I saw a thread elsewhere recently which was heavily critical of the idea of school as in institution, and where some people were directly comparing teachers to cops (one guy even compared them to death camp guards). That seems silly to me, as police obviously have far more power over both adults and children than do teachers, but it's made me wonder if there is some kind of leftist line of thinking when it comes to education which I'm unaware of. Defenders of the idea of school, such as myself, definitely seemed to be in the minority.

I have a feeling most of the people in that thread were American zoomers, which might go some way to explaining things. Maybe anarchists have different thoughts about this than MLs and the like too?

What do you guys think?

Edit: A lot of interesting responses here, and I'm glad to see that people are broadly in favour of education and sympathetic to teachers. Actually, a book I have - but haven't read (tsundoku be damned) - which some people here may find interesting is The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Jacques Ranciere, and I'll have to read Pedagogy of the Opressed and Education to Govern one day too.

  • root [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    School as it is encourages skill hordeing the way school is set up locks jobs behind artifical cartelling a degree is a premium pay paper nothing more. school as it is right now needs radicals more then ever to share those skills for free with the masses and undo this cartelling of information so we can build a moment that can govern, this being said I read a handle full of responses and became disappointed 😞

    If people can't get access to education it becomes a point of resentment amung workers we are here to show them they can govern them selves you, instead degreed workers cause resentment by not sharing skill but saying they want to help. You see the problem it will create a sectional divide amount workers. Posion to b solidarity and dosent empower workers.

    Last words: school as it is right now isn't fixable in maybe 2-3 human life times in a better world i would hope academia and lower pre -12 would change because the current model of class room education is impersonal, repetition models of learning barely work. A massive chunk of the people that come from university are not much more educated and wasted their time because all their job is spread sheets and PowerPoint.