Reddit reviews Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, 10th Anniversary Edition
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New Society Publishers
If you're actually interested this is the book Dumbing Us Down by John Gatto, that made up my and my wife's mind to homeschool our son. We had a great experience.
Our initial concern that made us consider it in the first place was that he was a really inquisitive child and we feared that his enthusiasm for participating and learning would be crushed by the cookie cutter educational system.
Once we got into it many other benefits became evident.
Agreed. Once upon a time, science and philosophy were much more closely related than they are today. We are polarizing individual aspects of the arts, which has done more to create robotic thinkers than open minded learners. Homeschooling is a great first step to breaking his daughter out of the conveyer belt thinking process, and introducing her to every aspect of the world of education, even religion, and allowing her to pursue those subjects that interest her most. This will feed her curiosity and allow her to become her own person in the long run. Pushing her toward Atheist thinking is as dangerous as pushing her toward religious thinking, if the goal is to allow her to choose her own path and ideas, and truly become an individual thinker. If her religious upbringing by her mom is more restrictive, and you create an open environment that is truly open to all possibilities, she will be a great leader.
But it starts with you, the parent. If all you are doing is teaching her things in direct opposition to the mom, then this is petty and not in your daughter's best interest, nor will it draw her toward your way of thinking, it will repel it. If your goal is to have her think like you do, then, again, you are not really raising a "free thinker" are you? So start with your own education, your own style and teaching philosophy. Here are some great books to give different and honest perspectives. Do what works for you.
Enjoy the journey!
*Edited for formatting.
Uh, public education in the US can hardly be any worse than it already is.
Presently, it already does an outstanding job of deintellectualizing the people who pass through its machinery and preventing them from becoming a threat to the status quo, whether they come from a "good" school district or an impoverished one.
The robber barons like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan were the people who drove the adoption of the Prussian model of public schooling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their intention was to create, as the Prussians had done in the early 19th century, a docile and unimaginative underclass of worker/consumers incapable of threatening their social and economic dominance, by taking kids away from their families during their most crucial formative years, training them to be dependent on authority figures, instilling nationalism, and above all, preventing them from learning to think critically.
The system already works like an absolute dream from the point of view of the class of people who created it and presently maintain it. Gates, as a member of this same social layer as the 19th century tycoons, has zero intention of upsetting the social order. His proposed "remedies," charter schools and measuring teacher performance based on standardized test scores, are meaningless cosmetic changes that will have no effect on education whether he succeeds in implementing them or not. The social conditioning aspect, which is the signature feature of public education, will remain unchanged.
Read John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education for context. You can read it for free online. Gatto is possibly the single most successful public school teacher in American history, and he achieved this specifically by rejecting his official mandate for as long as he could before getting drummed out by administrators in 1991, an event he described with characteristic eloquence in an op-ed published at the time in the Wall Street Journal, entitled I Quit, I Think.
Alternately, the "quick version" of his larger book is called Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.
It's both.
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
https://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487
I was very unhappy with my own public education... too many apathetic teachers; stiff and backward policies which only served to stifle learning; a white-washed version of American and world history being taught as fact ("the winner writes the history books"); more crowd-control going on than actual teaching; etc.
When it became our turn to be parents, it did not take us long to decided on homeschooling our own (three) kids. What a difference that has made to them and to us. They are free-thinking, creative individuals -- not rubber-stamped clones made from a government-approved brain mold so they will be the perfect corporate or military drones of the future.
No, my kids understand the meaning of the of the Bill of Rights, and that there have been dark times in American history and politics, and that we are going through some right now in their lifetimes. They trust science and scientific methods of discovery. There is no superstition here.
For reference material, read Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
> but for some bizzare reason we've not really taken education out of an era where there was a genuine question as to the value of compulsory education, and the folks who devised the modern system were Prussians.
This is the most important sentence in that entire thing and here's why:
> The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty. -Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of the main architects of the education system that we now use. It's stated purpose was to create soldiers/people who unthinkingly follow orders. To understand why this happened it is important to look to the historical climate at the time (edit: around 1815).
Now to understand what was going on we have to go a bit further back. Up until the French revolution war in Europe was something that was something a kin to fox hunting. It was a highly civilized affair and the goal was to outmaneuver the opponent and put him in a losing position whilst killing as few men as possible. Then there was a party afterward and everyone had cake.
Back to France. After the Revolution the monarchs of Europe saw events in France as a dangerous president. They gathered their armies (often mercenaries) and attacked to quash the fledgeling democracy. The French response to this was a nation wide draft and became the first nation in ever to engage in total war.
