Permanently Deleted

  • StLangoustine [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Schools have been a tool of oppression of ethnic, sexual minorities and neurodivergent people. Another of their purposes is to legitimise keeping the oppressed away from the instruments of power under the guise of meritocracy.

    To be honest I don't see much reason for schools to exist after the anarchist revolution. What's the point? If you don't know something just look it up on the internet, lmao.

    The lack of imagination on the issue on this site is surprising. What's next? You are going start asking who's going to stop crime if we abolish police?

        • StLangoustine [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I mean, people were teaching each other for millions of years before schools were a thing.

            • StLangoustine [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              This seems like an issue solved by democratic control of production. If the workers at the People's Boeing factory figured that the graduate of the Uncle School of Engineering designed the best plane around, it's probably a good plane.

              Also having an degree doesn't stop a person from being a crank. There are a lot of crank engineers and scientists running around.

          • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Assuming we still have a complex society, we'll have a society still in need of engineers and lots of other professions. Without some sort of formalized or semi-formalized structure your way of gaining knowledge or seeking apprenticeship will largely be restricted to your immediate social circle, which might mean keeping certain domains of knowledge closed off to certain social groups. Schools my currently keep the power structures in tact, but getting rid of schools entirely will just replicate the same power structures within a few generations.

            • StLangoustine [any]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              Isn't that the basic question of anarchism? If the workers are not bound by formal structure and have no boss that forces them to do their work, what stops the workers from telling some marginalized group to fuck off when those marginalized people need some sort of service?

      • StLangoustine [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Are we talking about Revolutionary Catalonia here? Just press the microphone button and ask the computer, it'll talk back.

        Reading is as obsolete of a skill as clipping flint knifes with a rock.

        • Kaputnik [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Sorry you are communicating in an obselete form please use a voice message

          • StLangoustine [any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Sorry you are communicating in an obselete form

            Such is the life under capitalism...

            please use a voice message

            Isn't the cool new social network, Clubhouse or something, voice only? The future is now, baby!

            • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Voice or video only seems like a really inefficient way to actually do anything. Have you never had to pick out an individual piece of information ever? Would you prefer skimming or skipping back and forth through audio?

              • StLangoustine [any]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Me, personally, I prefer text, but I know a share of people who fave no problems with searching videos and audio. I guess it's something you can get used to. Also current tech is pretty close to basically be able to ctrl-f a video lecture.

                • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  I just can't imagine science or engineering getting done in an illiterate world. You'd need to have equations dictated to you repeatedly as you try to figure out a way to proceed.

                  • StLangoustine [any]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    4 years ago

                    I can imagine it. Not every field makes heavy use of equations and there are blind people who use screen readers and are very competent software engineers.

                    Either way those are specialized skills. Theoretical physicists or whatever can learn reading and writing if they want to.

                  • StLangoustine [any]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    I dunno. I don't see anything wrong with people not being forced to learn to read to participate in the society. We already have the technology.

      • StLangoustine [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I dunno. Providing everyone with at least access to a place where they can use the computer to google shit, don't seem like too high of a mark to clear.

          • StLangoustine [any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            How true is the part of some students needing structure? There's been a lot of success with homeschooling and unschooling and all that jazz.

            • machiabelly [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              I have significant ADHD that effects all parts of my life. Despite my love of learning without the structure of a school I would never have been able to study philosophy or history to the extent that I did. Additionally creating social connections and communities is essential for all humans, but especially people of developing ages. Having a place where kids and young adults can go and spend time with peers, pursue hobbies/extra curriculars, do some physical activity, and engage in learning they are invested in is essential to a functioning society and a healthy childhood. Just because school is shit now doesn't mean that we can't make it better.

              Think of it less as a prussian model of indoctrination and more of a community center for kids that helps with their growth and to engage with society in a way that is satisfying for them.

              • StLangoustine [any]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Huh. I thought a person with ADHD would benefit from having a personal tutor that helps them learn at the pace they are most comfortable with, instead of rigid classes, but then again, I don't know shit about ADHD.

                I can't really argue against youth community centers where kids can hang out and maybe learn something from someone, but that might be to school what community self-defence is to cops.

