One thing about the word "Democracy" is that it can never by its nature be fully described. It's always an unfinished project. The tensions that blog-reader and commenter Daniel Fallon precisely points to in all organized bodies (be they states, political parties, corporations, or unions) can be matched by the dangers that exist in (what many call) a free-market economy in which there is no state to mediate on behalf of the less organized and less powerful. At Mission Hill we kept playing with this problem as we constructed our operating rules. We recognized that we all needed some stability, so that we'd perhaps be best living with some questionable ones rather than continuously shifting gears—even though we could. But I think my default position is always: could we do without another rule, law, organization, etc.? Let's try. That places me perhaps more in the tradition of individualism even as I seek to build communities, and nervous about those rules imposed upon us, but still aware that we need them! (Thanks, "Anonymous.")
When discussing voluntary versus compulsory attendance laws, I do think we face an issue similar to that which breastfeeding advocates have discussed: a loss of the an entire breastfeeding culture and tradition and what is takes to reestablish that. Because almost everyone discussing voluntary attendance were themselves raised within a system of compulsory attendance, it is by definition, extremely hard to really understand something that is foreign to us. And yet, as breastfeeding has begun to spread from the extreme lows that corporate bottle-feeding managed to achieve, so too, homeschooling is helping create a new culture and a group of people who have lived and learned outside the, what I have called, compulsory attendance mindset. |
Showing posts with label Gatto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gatto. Show all posts
voluntary attendance
A thoughtful post discussing schools as prisons is up at Bridging Differences.
a concise summary: Gatto's Dumbing Us Down
Mahdi Lock, a Muslim blogger in Morocco has a concise summary of John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down. This is a tightly written piece with many facets including a mention of the Islamic prohibition of alcohol and the US attempt at prohibition. Worth a read.
For the record, Gatto's Seven Things Schools Teach are (Lock's summary):
For the record, Gatto's Seven Things Schools Teach are (Lock's summary):
- Confusion
- Class Position
- Indifference
- Emotional Dependency
- Intellectual Dependency
- Provisional Self-Esteem
- One Can't Hide
In the next chapter, ‘The Psychopathic School’, Gatto enumerates eight pathologies of the children he teaches, which are: they are indifferent to the adult world, they have almost no curiosity, they have a poor sense of the future, they are ahistorical (i.e. have no understanding of how the past has affected the present), they are cruel to each other, they are uneasy with intimacy or candour, they are materialistic, and, last but not least, they are dependent, passive and timid in the presence of new challenges.
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