ours, that we cannot reach it by verbal instruction, nor intervene directly in the process of its passion from the unconscious to the conscious - the process of making human faculty - then the whole concept of education changes. It becomes a matter of giving help to the child’s life, to the psychological development of man. No longer is it just as enforced task of retaining our words and ideas.

If that notion doesn’t excite and anger you, then I can only think to blame the French to English translation, because it seems so clear to me that we are missing out on incredible opportunities in the minds of the young, that they are literally being beaten into bored stupidity when they could be raised to such heights of intelligence and freedom that those of us who experienced compulsory school can only imagine.

The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori: Maria Montessori, the creator of the Montessori Method, made incredible and long-lasting contributions to the principles of educating children. She promoted the concept of the “Normalized” child, meaning that independence and a love of learning of normal qualities which all children possess. The Absorbent Mind is considered her cornerstone work.

The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn: This book, written for and to teenagers, presents the argument for quitting school to pursue your own education. Definitely controversial, but very thought-provoking. She makes her points on the negative - but intentional - practices of compulsory education, while providing heaps of information and anecdotes about quitting school and those who have done so successfully.

How Children Fail and How Children Learn by John Holt: Two excellent books by the pioneer of the unschooling method.

Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto: Coming out very soon, this new book by Gatto exposes the true nature of compulsory education. His book is “a demonstration that the harm school inflicts is quite rational and deliberate, following high-level political theories constructed by Plato, Calvin, Spinoza, Fichte, Darwin, Wundt, and others, which contend the term “education” is meaningless because humanity is strictly limited by necessities of biology, psychology, and theology. The real function of pedagogy is to render the common population manageable.”

Think back to the friends you made in grade school. Think about the things you had in common, the things you were pressured to do. Think about, really, all the kids you knew back then. They came from different backgrounds, sure. And some were differently skilled than others. Some grew or read a little faster. Some had a bit more money, or a bit more melanin in their skin. But you also shared so much. At the same stages of development, the same number of years of experience, the same awe of the upper-classmen and the same distaste for the lower-classmen. But most of all, you had all the same classes, learned the same things at the same time, and moved at the same pace.

Again we look back at a situation that seemed perfectly natural. You had all your classes with kids the same age, and you did all the same stuff. Makes sense from a purely organizational standpoint. But the truth is that children are once again robbed of a rich learning experience in the name of easy management.

Age

There is of course nothing wrong with learning alongside students your age. The problem is that students are not given a choice, and cannot learn with older and younger students around even if they wanted to. And their learning potential greatly suffers because of it.

• Age grouping enforces superficial differences: Children that are completely removed from the wide array of development and experience levels around them begin to see all children of other ages as inherently different. Older students become romanticized, and are seen as better simply because they are older. Younger students become demonized, and are seen as inferior simply because they are younger. And truly, it is a completely logical conclusion for children to come to given the circumstances. Why else would they be separated by age?
• Age grouping enforces superficial likenesses: The flip side of this coin is that children are greatly limited in their scope of social relationships, and it becomes very difficult for many to find others who share their real interests. And I don’t just mean their interest in purple or monkey bars. We have to stop pretending that children are these two dimensional cartoon characters that only talk about bubblegum and their wonderful daddies. They have personalities with depth and complexity, they are drawn to virtue and ability, and they long to learn about people like them. But when they are left with no choice about whom they can meet and spend time with, they will try to be social in any way possible since they are unable to foster friendships based on mutual interests.
• Increases power of peer pressure: I am not completely sure about this one yet, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I believe that by cordoning off students from children of other ages you are creating a very narrow set of perspectives, making peer pressure a far more powerful force.
• Causes stagnation in group efforts: Again this is another side-effect of the extremely limited experience levels that children are presented with. They are left with only their direct peers to learn from and brainstorm with, greatly reducing their exposure to new ideas. This also has the smaller disadvantage of leaving older students with no experience in relating their knowledge to others besides their direct peers and the requirements of a specific teacher.

Pace

In a setting where students must, by compulsion, learn all things together over the same amount of time, we are once again making the mistake of assuming that kids are all the same. But there are many levels of aptitude and interest, not only in learning in general, but within any particular subject. Even the average student suffers greatly. In some subjects he does very well, and becomes bored and stagnant. In other subjects he might not do so well, and feels rushed and frustrated.

