Sorry, I'm just not seeing how that's useful. Because you're going to tell a bunch of children, "Go and learn things," and a whole load of them aren't going to without specifically being taught.
As I already said, my little brother went to a school which works exactly like that – no classes, no lectures – and lo and behold, as I
also wrote earlier, it works, because these children weren't taught from day one that learning is something tedious and unfun! Every child in the whole wide world (who is lucky enough to have access) I ever heard of was totally
ecstatic about
finally going to school and learning such awesome things as reading and calculating and stuff! Seldom I see children on such high moods on the morning of the first day of school.
It's only after they spent a week at that soul-crushing hellhole which they call schools today that they begin to learn that going to school isn't about all that fun stuff like reading and calculating and history and stuff, but mostly about sitting still, listening to that boring dweeb in front of them while wishing they could do something interesting, like playing with bugs maybe or at least being finally able to read what they want instead of what their parents are willing to read to them or god knows what kind of things they come up with to do! But
NO, of course that self-important teacher knows much better what's interesting and important and he doesn't even go as far as showing why it's important, no, he just will
assert it with his almighty
authority, because being a teacher is all about authority and not maybe about all the other aspects that make up pedagogy!
You know, in their little minds they believed going to school they finally would get to be self-sufficient, to do stuff by themselves but instead they get pressed into an even more passive role then ever before. How is it a surprise that they don't like it? Why does everyone conclude then that they won't learn if one just would let them from the moment they want to?
Wanting to learn is something which every child does.
But no, learning needs to be tainted with discipline, whose high regard stems from a time where the military was still the one branch of government which signaled it's prosperity, and tainted with false authority, which is just bullying by people who can get away with it. And when one wants to remove these things one is told that those are essential to learning, when those are exactly the thing which make learning into the insufferable rut it is now.
And about that
very small minority
That's a myth. It's not a minority. As I already stated repeatedly, the dropout rate at those schools isn't any higher than elsewhere. And as opposed to the dropouts at the standard schools these are actually still willing to improve and learn! They even feel fine with working in a menial job, where most others feel as if they're missing out somehow, only because their job misses prestige!
And don't come with the labor market! As if that was a productive environment in which people can work to the best of their ability!
Of course people who work best when you let them (and that is exactly what almost
all of them learn in these schools, not only a "small minority") fail when you put pressure on them.
It's almost like you
don't bash someone in the head with a frying pan repeatedly and then they can't deal with it when you start doing so! Of course the ones who are used to it already will work better under those conditions.
[Edit]Removed some of the hostility. The rest is hard to remove without reworking or changing the meaning.[/Edit]
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1286005 times)