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I'm shocked by the amount of ignorance in the comments here about schooling and the reason for alternatives. I can only think the "Stockholm Syndrome" is in play. With that said, I did not understand these issue when I was in school, either, and I resisted accepting them even when they were pointed out once or twice back then.

Some links:

"John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ

http://www.school-survival.net/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/18s.htm
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/freeschool.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/faqabouthomescho.html

My writings:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy
Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early
Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by
other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early
Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.
They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8-12 not only lacked the
anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores
began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young
children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They
presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency,
nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students in special education
classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier
enrollment of students.[9] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that
orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent,
with superior long term effects - even though the mothers were mentally
retarded teenagers - and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced
children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical
western children, by western standards of measurement.[9]
Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made
at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results
that were cut short by enro

I'm shocked by the amount of ignorance in the comments here about schooling and the reason for alternatives. I can only think the "Stockholm Syndrome" is in play. With that said, I did not understand these issue when I was in school, either, and I resisted accepting them even when they were pointed out once or twice back then.

Some links:

"John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ

http://www.school-survival.net/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/18s.htm
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/freeschool.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/faqabouthomescho.html

My writings:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy
Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early
Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by
other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early
Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.
They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8-12 not only lacked the
anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores
began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young
children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They
presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency,
nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students in special education
classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier
enrollment of students.[9] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that
orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent,
with superior long term effects - even though the mothers were mentally
retarded teenagers - and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced
children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical
western children, by western standards of measurement.[9]
Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made
at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results
that were cut short by enro

That's what I was taught as well. Then after getting into discussions about schooling with lots of teachers (both current and studying-to-be), watching my dad debate policies at school board meetings, etc., I realized that school and education are not necessarily the same thing, and many times are polar opposites. That was years ago.

About a month ago someone here on /. mentioned this book and I highly recommend it.

I've heard it mentioned dozens of times before over the last 6 or so years on the Internet but always ignored it as conspiracy rantings. I finally took the time to read John Taylor Gattos "Underground History of American Education" and when I was done walked around in a dazed stupor for a few weeks at the scope of the education "system" and the people and utopian (distopian?) ideals that have gone into building it over the last 100 years.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

I dare anyone with a child to read it and not feel sick with the new understanding history and ideals behind the system that they're sending their kids into that that book brings.

A choice quote from the first mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education Board one of the biggest movers in the creation of mass government schooling:

"In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."

W.T.F

Words by John Taylor Gatto, 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year:

http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"The second lesson I teach is your class position. I teach that you must stay in class where you belong. I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has
increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being plainly under the burden of numbers he carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the strategy is designed to
accomplish is elusive. I don't even know why parents would allow it to be done to their kid without a fight.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make them like it, being locked in together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at the 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 how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly polices itself into good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place."

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real."

I thought you might be interested in this.

The Underground History of American Education is relevent here, if you're interested in one former teacher's account of how forced schooling came to be in the U.S. and where the new concept of "adolescence" came from. Highly depressing; I thoroughly recommend it. It's free to read online. (Not affiliated with it in any way, I just happened to have read it recently.)

link

"Still, this is a simple solution. Kids don't need class."

There, fixed that for you.
    http://people.howstuffworks.com/homeschool.htm
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
    http://www.school-survival.net/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_school

I would venture to say that most humans are born curious, but then have it beaten out of them, both figuratively through the demands of societal conformity(specifically through the education system, church, etc.), and literally by the parents. It all happens at a very early age usually beyond conscious memory of the adult. Either way, it's usually our environment that kills the urge. Genetics plays a comparatively small part.

This is absolutely the truth! Any thorough investigation into the matter will convince you that this has been both deliberate and systematically executed, for the purpose of creating a society of people who are easier to control because they do not have strong minds that are willing to question. The public schools are essential to this effort and it could not have been so successful without them.

Albert Einstein once said "it's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

Also, you are not really venturing with that one. You are exercising the natural intuitive brightness and discernment that is your birthright as a human being. I say this because you may not be aware of how profound your insight actually is or of the real means by which you understood it. Let's say it was more direct than ordinary deductive processes. It only feels like a venture because people who do not possess that brightness may ask you to prove it to them logically or mathematically which is quite difficult compared to being able to see it on your own and know that it is the truth. The challenge is learning to trust that intuition.

It's a delight for me whenever I see an example of this. It makes me believe that there is still some hope, that maybe this unsustainable society doesn't need to collapse under the weight of its own excesses, or that if it does that it will be replaced by something much better. You won't see them promoted in the media because the media is heavily invested in the status quo, but I am encountering more and more people who have real understanding to some degree or another.

If I may, I'd like to recommend something to you. Another man has explored the same realization you have shared here, and for the subject of public schools he is quite exceptional because he was a schoolteacher for decades who was very good at what he did. He had to resign after he realized the damage that was being done in the name of education. His name is John Taylor Gatto. I'd highly recommend to you his essay and also his free online book. There is no better reference for this subject anywhere. Both are enlightening reads that I think you will truly enjoy.

While its an interesting premise, and underscores the average americans need to learn the basics ( reading, writing, and arithmatic) well beyond what Henry Ford envisioned for them when he helped pen the public school system -- sadly, this whole survey seems as contrived as the classic problem of Hot Days, Ice Cream, and Violent crime

I'm going to address this a bit out-of-order because there was one point that I felt was most important.

Some people are just not capable of critical reasoning skills at the level you demonstrate - but are worthy contributors to our society.

That "at the level you demonstrate" part is tricky for me. Yes, at the risk of sounding egotistical (though it is not meant that way) I am aware that I am more skilled at this than most. In fact, for just that reason, I feel something of a responsibility to share it with people who appreciate it, particularly those who just need to see a decent example to realize their own abilities. However, I don't think I am anything too special. I just think that so many others are so stupid. What I have a problem with is that most of them don't have to be. I think that, barring any diagnosed physical or mental disabilities, all people are capable of critical reasoning. To see my point would require some research into the public education system that we have today, how it got there, what its original stated goals were, and an understanding of a turning point in American history (other countries followed suit) during the 1800s when the desires of industrial tycoons replaced community standards when determining how to educate children. Let's say that it is "desirable" (and not by me), for the maintainence of the current status quo, for people to be just smart enough to do useful work and absolutely no smarter; certainly no wiser. That way they believe what they are told all too readily, don't question very much or do so in shallow or pre-patterned ways, and will accept almost anything if told that it's for their own good. One of the effects of this which is easiest to see for yourself is the way education is done primarily by rote memorization and certainly not by showing people how anyone with basic literacy and mathematics skills is fully capable of educating themselves. That amounts to nothing less than conditioned dependence or conditioned helplessness. If you want to see a simple real-world effect of this, look at how the average person gives up so easily when it comes to the most basic computer skills even though this information is widely and freely available to anyone who can reach Google. These are not folks who can grok "problem, reaction, solution" (aka "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" of Hegel) or "bread and circus" and do not understand why the constant supply of false dichotomies offered on mainstream news about most issues is not real debate but debate framing. I know of no better single reference for modern education than John Taylor Gatto. He has an excellent essay and a completely free online book.

