Kids are hardwired to love learning, they will never stop asking questions and exploring the world.
Schools quash that curious spirit. They put kids in a boring, prison-like, highly regimented environment that seeks to teach discipline and obedience to the status quo. Don't think, accept your role in the capitalist machine. If you are bullied, no one will help you, but if you fail to complete work you will be punished. Most of all, get used to not owning most of your time.
Take note of this and try to rekindle your child-like curiousity and love of learning. Ask yourself, do you still have questions about the universe you forgot to ask as a child? Read about the planets, the stars, microbes, machines. But most importantly, do it at your own pace and do it because you still have questions. Not to pass some test, but for you.
I remember one of the things that frustrated me the most as a kid, was asking an adult "why?" and getting the answer "that's just the way it is".
Motherfucker, that is not an answer, even my 6 year old self knew that. Do better!
Lol same, I would get "Because I said so." and I would say "That's not a real answer!"
I was probably an annoying kid lol
I was probably an annoying kid lol
We were probably both seen as that, but that wasn't our fault. It's on the unimaginative dipshits we were asking.
Questions are annoying when people don’t have the time or knowledge to answer them. Time is understandable, but if that’s the case, the answer should not be “because I said so” it should be “I don’t have time to answer that right so try and remember to ask me later”. A lack of knowledge is also frustrating because it should always be okay to say “I don’t know”
I agree, and I think it's also intended to selectively reward a very specific kind of worker bee that can put up with that environment and punish those that can't.
Of course, such intentions are only there for the poors in public schools or charter schools that are inflicted upon the poor. Rich kid schools select for different attributes, or just let the failson coast.
worker bee that can put up with that environment and punish those that can’t.
Indeed, the ones that resist or make any attempt to rebel against that shitty system gets shoved into the carceral system.
I was in an uncanny valley of gifted kids and high-behavior students. Like I would be failing my classes, but they were advanced classes. Or I would sleep through a month of classes but then I’d get a decent score on the tests. If they’d moved me back down I would have just stopped coming. But that is what it is
I've been teaching myself about trains for over a decade, and I'm still not done.
https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf
Chapter 2 starting on page 71, contrasting the "banking model" of education and a liberating one which engages students in dialogue.
Fuck the banking model. So many older teachers still strictly adhere to it and it’s just not accurate
I had all the same sensibilities that make me an ML today as a child and was cycled between Catholic/boarding/public schools. All of them used the banking model, and while I'm good at remembering for tests I learn nothing from that. Any sense of creative or critical or systemic thinking was discouraged if not punished, outside of the prescribed places to be creative or acknowledge that a system exists. At best it felt like gaslighting and now basic algebra gives me anxiety. Every meaningful thing I've learned and every ability I have to learn more is despite school, not because of it.
Montessori schools seem like book chiropractors, but I'd have done so much better in an environment like that where you can explore and engage with shit. Waldorf schools would have been all the better in encouraging formal experimentation. The way Freire structures his model as an improvement over that, committees investigating problems together and engaging students in a rehumanising process, would have really made me love school instead of dreading it. Teachers engaging with students instead of strictly teaching out of a book would have made them much less of an opposition figure to me, as they wouldn't just be the barrier to the grade I need who yells if I ask a probing question about something. The fascist teachers I had wouldn't have lasted a year poisoning history/social studies/English as subjects because they wouldn't have some unimpeachable authority to their boomer rants.
Definitely essential theory.
Any sense of creative or critical or systemic thinking was discouraged if not punished
That’s a class thing as well. Ruling class schools focus much more on open ended project work and team-based cooperation. They teach people to question things because, basically, the engineers running a system need to know about its flaws to keep the junk pile running. There have been studies about how school culture is used to reinforce norms around how much freedom students ought to have. Teachers from working class backgrounds tend to see school as a means to get a job and tend to teach in districts full of other working class teachers where this is the prevailing sentiment
I know a lot of socialist teachers and none of them have a history of domestic violence. If my partner called me a cop I might be ready to throw down though
If your partner said something to you and you thought about throwing hands you might have same potential in law enforcement after all
Same. Let me know when the revolution comes and you start executing people for teaching kids how to read
Have you seen America's literacy rate? Don't pin your pride on that claim.
I’m well aware of the literacy rate. I’m fighting it every fucking day. I do reading intervention. It is my only subject and I work at it 10 hours a day. And I also have union duties and do org work on top of that. It’s not my fault that kids come into 2nd grade with more severe trauma than the average adult. It’s not my fault that a bunch of racist housing policies made my district dirt poor or that 10% of my students are housing unstable. But I have hard data to prove that what I do works.
