Mar 30
0 Comments, 0 Likes showHow to Save the World pointed me at this text document by a schoolteacher John Taylor Gatto. He basically says that the US educational system teaches:
- Confusion, incoherence and disconnection (by teaching without context),
- Know and stay in your place,
- Don’t care too much,
- How to be emotionally dependent,
- How to be intellectually dependent (wait to be told what to do and think),
- Your self-esteem is provisional on what others think of you,
- You can’t hide, even long enough to think for yourself.
He further says that “the system was designed to produce compliant industrial workers, but now operates on its own momentum”.
This is what I learned in K-12 which I use in my daily life:
- How to multiply and add in my head
- How to sound out words
- I before E except after C
- How to use a library
- How to type
- What a devil’s advocate is (thanks to a fabulous civics teacher my senior year)
- Boolean logic (I learned to program in Basic)
School is basically a place to send kids to grow up, where incidentally they are taught a few things they need to know.