And who decides? "I'm sorry, you are not smart enough to know what companies are evil, therefore you are not permitted to buy stuff." Surely this approach is ludicrous to even the most socialized of first world societies - right?

Of course that would be ludicrous. I think the real "triumph" of the current system is that it has so thoroughly discarded reasonable solutions that we start asking questions like this for lack of apparent alternatives.

In short, the problem you have with free markets are that they are free for everyone involved, and those who lack the mental acumen to see that they are being abused will continue to be abused.

If that happened in isolation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In my more cynical days, I would say "yeah, stupidity is supposed to have a price." However, it does not happen in isolation. It helps to determine the kinds of business practices and expectations that we all must deal with whether or not we have the acumen to recognize abuse. When people who lack that capability constitute the majority of the population, they harm both themselves and th

Some people are just not capable of critical reasoning skills at the level you demonstrate - but are worthy contributors to our society.

That "at the level you demonstrate" part is tricky for me. Yes, at the risk of sounding egotistical (though it is not meant that way) I am aware that I am more skilled at this than most. In fact, for just that reason, I feel something of a responsibility to share it with people who appreciate it, particularly those who just need to see a decent example to realize their own abilities. However, I don't think I am anything too special. I just think that so many others are so stupid. What I have a problem with is that most of them don't have to be.

I think that, barring any diagnosed physical or mental disabilities, all people are capable of critical reasoning. To see my point would require some research into the public education system that we have today, how it got there, what its original stated goals were, and an understanding of a turning point in American history (other countries followed suit) during the 1800s when the desires of industrial tycoons replaced community standards when determining how to educate children. Let's say that it is "desirable" (and not by me), for the maintainence of the current status quo, for people to be just smart enough to do useful work and absolutely no smarter; certainly no wiser. That way they believe what they are told all too readily, don't question very much or do so in shallow or pre-patterned ways, and will accept almost anything if told that it's for their own good.

One of the effects of this which is easiest to see for yourself is the way education is done primarily by rote memorization and certainly not by showing people how anyone with basic literacy and mathematics skills is fully capable of educating themselves. That amounts to nothing less than conditioned dependence or conditioned helplessness. If you want to see a simple real-world effect of this, look at how the average person gives up so easily when it comes to the most basic computer skills even though this information is widely and freely available to anyone who can reach Google. These are not folks who can grok "problem, reaction, solution" (aka "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" of Hegel) or "bread and circus" and do not understand why the constant supply of false dichotomies offered on mainstream news about most issues is not real debate but debate framing.

I know of no better single reference for modern education than John Taylor Gatto. He has an excellent essay and a completely free online book.

And who decides? "I'm sorry, you are not smart enough to know what companies are evil, therefore you are not permitted to buy stuff." Surely this approach is ludicrous to even the most socialized of first world societies - right?

Of course that would be ludicrous. I think the real "triumph" of the current system is that it has so thoroughly discarded reasonable solutions that we start asking questions like this for lack of apparent alternatives.

In short, the problem you have with free markets are that they are free for everyone involved, and those who lack the mental acumen to see that they are being abused will continue to be abused.

If that happened in isolation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In my more cynical days, I would say "yeah, stupidity is supposed to have a price." However, it does not happen in isolation. It helps to determine the kinds of business practices and expectations that we all must deal with whether or not we have the acumen to recognize abuse. When people who lack that capability constitute the majority of the population, they harm both themselves and those who

On the night of June 9, 1834, a group of prominent men "chiefly engaged in commerce" gathered privately in a Boston drawing room to discuss a scheme of universal schooling. Secretary of this meeting was William Ellery Channing, Horace Mannâ(TM)s own minister as well as an international figure and the leading Unitarian of his day. The location of the meeting house is not entered in the minutes nor are the names of the assemblyâ(TM)s participants apart from Channing. Even though the literacy rate in Massachusetts was 98 percent, and in neighboring Connecticut, 99.8 percent, the assembled businessmen agreed the present system of schooling allowed too much to depend upon chance. It encouraged more entrepreneurial exuberance than the social system could bear.

The minutes of this meeting are Appleton Papers collection, Massachusetts Historical Society

You write:

It simply wouldn't give coverage to everyone

This reminds me of the major theme of the well-regarded book Understanding by Design wherein the authors ridicule schools' mandate to "cover material" rather than designing means to have children understand the material.

At any given time, way more than 100,000 people are wrong on any given issue.

No, but it lessens the probability that the idea is "absurd" as so accused by the original response to my post. Further support is that the U.S. went without public education for most of its first century.

It is sad, and the state the US educational system is currently in will not allow it to compete in the global market, it will not allow it to be innovate and provide new ideas, but what it will provide is people who are like sheep and are more than willing to follow the crowd and just do it because everyone does. These people will be easy to govern and control since they won't ask questions and least of all will they rebel and fight for their beliefs. In other words, the US education system as it currently stands is making zombies.

I am sorry to say, but this is very much by design. The system was designed to by the powerful to perpetuate their own interests, not those of children. It is designed not to teach children how to think, but to prevent them, insofar as possible, from ever doing so, or even realizing that they can. After all, the easiest way to enslave people is to keep them so ignorant that they don't even realize that they are slaves. And, sad to say, that is exactly what they have done. It is probably among the greatest crimes of all of human history.

Before you troll and bash "fundamentalists" with no proof you should read a few books on why education in the US is in the state we now see.

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America By Charlotte Iserbyt

An Underground History of Education by John Gatto

Or read the Dodd Report to the Reece Committee which investigated Tax Free Foundations in the early 1950's.

Now teachers are being asked to change diapers for kids who's dead beat parents never bothered to teach how to use a toilet.

...excepting of course the special needs kids in the world, right? Use caution painting every child with any brush at all. They're each different people, and the generalizations don't usually work when they're that large.

In the USA public education is now just used as a tool for political indoctrination. With extremists at both ends vying to brainwash children.

This isn't just a 'now' thing. These have always been stated purpose of the education system since it was created. Another fine slashdot discussion led me to this site, which you really have to read immediately:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm

School is a religion. Without understanding the holy mission aspect you're certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare. All are present in the equation, it's just that none of these matter very muchâ"even without them school would move in the same direction. Dewey's Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.