Kids come in functionally illiterate and are often caught up to their peers by the end of the intervention. I chose to work in a poorer district with higher need kids for lower pay because their union is more radical and because I have more leeway here to not propagandize children. Guess that’s equivalent to beating unarmed protestors or shooting black kids dead in the street daily though.
Nah, you get a pass. However you are unuseually dedicated and unuseually good.
Back in the school district I worked in we didn't have a lot of people like you and it showed. If we had had more like you, I might have followed through with finishing my education as a young man.
Yeah some districts are bootlicker central. There were several points where that sort of deference to the bureaucracy made me consider swapping lanes. There’s a sweet spot for me where a district isn’t performing so poorly that it’s about to be taken over by the state but it’s underserved enough that it’s kind of an “emperor is far away” situation
I read your comment on my way to school, in the midst of a massive outbreak, where more than half the staff and students are out, as the city government continues to feed my body into the gears of the economy to lubricate them with my blood. And I get to read you calling me a cop. Unironically go fuck yourself
Meat grinder gang. What’s the over under on us staying open through the entire Omicron wave?
I think my district is playing for time. Get to the break and then they can start counting cases again from zero
Mine seems to be hiding behind the fact that a lot of the kids out are ones where unexplained absences are already a thing
In the midst of a massive outbreak the members of your profession have not even considered a strike to save thr lives of their charges, the lives of the famies involved or even the their very own.
You are a good one, in a barrel of bad ones.
Don’t come in here criticizing teacher’s unions if you don’t even follow their activity. There have been unions all over the country getting classes to go remote by threatening strikes. Many of them in environments where public employees striking is illegal. My union is currently negotiating something similar and there are rumors of a sickout if they don’t follow through.
Hell yeah, based as hell comrade. When you strike drop a link to the strikefund and I will put a pizza in it.
Very cool to blame workers for their own oppression
Fair. However they have one of the last few good unions and they are are honor bound to set a positive moral example for thr future generations.
If anyone vould be doing it, it's them. Infact, many of them have been doing it and it has been working. However most of the professon are not living up to the samdard
IDK what you're talking about. A lot of teachers don't have unions. I do, but it's terrible. And frankly you have no idea what kind of organizing goes on. When COVID started we forced the schools to shut down with wildcat sick outs that the progressive caucus I'm a member of helped organize. I organized my entire chapter from scratch to get them strike ready a year ago, and then our leadership sold us out.
Teachers are workers, full stop. And like most workers they are poorly organized if organized at all. Their conditions match the conditions of other workers in this country. We're not cops just because they aren't doing what you (and I) would like them to do.
You can think ill of my profession all you want, but don't call me a fucking cop
Gonna dedicate my life to getting underpaid to teach government propaganda to children. Couldn't be me cause I had a breakdown and dropped out of early childhood education courses when I realized the grim truth
It really is disturbing how much of early childhood ed is just behavior management. They barely emphasize it in college, but going into the field you sink or swim based on your classroom management skills. Kindergarten teachers terrify me. You shouldn’t be able to take a 5 year old and train them to sit at a desk for extended periods of time.
That said, I’m a reading teacher and I refuse to read propaganda books. Critical literacy and culturally responsive pedagogy are where it’s at. The representation in my classroom library reflects the population of the school I’m working in and I’m always happy to find a book that a kid can see themselves in. Covid has absolutely fucked these kids over and any chance I have to help them enjoy reading I will take it
holy shit I always forget that they really did Graeber fucking dirty lmao
Gotcha yeah that checks out. However I do think that revolutions are born hiding within the cracks of a system and schools have a lot more leftists than one would expect (especially with how mask-off the chud teachers are allowed to be). There was that post yesterday by a journalist saying that a lot of leftists work in mainstream publications and just get their more radical bits edited away as well. Our self-visibility as a group isn’t great
Isn't the modern school system some preWW1 german shit to train soldiers?