• No Child Left Behind mentality: Again we focus on the myth that all children, once their primary education has completed, should know all the same information about all the same subjects. A utilitarian mindset leads us to believe that in order for children to be treated equally, they must all learn the same things, with none moving ahead or falling behind the others in anything. But even at the very best application, this method can only engender a level of education that is less than mediocre.
• “Gifted” programs are no solution: All gifted programs accomplish is declaring that instead of their being one type of student: the average student, there are two: average students and really smart kids. This is of course false. Every single child is extremely different, they excel and struggle at different things at different times. They are more varied than pasta sauce at the grocery store! Any educational methodology must provide for children of all types.

What It Could be Like

With a mixture of ages and paces, students can interact freely with one another as - and if - they desire. They will be able to form more solid bonds based on common interests rather than just a common age or seating assignment, and younger students can pursue mutually beneficial and respectful relationships with older students.

Students who are able to move more quickly can do so without hindrance, while students who have trouble with a particular subject - or with learning in general - can focus more on problem areas, spend more one-on-one time with teachers and seek guidance from more advanced students (on a mutually voluntary basis).

I also believe that this would have the happy side effect of a more healthy competition among students that would be based more on actual progress - I wish I knew how to build rockets too - rather than superficial standards - I wish I got all A’s.

What They Don’t Accomplish

Grades and report cards are a near-universally accepted method in public schools (and most private schools) of gaging a student’s progress in a particular subject, and are a means of highlighting their strengths and pointing out the areas where more focus is needed. Children are often scored on things like class participation and homework, but the majority of their grades comes from tests following each section of a subject (say, after each chapter of a history book), with a much larger test ending the semester and counting for a significant portion of their grade.

Do they succeed? Not at all:

• Grades emphasize arbitrary goals over the learning experience: The point becomes the A, or the Check+, or the high SAT score, rather than the subject matter itself. Learning is no longer about the joy of exploration and discovery, but is just the means to an end.
• Tests emphasize data memorization over subject immersion: The fact that “cramming” is such a well-known term in our public school should be enough to send a shudder down any parent’s back. If a child is given a four-page multiple choice test on Civil War dates, he will do his grudging best to accomplish just that, do well on the test of Friday, forget everything by 3 o’clock that afternoon, and have nothing to show for it afterwards except a distaste for history. Students are force-fed minutia without context or relevance, rather than experiencing and implementing the subject they are studying.
• It is more profitable for schools to post good test scores than it is to engender intelligence and creativity: When a school’s test scores go up, their funding increases. And the opposite is also true. When a school’s funding goes up, it must take on more students and generalize the testing process even more. When a school’s funding goes down, it must lower the intellectual rigor and challenge of its classes.

What Do They Accomplish?

I believe that people may be dishonest in their words, but will show their honesty in their actions. So if a person claims that his goal is one thing, but all of his efforts consistently produce a different, even opposite, result, then it seems logical that either he is not in touch with reality, or that his goal is in fact the thing which he accomplishes.

Schools claim that their purpose is to teach children, to prepare them for life, to interest them in a wide-variety of subjects and academic endeavors. But they do not accomplish this, despite decades of trying, mounds of research and tons of taxpayer dollars. Are schools out of touch with reality? Most definitely! But the fact remains that they are accomplishing their goals, unstated though they may be.

• Bad grades promote a sense of failure: If a student does badly in a class, for whatever reason (he doesn’t enjoy it, the teacher is horrible, the view through the window is distracting, etc), he is punished with a bad grade. Their is no curiosity in his predicament, no interest in why, only the punishment for his “failure” to test well.
• Good grades create dependence: Most children who make good grades cannot conceive of doing badly. Their grades become their standard of value - to their teachers and parents, as well as themselves - rather than the knowledge and experience they might have gained. It becomes then more important to do well than it is to pursue your own interests or enjoy the learning process.
• Grades create unhealthy competition: Generally I am all for competition as the best means of producing the best result. But two girls fighting over one guy isn’t healthy competition, and neither are grades. Students often become obsessed with one-upmanship, again focusing on their grades rather than content. Or the opposite occurs, and grades become an unchosen authority that they fully reject, along with any activity that smacks of learning.