What is "proper" social order? What does "right" social growth look like? If you don' know you're like me, not like John Dewey who did, or the Rockefellers, his patrons, who did, too.

1897, dude.

You definitely re-opened my opinion on grade school learning.

http://johntaylorgatto.com/
For your continued realisation of what schools real purpose is. Some people have diverted this thread into right vs left, but both the communists and the fascists used school to consolidate political power. Groups such as Hamas place running schools and day-care centres high on their priority list.

From John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education":
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/17b.htm
"""
Power ÷ 22

PLAYERS IN THE SCHOOL GAME

FIRST CATEGORY: Government Agencies
1) State legislatures, particularly those politicians known in-house to specialize in educational matters
2) Ambitious politicians with high public visibility
3) Big-city school boards controlling lucrative contracts
4) The courts
5) Big-city departments of education
6) State departments of education
7) Federal Department of Education
8) Other government agencies (National Science Foundation, National Training Laboratories, Defense Department, HUD, Labor Department, Health and Human Services, and many more)

SECOND CATEGORY: Active Special Interests
1) Key private foundations.2 About a dozen of these curious entities have been the most important shapers of national education policy in this century, particularly those of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller.
2) Giant corporations, acting through a private association called the Business Roundtable (BR), latest manifestation of a series of such associations dating back to the turn of the century. Some evidence of the centrality of business in the school mix was the composition of the New American Schools Development Corporation. Its makeup of eighteen members (which the uninitiated might assume would be drawn from a representative cross-section of parties interested in the shape of American schooling) was heavily weighted as follows: CEO, RJR Nabisco; CEO, Boeing; President, Exxon; CEO, AT CEO, Ashland Oil; CEO, Martin Marietta; CEO, AMEX; CEO, Eastman Kodak; CEO, WARNACO; CEO, Honeywell; CEO, Ralston; CEO, Arvin; Chairman, BF Goodrich; two ex-governors, two publishers, a TV producer.
3) The United Nations through UNESCO, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, etc.
4) Other private associations, National Association of Manufacturers, Council on Economic Development, the Advertising Council, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy Association, etc.
5) Professional unions, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Council of Supervisory Associations, etc.
6) Private educational interest groups, Council on Basic Education, Progressive Education Association, etc.
7) Single-interest groups: abortion activists, pro and con; other advocates for
specific interests.

THIRD CATEGORY: The "Knowledge" Industry
1) Colleges and universities
2) Teacher training colleges
3) Researchers
4) Testing organizations
5) Materials producers (other than print)
6) Text publishers
7) "Knowledge" brokers, subsystem designers

Control of the educational enterprise is distributed among at least these twenty-two players, each of which can be subdivided into in-house warring factions which further remove the decision-making process from simple accessibility. The financial interests of these associational voices are served whether children learn to read or not.

There is little accountability. No matter how many assertions are made to the contrary, few penalties exist past a certain level on the organizational chart--unless a culprit runs afoul of the media--an explanation for the bitter truth whistle-blowers regularly discover when they tel

This has the pungent aroma of legal douchebaggery all over it. A cynic might suspect that all the business-friendly appointments to the bench Bush made are starting to pay off.

In truth, the two major parties are quite comfortable with their duopoly. There is but one and only one significant difference between the two major politcal parties of the USA: the justifications given for things that they're going to do anyway. All of the rest is designed to make you believe that all problems and all instances of corruption are due to the other party or the other candidate(s). It's always some kind of "other". Some people think the entire problem is the Republicans. Some people think the entire problem is the Democrats. Who is correct? Both. Do you know why Congress has such a high incumbency rate? Because my Congressman is great; it's all the rest who need to go!

I'll phrase the same idea in a different way. These are in no particular order.

• I want a federal government that is far less powerful, including the recognition that it has no jurisdiction over any domestic event that does not cross state lines.
• I want the legal definition of "treason" expanded to include any politician who ever infringes on any civil right (as defined in the Bill of Rights) for any reason and I want this to be legally and vigorously enforced.
• I want all income taxes outlawed and replaced by sales taxes in a revenue-neutral way, at all levels of government, no matter what disadvantages (real or perceived) there may be to the practice of sales taxation.
• I want to end the War on (some) Drugs and replace it with the legal recognition that it is the government's responsibility to prevent you from harming other people or depriving other people of their civil rights but it is not the government's role to prevent you from harming yourself.
• I want all laws concerning victimless crimes to be abolished, for that matter.
• I want the law to require that all states must raise their own revenue via their own taxes and the federal government may not give money to any of them.
• I want all forms of fiat currency outlawed, particularly those which are combined with fractional reserve banking, and replaced with a representative currency.
• I want the Constitution amended to state that no government or government-funded entity may run any sort of educational institution, no matter what the disadvantages of this (real or perceived) may be, with one exception: critical thinking, argumentation, and propaganda techniques should comprise the only compulsory education and, due to their compulsory nature, should be state-funded.

If you read that and are inclined to tell me that some of those ideas have disadvantages, particularly those that would abolish government's involvement in drugs and in public education, I may already agree with you. My argument is not based on the idea that this is some flawless solution. My argument is simply that the advantages of removing government's entanglement with these things far outweigh any disadvantages of doing so. Research it earnestly and you will come to the same conclusion, without fail, so long as you can go wherever the facts may lead you. Beware, because the number of people who think they can do that is far higher than the number of people who can actually do that. A good topic for researching drugs is the asset forfeiture laws and the fact that they are carried out without any sort of due process. An excellent reference for researching education is John Taylor Gatto.

If you read that and believe that I must mean "the private sector" when I call for the abolition of public schooling, you need to know the danger of allowing the media to frame debates for you. I imagine that for-profit private schools, parochial schools and homeschooli

If we start looking at every politician based soley on his or her merits alone and ignore his or her political affiliation we would see the enormous "change of course" that we have been promised oh-so-many times and never actually seen.

The problem is that the vast majority of voters will never do that. The politicians know this and they know the key to winning is name recognition and publicity. That requires vast amounts of money in the modern era, which requires a vast organization (i.e: political party) to raise and manage said funds. Like most other large organizations the political party eventually forgets its original mandate and starts to focus on preserving and expanding the organization.

Smarter people than I have failed to come up with a viable solution to this problem. In short, we are all screwed.

That's what I mean when I say that we've lost our way. I do, with respect, disagree with you on one thing: "smart" isn't going to solve this problem. Wisdom is up to the task, however. The misunderstandings about wisdom happen not because it is so difficult that few could hope to grasp it, but rather, because it is so simple that nearly everyone overlooks it. The way I see it, there are but a few root causes of the mess we're in:

The original American spirit of rugged individualism, independence, and freedom was based on pride. The trouble with pride is that it always focuses on the self, and the self is mutable and impermanent compared to the timeless principles on which these virtues could also be based. That means that pride is a shifting sand, while a more solid foundation is also available. Because of that, pride has a number of weaknesses that render inevitable its eventual undermining. The worst of these are convenience and its decay into dependence.