There have been a ton of meaningful reforms since that model was instituted. Now if only we could give the teachers who were trained under some of the older systems the boot and have the dept of ed actually let us use the stuff we learn in school more often. Like there are so many evidence based strategies out there that are so difficult to do anything with if you’re in an Adopt school for Common Core instead of an Adapt school
I think it depends on the school. I've had a school career where I went from underfunded public schools to rich asshole schools and everywhere in between, but all schools embodied at least part of your message. Rich dickhead school was super duper tiny, a bunch of rich republican shitheads with small businesses or w/e send their kids there. My family, who are fortunately not republican shitheads, tell me a bunch of teachers there quit since I left because admin doesn't enforce pandemic rules. It honestly felt very amateur, like the whole place is barely running at all, not for lack of money (they got loads) but from poor management. They had like ridiculous workload, I only passed because I had a stimulant prescription, and even then if they hadn't banned all cell phones from being even brought on campus I'd have failed for sure because I have hella ADHD. No clue how anyone else did it. There were a few times I got bullied in rich dickhead school but I always just punched them or smth and they went crying to principal and I got a small vacation. The bullies there always felt very... fake, to me, like even when they were physically way stronger than me they always folded the moment you showed any resistance. Admin never interfered when it's someone picking on you, you had to have "a fight" before they cared. My parents absolutely hated when that happened but I don't particularly regret it, I never seriously hurt anyone. One time I legit had like a mental break like in fucking Rimworld or some shit, I was so stressed I kinda just sat in a chair and didn't go anywhere until they sent my parents to come get me lol. Before that I was in a (only slightly) underfunded public elementary school, and their basic strategy was to give everyone work that was so mind-numbingly easy that anyone who didn't have a total dogshit home life could get it done pretty easy. There were more than a few people there who did have a terrible home life, household, whatever that got in the way of things, but I never got a good view into any of their lives because I was young and privileged and never thought to ask. This was also the school that basically put me in a box when I acted out lmao. Like they had this room, really tiny, like ~1-2 square meter floor space, barely big enough to fit a plastic chair, where they just make you sit and there's nothing in it. There was one specific one in the school my ass would get sent to because I guess ND kids are too much for underpaid teachers or w/e, but I think some classrooms had their own individual ones as add-ons. My last year before college was at a decently big and well-funded public school, that was probably the best because I actually had time to do what I want, and as a senior I could even leave campus during lunch. They also had actual electives and AP courses, which was a step up from rich asshole school, so that's nice. I never took the time to get to know anyone who was there, but everybody was super nice, never got fucked with or anything. Even with mostly AP courses it was way easier and less stressful than rich school.
Hey, I teach CEGEP level (basically a transition between high school and university) and I have been trying over time to make my students more involved in their learning and/or to have a more leftist approach to knowledge.
Thing is, flipped classrooms and ungrading are some small steps forward but I do not really know how to break the "mold" and get students to explore genuine interests of their own. For reference, I teach English as a Second Language for intermediate/advanced students and anytime I try to go for projects that are a bit more "out there" students end up being extremely hesitant because they are so used to just writing what their teachers want to read.
Long story short, what are some concrete techniques and/or important texts that could help me make my teaching more liberating and empowering and get my students to go beyond just "I am taking this class because I have to take it to get my diploma"?
I always find these kind of critiques of school very strange, both as someone who attended public school and now someone who teaches in one. (Neither in the US).
Public schooling was hard won by labour, not insisted upon by capital. It's a project where we take money from the rich without asking so poor kids can get new, enriching life experiences like playing the trumpet, painting with watercolours, close-reading literature, participating in school plays, etc.
I've seen kids that are the product of unschooling in experiences in alt-ed, and most of them aren't glad they did it. It may sound like a kind and respectful way to treat kids but it's a very idealistic way to think about what most kids are like. Definitely there is a percentile of kids that thrive in that type of environment, but most don't.
Mostly it feels like adopting this framework for schooling is one that gives the adopter some sort of psychic vindication they feel like they need because they had traumatic experiences in school. It also feels like a very easy and lazy approach to critiquing a US education system that has been eviscerated by capital and assuming the problem is schooling and not capital.
In all fairness, current American education standards are very oppressive for kids with ADHD (usually underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed simultaneously in the USA because teachers don't receive training to really know what it is). It's often difficult for those with learning disabilities to adequately describe why they suddenly lost a lot of interest in learning, all they know is that there was some period where the expectations absolutely destroyed them and their self esteem and they never had the support they needed to learn productively. It's instead an unknown force for them, and they're left feeling like their potential was squandered as a child.
That's my suspicion for OP and most others that agitate on this issue despite how hugely beneficial public education tends to be (Republicans defund it for a reason!). They are bringing up a legitimate issue, even though on the surface it's little more than a juvenile rambling about how homework is bad. They and millions of others had a real struggle that the Taylorist powers-that-be did not help with.