(The practice of the times was that you have few, well trained and well disciplined soldiers to do your fighting for you because if you don't want to put weapons in the hands of people you are in effect oppressing. This was not a problem that democratic France faced however, it's problem was that all those professional armies were knocking on it's doors. and so out of desperation France was forced to reinvent war.)
The French suffered early on but soon competent generals (enter stage right: Napoleon) and overwhelming numbers won the day. Napoleon became popular enough to name himself king(ohh the irony) and decided that the French flag should we waving over all of Europe.
Side note, Napoleon is famous for saying "You cannot stop me - I spend 30,000 men a month" . This illustrates beautifully how he changed the game as only a few decades earlier it was considered rude to kill the opponents soldiers.
Later Napoleon was defeated by the British and the Prussians(who had the most elite army in Europe, for more on that read up on Frederick the Great) and the rest is, as they say, history.
Now, what does this have to do with the education system you ask? Well, Napoleon had scared the monarchs of Europe, he had changed the game and they would have to change with it. They needed big national armies (is it coincidence that Nationalism starts booming right at this time? Ahh nationalism, almost as good as religion) and you need to be able to trust that soldiers will follow orders. Enter stage left: Johann Gottlieb Fichte (you had forgotten about him, right?). He architected a system of schooling that would guarantee the German people good soldiers, and it worked (think Bismarck's wars, and the two world wars.) that system was later adopted by the western world and later the whole world.
Now you might be wondering: "why was the system was perpetuated and kept around?". Well, because: Industrialization. If you want people to be a bunch of interchangeable cogs then you can't beat the school system and boy were the factory owners happy with that. (Interchangeable cogs is not however what the knowledge economy wants or needs.)
Time crawled on and the system became more and more entrenched becoming one of the biggest employers in any state (isn't government swell). Time changed more and pressure mounted to change it but no matter how you change it it is still a deeply flawed system, at least if you think of it as an education system. It is a marvelous system of indoctrination but education...not so much. So time has come to dismantle the inaccurately named education system and replace that bastard of the enlightenment with something more enlightened.
tl;dr: Once a high ranking member of the Chinese communist party was asked what he thought the effects of the french revolution were. He replied: "It's to early to tell". In other words School sucks now because the French
didn't want to eat cakerebelled in 1789 and it's to early to tell what will happen in the future.For those interested read Dumbing us down by John Taylor Gatto. The following is a speech he gave whilst accepting "Best teacher in New York State" award
Edit: links 'n' stuff
> There's not a new world order outright ain't trying to make us dumber, we're doing it to ourselves.
I respectfully disagree. While human stupidty may be a universal constant, factory schools have been proactively exacerbating it for a century. Not just failing to educate, but anti-educating; the little bit of real learning comes from a minority of individual teachers, and those students who are sufficiently driven to teach themselves, both inside and outside the system.
Take a look at the work of former teacher John Gatto for further elaboration.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487
Well, besides starting to get to know homeschoolers now, you can also talk to your husband about how recent a phenomenon schools are (the way they currently exist).
Think about the thousands of years humans have been around. Now lets only consider the educated classes. They usually had private tutors as children. They weren't grouped together with 20-30 kids their exact age all day. People learned to be social through interaction with their families and communities.
You might also try checking our this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346184157&sr=1-1&keywords=gatto+school
Yea you know my wife read this book called 'Dumbing us Down' about this very topic. At first I was completely turned off by the hyperbolic title but after my wife started explaining what it was about I found it to be extremely insightful.
Essentially this guy explains how our current school system was devised in the late 1800s to produce good factory workers.
Think about it how every class starts and ends with a ringing bell as though you are on a production line.
It doesn't matter how involved the class is, it doesn't matter if little johnny is finally understanding a new concept for the first time, it doesn't matter if a student has come up with an insightful new idea or perspective that no one has ever thought of before. As soon as the bell rings everyone stops and leaves the room immediately.
Apparently people really hated these factory school and some of the last town and communities were forced to adopt the system literally by the militia marching into their towns.
Anyway instruction is an important method of learning but it is by no means the only one or the best. You can also learn by discovery, experimentation, assisting or mimicking others, or peer discussion. Our schools only teach by the top down instruction method 90%+ of the time.
>I do plan to be outspoken and advocate sudbury education throughout my life.
