[forensic]

Nobody wants to admit that the concept of "school" itself was designed to church out assembly line slaves.

It's not a surprise that when the system is designed to turn humans into robots... that's what you get.

Anyone who comes out of school with useful skills does it despite school, not because of school.

John Taylor Gatto figured this out years ago.

[epo]

Perhaps nobody wants to admit it because few are that stupidly paranoid.

For one, schools predate assembly lines. For another, if that is what schools were designed to do then they are remarkably poor at it. The ruling cabal who you seem to think is trying to push us all into servitude would surely have noticed and remedied the situation YEARS ago. Finally, you did read enough of the article to realise it was about the UK? What this Gatto person thinks is irrelevant.

[randomdata]

He does have a point. A high school teacher friend of mine and I were discussing how certain aspects of school, like scheduled class time, project deadlines, etc. were intended to prepare the students for the workplace.

As an adult who makes my own choices, I only work when I want to work, and I only meet deadlines which I set on my own accord. I imagine, given the context of this site, that a lot in the HN crowd are the same way. However, when you get out into the real world, most people do follow the same schedule and obey the same rules that were ingrained into them in school.

A lot of people do not even realize that they have choice. I have actually met people who look down upon me for not following the same 9-5 schedule that everyone else does, like it matters or something. I imagine that attitude comes from their upbringing by having it pushed upon them by educators.

I wouldn't go as far to say that the only reason for school is to shape people into obedient workers, but that element is definitely present.

[forensic]

If you cancelled all schools right now, no one would stop learning useful and applicable skills.

But many many people would stop being obedient.

The bait of school is the opportunity to learn, something every human inherantly loves. The opportunity to learn and access to knowledge is just the sugar that is used to get you to swallow the medicine: the medicine is your obedience training.

When people graduate from high school, often the only thing they have to show for it is their obedience and conformity. If they are good readers, they probably read a lot outside the curriculum. If they are good at math, they probably did a lot of math outside the curriculum. etc.

One thing from the curriculum which they did thoroughly learn, however, is how to obey, how to conform, how to navigate bureaucracy, how to play social pecking order games, when to bully, when to submit.

Conspicuously absent from the gifts of the curriculum is anything related to what used to be called a liberal education or an enlightened scientific education. These things are always learned despite curriculums, and those who achieve a true scientific or artistic education usually have the air of a rebel or hacker, someone who eschews their lessons, who breaks out of the mold, who skips their homework in favour of reading poetry or hacking their graphics calculator.

At school, true learning is always a form of rebellion.

[megablast]

How many people do you imagine do maths outside of school?

[forensic]

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

[sliverstorm]

certain aspects of school, like scheduled class time, project deadlines, etc. were intended to prepare the students for the workplace

In my view, it is preparation for the world. Preparation to be a functioning member of society. Sure, everybody has a choice. I have walked both worlds. I have decided there is little to no value in trying to live in some alternate world. Stores are closed at night. Are they evil corporations bending me to their structure and will? Friends go to sleep at night. Are they sinister secret agents controlling my thoughts? I feel better physically when I live normal hours. Is the government injecting me with chemicals while I sleep?

Of course you can rebel and follow your own schedule. But just as it is up to you to choose to rebel, it is also in your power to decide there is no value in rallying to such a silly cause. If I found value in it I might, but I don't. At the end of the day, schedule and structure provides value when you are trying to interact with a large number of other people. That's just the way it works, not some secret evil ploy.

[randomdata]

It's hardly rebelling, it is about working when it makes sense to work, not because the clock says it is time to work.

We're just finishing up harvest here. Are you going to shut down at five because the clock says it is time to go home? Of course not. You keep going until the field is done. It might be raining in the morning. You can rest later.

I find creative and technical roles to suffer from the same limitations. You have to be in the right mindset to produce quality work. You can't always count on the clock.

Do what works for you, but if you are only doing it to please someone else, you are cheating both them and you.

[sliverstorm]

You realize you are still working a clock in the field. It's called the sun.

[randomdata]

Headlights, my friend.

The idea that farmers work by the sun must be from some place with a different climate, because around here, most of the field work is done during the late afternoon into night. Rarely does any field work get done in the morning. The conditions are often not favourable.

But if I am really tired and want to shut down for the night, I will do so. It's all up to me, not someone else.

[forensic]

Churches predate assembly lines too. It's not about literal assembly lines, it's about obedience and conformity, the tools of social control since time immemorial.

Public school is just the latest version of obedience training.

[pnathan]

Can we get more citations for this besides Gatto?

I.e., do we have citations to some of Dewey's works, or the early 1900s academic reformers advocating this?

[forensic]

Compare and contrast tradition schools for the wealthy with what became public school.

A proper education comes when you put pupils in a room with a very smart person and let them question him. He answers their questions and introduces them to new ideas. Pupils guide the learning, tutors are just a resource. There are no lesson plans.

This is how the great thinkers have learned and taught since the dawn of man. This is how the wealthy and in-the-know still educate themselves.

When public school was demanded, the educated upper class thought it abhorrent and dangerous to give poor children this kind of free-form, liberating education. They invented "public education" and modeled it after church education where students are preached to and rigidly controlled.

Church is a place where poor people go to be controlled. Public school extended this control programming to the formative years of all the children of the non-elite. Everything in public schools is optimized to create obedience, unthinking, conformity, rigidity.

Tell me one thing you learned from a lesson plan that did you any good. All the great thinkers, today and in the past, learned by directing themselves and (ideally) questioning smart people. Never by being whipped into doing lesson plans, always by following their creativity and doing investigations and self-directed projects.

[pnathan]

That is a thought experiment, not a citation.

Also, German schooling was famously rigid, and produced a sizable crop of scientists in the 1900-1960 era.

[Fliko]

Actually, German schooling was more famous for it's freedom unlike it's French brother.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_European_research_un...

[pnathan]

Hunh. That is decidedly not the image I had of German schooling. But thank you for the link. It's very interesting.

[Fliko]

Most of the information seems to be stuck in books and harder to find on the internet, I looked for a really long time and that was the best resource I've found so far. It's very possible it's relative to other schooling models.

[forensic]

Your mistake is thinking that school produced those scientists. They produced themselves despite school, not because of it, and they thrived because Germany invested heavily higher education and research. Science in Germany was due to German philosophy, higher education, and lots of funds.

Universities in 1900 are indistinguishable from what we have now. In 1900 they were still targeted at the wealthy and unusually talented. Now they are just extended sunday school. Obedience training for adults.

[pnathan]

Citations, please!

You are saying these things with massive assumptions!

edit for clarification: you are not using any sort of proof mechanism in your statements. No data, no citations.

[forensic]

Wouldn't it be great if you had a personal research assistant who would spend hours looking stuff up for you?

[Daniel_Newby]

> When public school was demanded, the educated upper class thought it abhorrent and dangerous to give poor children this kind of free-form, liberating education.

Rather a lot of the scientists and engineers on the Apollo program grew up in tiny backwater schools funded by local subscription. Their teachers were high school graduates or (if lucky) graduates of a two year normal college. The "educated upper class" consisted of the local town fathers who thought that the average teenager was capable of a lot more than the amusements they would have otherwise picked for themselves. It turns out the town fathers were right.

> Everything in public schools is optimized to create obedience, unthinking, conformity, rigidity.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of learning the classics of high culture in what you are claiming are industrial indoctrination factories.

> Tell me one thing you learned from a lesson plan that did you any good.

Calculus, computer science, electromagnetism, chemistry, writing, poetry, etc. 16-year-old me was not yet organized and knowledgeable enough to know where to even begin.