The real solutions to teaching kids with ADHD and other learning disorders are beyond me since I'm just a bullshitter on the internet, but I know effective methods are out there. There are, unfortunately, no magical shortcuts. The solution would never be the 24/7 Montessori recess people want to imagine.
Kids are mostly alright with school, until about age 13 or 14. Then they like nothing other than chatting with peers and wanking
Even then, kids are curious but they aren't diligent. They'll get excited about New Thing, then give up as soon as it gets somewhat challenging. They'll get distracted by the next New Thing. They're easily confused and frustrated without guidance or the competition among peers. They routinely get things wrong, then stubbornly insist they are not wrong.
That's before the turn into anxious, cliquish, horny teenagers.
Schools - even American schools - generally exist to provide structured learning, smooth the difficulty curve, and provide a focused environment for learning free of distractions. How well they fulfill the role often depends on the skilled labor and resources available to administrators. But "school is an evil plot to turn children into robots" shit seems to come as much from reactionary libertarian attitudes as genuinely socialist ones. At some point, the process of learning becomes uncomfortable. Working through that discomfort is as much about developing yourself as the lessons themselves.
Schools - even American schools - generally exist to provide structured learning, smooth the difficulty curve, and provide a focused environment for learning free of distractions.
They’re easily confused and frustrated without guidance or the competition among peers.
Do you think humans are inherently competitive? Or that competition is good for education? To quote gigachad Miyazaki, I strongly believe such an idea is an insult to life itself.
Schools as we know them under neoliberal capitalism generally exist to make students learn to be good workers, enforce adherance to a heirarchy of authority, and brainwash people with an inbuilt desire for competition. Students compete with each other because the system is designed to encourage it by assigning self-esteem based on test scores, arbitrary numbers which have been proven time and time again to be inferior ways of measuring learning and cognitive ability, especially for humanities subjects. The problem here is that competition between individuals is an inferior way for a species to exist within an evolutionary framework, and alienates the said individuals from each other, destroying any sort of common humanity in the fires of animosity.
Furthermore, the school system "structure" is fundamentally flawed. I do not disagree with the fact that learning needs to have structure. But how do you know each and every individual child will adhere to the common "structure" such that it suits their individual needs? Why do we need a singular "authority" to provide this "structure"? Even the dude who made Khan Academy disagrees with a singular "structure" that all must adhere to. Also, why should schools maintain a singular standard for "focus" for all children? How do people with different capacities for focus factor into this? How much of this "focus" is just practicing adherance to a manager's or boss's discipline? Is the Prussian education system the best way to go about things?
They routinely get things wrong, then stubbornly insist they are not wrong.
And yet adults who have finished school still do this, albeit in a more sophisticated way, curious.
At some point, the process of learning becomes uncomfortable.
How much of this discomfort (understatement of the year) is due to the actual process of scholarship, or due to the influence of an education system designed to churn out employees for the market instead of educated, critically thinking human beings?
Do you think humans are inherently competitive? Or that competition is good for education? To quote gigachad Miyazaki, I strongly believe such an idea is an insult to life itself.
I don't think that there's any real doubt humans express competitive behaviors. Particularly young people rivaling one another for attention and acclaim. "Oh well, I find that idea offensive" is a lazy cop-out.
Schools as we know them under neoliberal capitalism generally exist to make students learn to be good workers, enforce adherance to a heirarchy of authority, and brainwash people with an inbuilt desire for competition.
Neoliberalism exploits competitive impulses and perpetuates the theory of meritocracy, wherein exploitation is justified through meritocracy. Past that, the term "brainwashing" gets tossed around far too casually. It feeds the theory of a competent conspiracy and plays into the "evil public school teacher" reactionary stereotype.
Furthermore, the school system “structure” is fundamentally flawed. I do not disagree with the fact that learning needs to have structure. But how do you know each and every individual child will adhere to the common “structure” such that it suits their individual needs? Why do we need a singular “authority” to provide this “structure”?
The US doesn't have a single common structure. It has thousands of independent school districts funded and administered primarily through local governments, with a little extra from the Feds to cover shit like means-tested lunches and disability care. It is also riddled with segregation and segmentation, precisely because the "my kids are special! they need a different kind of experience!" illusion-of-choice shit has been pumped into the minds of adults who are easily gulled into buying whatever snake-oil cure the private sector is pushing.