Excellent, this is the best thing to do in order to ensure real education reform. I’m currently reading Dumbing Us Down, a book about how compulsory education destroys the soul. The Sudbury school presents not an alternative, but the only sane way to instill a true passion for learning that can sustained throughout your life. State controlled (even private schools, too) brick and mortar schools are nothing but institutions of misery, a 12 year prison sentence where the inmate (student) is moved from cell (classroom) to cell to complete a predetermined lesson, a lesson that is un-negotiable and imposed on you. Teachers tell their students that employers hire based on high test scores, so students live under the tyranny of letter grades throughout their sentence. Even after the final bell rings, teachers assign a type of extended schooling called “homework”, so that the inmates do not use their free time to learn something unauthorized.
When someone says “our schools are failing!,” this means they do not understand. Our schools are doing exactly what they were designed to do: instill intellectual paralysis in order to have a population of unquestioning and obedient workers.
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
The opening essay of this short read is a condemnation of traditional schooling techniques---and it's also the speech he delivered when he (again) won the NY Teacher of the Year award. Gatto gets at the heart of why public schools consistently produce pencil pushers, not leaders. Every teacher should read this book.
How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon
If Dumbing Us Down is the manifesto in favor of a more liberal pedagogy, Herdon's book is a memoir of someone trying to put that pedagogy in action. It's also a simple, beautiful easy to read book, the kind that is so good it reminds us just how good a book can be. I've read the teaching memoir that made Jonahton Kozol famous, this one is better.
The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori
In the early 1900s, Maria Montessori taught literacy to children that society had otherwise assumed were unreachable. She did this by using the scientific method to study each child's learning style. Some of what she introduced has been widely incorporated (like child-sized furniture) and some of it seems great but unworkable in overcrowded schools. The bottom line is that the Montessori method was one of the first pedagogical techniques that was backed by real results: both in test scores and in growing kids that thrive on learning and participation.
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly Daniel Tatum
While not precisely a book on how to teach, this book is incredibly helpful to any teacher working with a diverse student population, or one where the race they are teaching differs from their own. It explains the process that white, black, and children of other races go through in identifying themselves as part of a particular race. In the US, race is possibly the most taboo subject, so it is rare to find a book this honest and straightforward on a subject most educators try not to talk about at all. I highly recommend this book.
If there is any chance you will be teaching history, definitely read:
Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People's History of the United States (the latter book is a classic and, personally, changed my life).
Also recommend: The Multi-player Classroom by Lee Sheldon and Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov
Finally, anyone who plans to teach math should read this essay, "Lockhart's Lament" [PDF at the bottom of the page].
PS, I was tempted to use Amazon affiliate links, but my conscious wouldn't let me.
I have a question for you guys - what on earth are you still doing in the gulag of "public schools" (government prisons)? I remember my experience, and it sounds like things have only gotten worse since I graduated ~a decade ago. If I knew then what you guys know now, there is no way I would set another foot inside those perverted halls of ridicule, scorn, bullying, violence, indoctrination, and suffering. They are stealing your childhood, and you are letting them!
Sorry, look, I know what it's like to be beaten down your entire life by these monsters, but you have insight into a truth that sets you apart from 99.9% of your peers. I'm honestly curious, what is preventing you from simply saying to your parents, look, I'm done with it? If you are familiar with and can articulate the arguments of, say, Gatto or Molyneux, are the people who control your life so closed to the truth, or to alternatives to your "education"? If so, what is preventing you from walking away from them as well? I just don't get why you aren't devoting 100% of your excess time/energy to extricating yourselves from these monstrous institutions that do you irreparable harm. If it's a lack of resources (time/money/food/shelter), is this something that we as a community should be stepping up and responding to?
I've read Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down", and his writing style for that is a bit sensationalist, too. It was confusing that in this .txt file, near the end, someone wrote that free market, pre-Civil War style schools are "UNavailable only to the
resourceful, the courageous, the lucky, or the rich." (Huh?)
If anyone takes anything from this, though - since I'm assuming everyone reading this post has already gone through said schooling system - is to look into homeschooling yourself now. You can still learn things from people in the community and or teach yourself. Sure, we don't have as much free time as schoolchildren anymore, but that doesn't mean we ought to not try. Inside of a school building is not the only designated place where you are allowed to learn, and after you graduate high school/college/trade school, that doesn't mean you have to be "done."
Gatto's writing, along with others (John Holt, Susan Wise Bauer, etc.) have been used by many who have decided to homeschool their children, but you can can become an autodidact and "unschool" yourself, no matter what age.
