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Connecting the dots: Forced Schooling => Domesticated Humans

By Bruce R.

This is a letter that I sent to Rachel's Democracy & Health News. It has been modified some: typo corrections and reformatted to html so it can include links to the things referenced.

To: dhn@rachel.org
Date: November 20, 2005 12:16 AM
Subject: Connecting the dots: Forced Schooling => Domesticated Humans

Connecting the dots: Forced Schooling => Domesticated Humans^[1]

I have read issue #806 "Help! I've Been Colonized and Can't Get Up...", December 09, 2004 and the related issues by Jane Anne Morris.

One "connect the dots" question that is only briefly touched on: What is the major vector for *how* our minds have been "Colonized"? Corporations are a major factor, but again *how* do they make complacent workers and good consumers? The sad truth: it's our education system. It is not broken, it is working just fine, for the current corporate and government needs. We are doing it to ourselves too, by insisting that of course our children should be forced to go to school. Children have to be educated, and parents don't have the time or knowledge, and some can not be trusted to teach all that kids must know. More than once I've heard parents acknowledge that schools are needed to teach our culture. And they seem fine with handing their kids over to a state run institution to teach our culture, as if parents, extended family, and friends couldn't teach our culture.

The book, that changed my view on schools, is "The Underground History of American Education", by John Gatto. (The whole book can be found online. (Note: the book listed in amazon.com is not the whole book that I read.) The book is certainly not anti-education, or even a call for homeschooling. But it is about how schools are failing at what most of us want. We want to raise independent, critical thinking, self-motivated, adults who continue to learn. The existing education system satisfies *none* of these goals! Gatto points out "It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on."^[2] One hundred fifty years ago, most kids started school (at about 2'nd grade level) already knowing how to read and do basic math.

There is a personal side to this. As a parent, I've seen my daughter gradually change. She used to like school. But the unreasonably high expectations, and the massive amounts of homework, changed her to not liking school, to avoiding anything with an "educational" goal. In short she became a typical "normal" teenager. But even before I read Gatto's book, I could feel it in my gut that this might be "normal" for our society, but it is not a healthy human response.^[3] In other times (before the industrial age), when teens were valued for their enthusiasm and energy, they were happy productive members of society. Yes, I've heard the piece by Socrates (470-399 BC) grousing about the disrespectful youths of that time.^[4] Is it only a coincidence that Socrates' culture too, held their teens in state of limbo, prevented from fully participating in adult affairs? So we've chosen to "homeschool" our daughter for her high school years. She is fully capable of learning on her own. She only needs some mentors to help direct and focus her occasionally. Basically I see this as a time for her to see what she would like to do with her life, i.e. pick a "major" and do what is needed. It might include college, or it might not. Already the change in her attitude has been very positive. And she's spending more time and depth on topics that no public school curriculum would allow.

There was a time were you would have to go through college, to get your "ticket" for the good jobs. But as many college graduates are now discovering, that bargain is not being honored anymore. So the path that my daughter is on now is not "normal"; she will be learning what she needs, to go after what she wants.

Gatto's main solution: scrap the current educational system and replace it with community funded and managed schools (city or town level), i.e. local school boards. If there is any funding outside of the local community, there can be no restrictions on how the money is used--only the local community can decide how the money is allocated.

It is interesting that just about all of the root problems we are facing, corporations, governments, the education system, ecological changes, all have a common solution: local control, local organizations, local representation. Of course this is only partly true. Who represents the other life forms on this planet, and who represents the people 10,000 years from now?

I've been reading Rachel's on and off since about 1989. Thanks for all of the high quality reporting and essays on environmental topics, that identify hard facts, while speculating on root causes.

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[1] I've taken the term "Domesticated Humans" from David Suzuki's "A Planet for the Taking." The videos can be accessed here (use guest/guest to access).

[2] Source: The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher Source: http://reliableanswers.com/hs/six_lessons.asp (Archive)

[3] I'm not talking about the pull to separate, to go out with friends, rather than family. I'm proud to see her striving for independence. I'm talking about the anger, the resentment for being told what she can and can't do.

[4] Q: Quote About Ill-Behaved Kids - -- Aristotle? Socrates? Plato? Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Socrates (Archive)

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