Teachers alone cannot control students. They cannot stand in front of them each day spewing the same boring, disconnected diatribe and expect to keep a calm house. It becomes imperative then, in order to manage kids (this is, after all, the school’s highest goal), to create an environment where students will manage each other. Fear drives some do to better on the next test, while jealousy drive others to do as well as their neighbor.

Kept in herds with children your same age, all of whom move at the same pace, you are left with very, very little choice in what you can look for in a friend. Grades become a means of categorizing ourselves, and finding others like us. And then those grades become a point of pride, a source of personal value. More than anything, they a means of keeping you calm and quiet, sitting at your desk and doing your work.

See more from Stefan Molyneux at FreeDomainRadio.com

While my tone might be a bit more confrontational (I wonder why?), I think this sums up the argument most people would provide for supporting the Well-Rounded Education concept. And it sounds like common sense. Children are ignorant of the world and, we can assume by this argument, of their own long-term interests, and need exposure to a wide-array of subjects in order to insure their success. But I would like to point out the issues that I have with this argument, and the assumptions it makes about children. And if you have a different view that shows mine as false, I would love to hear it. The last thing I want to do is promote a learning methodology that does not best serve children.

The explicit end goal is assimilation and gainful employment

Proponents of this system make it clear that learning in and of itself is not at all a justifiable action. John Dewey (the father of the modern education system) went so far as to call learning a selfish endeavor for which “there is no obvious social motive” and “there is no clear social gain.” In order to be useful, then, we must learn the things that our society needs us to know, and not necessarily the subjects we wish to pursue.

But if the purpose of life is happiness on earth, as I truly believe, then the sole purpose of learning is to achieve happiness, or at very least to assist in its achievement. And if you wish to make the argument that one cannot be happy unless accepted into society and gainfully employeed, not only is that simply not true, but a well-rounded education is not even the best means to achieve such an end.

Most people are not virtuosos. We enjoy a handful of things. And it is from that handful that our life’s work should grow, naturally, like an extracurriculur activity. If instead the common mind is made to be common at all things, never allowed to focus and therefore excel at the few things that he truly loves, how have we helped that child? He will spend his life pursuing goals that are not his own, and moving in a circle of society without his peers. And while I do not enjoy making the practical point, the fact is that the best possible thing for everyone is for everyone to pursue his own passions. The world is built on the shoulders of the few men and women who actually do it, and I can imagine the incredible results as more and more do as well.

Children cannot be trusted

This portion of the myth is predominantly psychological, having to do with our own twisted concepts of authority and trust that are inevitably thrust upon our innocent children. As John Holt writes in How Children Learn:

All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words - Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple - or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must trust ourselves - and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.

We are convinced as children that we are dependent, primitive and too new to the world to make any choices or know our own interests and personalities. Somehow all of our desires are generalized as whims and our paths an unpredictable digressions. And so we live in a world of authority where every grownup knows better. And our personalities, distinctive nearly from the day we are born, are either beaten down the moment we cause an adult anxiety, or simply trivialized as childish silliness.

In school the assumptions made about us become justified. We don’t like some or all of our classes, we become easily bored or aggitated. We read when we should be listening, or talk when we should be reading. So it’s true, we’re just little ignorant bastards that want to cause trouble, and we definitely cannot be trusted with our own education. Nevermind that most of the classes seem so useless to us, that the one class you love moves so slowly when you want to know more and more, that the teaching methods - which need to appeal to the lowest common demoninator - are driving you mad with boredom. No, that can’t be it… it must be you.

Again, quoting John Holt:

Of two ways of looking at children now growing in fashion - seeing them as monsters of evil who must be beaten into submission, or as little two-legged walking computers whom we can program into geniuses, it is hard to know which is worse, and will do more harm.