Edit: If you like the idea of Ben Franklin's self-education, you might find this book to be a really fun read.
https://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487
Nice article.
Reminds me of the work of numerous New York "Teacher of the Year" award winner John Taylor Gatto. His Six-Lesson Schoolteacher is one of his better known pieces, though he also has a heavily researched - though easy to read - book titled Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and another free book on his website dealing with the hidden history of US education.
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487
> John Gatto has been a teacher for 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award.
If you care to make an actual argument you're welcome to. If you want to argue that the 13-year assembly line approach to education is doing these kids a favor, be my guest.
> Even "winning" in our school environment isn't really good for a person's future, in some sense.
I love that you get that. Most people (especially the "non-winners") don't. You may also want to check out Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto.
Coincidentally, I graduated from MIT. It was an awesome experience, but I wish I had taken more advantage of the resources there. Truthfully, I wasn't ready for it 'cuz I didn't really choose it. It was just the next thing one was supposed to do on the educational path. I would totally encourage my daughters to take at least a year off before heading to college, if they chose to do so at all.
I was in electrical/computer engineering, so I think I can relate. Just graduated 2 months ago.
Don't let school get in the way of your education.
Learn about human sexuality.
Learn how to outsource, but be very skeptical about some of the philosophy in this book.
Travel.
My 2cents. Have fun :)
> My passion for learning has not made me love school. It’s had the opposite effect. I feel as though school is failing to provide me with an adequate, relevant, current education.
John Taylor Gatto explains why that is so.
>What I mean by Equal opportunity is the chance for every individual to attain the knowledge to follow a specific career path via educating themselves or working in the related field, be it Engineering, Apprentanceships or the like without being limited by their class.
I don't think that's attainable, state or no state. The reason for this is that people are born into the world in different circumstances, with different sets of abilities, economic circumstances and varying levels of wealth. However, if we look at the current situation with the state, barriers of entry are brought into existence by means of subsidization and licensing. This makes it so that if you want to be a doctor, you have to undertake a lengthy and expensive educational program, after which you are granted a license, which prohibits you from practising your trade outside of the geographical area where your license is valid. So someone of lesser means that has a license elsewhere, can not freely travel to practice his or her trade in a different area. This limits the number of doctors that are available, and makes it more difficult for people to become a doctor. Without the overhead of the state, costs can be lowered and more can be learned through, like you mentioned, apprenticeships. I think apprenticeships are great. However, mainly because of child labour laws prohibiting children from entering into apprenticeships, this is severely curtailed. My little niece can't work and learn in her mom's store because they would be breaking numerous laws.
>However, I also can't help but think that there will be at least some level of favourism if private educational and social institutions don't treat their clients equaly, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
Let's say that there is a corner store that refuses to serve Asian people. The farmer that sells goods to the store, who knows and employs several Asian people on his farm might refuse to do business with such a bigoted individual. Furthermore, I myself might stop going there because I disagree with his policy. He might suffer vandalism from the people he is discriminating against, people in his family might lose respect for the man, etc. There are lots of ways social and economic ostracism would work against such types of undesirable and bigoted behaviour.
>Of course, my idea of Equal Opportunity will not be relevant until we live in a completely Anarchist society, in the same manner that the Anarcho-Capitalist ideology would not begin to exist until after the state has been entirely abolished.
Like I mentioned, I think people's circumstances and preferences are too diverse for this to ever come about. Social ostracism however, has been and always will be around, state or no state. I think that will do more for equality than any state ever is able to. We are a social species and unless our ideals are distorted by state indoctrination for 14 years of one's life, we tend to stand up for what we think is right and speak out against what we think is unjust.
>I am simply afraid that the people that run the state will exist even if the state is abolished and many of them will turn to the private sector to achieve a lot of the same goals they strive for in a state-run enviroment.
This does not make logical sense to me. The people that run the state will not be around anymore in an environment without the state, for there is nothing for them to run. In that scenario, it will be a private matter. I think the core of your concerns if I understand it correctly, is that you are concerned about human greed. I think if there is no more state apparatus that institutionalizes and provides a vehicle for greed that is socially acceptable in the eyes of one's peers, it becomes a personal matter. If someone in your circle of friends or family exhibits greed in their personality, either it results in actions or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it's not a problem. If it does, they are responsible for their actions and are legally and socially liable. One's reputation can suffer and people can refuse to transact on contract with those that refuse to conform to social norms (such as not stealing or being charitable and tolerable towards your fellow men).
