Earlier quoted context omitted.
Schools just sort of happened at the behest of industrialists. There isn't actually that much thought put into the concept of schools much less all that follows from them. They are simply taken as granted despite the fact that they are a relatively recent invention. "The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tor…
School is not a recent invention. Public school is recent invention. Also, there is much thought put into schooling. Curriculum (what to teach), instruction (how to teach), school administration, etc. I am not saying schools are perfect, but claim schools are the same as jails, education is the same as torture, it's just bullsh*t.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedom-learn/200808...
In relation to the biological history of our species, schools are very recent institutions. For hundreds of thousands of years, before the advent of agriculture, we lived as hunter-gatherers. In my August 2 posting, I summarized the evidence from anthropology that children in hunter-gatherer cultures learned what they needed to know to become effective adults through their own play and exploration. The strong drives in children to play and explore presumably came about, during our evolution as hunter-gatherers, to serve the needs of education. Adults in hunter-gatherer cultures allowed children almost unlimited freedom to play and explore on their own because they recognized that those activities are children's natural ways of learning.
In sum, for several thousand years after the advent of agriculture, the education of children was, to a considerable degree, a matter squashing their willfulness in order to make them good laborers. A good child was an obedient child, who suppressed his or her urge to play and explore and dutifully carried out the orders of adult masters. Such education, fortunately, was never fully successful. The human instincts to play and explore are so powerful that they can never be fully beaten out of a child. But certainly the philosophy of education throughout that period, to the degree that it could be articulated, was the opposite of the philosophy that hunter-gatherers had held for hundreds of thousands of years earlier.
With the rise of schooling, people began to think of learning as children's work. The same power-assertive methods that had been used to make children work in fields and factories were quite naturally transferred to the classroom.
In recent times, the methods of schooling have become less harsh, but basic assumptions have not changed. Learning continues to be defined as children's work, and power assertive means are used to make children do that work.
> schools are the same as jails, education is the same as torture, it's just bullsh*t.
Meant in jest.
"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
- Mark Twain