For all of their foibles, governments understand one thing very well: if you want to own someone, get them to depend on you and your support by doing for them what they should do for themselves. Sell it in terms of convenience or duty. You see this in the USA with states that are afraid to defy the federal government because doing so would mean the loss of federal funding. States have the ability to levy their own taxes for exactly the purpose of raising the funds they need, yet many have come to depend on the federal money to where their budgets don't work without it.

You see this on an individual level with the amount of upheavel that would happen if Social Security were suddenly cancelled. In a more subtle form, you see it when you are taught, from the time you are a child, that it is up to the "experts" to determine your intelligence, aptitudes, future success, well-being, and in summary, your self-worth. You see it when suddenly, the early education of children becomes an important government priority and thus, the state takes on a responsibility that rightfully belongs to parents. All of this in spite of the rather open declaration by various 19th century industrial tycoons that regulating the poor and preventing them from becoming educated enough to seriously question the status quo was the purpose of public education. Really, it's amazing; today's authoritarians are masters of subtlety by comparison. This, of course, was later extended to include the growing middle class. There is no greater reference for this than John Taylor Gatto's free online book. You see it as well when there is a pill for every ill, an emphasis on instant gratification, and shallow thinking rife with logical fallacies and propaganda techniques as mainstream news.

Then there is religion. The morality of Judaeo-Christian beliefs was once a unifying force for this country. Many of the problems with this are now well-known and easily grasped. One problem is not so obvious. The mainstream forms of Christianity are more properly called Churchianity. Their followers do not love one

Still, it would seem to me that just like a Disney shareholder can quite frequently have more impact on changing a company than, say, a strongly conservative religious group's decision to avoid buying from the company, so too, a teacher, or any other government employee, stands a greater chance at implementing significant change than someone on the outside yelling that we're doing it all wrong.

If your aim is to effect change from within the system, then I think you know that you are rather unique in this regard. Honestly I don't believe that government schooling is going to change because of activist teachers who wish to see this happen. Modern government-run schools foresaw this possibility and so they stopped trusting you with the content of the curriculum a long time ago. They are replacing it with SOLs on the state level and No Child Left Behind on the national level because faceless centralization is what they want, not individual determination.

If that changes, I believe it will be because parents start taking responsibility for their children's education instead of leaving this job to the government. I really don't care whether a parent feels guilty from that statement and wants to subject me to the depth of their denial that abandoning their responsibility to someone else is in fact what they are doing. Whether real change means homeschooling or private schools or some as-yet uninvented method is not material to the point I am making. The idea is that the current system only works because people decide to participate in it instead of doing whatever they have to do to use available alternatives. I believe parents will make these changes once they realize that government as it is currently implemented does not represent their interests (knowing on which side their bread is buttered is not the same thing) and is indifferent to the social costs of the current system. To get a better idea of how I feel about this issue, as well as an enlightening read concerning how the current system came about, I humbly recommend that you take the time to read The Underground History of American Education by Gatto.

After all, do you listen to strangers who tell you that you have it wrong or to people you know and work with on a daily basis? (of course, as someone disagreeing with your position who doesn't know you, I may have just sealed my fate :) )

Certainly. For strangers, friends, or whomever, I am not what is called a respecter of persons, that is, I do not generally play favorites unless it's strictly a matter of taste; therefore, my requirements are the same for everyone. All they have to do is demonstrate that they correctly understood what I said and show me why it is wrong or doesn't add up or doesn't work, without using any logical fallacies or contradicting themselves.

Putting words in my mouth, using straw-man tactics, or pretending that you know my intended meaning better than I do is an automatic disqual

Defeat Communism and socialism by having a purely private educational system.

In no post in this discussion have I said government has no place in education. What I am against is the compulsory indoctrination of populations through school. This is something that communists most definitely want. Marx proposed public schools as a political tool necessary to implement communism and frankly admitted that education as a form of social control was not an original idea. All totalitarians want that, especially since freedom of religion has happened. That was previously the governments favored method of thought control.

My contention is that the purpose of education ought to be to benefit the student, not to bend them to the political will of others.

Yes, having a huge uneducated underclass is really going to keep the US on top of the world.

The US had a high level of education before government schooling.

If US conservatives wanted to change society in a constructive way, they would come up with a conservative state educational system that was successful, so that people would want it for their children.

Why does the answer have to be the government doing it for you? Maybe that's your cultural heritage, mine is a bit more independent. I'd recommend reading John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education or if you don't have time, at least the prologue Quote: "Our problem in understanding forced schooling stems from an inconvenient fact: that the wrong it does from a human perspective is right from a systems perspective."

Explain to me why the most socialist European countries have the most successful outcomes in terms of education, better than the US.

I don't know. Is it because they allow social, political and cultural values they oppose to be taught to their children by compulsion? Explain to me why I have had to deal with workers who have put their 12 years of school in but seem almost completely unable to think. (I'm not in the US by the way but a much more socialist country).

Personally I think there are many things that are good if you choose them but can be horribly bad if forced on you. Sex is one example, school most definitely has the potential to be this way. I think of the schools run by Hamas, by the Nazis, by the communists, etc where a central purpose of the school is to produce compliant slaves. Notice they do not need to change the structure of schools to do this sort of brainwashing, simply change the content. This ought to make us seriously examine our own school systems. My own examination leads me to the conclusion that compulsory government schooling has as its primary purpose to produce compliant citizens, fit to obey a corporation or government. It would not matter what political group controlled the system, my objection is the same.

Defeat Communism and socialism by having a purely private educational system.

In no post in this discussion have I said government has no place in education. What I am against is the compulsory indoctrination of populations through school. This is something that communists most definitely want. Marx proposed public schools as a political tool necessary to implement communism and frankly admitted that education as a form of social control was not an original idea. All totalitarians want that, especially since freedom of religion has happened. That was previously the governments favored method of thought control.

My contention is that the purpose of education ought to be to benefit the student, not to bend them to the political will of others.

Yes, having a huge uneducated underclass is really going to keep the US on top of the world.

The US had a high level of education before government schooling.

If US conservatives wanted to change society in a constructive way, they would come up with a conservative state educational system that was successful, so that people would want it for their children.

Why does the answer have to be the government doing it for you? Maybe that's your cultural heritage, mine is a bit more independent. I'd recommend reading John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education or if you don't have time, at least the prologue Quote: "Our problem in understanding forced schooling stems from an inconvenient fact: that the wrong it does from a human perspective is right from a systems perspective."

