I wonder how many of the schoolcels here are jealous that someone managed to do it without following their way.
When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
271–280 of 378 posts
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a safer approach would be "home after schooling" or to follow this new terminology "unafterschooling". Basically give kids time for unstructured learning using the hours after school/after homework study time that are currently effectively used up toiling at zero sum, super structured activities strictly aimed at getting into college.
So you're going to send kids to 7 or so hours of being pressured into paying attention to stuff they're generally not that interested in learning, then some amount of time doing mostly make-work activities, and you expect them to be interested in exploring learning opportunities in the minimal remaining bits of time? (And for older grades, they're also getting up well before their bodies want to.) Would you be able t…
> (And for older grades, they're also getting up well before their bodies want to.)
So true. There's nothing about the school start time that makes sense other than enabling parents to go to work afterwards.
Though I feel the same about my morning standup as a 38 year old...
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> am afraid that he will miss out on all the social aspects. Consider carefully and closely what those social aspects are. Check that your perception matches reality. For example, in the classroom, 90+% of the time students are supposed to be quiet, or to interact with the teacher (usually answering a question—in front of, but not with, the other students). Most of the social part of school is interacting with friend…
> the parts of school that are social are not necessarily good Most definitely - however it's also worth bearing in mind that if you happen to fall into a more traditional life path afterwards, those social elements will rear their heads again. The sink or swim mentality of school social interactions sadly mimics quite a lot of interactions post school as well. In an ideal world my shitty experience at school wouldn'…
It's a good thing you responded well to that situation. But can you imagine others in your situation not learning the lessons you did, or learning to emulate the toxic behavior, or becoming withdrawn or callous or misanthropic, or otherwise developing bad coping methods?
It's very common for people who admit that school sucked, to then defend it by saying "it taught me to deal with it". I say, if you really wanted to teach that thing, you could probably come up with something way more safe, time-efficient, and pleasant. I mean, how many weeks would it take for someone to teach a course on "Common personality problems and sources of conflict in the workplace", or something, that would cover 80% of what you learned plus some things you didn't experience? Most of the time, when people claim school is good for a particular thing, you can quickly see that it's nowhere near optimized for that thing.
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Germany was among the most highly educated countries in the world in the 1930s. The Russian Revolution was an elite phenomenon. In a country of peasants the Revolution was of and by the intelli…
> It would be hard to be clearer that the purpose of the “education” system is indoctrination. You call it indoctrination. Someone else might equally call it social cohesion.
Call it what you want - it sure isn't critical thinking.
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just recited the unwashed masses dogma. I don't really agree with you at all. The vast majority of british people I've interacted with, even the "uneducated", all have reasonable, well thought out opinions even if they don't always agree with my own. I think it's much better than you seem to suggest. The real issue is with the politicians, and the fact we don't have proportional representation. There is a signifi…
> I do not relate with either Tories or Labor Nor do most voters. They have to keep FPTP because they know that otherwise, most people won't vote for them; the last 4 times the UK had nationwide elections held under a more proportional system, most voters voted for parties other than labour of the Conservatives. > I don't think either has my best interests at heart. Most people agree with you!
1. we already had a vote on proportional representation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternat...
2. everyone thinks proportional representation is excellent. the reason is usually a misunderstanding of the voting process. in reality it has drawbacks, same as first past the post. before the UK referendum a study was commissioned exploring the various types of voting. the conclusion was that all these systems have flaws and all these systems are similar. but the clarity and the definitive mandate a party gets from FPTP will make sure alternative voting will not be adopted anytime soon.
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#276My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let…
This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…
Disagree. In practice schools are a place where parents can offload their children while they are working. Covid underlined this.
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "As a status class, the intelligentsia includes artists, teachers and academics, writers, and the literary hommes de lettres.[3][4] Individual members of the intelligentsia are known as intellectuals." I would love to see analysis under which Stalin was intellectual. And people I mentioned (except maybe programmers) are not. > "In Russia, before the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), the term intelligentsia described the…
> I would love to see analysis under which Stalin was intellectual The Wikipedia article conflates intelligentsia with intellectuals, which I don't agree with (I'm Polish, so I have some long-ingrained intuitions regarding those terms). Stalin, as an educated non-wealthy person (he studied to become a priest), can easily be seen as someone who is a member of inteligentsia. > Which literally means every person partici…
You argued that "intelligentsia does not mean educated people". Now you are classifying Stalin with finished elementary school at 16 and seminary studies as intelligentsia.
