The problem with schools

Here are some critical thoughts related to school and schooling. See what you think.

It’s rooted in fear, in hierarchies, in oppression. It prepares students for a lifetime of employment, but little else. It makes bullying acceptable by not making it utterly unacceptable. By adhering to the status quo, it indirectly teaches us to be unequal, to be racist, to be compliant. It favours the out-of-date notion that reward and punishment are the way to treat students. It makes learning boring and repetitive. It doesn’t consider that many students are unable to cope with living in a sick society and that their behaviour is based on dysregulation rather than attention-seeking. It favours those who are rich. It’s full of dysfunctional and dissatisfied teachers who dump their woes onto those who are more vulnerable than themselves. The teacher-student relationship is at best uneven, and at worse abusive. It fails students who are unable to bend to its rigid structures.

Here is what Ivan Illich, the author of Deschooling Society, has to say on this theme:

“Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.”

He then goes on to say: “Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school.” Yet: “The public is indoctrinated to believe that skills are valuable and reliable only if they are the result of formal schooling.”

Meanwhile John Holt, author of How Children Fail, wrote:

“We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards.”
“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves... and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.”
“To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid.”
“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”

What was your own experience of schooling like?