Explain to me why the most socialist European countries have the most successful outcomes in terms of education, better than the US.

I don't know. Is it because they allow social, political and cultural values they oppose to be taught to their children by compulsion? Explain to me why I have had to deal with workers who have put their 12 years of school in but seem almost completely unable to think. (I'm not in the US by the way but a much more socialist country).

Personally I think there are many things that are good if you choose them but can be horribly bad if forced on you. Sex is one example, school most definitely has the potential to be this way. I think of the schools run by Hamas, by the Nazis, by the communists, etc where a central purpose of the school is to produce compliant slaves. Notice they do not need to change the structure of schools to do this sort of brainwashing, simply change the content. This ought to make us seriously examine our own school systems. My own examination leads me to the conclusion that compulsory government schooling has as its primary purpose to produce compliant citizens, fit to obey a corporation or government. It would not matter what political group controlled the system, my objection is the same.

My comments almost three years ago on the Shuttleworth foundation also trying to reform schools, and applicable here:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/26#comment-397

Also, a related essay I wrote:
"Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools.
Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving
compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the
information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch
this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory
schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

Gates' initiatives for small schools are probably just more of the same, to make digital slave laborers. Even the more radical reform in the news still puts the emphasis is still on making kids fit into the needs of business:
"To fix US schools, panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html

At least Shuttleworth's initiatives are trying to empower kids, but that group too can't get past seeing schooling as the solution, instead of realizing it is a big part of the problem disempowering the next generation.

In twenty to thirty years computers will be about another million times faster, and we'll have better 3D printers and smarter dexterous seeing robots, and most humans just won't be employable in any sense we now understand. A previous related post by me to Slashdot on computing and education and the mindset of the class of 2029:
"Ignores the big picture on exponential computing
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=279703&cid=20354965

Marshall Brain on that theme:
"Manna"
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

A bigger generalization on that theme by me:
"Post-Scarcity Princeton"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year, in general on this:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
A lower middle class which has received secondary or even university education without being given any corresponding outlet for its trained abilities was the backbone of the twentieth century Fascist Party in Italy and the National Socialist Party in Germany. The demoniac driving force which carried Mussolini and Hitler to power was generated out of this intellectual proletariat's exasperation at finding its painful efforts at self-improvement were not sufficient
-- Arnold Toynbee, MA Study of History

Two Social Revolutions Become One

Solve this problem and school will heal itself: children know that schooling is not fair, not honest, not driven by integrity. They know they are devalued in classes and grades, that the institution is indifferent to them as individuals. The rhetoric of caring contradicts what school procedure and content say, that many children have no tolerable future and most have a sharply proscribed one. The problem is structural. School has been built to serve a society of associations: corporations, institutions, and agencies. Kids know this instinctively. How should they feel about it? How should we?

As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom y

Hell, I was extremely interested in math and science and even philosophy when I was a teenager, and I was in a school system that was considered one of the best in the country. Still, I almost dropped out because schools-- at least the schools I went to-- position themselves against learning, against curiosity, and against discussion. It was all about authority and power, and someone who was genuinely interested in the topic rather than interested in the grades was a "problem" to them.

The modern public school system was designed that way.

Many of the lessons that he describes can simply be explained by "It's the most efficient form of education that works."

Then you missed his point. The point is that things like efficiency or this image of a great competition among nations are our goals, not healthy development of strong, mature minds that can think critically and are not easily deceived. I recommend that you read his book, The Underground History of American Education (the entire book is available for on the Web site, for free) in order to really understand the difference. Yeah it's a full book and no you won't be able to instantly read it, but believe me when I tell you that the subject is worthy.

Not only do they not do their job, they're effectively making kids dumber by causing brain damage.

Unless making kids dummer is their job.

This is the first time I've seen anyone other than me reference this excellent man and the wisdom he is willing to share. You referenced the book The Underground History of American Education. That's an amazing thing to read, for it explains not just the problem but how it came to be this way and the sort of politics that made it override the wishes of parents.

If you ever need (depending on your audience) a shorter introduction to John Taylor Gatto and his message, you may also like his essay, The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher.

I know that you referenced truth because doing so was its own reward. It does not make you want to horde it like gold and silver, but rather to share it with whomever will listen. Knowing this, I say BLESS YOU for bringing such excellence into this discussion. To lots of us, even those of us already familiar with these things, it is a welcome sight.

Not only do they not do their job, they're effectively making kids dumber by causing brain damage.

Unless making kids dummer is their job.

Who's getting dummer?

Not only do they not do their job, they're effectively making kids dumber by causing brain damage.

Unless making kids dummer is their job.

From what I gather, though, at least the Democrats want everyone to go to school, so they can learn to think for themselves.

If that's what you believe the public school system is for, I'd like to introduce you to a man named John Taylor Gatto. I know of two works of his which will disabuse you of this notion if you will only read them. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher and the second is a full book called The Underground History of American Education. Both are quite eye-opening. The only caution I will give is that you may feel a temptation to become angry when you read these works; that will help nothing and no one, particularly you. The better approach is to understand that "if they really understood what they were doing, they wouldn't."

The public school system, like all systems, is fucked up beyond repair. It is no longer about training to be a successful member of society, and more about learning to obey and stand in line. Problem is, I don't have any solutions to offer.

This guy does.

I think sometimes it might be the that professions have the perception that someone spent time learning this through apprenticeships or many years at university and are therefore better people than that damned bespectacled nerd who only knows what to do from tinkering with those stupid computers in his parent's basement.

Formal education is severely overvalued in terms of the actual expertise of those who have it. John Taylor Gatto (or the excellent and much shorter essay here) is a particularly good reference for this, but if you forget everything you think you know about the matter and really look into it, for yourself, as someone who will follow the facts wherever they may lead, you'll find that modern methods of instruction are some of the worst ways to lean anything. I believe that the primary purpose of i.e. college is not to impart knowledge. The primary purpose is to teach you to allow others to run your life and set your schedule and that "the experts" will tell you whether your work is any good and how useful you are. It amounts to obedience training. In a modern society where most human beings are expected to be interchangable, replacable parts of the social machinery of corporations and other large organizations, this has immediate practical value despite what I must call a dehumanizing influence. Either way, my point is that I don't know anyone who has ever carefully thought about the matter who is terribly impressed by credentials alone. It's one of those numerous examples where some of the most important things that we collectively do are not the result of a conscious choice where everyone involved calls things what they are.

That and while people appreciate their cars or of course, their health, with computers it seems to be more that they HAVE to use it and resent every minute of it.