>This would mean that certain pindividuals will follow a lot of the same practices that states use to control the people. Unless there is some sort of countermeasure to deal with the pressure from monopolistic corporations we can quickly find ourselves in a world where globalized companies have the power to impose rules on the same level as the state does today.
There is an important distinction to be made in the two scenario's. In the scenario with a state, payment for services is provided in the form of taxes, no matter the quality of these services. In this scenario, the provider of services can even set the price of the services, and increase it if it so sees fit. And it has. In the scenario without a state, there are numerous business that provide services and their payment is not mandated by law. They find themselves in the unfortunate situation of having to provide value, and value that is higher than the next provider of that value, or customers will cease their payments for a service that is sub-par. If a new competitor enters your field of business and offers similar quality services for lower payment (due to more efficient processes or some innovation in the field), your business model is now obsolete and you will have to either increase quality, lower your prices or go out of business. Unfortunately, there is no state to lobby to raise barriers to entry for newcomers and thus the customer will end up with a better deal, regardless of what you will do.
>Regardless, the notion of Equal Opportunity is my own personal opinion and as such doesn't really have any room in the discussion we are having so I appologize for bringing it up.
Apologies are not necessary, I welcome the discussion. You have a concern and I enjoy thinking about such things.
>Edit: Can you recommend some good reading material in regards to the history of education and the involvement of the state?
Sure, so before the Prussian educational system came into being there was this German guy named Martin Luther in the 16th century that was of the opinion that governments should be get involved in education. Before that, schools were mostly a private matter for children of wealthier parents. In the 19th century, driven by a industrial economy where factory workers and soldiers were needed, Horace Mann introduced the Prussian system of education, the one we still have throughout the Western world. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Hope this helps. I'm sure there's some stuff to find on YouTube as well about the coming about of the Prussian system.
Hehe. Right, I just have to.
Weapons of Mass Instruction
Dumbing Us Down
The Homework Myth
;]
While there are some who are willfully ignorant, ignorance, in most cases, is simply a product of environment.
Think about it. We know for a fact that
·People inherently wish to be led
·A person can only act within their given range of knowledge. If they're not exposed to knowledge, then how can they know?
·Our education system only teaches submission to authority, and blind obedience
·Because of this, most don't even know how to think critically about their own beliefs.
I know exactly where you're coming from. It's easy to be very pissed off at all the idiots out there. But with some patience and understanding, you can see that many, if not most, are not responsible for their idiocy. Blame the system, not the ignorant masses.
And yes, I do believe this ignorance is purposely engineered. I highly recommend this book for an elaboration on the topic.
Dumbing Us Down.
Public education has been used as a tool to dumb down the populace to a point of complacency. Something politicians want. People no longer care about anything because they simply don't have the ability to, their minds have been so dulled out and have a inability for original thought. I am a product of public education, and it was horrific, once I actually spent years re-educating myself. I was my middle and high school valedictorian and I still consider myself incredibly unintelligent at those times. Though it would seem socirty placed me as the creme of the crop. I suggest you read http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266519634&sr=8-1 maybe it will give you some insight on how Public education really works.
Building roads and infrastructure is unconstitutional unless it is a post road. private companies can do that.
Saying we would have no Internet without a Military is rather silly and logically false. You can in no way prove somebody else or some other entity would have not come up with the same idea. In fact the majority of the Internet was done by universities for their research. I never said I wanted to get rid of the Military, I just dont think we should have bases and troops all around the world.
Quite the contrary.
Here are two great reads if you're interested on getting the "abolish the Dept. of Education" peoples take. It's not so much "screw them" as it is "we can give children a better education".
https://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716692/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
I read Vince Gatto's book and got a very different point of view.
The whole structure of schools is designed for obedience rather than engagement or independent thought. Kids are educated in a monoculture of other people their age and prevented from participating in the economy or engaging with the rest of society.
Instead they're forcibly confined to a room, where a teacher tries to get them excited about a prepackaged set of ideas. Until the bell rings, and they must set aside any enthusiasm they were building for that subject and take up the next.
I agree a more informed electorate is vital. And that requires libertarianism. The government federalizes schools and keeps the public uninformed for a reason (See Dumbing us Down. If libertarianism was practiced the government would have never allowed segregation, or discriminated against gays. Libertarianism is freedom for all. Social security was actually never meant to serve anyone either, the average life expectancy when it was created was under 65. Now the BIG GOVERNMENT has bankrupted the social security fund, so there is no money there anyways, they must print money to fund it, causing each dollar to loose value. If people did not have: IRS, Medicare taxes and Social Sec. taxes, maybe they could save enough themselves. The fundamental problem with taxation is it a promise the government will force you to pay at gunpoint, or lock you in jail or seize your property. Furthermore, government programs like these keep people dependent on the government, and make them tolerate injustices they would typically not, because they depend on the government. As for child labor laws please review this article it clearly details the problems with child labor laws.