                • machiabelly [she/her]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 years ago

                  Personal tutors are great but honestly the only times that I ever studied in college were in study groups. Tutors are great for mastering more specific skills but I think that the classroom environment and collaborative learning that is possible there can be beneficial when it comes to forming relationships, teaching kids to work together and cooperate to solve problems, ect. Additionally slightly higher student to teacher ratios allows teachers to be more knowledgable about specific subjects which has all kinds of benefits. One of them is that when teachers actually know things about history they are less likely to just regurgitate the propaganda they are encouraged to teach. A huge amount of the propaganda that gets taught throughout all education is because it's hard to get changes to curriculums approved, and because teachers are overworked as it is, so as much as teachers might want to be teaching more up to date or more interdisciplinary history, they are just too overworked to make huge changes to their lesson plans.

                  Probably every teacher in my high school was a huge lib but because they got to have complete freedom to design their own lesson plans I learned about most American atrocities, both foreign policy wise and domestically, tulsa, rodney king, ect, and a lot of other things most high schoolers weren't taught. One of the reasons that I radicalized so quickly after bernie lost was because my lib teachers had accidentally given me a decent education. They all provided lib justifications for the events but even so it made it easier to connect the dots after the 2016 primaries. If singular teachers were expected to give most of the education to a single student then these sorts of higher level things wouldn't have been taught to me.

                  I think that we both agree that personalized learning and student self determination are incredibly important, at all ages and levels, not just college, but to me a brick and mortar school will always be an irreplaceable, essential, part of childhood.

                  I should note though that I went to a small private high school with low homework and tiny teacher:student ratios. Going from a public middle school that I did horribly in to there gave me a pretty unique look at just how much better, more freeing, and more stimulating school can be. I got huge freedom in terms of what i wrote papers on and everything. In English I gave a presentation on how the popularity of LOTR in a post WWII world reflects such a different social climate than the popularity of GOT in a post 9/11 world. I compared Petr Baelish to Gandalf, and Aragorn to Ned Stark among other things. And that is so fucking cool for a high school paper. We were always encouraged to make everything that we did something individual and expressive.

                  It is important to note that I am somewhat academically talented, I had an easier time with most things than almost all of my peers in high school and college. It's why I was diagnosed with ADHD later in life than most. There is a huge difference in experience between, for lack of a better term, low and high IQ ADHD. So a pretty high percentage of other ADHD people that you meet will probably be much more willing to burn it all down than I am. Because many people with ADHD literally have never had a positive experience with learning in any kind of structured environment. Although if I stayed in the public school system I might not have "blossomed" much at all. I was a shit student in middle school.

                  tldr: Yeah this is the education equivalent of abolish the police. I just think that we need to replace it with something at least reminiscent of our current system. And even if ADHD kids don't need it, kids with more severe disabilities certainly will.

                • Esoteir [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  I would definitely benefit from having a personal tutor lmao, the only info I learn in school with ADHD is how to pass tests/the next homework assignment. With the way classes are paced and graded I don't have time to care about the content, just how to pass that content from one end of my brain to the other efficiently. If I happen to learn stuff along the way, cool. Mostly it just gets stored in temporary info for the test and thrown the fuck away right after.

                  I do my best learning over the internet/in books at my own pace, when I feel calm enough to actually parse the information rather than use it as a survival tool.

              • StLangoustine [any]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Maybe this is a way the students who prefer structure in education can be provided said structure without need for a school.

      • StLangoustine [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I bet all of those can be learned without formal school structure. People have learned all sorts of professions by themselves for ages and it's could be easier than ever with modern technology.

        You know what data says. Most people with higher education say they would rather not go to a university if they decided they wanted to learn something else.

        • Brnaakin2 [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I look forward to your society of self taught engineers and their collapsing buildings. What's wrong with the formal structure?

          • StLangoustine [any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I say much about other fields but many of the best software engineers are self-taught.

            The problem with formal structure is power hierarchies, something you'd want to avoid when possible.

            Either way abolishing school and abolishing universities are different questions. Schools are much more oppressive, but arguably someone needs to look for the kids when parents are at work and a child unlikely to be able to teach themselves counting as opposed to an adult who can learn any academic discipline by themselves with access to internet.