The worst harm of course is that we grow up, we have children, and begin the cycle again. And it is a violent, debilitating and often humiliating cycle of degredation and totalitarianism. Grace Llewellyn writes in The Teenage Liberation Handbook:

Most of what teachers know about teaching has to do with classroom management (a.k.a. “discipline”)… But schools push you beyond intimidation; they shame you into believing you need them… It boils down to something called “blaming the victim”: school [and parents] blames you instead of itself for your intellectual influenza. When they tell you the reason you don’t do your schoolwork well enough is that you have no drive, curiosity, or love of learning, you start believing them… Once they convince you of this, through intimidation and shame, it’s over; you submit without much argument to twelve years of it. [Brackets mine]

No one actually has a well-rounded education

This particular point is ex post facto, but I think it’s worth pointing out. After all, if the entire system of well-roundedness does not produce a well-rounded adult, we can assume two things: it doesn’t work, and the world still hasn’t blown up without everyone knowing Algebra and 18th century poets.

Now, there are of course people who are very knowledgeable in multiple, if not several subjects. And I can assure you that 99% of those people chose to pursue every single one of them. The rest of the adults in the world stick to the stuff they love, and always have. Every test they took from 1st grade to 12th in a subject that they didn’t enjoy has been long forgotten, probably within an hour of completing it. And this is because you simply cannot force learning. In fact, when you attempt to force the mind to do anything, you generally get the opposite of your desired result. And in the case of schools, you get generation after generation of kids who hate learning, because they have been convinced that learning is about doing everything you hate instead of pursuing the few things you love.

Learning is selfish, just like Dewey said. And that’s a good thing. School is coercion, just like Holt and Llewellyn said. And that is a terrible, terrible thing. Children can be and should be trusted with their own minds, just like us adults should learn to trust ourselves with our own minds.

The personalities of individual children become quickly evident even as infants. One might climb trees while another inspects the sap. One might dabble in paints while another orders blocks. Preferences, interests and even the suggestion of goals rise to the surface before long. Why, then, should we all the learn the same thing in our schools? I have long thought that a well-rounded education was completely nonsensical. Children’s minds are not given the respect they deserve, and I’m sure that with a methodology that promoted their own natural curiosity and interests they will quickly reveal the areas that best suit their particular minds. That is why I like the Montessori method, and further why the Unschooling articles I read interest me as well.

An “unschooled” child, as I understand it thus far, would be free to pursue their own interests indoors and out, with parents or another teacher acting as a sort of guide that would provide context and relevant knowledge about any particular activity or subject. Here’s a quick example.

Johnny likes dinosaurs. Therefore, see if he would be interested in:

• Books on the lives of prehistoric animals
• Trips to dinosaur museums or an actual archeological dig
• Other rare and wild animals, past and present
• Descendants of dinosaurs, and the theory of evolution

Or a real-life example, from an article I read today, tells us about Jacky who played on a swingset, a tree swing and a tire swing for a while, and then walked back inside to declare to her mother:

• It is impossible to swing in a square or a triangle.
• When you go real high you hang in the air for a second until you start down.
• Legs outstretched make you go slow (when spinning on a tire swing)- bent goes faster. She thinks this may be due to the fact that with legs bent, your middle [center] is closer to your body and you are smaller so you can go around more times in one “twist”.
• When you spin in the tire swing it must be like how it feels to the earth spinning. It’s hard to stretch out your arms but easy to hold them to your side. This must be why we don’t fly off the world.
• Poodles do not like to swing.

Jacky I think is a really good example, as it shows the intuitive inverse of the “unschooling” method. In the first example, a guide provides a context for Johnny’s interest in dinosaurs. Jacky, on the other hand, already familiar with the concept of garnering knowledge from her interests, is eager and capable of doing so herself.

I need to do more research, and once I do I’ll share more. But I think the point is this: if the free market is the best way to acheive wealth, wouldn’t it make sense to apply the same principles to education? I certainly think so.

Wachovia failed (though the FDIC stepped in a little early so it didn’t look like a takeover, ha!).

And the bailout didn’t pass! Because it wasn’t big enough and didn’t pay off the right people! If it doesn’t pass by next Monday I’ll eat my hat.

The Fed’s budget is being doubled. The FDIC will most likely raise it’s 100,000 insurance limit to 250,000. Temporarily?! Chuckle, chuckle…

Once you get past all the Partisan BS, this video is pretty helpful as far as historical info: