Great writing, enthralling, whether or not one adheres with the message. The Enemy feels like it fits a very general pattern in my mind, like this article could be interpreted as a metaphor for many different struggles.
However I am sick and tired of the “we will eventually prevail” mantra (my gratitude for whoever finds if there’s an actual name). I am starting to get old, and in my life I’ve seen countless of these claims about various causes, how group X is suffering unfairly now, but someday, just someday… you’ll see. We’ll have to change, the conditions will be different. The bad guys can’t stay unpunished. The truth will triumph—when? They never achieve anything. A cheap hope, better than despair? I disagree. Hope can induce passivity as easily as despair, two ways of changing your perception of the situation without changing the situation. What we need is a plan, concrete actionable steps to a goal. Spare the motivational speech, cut to the strat if you’ve got one.
There were many people who were sick and tired of the prediction “the communism will eventually collapse on its own”. There were many plans to abolish the system, but in the end, it crumbled because it was dumb. So will the Prussian slave camp of schooling. The old guys can do little. Old brains have already been reprogrammed by the school system itself. It is the youth that need to refuse coercion. That is the plan viable for each individual. A systemic solution will come with constitutional protections (see: Declaration of Educational Emancipation)
The truth will triumph—when? They never achieve anything. A cheap hope, better than despair? I disagree. Hope can induce passivity as easily as despair, two ways of changing your perception of the situation without changing the situation.
Thanks, I agree. I do not want to encourage passivity. Leaving it as purely dystopian, which it is, would likely have been better for that purpose. Thank you. I wonder if it’s too late to edit out the final bit?
As for concrete steps, talking about the thing is one of the steps, so that people can stop rationalising it and see it as wrong, to change from ‘Eh, school’s not perfectly but it’s mostly fine’ to ‘school is really actually quite terrible’. Unfortunately I don’t have an entire action plan, but user rajlego and I are first working towards that, currently mostly based on memetics and creating a website we can point people to to thoroughly outline all the reasons school sucks in a cohesive and persuasive enough that the average parent can be linked to it and have their mind changed by the time they leave. Advice is appreciated.
Luckily in countries like the UK homeschooling is legal at the moment. So any parent convinced can make the local change, hopefully contributing to a tipping of the scales. Maybe. Theoretically. This text is also useful on views for how long compulsory schooling is going to last: School slavery will end soon—supermemo.guru
Well I think as a general matter that a case against status quo is incomplete without the case for an alternative, because everybody can picture the status quo, but few will guess what your alternative looks like.
There’s been a plethora of essays denouncing the school system already, and I haven’t seen any major change except more restrictions on alternatives to public schools. A difficulty IMO is that good teaching is hard to scale. To keep motivated, young people need models to look up to, and the most relatable are the ones they can interact with IRL. An alternative would be teaching parents to be those role models, but your mileage would vary.
Have you heard of the monitorial system—bleh, this sounds carceral in English - ? When public education appeared, a lot of leeway was left to teachers. To manage large numbers of students, the school didn’t batch students by age. Students who had learned a topic would teach it in return. This seems like a clever way to form role models, personalize learning, teach responsibility and reinforce the learnings, all with minimum investment.
My current best plan would be to get rich, fund multiple private schools based on alternatives, rate them, keep the best, open more. I’m far from milestone 1.
a case against status quo is incomplete without the case for an alternative
“A case against status quo” is ambiguous in this context. The first step to fixing a problem is realizing that you have one. A formulation of a problem is a perfectly adequate thing on its own, it lets you understand the problem better. It’s not incomplete as a tool for understanding a problem.
Great writing, enthralling, whether or not one adheres with the message. The Enemy feels like it fits a very general pattern in my mind, like this article could be interpreted as a metaphor for many different struggles.
However I am sick and tired of the “we will eventually prevail” mantra (my gratitude for whoever finds if there’s an actual name). I am starting to get old, and in my life I’ve seen countless of these claims about various causes, how group X is suffering unfairly now, but someday, just someday… you’ll see. We’ll have to change, the conditions will be different. The bad guys can’t stay unpunished. The truth will triumph—when? They never achieve anything. A cheap hope, better than despair? I disagree. Hope can induce passivity as easily as despair, two ways of changing your perception of the situation without changing the situation. What we need is a plan, concrete actionable steps to a goal. Spare the motivational speech, cut to the strat if you’ve got one.
There were many people who were sick and tired of the prediction “the communism will eventually collapse on its own”. There were many plans to abolish the system, but in the end, it crumbled because it was dumb. So will the Prussian slave camp of schooling. The old guys can do little. Old brains have already been reprogrammed by the school system itself. It is the youth that need to refuse coercion. That is the plan viable for each individual. A systemic solution will come with constitutional protections (see: Declaration of Educational Emancipation)
Thanks, I agree. I do not want to encourage passivity. Leaving it as purely dystopian, which it is, would likely have been better for that purpose. Thank you. I wonder if it’s too late to edit out the final bit?
As for concrete steps, talking about the thing is one of the steps, so that people can stop rationalising it and see it as wrong, to change from ‘Eh, school’s not perfectly but it’s mostly fine’ to ‘school is really actually quite terrible’. Unfortunately I don’t have an entire action plan, but user rajlego and I are first working towards that, currently mostly based on memetics and creating a website we can point people to to thoroughly outline all the reasons school sucks in a cohesive and persuasive enough that the average parent can be linked to it and have their mind changed by the time they leave. Advice is appreciated.
Luckily in countries like the UK homeschooling is legal at the moment. So any parent convinced can make the local change, hopefully contributing to a tipping of the scales. Maybe. Theoretically. This text is also useful on views for how long compulsory schooling is going to last: School slavery will end soon—supermemo.guru
Well I think as a general matter that a case against status quo is incomplete without the case for an alternative, because everybody can picture the status quo, but few will guess what your alternative looks like.
There’s been a plethora of essays denouncing the school system already, and I haven’t seen any major change except more restrictions on alternatives to public schools. A difficulty IMO is that good teaching is hard to scale. To keep motivated, young people need models to look up to, and the most relatable are the ones they can interact with IRL. An alternative would be teaching parents to be those role models, but your mileage would vary.
Have you heard of the monitorial system—bleh, this sounds carceral in English - ? When public education appeared, a lot of leeway was left to teachers. To manage large numbers of students, the school didn’t batch students by age. Students who had learned a topic would teach it in return. This seems like a clever way to form role models, personalize learning, teach responsibility and reinforce the learnings, all with minimum investment.
My current best plan would be to get rich, fund multiple private schools based on alternatives, rate them, keep the best, open more. I’m far from milestone 1.
“A case against status quo” is ambiguous in this context. The first step to fixing a problem is realizing that you have one. A formulation of a problem is a perfectly adequate thing on its own, it lets you understand the problem better. It’s not incomplete as a tool for understanding a problem.