I kinda feel the same way. There is a lot to be said about schools as concept and the way they are being run currently, and this piece brings up quite a few good points. But the style feels so sensationalized and propagandized, it sets off all kind of alarm bells in my brain and just makes me want to push back against the message:
Setting the thing you’re arguing against up as ‘the enemy’, fully with repulsive physical features, which is gleefully evil without any positive aspects or intentions will never feel as a fair characterization of anything.
There is a strong insistence on how useless and opposed to ‘freedom’ schooling is, without offering any alternative of how children could be raised in an obviously better and more ‘free’ way (hopefully without totally redesigning our society).
Characterizing the schooling experience as ‘intolerable suffering’ seems laughably hyperbolic to me. As someone who went through a full standard education (non-US, so YMMV), I don’t think I encountered many people who’s negative experience extended far beyond ‘slightly bored’.
Dear Newcom, An innocent prisoner has the right to say “Set me free!”. He does not need to analyze the effects of freedom on other prisoners. There is no excuse in your saying “I felt good as prisoner”. Imprisonment violates that rights of that particular person, and here it is all that matters!
I kinda feel the same way. There is a lot to be said about schools as concept and the way they are being run currently, and this piece brings up quite a few good points. But the style feels so sensationalized and propagandized, it sets off all kind of alarm bells in my brain and just makes me want to push back against the message:
Setting the thing you’re arguing against up as ‘the enemy’, fully with repulsive physical features, which is gleefully evil without any positive aspects or intentions will never feel as a fair characterization of anything.
There is a strong insistence on how useless and opposed to ‘freedom’ schooling is, without offering any alternative of how children could be raised in an obviously better and more ‘free’ way (hopefully without totally redesigning our society).
Characterizing the schooling experience as ‘intolerable suffering’ seems laughably hyperbolic to me. As someone who went through a full standard education (non-US, so YMMV), I don’t think I encountered many people who’s negative experience extended far beyond ‘slightly bored’.
Just my first thoughts while reading.
Dear Newcom, An innocent prisoner has the right to say “Set me free!”. He does not need to analyze the effects of freedom on other prisoners. There is no excuse in your saying “I felt good as prisoner”. Imprisonment violates that rights of that particular person, and here it is all that matters!