I maintain that for a user to have these frustrations and take them out on the guy who's trying to help them, merely because he's a captive audience who is forced to take it, is unjust and indicative of a petty, small-minded individual. If you really want to find out what sort of person you're dealing with, don't look at how they treat their friends or their family or their boss -- look at how they treat a captive audience. If someone's work involves computers and they resent using computers, they should deal with that by either learning to like them or finding another line of work. So, I again think this is a matter of personal responsibility and to be honest with you, these chronological adults who are really nothing more than overgrown children need to grow up and learn what that is.

just like everything else in modern human MIS-understanding .. of just about everything else .. economics .. physics .. politics .. health .. human nature .. and the list goes on and on ..

let's do a little free thinking ..

something that according to studies done by the CIA .. also only exists in about 1 to 2% of the general population .. where public education and mass media is driving the agenda .. established by the Ruling Class .. which is also about 1 to 2% .. in ORDER to fulfill their self-interests .. of their understanding .. of what is RIGHT and how thing should and do work ..

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

DNA 64 .. RNA 64 total 128 ..

so it would be a reasonable assumption that it is probably 50% of the whole story .. and we are only now gaining a crude understanding of 1% of DNA .. which if you look at the Whole is actually only 1/2 of a percent ..

welcome to the Brave New(old) World Order .. the future for humankind indeed looks bleak ..

as Timothy Leary was reported to have said:

"ALLWAYS question authority .. and think for yourself" and may the force be with you ..

Well, Medicare is pretty efficient in terms of low administrative overhead (in part from the cost-effectiveness of buying in bulk with less paperwork).
    http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2006/06/policy_why_medi.html

But I agree with you on Gatto, but for different reasons.
    "The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling"
    http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

Schools are efficient, but what they are efficient at doing is dumbing people down for 19th century factory work of a type which barely exists now (among other things schools do to make the average person part of a certain kind of repressive social machinery).

Links for those who are new to Gatto's writings:
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
and:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue6.htm

From the second link: "Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness. It's a religious idea gone out of control. You don't have to accept that, though, to realize this kind of economy would be jeopardized by too many smart people who understand too much. I won't ask you to take that on faith. Be patient. I'll let a famous American publisher explain to you the secret of our global financial success in just a little while. Be patient."

None of the candidates have put this on the table directly. Even vouchers don't address this issue unless you get the money in your pocket for homeschooling.

"It takes quite a lot of effort to turn a naturally curious child into a mumbling, illiterate worker bee who lives to shop, but Americans are known for their can-do spirit."

John Taylor Gatto makes exactly this point, suggesting schools were designed specifically to destroy curiousity and initiative so as to make people obedient workers, obedient soldiers, and compliant consumers. See:
    "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year
    http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
And:
    "The Underground History of American Education"
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real."
And:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue6.htm
"Once the best children are broken to such a system, they disintegrate morally, becoming dependent on group approval. A National Merit Scholar in my own family once wrote that her dream was to be "a small part in a great machine." It broke my heart. What kids dumbed down by schooling can't do is to think for themselves or ever be at rest for very long without feeling crazy; stupefied boys and girls reveal dependence in many ways easily exploitable by their knowledgeable elders."
And:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

"It takes quite a lot of effort to turn a naturally curious child into a mumbling, illiterate worker bee who lives to shop, but Americans are known for their can-do spirit."

John Taylor Gatto makes exactly this point, suggesting schools were designed specifically to destroy curiousity and initiative so as to make people obedient workers, obedient soldiers, and compliant consumers. See:
    "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year
    http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
And:
    "The Underground History of American Education"
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real."
And:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue6.htm
"Once the best children are broken to such a system, they disintegrate morally, becoming dependent on group approval. A National Merit Scholar in my own family once wrote that her dream was to be "a small part in a great machine." It broke my heart. What kids dumbed down by schooling can't do is to think for themselves or ever be at rest for very long without feeling crazy; stupefied boys and girls reveal dependence in many ways easily exploitable by their knowledgeable elders."
And:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

"It takes quite a lot of effort to turn a naturally curious child into a mumbling, illiterate worker bee who lives to shop, but Americans are known for their can-do spirit."

John Taylor Gatto makes exactly this point, suggesting schools were designed specifically to destroy curiousity and initiative so as to make people obedient workers, obedient soldiers, and compliant consumers. See:
    "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year
    http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
And:
    "The Underground History of American Education"
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real."
And:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue6.htm
"Once the best children are broken to such a system, they disintegrate morally, becoming dependent on group approval. A National Merit Scholar in my own family once wrote that her dream was to be "a small part in a great machine." It broke my heart. What kids dumbed down by schooling can't do is to think for themselves or ever be at rest for very long without feeling crazy; stupefied boys and girls reveal dependence in many ways easily exploitable by their knowledgeable elders."
And:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

the reason that situations like nazi germany occur in the modern world .. is because it is natural for people to believe that what they are being told is true .. it is unnatural to question or suspect on firsthand that you are being lied to .. and by the time that enough people realize what has and is happening it is to late to easily do anything about ..

study the origins and history of modern education .. the work of John Taylor Gotto is a good place to start .. http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

then watch the BBC documentary .. The century of the Self ..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml

citizen

1: an inhabitant of a city or town; especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman

2 a: a member of a state b: a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it

3: a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state

since the day that through political and legal maneuvering the corporation gained limited legal liability and the rights of persons .. two things happened ..

first .. this became a private planet .. and we all ceased being citizens ..

even in the modern dictionaries homogenized definition of a citizen .. we are all slaves and the chattel property of the corporation .. we have no rights .. except in our brainwashed minds ..

second .. on that day the LAW .. which at it's very essence is and has to do with regulating and controlling the behavior of human beings .. ceased to have any true or real meaning in relationship to human beings .. as it is now used to regulate .. control and more importantly protect the RIGHTS of things(corporations) and your natural inclination to believe there is some virtue and special status in being a law-abiding citizen .. is the very thing that has allowed the forces of evil .. via the corporation to enslave the people in the NAME of democracy and freedom ..

waking up to the true state of the modern world is a real bitch ..

the only way out is a full scale revolt of the slaves .. ironic as america was founded by an armed revolution against the ruling class .. but as the old saying goes .. fool me one shame on you fool me twice shame on me .. the ruling class will not make that mistake again .. since 9/11 they have used you money and they are now well prepared for that scenario .. both LEGALLY and otherwise ..

but the sheeple are not likely to do that because the vast majority will still prefer to live in denial believing that they have some RIGHTs ..

Education is based in a Victorian era copy of a flawed greco-roman model. Easy to say but what does that mean?

Our education models are not about learning, but creating students with a homogeneous comparative experience. If you really want them to learn you simply provide them with resources and incentives.

That's it.

A good analysis is from this former NY teacher, John Taylor Gatto. He put his book online. It's a good read to find out how *DEEP* these hierarchical ideas go. Underground History of American Education.

