How to Save the World
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Saved by 20 people (-1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-04-27
- Joel on 2009-09-09 - Tags Education
- Wlanderson on 2009-07-08 - Tags education , unschooling , learning , school , trends , sustainability
- Digizen on 2009-05-17 - Tags unschooling
- Wfarren on 2009-05-05 - Tags no_tag
- Teachandlearn on 2009-05-03 - Tags unschooling , Dave_Pollard , self-didacticism , education , school , self-driven
Public Sticky notes
The fact is that my peers had done
what no English teacher had been able to do -- inspire me to read and
write voraciously, and show me how my writing could be improved.
Highlighted by wfarren
The fact is that my peers had done
what no English teacher had been able to do -- inspire me to read and
write voraciously, and show me how my writing could be improved. My
writing, at best marginal six months earlier, was being published in
the school literary journal. On one occasion, a poem of mine I read
aloud in class (one of the few occasions I actually attended a class
that year) produced a spontaneous ovation from my classmates.
Highlighted by teachandlearn
It is not up to teachers or school administrators to figure out what
you should be or do. It’s not up to the State, it’s
not up to your guidance counselors. It’s not up to your
parents. What you do with your life ought to be up to you. What you
learn ought to be up to you. How you navigate the world and
create your place in it ought to be your decision. Your life
belongs to you. School does its best to disabuse you of this
notion. Unschooling celebrates it. Unschooling puts the
responsibility for creating a satisfying life squarely where it
belongs: in the hands of the one living it.
Highlighted by joel
PS presents 50 reasons why schooling is, in every imaginable way, bad
for us and our society, and then 50 reasons why unschooling, which she
defines as "learning
without formal curriculum, timelines, grades or coercion; learning in
freedom" is the natural way
to learn. She argues that we are indoctrinated from the age of five to
cede our time, our freedoms, and what we pay attention to, to the will
of the State, so that we are 'prepared' for a work world of wage
slavery and obedience to authority. We are deliberately not taught
anything that would allow us to be self-sufficient in society. And in
the factory environment of the school, where teachers need to 'manage'
thirty students or more, ethics and the politics of power is left up,
from our earliest and most vulnerable years, to the bullies and other
young damaged psychopaths among our peers, to teach us in their
grotesquely warped way. As PS explains, it is in every way a prison
system.
Highlighted by joel
Many people argue that unschooling will only work for the very
brightest and most self-disciplined children. On the contrary, I think
we are all perfectly suited to unschooling until the school system
begins to beat the love of learning, the ability to self-manage,
curiosity, imagination and critical thinking out of us. By the time we
have reached the third grade it becomes much more difficult, and my
success in unschooling in twelfth grade was, I will agree, due to my
above-average intelligence and initiative -- most of my
intellectually-crippled peers just couldn't manage by that time without
the strictures they'd become accustomed to. They had long ago lost the
desire to learn, and to think for themselves.
Highlighted by joel
Unschooling, by contrast, starts with the realization that you 'own'
your time, and have the opportunity and responsibility to use it in
ways that are meaningful and stimulating for you. When you have this
opportunity, you just naturally learn a great deal, about things you
care about, things that will inevitably be useful to you in making a
life and a living. Your learning environment is the whole world, and
you learn what and when you want, undirected by curricula, textbooks,
alarm clocks and school bells. You develop deep peer relationships
around areas of common interest, once you're allowed to explore and
discover what those areas of interest are. And the Internet and online
gaming allow you to make those relationships anywhere in the world, to
draw on the brightest experts on the planet, and to communicate
powerfully with like-minded, curious people of every age, culture and
ideology.
Highlighted by wfarren
Given the damage we've done to the world -- due in no small part to the
"education system" that has molded us -- damage that future generations
must reverse, it's the least we can do for them, and, at last, for
ourselves.
Highlighted by digizen
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