Students consistently need three things to get a good education:
- Maximal student-teacher interaction (typically by way of small class sizes)
- Educated teaching staff (provided by older/veteran teachers and teachers with higher levels of educational attainment)
- Uninterrupted study (summer breaks are terrible, households with lots of distractions are terrible, etc)
Any public-facing system trying to sell you something other than these three things is scamming you.
And yet adults who have finished school still do this, albeit in a more sophisticated way, curious.
The line between childhood and adulthood is far fuzzier than folks like to believe.
How much of this discomfort (understatement of the year) is due to the actual process of scholarship, or due to the influence of an education system designed to churn out employees for the market instead of educated, critically thinking human beings?
Critical thinking is difficult. It requires undergoing some amount of stress and discomfort. It requires a tolerance for failure and a certain amount of humility. If you aren't experiencing any kind of stress in your academic pursuit, you're either a prodigy (you're not) or you're not bothering to test your limits.
The brain is a muscle, and just like every other muscle it needs exercise. Anyone who has tried to learn a language or solve a math puzzle or organize a large social event can tell you this. Difficult problems exist. Avoiding problems because you cannot solve them right away will not lead you to become more critical or more curious. They result in the exact opposite.
Avoiding problems because you cannot solve them right away will not lead you to become more critical or more curious.
What a weird strawman, when did I ever state that the correct response to a difficult assignment as a student is to avoid it? This is even wrong because taking a rest to allow the subconscious to work on a problem will actually help in finding novel solutions.
Its ironic too how I will prove your assertion wrong tomorrow by going to sleep first before responding to the rest of your americanisms.
I have no idea why you responded like this. Truly, Im not gaslighting you, I am utterly baffled as to why you put these words in my mouth. I reiterate, when did I ever state that the correct response to a difficult assignment as a student is to avoid it?
I don’t think that there’s any real doubt humans express competitive behaviors. Particularly young people rivaling one another for attention and acclaim. “Oh well, I find that idea offensive” is a lazy cop-out.
:LIB: :cope:
Of course everyone expresses competitive behaviours. This is largely because the entire neoliberal superstructure is largely based on some fundamentalist christian competitive meritocracy. But does this mean competitive behaviour should be encouraged and strengthened on a fundamental level via an authoritarian schooling system?
Past that, the term “brainwashing” gets tossed around far too casually.
No. Brainwashing is an accurate way of describing the Prussian education system with american neoliberal characteristics. "Neoliberalism exploits competitive impulses and perpetuates the theory of meritocracy, wherein exploitation is justified through meritocracy." You said it yourself, this is brainwashing of the citizenry to an ideological standard. This doesn't mean public school teachers are evil, its just that the system is fundamentally corrupt as a whole.
The US doesn’t have a single common structure. It has thousands of independent school districts funded and administered primarily through local governments, with a little extra from the Feds to cover shit like means-tested lunches and disability care.
Ok I wasn't clear enough. I meant the very fundamental structure of schooling as it exists today, where all students must adhere to a common timetable, listen to a singular authority figure, get their learning performance assessed based on test scores, and be taught every subject from a monolithic syllabus, among other characteristics.
Critical thinking is difficult. It requires undergoing some amount of stress and discomfort. It requires a tolerance for failure and a certain amount of humility. If you aren’t experiencing any kind of stress in your academic pursuit, you’re either a prodigy (you’re not) or you’re not bothering to test your limits.
Yes of course what you said is true. But to what extent is the current schooling system, with its meritocratic foundation, its test-score based assessment, its use of homework and regimented timetables, conducive to creating an environment where humility and the acceptance of failure during learning is cultivated within the individual? Why are single, arbitrary numbers based on an individual's ability to perform a rote task on 1 day a good indicator of whether they "pass" or "fail"? Does this create a mindset of embracing failure? Is failure even being defined properly here?
I agree that learning should be stressful to an extent, the application of mental effort in acquiring knowledge is in fact exhilarating. However, why should this be done under the shadow of external stress from a competitive, rigid, meritocratic marking standard where a singular individual determines the worth of every student's final work?
The brain is a muscle, and just like every other muscle it needs exercise.
Of course, but saying the current general structure of the Prussian education system is good for this is like saying joining meal team 6 and doing their 13 weeks of misery is the best way to get fit.
good education
What is your definition of a "good education"?
All in all I think the problem here is that I am operating on pseudophilosophical concepts of critiquing the structure of schooling based on how education should be, while you are operating on practical considerations based on how the current system works today.