There was a recent TED presentation I remember where the speaker stated flatly that higher education was specifically tuned at making academic administrators, but perhaps not much good at other things.

Having just achieved my bachelors and even considering a master's (not in science granted but) I find the education wasn't so much about the knowledge but also about the opportunity to interact with the knowledgeable. What they have given is of dubious value at best but what you tease from them with your own questions is invaluable. How they went about becoming a "professional" was of interest as well. Using your time in any program as a launching point for what you want to do seems to me the true way to use this education system.

As to what should replace it. You need to decide on the principles of what you want to achieve. The rest will flow.

"The real issue is, can someone who went through 20 years of science education as a student, lived his life in academia since then and even got a Nobel prize get a fair shake from bureaucrats who like education the way it is -- flawed and therefore always needing more money?"

No the real issue is could someone who went through 20 years of science education as a student, lived his life in academia since then and even got a Nobel prize pass an
1895 eighth grade test?

http://www.rense.com/general68/8th.htm

While we're at it.. read John Gatto's book: The Underground History of American Education
http://johntaylorgatto.com/

The people behind educatoin

School Prison System. I have said it a few times now, on slash dot. School is a prison where young people are held hostage and counted, frequently. These cameras will make that even more efficient.
John Gatto has said it all already http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm

The problem is that your response displays reason, which has little place in the bureaucracy and money sink that is the modern public school system. After all, why use a crummy old textbook when you can get a new one for only $35-50 (times the number of kids, times how many books each needs).

I remember reading a truly mind-boggling article about the textbook development and selection process, but I can't find it now. If somebody else knows about this, please post a link.

As to the "bureaucracy and money sink" stuff, I highly recommend that any parent read the free online book: The Underground History of American Education. It gives a very interesting perspective on the whole public school system, and raises some compelling and disturbing issues about it.

You got modded as funny, but I'm not so sure it's a laughing matter. John Taylor Gatto talks about this in his essay, and also in his new book.

The OLPC project has multiple issues. That "security" choice is one of them, as in the Sugar GUI (as
opposed to plain Gnome desktop). Having said that, the rest of the article is FUD.
These cheap laptops are revolutionizing the possibilities for planet-wide democracy and education.

It is true children do better with adult involvement. But kids learn by themselves as well
when adults can't be present. The "Hole in the Wall" project by Sugata Mitra project shows that:
    http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm

And work by John Holt and John Taylor Gatto and others call into question the political underpinnings
of the entire enterprise of compulsory education:
    http://www.holtgws.com/johnholtpage.html
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
    http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

Here is an essay I wrote on "The true cost of a Princeton-style education in the OLPC era":
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-true-cost-of-Princeton.html
"This essay suggests that the cost of just one year of elite college education across the top fifty elite schools costs about the same order of magnitude as what it would cost to educate the poorest billion children on the planet K-12 using networked laptops. And that's just one example of the upcoming transition to a "post-scarcity" society we are in the middle of right now as a planet."

People can decry specific problems which have fixes, but the bottom line is that we can now
educate billions of poor kids on the planet for a fraction of the Iraq war and are not yet doing so.

Another related essay:
    "Post-Scarcity Princeton"
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"And those trends continue to the point where, say, for *only* US$600 billion (plus some more for communications infrastructure in some places) everyone on the planet can have a personal laptop with access to all these services and others, including free-to-the-user voice communications. US$600 billion is about a fifth of the current projected total cost of the Iraq war. And if a family shares one laptop, this might only cost about $200 billion, or about the size to a recent mailing of "rebate" checks to US Americans intended to prevent recession. And the potential benefits of a connected planet to help everyone become prosperous together in a diverse and democratic way is enormous. Even just one breakthrough innovation, like, say, a general cure for cancer, developed by, say, a woman in Africa studying pond water who might otherwise not have received an education, might pay back that $200 billion investment a hundred fold. And, if $200 billion still sounds too expensive right now for a chance at world peace and prosperity, in another ten years, it might only cost US$20 billion ($10/laptop) to give every family such a laptop. And in ten years after that, US$2 billion ($1/laptop, same as some electronic greeting cards now integrating paper, printing, and circuitry). Or, essentially, at that point twenty years from now, the laptops are free, compared to the benefits and other cost savings (like not needing to mail paper as often)."

There are problems beyond math.

The biggest is that the school system is not a great way to learn stuff. I remember (but bear in mind that I'm your average slashdotter, not your average person) at a fairly early age drawing 6x6 grids which taught be that 7 has probability 1/6. I remember my father drawing circles in the sand with dots in the center, explaining the basics of chemistry (and he's not a chemist), and me completely getting it.

I remember at age 14 (laughably late by slashdot standards) that a person I knew had written a program that played chess. Being a moderately skilled chess player at the time (1390), I thought that was awesomely cool and wanted to do that myself. That got me started writing C (I had dabbled in .bat "scripting" and javascript for ~2 years before that).

Where am I? Studying CS & Math. Doing the things I chose to study in my own time, not the things I discovered in school.

Contrast this with school. You're forced into confinement (it wasn't until grade 6 or 7 we were allowed to leave school grounds unsupervised) with a bunch of people that mistreat you horribly and wish you the worst, and another bunch of people who really don't give a rats ass. You're bored out of your mind in the classes that interest you because the material is easy and progress through it is slower than your pace. You're bored in the rest as well, because they don't interest you; the disinterest may arise merely from the fact that they are being forced upon you.

And I went to a private school... with the things my mother has said about public schools (and she's worked at one), I think I should be glad to not have attended one. On top of that, I hear the danish school system is better than the one in USA.

More edibles for cognition: John Taylor Gatto (English teacher) says that we he finds companies that don't mind having the kid do some work, the kids do more and better work than the paid staff. My ex-girlfriend (okay, so not completely an average slashdotter :D) has had the same experience (with her being the "kid", age ~15 at the time). This at least tells me that kids have an inherent drive to not waste their time. If that's true, then why are they so unmotivated to do schoolwork?

Not wanting to be completely off topic, the article says that work needs to be done on making math chic. The question is: who has the credibility and influence with kids to make math cool? For young kids, the parents have some influence, although not much in the "cool" department. For teens, it's mostly the peers (not the kinds who reset the connection). That's a network effects problem you have to solve. Who else? Rock stars? Quaterbacks? Miss teen south carolina (everywhere such as maps)? I mean, having math be the Hot Stuff wouldn't be bad, but it would imply (not just suggest, as the decline in maritime piracy has) the existence of the flying spaghetti monster.

(for those not picking up logician's humor, everything follows from a contradiction).

