Here is that big mistake, again, better known as the “Error of the Third Kind”, identifying and fixing the wrong problems. You say that “Public schools need to re-invent themselves”. Public schools have tried six million times (probably not an exaggeration) to re-invent themselves. That is the whole point of my assertion. Power resides externally. There are impenetrable barriers to change, innovation, and “school or educational reform”. Those barriers emanate directly from the law and from the illegitimate authority and control that under the law must go to state officials, designated appointed or elected authorities, school board bigwigs, and school administrators. None of those people know squat about education! Who is kidding whom?
We have some wonderful examples of good schools. They do not educate in the way that people have imagined that schools should because that is a pathetic misconception. Schools are very limited in what they can do and education is a matter for personal growth and development which cannot be legislated or bought. However, free schools are great examples and experiments which provide autonomy and a free environment for learning, teaching, and organic development. Many public schools have tried to imitate the free schools and many advocates have tried to spread the free school philosophy. They invariably and almost immediately hit the brick wall. Compulsory attendance law is about control, management, authority, social engineering, and making sure the people remain passive and obedient. Freedom and democracy in schools, as Dewey and so many others have found out the hard way are directly at odds with what the laws require. Reforms are DOA. Changes are dead in the water. The school must always go back to business as usual. The status quo is baked into the cake. Tell your friends. The ironic thing is that getting rid of the laws would not cost anything or "interrupt the flow of money" except to remove the middlemen which Thom has noted are making a killing on textbooks, programs, workshops, etc., etc.
You are not incorrect, course. Money, or capitalism and economics and powerful people with their own interests and imagined superiority have always been the problem. However, that still leaves the issue of how to reverse the trend and rectify the problems and bring the power imbalance back into some semblance of normality or sanity. That, I repeat, means taking the power and influence away from people who should not have it by reinstating the people as the determiners of how their children will be influenced, socialized, indoctrinated, and in specific instances, educated. It means bringing democracy to schools where children can experience it daily in their bones and eliminating the arbitrary authority which is inescapable with compulsory attendance and which morphs into authoritarianism, fascism, and often right-wing extremism and religious fanaticism.
Whose idea was mandatory attendance? It was promoted and pushed relentlessly by the uber-wealthy of the day, the industrialists, the capitalists, and the religious moralists who wanted a highly disciplined populace who could read the Bible, fight the expansionist wars, and produce and consume goods. They never even pretended that education as it was understood then to be a goal. They used their money to get what they wanted and for the most part, they got dedicated patriots and obedient sheep.
The only contemporary author who seems to understand this history well is David Gabbard, most recently a professor at Boise State. I highly recommend his writing if you really want to learn more about the topic. You should be able to download some of his work by Googling his name. If you can find Tolstoy’s Essays on Education from 1862, you will find revelations that will alter your outlook on education for all time. Tolstoy was writing specifically to oppose the new attempts to sell compulsory attendance laws in Russia and the US.
Carolyn,
Here is that big mistake, again, better known as the “Error of the Third Kind”, identifying and fixing the wrong problems. You say that “Public schools need to re-invent themselves”. Public schools have tried six million times (probably not an exaggeration) to re-invent themselves. That is the whole point of my assertion. Power resides externally. There are impenetrable barriers to change, innovation, and “school or educational reform”. Those barriers emanate directly from the law and from the illegitimate authority and control that under the law must go to state officials, designated appointed or elected authorities, school board bigwigs, and school administrators. None of those people know squat about education! Who is kidding whom?
We have some wonderful examples of good schools. They do not educate in the way that people have imagined that schools should because that is a pathetic misconception. Schools are very limited in what they can do and education is a matter for personal growth and development which cannot be legislated or bought. However, free schools are great examples and experiments which provide autonomy and a free environment for learning, teaching, and organic development. Many public schools have tried to imitate the free schools and many advocates have tried to spread the free school philosophy. They invariably and almost immediately hit the brick wall. Compulsory attendance law is about control, management, authority, social engineering, and making sure the people remain passive and obedient. Freedom and democracy in schools, as Dewey and so many others have found out the hard way are directly at odds with what the laws require. Reforms are DOA. Changes are dead in the water. The school must always go back to business as usual. The status quo is baked into the cake. Tell your friends. The ironic thing is that getting rid of the laws would not cost anything or "interrupt the flow of money" except to remove the middlemen which Thom has noted are making a killing on textbooks, programs, workshops, etc., etc.
You are not incorrect, course. Money, or capitalism and economics and powerful people with their own interests and imagined superiority have always been the problem. However, that still leaves the issue of how to reverse the trend and rectify the problems and bring the power imbalance back into some semblance of normality or sanity. That, I repeat, means taking the power and influence away from people who should not have it by reinstating the people as the determiners of how their children will be influenced, socialized, indoctrinated, and in specific instances, educated. It means bringing democracy to schools where children can experience it daily in their bones and eliminating the arbitrary authority which is inescapable with compulsory attendance and which morphs into authoritarianism, fascism, and often right-wing extremism and religious fanaticism.
Whose idea was mandatory attendance? It was promoted and pushed relentlessly by the uber-wealthy of the day, the industrialists, the capitalists, and the religious moralists who wanted a highly disciplined populace who could read the Bible, fight the expansionist wars, and produce and consume goods. They never even pretended that education as it was understood then to be a goal. They used their money to get what they wanted and for the most part, they got dedicated patriots and obedient sheep.
The only contemporary author who seems to understand this history well is David Gabbard, most recently a professor at Boise State. I highly recommend his writing if you really want to learn more about the topic. You should be able to download some of his work by Googling his name. If you can find Tolstoy’s Essays on Education from 1862, you will find revelations that will alter your outlook on education for all time. Tolstoy was writing specifically to oppose the new attempts to sell compulsory attendance laws in Russia and the US.