I'm not a teen, I'm a mother. This was at the top of r/all. I honestly feel terrible for students today. Schools have become total cluster-fcks. When I was in school, you got your lesson plans on the first day. All you needed were some notebooks, pens, pencils and maybe art supplies if that was your thing. You didn't need a computer, you didn't need a tablet, you didn't need to make an account with the schools site just to access your homework. You didn't need to bring in extra supplies for other people.
Math was math and it was straightforward. None of this common core shit. Tests were given to asses how far along you were. Not what part of society you should be directed towards. We had guidance counselors. You guys have state sanctioned social workers looking for that bonus they get, if they manage to convince your parents you need adhd meds. Most of you do not.
We had an hour each day dedicated to the arts and music. We had recess and a long lunch. We didn't have to walk through metal detectors and no one was ever suspended or expelled for wearing whatever they wanted to wear. No one was pulled out of school and made famous in the news for the small act of being a kid and chewing a pop-tart into something of a shape that maybe looked like a gun. No one was labelled a terrorist for taking initiative and wiring up a working clock.
When I was going to school, our parents were not arrested for trying to pick us up. These days, if you have the audacity to set foot on school property, to pick up your own kid even 5 minutes before school lets out? You are met with an entire security team, wanting to know why you are there and what could you possibly be thinking, trying to pick your own child up.
If you're sick of it? Check out this old book. "Dumbing Us Down" written by a retired teacher. Here's an amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487
It's almost prophetic, the original was written right around the time the internet became popular among the public world-wide. As students, you have the right to decide your own academic futures. You don't have to put up with alot of the bullshit they feed you each and everyday. Even minors have rights, you just have to know the ropes. READ YOUR SCHOOLS YEARLY MANUALS, the ones they send home for the parents to read. Then? Look up your states/cities education laws; easily accessed online. Usually on the State Board of Educators website, or even your states own website. The site's address will always end in " .org"
It's your life, your education paid for with your parents tax dollars, or even your own tax dollars, if you are over the age of 15 and working even part-time. Unless you go to a private school in which case? Can't help you much, private sectors have their own rules. School should not be a prison and students should not be forced to fail because they don't have the money to pay for the extra technology.
Public schooling is not even, (by law but you have to dig through the ammendments) required past 8th grade in most states. Despite the social services scare tactics. I'm not saying drop out. I'm saying use the system to your advantage. Not theirs. Know your rights as a minor and a student. No matter what "rule" a school has, they can not deny you an education. EVEN IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY WITH SAID RULE. Provided you do not pose a physical threat.
They want to kick you out over your hair or clothes, because it might be distracting? THEY CAN'T. EVEN IF THEIR BOOK STATES IT. YOU JUST HAVE TO STAND YOUR GROUND. They want to give you a failing grade because you or your parents can't afford an internet connection? THEY CAN'T. THEY HAVE TO ALLOW FOR MORE TRADITIONAL MEANS OF ACCEPTING YOUR PROJECTS.
Will they fight you on it? YES THEY WILL. Don't let them. STAND YOUR GROUND. Things get crazy? Call your States Attorney. One more thing. Know that, for the most part, alot of these teachers are on your side. They want to make it complicated about as much as you want it to be complicated. Meaning it's just as much of a pain in the ass for them as it is for you. Only they HAVE to comply or risk losing their jobs. Sometimes a 5 minute one on one conversation, can help your grades. Meaning that if you are honest and talk to your teacher about the assignments? A solution will be found.
If you happen upon a tenured teacher that is just sick of their life and could care less? Take your concerns to the next up in line. A vice principal, the principal, the board of education. Your life is yours, your education is yours. What you want out of life belongs to you. You fight for the life you want now. Not the life you are being offered by the mediocrity and red-tape that public schooling is throwing in your face.
Sorry for the rant, but you guys are the future. Those before us, are responsible for the rules in place now. It doesn't have to be this way and all of you will determine what happens next. Yall are all basically Obi-wan-Kenobe and your future is Princess Leiah.
She needs you and only you guys can help her. Demand better from your elders, you are not thugs in training. You are the next leaders of this world. You do not deserved to be caged in like wild animals.