Since the public education in this system was DESIGNED to dumb people down, and supress natural human ingenuity and intelligence, preparing them to live in a hierarchical industrialized nation. I'd rather see the PUBLIC education system dismantled!

---Even better question: what are they going to do with all the factory workers that simply CAN'T get an education? My ex brother in law has an IQ of maybe 105, and I know a LOT of guys like him. In my parents generation those with a strong back could afford to feed a family and buy a little home. Now the factories are nothing but decaying hulks, and what little work is left is being snapped up by illegal aliens that will work for a pittance while living ten to a rathole so they can take their money back home where they can live well.

After reading John Taylor Gatto's book, Undreground History of American Education. It's free to read on his website (he published 1 chapter per month free). Back in the 1800's, coal miners complained they had to work too hard and long that they couldnt inform themselves of happenings in government, along with enjoying of the Classics. That is a marked departure from today where they seek to watch the latest yuck on tv: complete and utter apathy.

I would never tell, myself included, that someone is not cut out on getting an education. Yes, some things are difficult, but all things are understandable. They may take time, but really, what are we going to do in the meanwhile?

---The simple fact is we have a black hole in this country, and it is only getting wider. Our money is being bleed to other countries while we make nothing but imaginary property which can be easily copied. I personally believe we'll end up in a ten year+ depression while will sadly in all likelihood be followed by a xenophobic fascist police state, circa Germany in the 30's. And the governments current folly of bailing out the investment bankers by printing more money is simply going to make the problem worse. And most sadly I don't see any way out of it, as it would require REAL long term planning and possibly even WPA style public works to rebuild our aging infrastructure and all of the corporations and public officials seem to be of the "damn everything but the quarterly report" types.

Do you know what saved our butts in the last Great Depression? Excessive government spending and coming up to a World War. We dont have the manufacturing base we once had, nor are we solvent as a country. Though a theory states that extreme interdependence on trade reduces warlike aggression, it does not eliminate it. I wonder what would happen if the USA found itself in a corner.

Well, in the absence of government-sponsored education, corporations are likely to step up to the bat. Very few parents are willing to put in the requisite amount of work to homeschool their kids, and those who are willing are oftentimes terrifying.

Labor unions, churches, political action groups, charities, are just a few examples of privatized institutions that are non-profit and not corporations. Of course, you would never learn that there are alternatives to government AND corporations in public education. It is always the either/or strawman.

All I remember learning about in highschool is the Kreb's cycle and Lord of the Flies. Unbridled material desire, on the other hand, was taught to me by advertising and Disney movies, all of which I encountered outside of the boundaries of the, ahem, fascist government zombie consumer factory.

In government schools you were taught how to show up in class when the bell rings. Since there was only one teacher to 20 or 30 students, there was no way the teacher could teach you individually - for the most part, you sat silently and absorbed without question what your teacher was saying (except for short question and answer periods during which an entire class of 20 or more could not all possibly participate). You learned that your test grades, attendance, and behavior would all be recorded and tracked and go on your permanent record. You were segregated by age and by ability (and although not officially, probably by race and class as well). You learned you would be evaluated by standardized testing set by a higher authority, and therefore learned to accept other people's goals as your own.

More importantly, you learned from the non classroom environment how to conform to social norms. You learned that if you didn't wear certain clothes, or listen to certain music, etc., that there would be certain peer social groups that you would be excluded from. Bullying, teasing, and social exclusion are almost universal in public education - You might not have been a victim yourself, but there was enough of it happening to some unlucky person for you to learn to fear and respect the superficial opinions of others.

While you didn't learn outright to buy Disney crap, you learned the type of obedience, conformity, and regimentation that is necessary to be a good worker and good consumer that would inevitably lead you to desire Disney crap.

Our current system of public education was designed by powerful industrialists in the U.S. and Europe in the late 19th century, in order to create a literate but obedient industrial worker class.

Check out this interview which gives you a bit of background:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ&feature=related

If you are interested, check out the book "The Underground History of American Education", which is now available free, online:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm

Remember the McCarthy era? Or was that just an incredibly complicated feint by the powers-that-be?

Fascists exploit Marxism when it is to their benefit... they also exploit anti-Communism when it is to their benefit. Fascism can attach itself to any authoritarian or reactionary ideology. Fascism isn't a self-contained belief system, it is a political and social system. It doesn't really care what the ideology of the authoritarian state is, it is simply the belief in an authoritarian state in and of itself.

In the post-1960s America, Marxism is a socially acceptable ideology, and therefore our modern education system uses Marxism as a tool to sell Fascism. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Marxism was taboo and therefore Fascists could exploit that. Fascists craft their propaganda to appeal to whatever pulls in the suckers.

Many times, rival factions of Fascists will be in conflict with each othe

Old school advice...

First of all, school up to the PhD is a pyramid scheme (currently failing):
"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein (Vice Provost CalTech)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
The end result is "disciplined minds" who will not step out of line politically:
http://disciplined-minds.com/
Or journalistically:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051207.htm
"By the time you've gone through, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here you could say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and even less fancy places, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things that just wouldn't do to say, and that's what a good deal of education is. So the people who come out of it - and there are many filters, if people go off and try to be too critical there are many ways of discouraging them or eliminating them one way or the other. Some get through, it's not a uniform story. ... The more educated you are the more indoctrinated you are. And you believe you are being free and objective, whereas in fact you're just repeating state propaganda."

The reason schooling exists in its current form is to teach these seven lessons:
"The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
in order to prepare most people for a life of servitude to the military or factories (and to not be very thoughtful about consumption or politics either).
"The Prussian Connection" -- Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/7a.htm
And from:
"A conversation with historian and author James Loewen. Sort of."
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/18/loewen.html
"We like to believe schooling is a good thing. But when it comes to understanding any problem with historical roots, we might expect that the more traditional schooling in history that Americans have, the less they will understand it. Students who have taken math courses are better at math. The same is true for English, foreign languages, and almost every other subject. But in history, stupidity is the result of more, not less, schooling."

Still, studies have shown that the only people who really get economic value out of an Ivy League degree or equivalent are those from lower middle class backgrounds. All other things being equal, for most other people it's not worth the money as an investment. See the book "Class" for some other details:
http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253
Otherwise, consider:
"College is a Waste of Time and Money" (1975)
http://www.grossmont.edu/bertdill/docs/CollegeWaste.pdf
"College, then, may be a good place for those few young people who are really drawn to academic work, who would rather read than eat, but it has become too expensive, in money, time, and intellectual effort to serve as a holding pen for large numbers of our young. We ought to make it possible for those reluctant, unhappy students to find alternative ways of growing up, and more realistic preparation for the years ahead."

And consider those years ahead following Moore's Law will include computers 10000X faster than what we have now for the same price in 20 or so years.
http://www.transhumanis