[Mz]

Yeah, I used to quote Gatto too, as well as the publishing house founder who established a publishing house to get Gatto's work published. It is super popular on homeschooling lists, even gifted homeschooling lists where people parrot this crapola like it is Gospel without ever engaging their brain. I figured it was kosher because it was repeated by so many smart, highly educated folk on elitist lists. (People who have been to big name colleges, like Harvard, some on scholarship because they were brainiacs.)

Then one day, on a forum unrelated to homescholling, I repeated the bit about how literacy rates used to be lots higher, before public school was instituted. I made an ass of myself. Yes, I have visited old ghost towns and seen the poor spelling conventions and other physical evidence of low general literacy. Yes, I used to be a history major and I know details like you used a pictorial sign for your tavern because so few people could read and that the purpose of church stained glass windows was to share some of the bible stories in pictorial form with the illiterate masses. I was taken in anyway, as are lots of very intelligent, educated folks.

Yes, I also know that there is a huge, important difference between a real education, which teaches you to think effectively, and mere training, which typically prepares you for a particular job. I have spoken of that many times. (FYI: "liberal arts" is designed to teach you to think. They are called that because they are supposed to be very freeing: If you can think effectively, you have much more genuine choice in life than the average person. Liberal Arts gets pissed on a lot as a really terrible thing to major in. And it may well be terrible, at a lot of schools. I don't really know. I think there is some truth to the idea that "90% of everything is crap".)

These days I find it questionable to quote anything by Gatto. The book was published with a hugely biased political agenda. The publishing house founder is a homeschooling crusader who would love to have public school abolished. For that matter, he would like to also have private school abolished. He would like homeschooling to be compulsory nationwide in the U.S. (if not globally).

That's a much more questionable agenda in my opinion than whatever agenda the powers that be had when they dreamed up public school.

(I homeschooled for many years. I think it can be a wonderful thing. But I see zero reason to believe that compulsory homeschooling would be inherently superior to what we do today. In the U.S. today, homeschoolers are generally rebels, defying the system in order to do right by their children. So they are typically very devoted parents. There is no reason to believe the excellence in education typical of homeschoolers today would remain the norm for homeschooling if it was the only avenue for getting a k-12 education.)

[Crake]

"In the U.S. today, homeschoolers are generally rebels, defying the system in order to do right by children."

Or to shove creationist propaganda down their throat, as in my case. A significantly large part of the homeschooling movement is dominated by christian fundamentalists determined to keep their children from "secular pollution" by evilutionists. Unfortunately, all the censorship just made me even more curious about real science.

[qu4z-2]

I'm going to go ahead and say that's "fortunate" rather than "unfortunate"...

[Crake]

It's unfortunate from the fundamentalist parents' perspective.

[Mz]

Have an upvote. I will take that as agreement with my basic point that homeschooling is not some perfect, idyllic solution and all the world would be a better place if we ensured that parents had near total control of what their kids learned by doing away with all other options, like public school and private school.

[tokenadult]

In fairness to John Gatto, Horace Mann himself estimated the general level of literacy in Massachusetts to be quite high well before school attendance was first made compulsory in Massachusetts. (I read many back issues of Mann's Common School Journal back in the day when you and I were learning about homeschooling.) Mann desired compulsory public schools for reasons other than promoting literacy. I have many people in my direct ancestral line, whose books from centuries ago I have inherited, who learned to read without a public school system.

[chefsurfing]

JTG also emphasizes active literacy (writing, speaking) versus passive literacy (reading, listening). One without the other is as a table with half it's legs.

[Mz]

Two wrongs do not make a right. And public works typically need to serve multiple agendas in order to serve the common good.

You are hardly of average intelligence. I see zero reason to believe your ancestors were either. Your remarks remind me that the publishing house founder routinely said "literacy was quite high where it mattered". A way to hedge his bets and justify the many folks who were illiterate and signed their name with an X. I guess that also completely justifies the average 2nd to 4th grade education typical of American women during Abe Lincoln's life. God knows women don't need an education. They just need to cook and clean and do as they are told.

(To everyone about to flame me: Please note that is sarcasm. I am a college educated woman.)

[chefsurfing]

Hi Mz,

I think the true test is to go to an educational institution and observe first hand what is happening. Is it a or b and to what extent either of the two:

a) Education that helps people leverage their innate curiosity to become free and intelligent individuals capable of independent investigation and thought.

b) Schooling that trains people to be obedient to authority, conform to standards of thought and behavior, distrustful of their own abilities and reliant upon experts.

The evidence I have seen shows the state ( any state, anywhere ) to be delivering to children today much more of b than a. JTG lived this for 30 years as a distinguished and awarded public school teacher in NYC. If you look at the incentives of those in power and actively controlling the government and it's apparatus, it is easy to understand why it would be this way and not get too judgmental about it. Lets imagine that you are a general in battle, which would you prefer: Obedient soldiers who follow orders or free-thinkers with their own agenda?

http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html

[Mz]

You are barking up the wrong tree. My father and ex husband were both career military. They are both extremely intelligent men. The military needs people who can do some of both, which is an even bigger challenge than promoting one or the other. The military has manuals for things like your uniform which are to be followed to the letter. But it has guidelines (not rules) for battle -- in other words, widom to help you make it up effectively as you go because no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Historically, river-based agricultural systems thrived as long as you had an effectively educated populace for running the large bureaucracy necessary to make the water distribution system work. Historically, they tend to break down periodically. Given that we currently have several billion people alive today, we need to master the need to get good at both things: at dealing with systems which serve a large scale population without killing independent thinking and new ideas. Claiming one is inherently superior to the other is foolish. They each have valuable uses, in appropriate situations.

I will also assume that you are some peacenik and your example is rooted in the assumption that the military is inherently evil. Again: you will get zero sympathy from me. Without a nation and its ability to defend its people, you tend to have anarchy and gang rule, essentially.

If you want to live in some idyllic paradise where large bureaucracies do no exist, you first need to exterminate a few billion people. Good luck with convincing people this is a loving, kind thing to do to improve the lot of your fellow man.

[fatbird]

Gosh, I like you a lot.