> The key factor of being in inteligentsia was (from Wiki): "people engaged in the complex mental labours".
Stalin was not engaged in the complex mental labors, outside of seminary he engaged in revolutionary politics basically.
The very same wikipedia has multiple definitions for inteligentsia - including specifically Russian one from pre-revolution I quoted. Which defines inteligentsia as people educated enough to engage in politics. Which does include Stalin and pretty much everyone else involved in Russian politics.
> Tzar family or many of the old aristocratic families were not a member of intelligentsia and would probably be offended by the association. The higher classes didn't do any labor.
I did not made that definition, wiki did.
Monarchy had more supporters then just Tzar and old aristocratic families. And again, old aristocratic families did actually engaged in ruling and leading. And then you have waste groups of lower aristocracy running smaller things. The country was under constant internal conflict and pressure. They did not done labor, they did politics a lot.
And group of people who had don't politics or who have been educated cant be reasonably reduced to "Stalin vs Tsar". Somehow, people pushing for reforms (too little too late success, but still) don't exist. Liberals dont exist. Capitalists dont exist or dont engage with politics. That is not even realistic. Monarchis trying for milder reforms dont exist.
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Germany was among the most highly educated countries in the world in the 1930s. The Russian Revolution was an elite phenomenon. In a country of peasants the Revolution was of and by the intelli…
The point of our system is that (as much as is possible) education is not limited to the 'elites' and 'intelligentsia.' Rather, it is distributed in a (relatively) egalitarian fashion amongst not just those who call for war and revolution, but those who rot in the trenches and die upon the bayonet. School is excellent at building the cohesive fabric of a society , including teaching it's boredom, authority, and point…
> The point of our system is ...
It seems to me that, to responsibly make a statement of that form, you would have to look at when the system was created and look at the motivations of the people who created it (or made significant changes to the system and its objectives). If we're talking about the compulsory education system, that means looking at when the compulsory education laws were first passed, and what was said by those advocating the laws (and, possibly, deciding if they were telling the truth and if they had additional motivations).
Can you honestly say you've looked into that? Do you even know when compulsory education laws were passed in your state (U.S. or otherwise)? I'm not really picking on you specifically—I had to look it up (1874 in California).
I stress this because, while ostensibly school is for "education", if you point out that it's not doing that nearly as well as it could, ten people will say "Well, really school is for X", and you'll get about five different values of X, some of which contradict each other. This is the hallmark of people making up rationalizations for something they truly don't understand.
(To take an example, even for something like compliance—I do imagine that employers use "suffered through school without getting kicked out" as a sign of compliance, but if you imagined an institution optimized for providing that signal, I suspect making it through one month of military boot camp is a stronger signal of that, and obviously way more efficient than spending 12 years in school. Or if you want compliance without that kind of physical stress, then some variant of extreme ascetic monk training would probably do it.)
Murray Rothbard says that compulsory education in Europe was first established by Protestant Reformation leaders—Martin Luther and his followers, and John Calvin—and that their primary motive was to promulgate their religious ideas and suppress religious heresy; and that the Calvinist Puritans brought this approach to America (starting with Massachusetts and more generally New England). "Only a year after its first set of particular laws, the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1642 enacted a compulsory literacy law for all children. ... In 1647, the colony followed up this law with the establishment of public schools. The major stress in the compulsory education was laid on the teaching of Calvinist-Puritan principles." Doing my own research, I verify that Massachusetts's 1647 laws[1] required that parents "once a week (at the least) catechize their children and servants in the grounds & principles of Religion" in the very next sentence after the requirement to "[e]nable them perfectly to read the English tongue".
As for what animated the educationists who successfully established compulsory public education in most of the American states in the mid-late 1800s, Rothbard describes it in the following link. Rothbard is an ideological libertarian, but he forms his arguments from plenty of primary and secondary sources which he cites. https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1/ht...
[1] https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-law...
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#279Something as important as education is always going to attract very strong emotion.
When you get into "state schooling", it is also almost a religion - thought shalt not question the teacher, thou shalt not question the dictats of the education establishment, etc.
Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, for example in France, the category where you can find the most antimask persons is high educated women in their 50s.
Source? In all statistics I have seen up to now, men were more likely to be antimask then women. So French women seems to be outliers.
Men are more likely to be anti mask in USA since in USA right wing tend to be anti science. In many areas of Europe right wing is more pro science than left wing though, so the roles becomes reversed.