-=> Quoting Sheila King to Michael Martinez <=-
 SK> While I can appreciate some of the points you summarized, largely I
 SK> find the summary points you made to be oversimplistic.
Yes, of course.  That's why I think you should read _Deschooling
Society_ because all I can do here is summarize what it says.
 -> The grade system that we have, is a certification of how _little_
 -> somebody knows.
 SK> This is some cute remark designed to provoke an emotional response, I
 SK> guess. Otherwise, I don't get it.
No, I mean it in all seriousness.  I'm referring not to the students
who get their diplomas, but to all the students who fail to achieve
in the school system.  For them, school is nothing but a certification
of how little they know.  It belittles them, by saying, "You didn't
make it through school, so you are going to be stuck working at McDonald's
and you will have a heck of a time getting a different kind of 
opportunity".
 SK> degrees and not necessarily accomplish that much, but the idea that
 SK> spending more time in school necessarily results in little learning
 SK> does not mesh with my experiences either as a student, a teacher, or a
 SK> mother of students. The opportunity to learn in school is available.
Yes, but what you are offered is decided by _other_ people and only
represents a piece of the pie.  
 SK> The students have to take advantage of it.
The majority of kids _can't_ take advantage of it, because the system
is designed to exclude vast quantities of those who don't fit in.  I
believe what you are saying is that a rowdy student must learn the
proper respect, and then he'll be able to learn.  I agree that a 
rowdy student is not inclined to learn.  But at a young age, the 
system automatically prevents him from going any farther.  So maybe
when he is older and calmed down, he will be interested in learning.
But it is infinitely harder for him to get back in the system, if he
hasn't graduated high school.
The other thing is more important.  The school system is not taylored
to _him_.  If he's going to take advantage of school, he must be
taylored to _it_.  And that's where the problem lies.  Learning is
best facilitated when it's taylored to the person, and when the student
doesn't have to mold himself to fit someone else's preconceived ideas
of how to teach the entire mass of students in one way.   No wonder
so many kids drop out of high school or don't go to college.  School
will never spark their interest the way it's structured now.  It will
never spark their interest so long as it is School.   
 SK> doesn't mean that no one in the system can learn.
I agree.  Some people in the system learn.  Who are they?  They're the
ones who can deal with learning the way we teach them.  But  the fact
that this is the minority of students, ought to tell you that school
should therefore not be mandated for everyone.
 -> The farther you proceed, from high school to college, involves you
 -> but excludes many people and in effect shows them that they are
 -> considered inferior.
 SK> Who considers these people inferior? I have siblings who have chosen
 SK> not to go on to college.
They have _chosen_ not to go to college.  Many students don't have the
choice.  They are automatically excluded whether they like it or not.  
This means two things:
1.  School should not be mandatory
2.  many kids who want to learn, are denied the opportunity.  School
isn't the only way to learn.  And these kids would thrive under different
systems of learning.
Why is school mandatory, when most kids don't want to go to school?
That doesn't make any sense.  These kids don't learn anything in school, 
and they don't even want to be there.  So why should they be forced to go?
Also, there should be other available opportunities for these kids
to learn, whatever they want to learn, when they get the desire to do 
it.  Undoubtedly, some if not most of them, will experience the desire
off and on, at different points of their life.  Since teachers need to
be certified, you need diplomas, and all these restrictions exist, it's
incredibly hard for a kid or adult to live out his desire to learn
about something or learn a skill, whenever he needs it.   Public
school is free.  Nothing else is.
 -> You must pass high school to get into college.
 SK> This is a false statement. Colleges do accept students with GED
 SK> certificates, homeschooled students, etc...
Same thing.  GED is just a scaled down version of high school.  Homeschooled
students still have to learn what other people want them to learn, use
predefined textbooks, and basically do the same thing they would be doing
if they were in school.
 
 -> If you don't, you are made to feel unworthy and uneducated.  You must
 -> pass college to be able to teach college.  If not, you are not a
 -> learned scholar.
 SK> In general, I would agree with the fact that one needs to hold a
 SK> college degree in order to teach college. However, if there is a
 SK> particular discipline in which alternate qualifications should suffice,
 SK> then members of that discipline should suggest that these alternate
 SK> qualifications be considered, and work towards implementing an
 SK> alternate certification.
An alternate certification is no different than an existent certification
known as a degree.  You must be approved by other certified people.  
If the educational system was a true institution of learning, the 
_students_ would give approval on the teachers, not the other way around.
You think this would result in chaos, but it wouldn't.  Students who
don't want to learn, wouldn't be there to provide approval or disapproval.
Students who do want to learn, have a vested interest in picking out
the teacher who is the best.
It works itself out naturally.  To the contrary, as it stands right now,
everything is _forced_ and contrived.  Teachers force certain curricula
upon students.  Academians force certain qualifications upon teachers.
Simply because there are other ways to become
 SK> educated, and college doesn't work for everyone does not mean to me
 SK> that we should scrap the college system.
We should scrap the entire educational system.  Once that happens, 
natural and efficient systems of learning arise, and of course a subset
of these will contain places which are very similar to current college
classrooms.
 
I truly believe that you don't learn half as much in school, as you
do on your own.  The only people that doens't apply to, I think, are
the people who have an innate agreeable disposition to learning by rote. 
  -> People learn their best when they are interested in something, when
 -> they are excited by something, and when they are actively involved,
 -> hands-on in the process.
 SK> I agree with this.
 
So tell me, do you think school satisfies these needs?  Does it even
come close?
 -> If somebody wants to learn, they will go to great lenghts on their
 -> own, to learn.  If they don't care about something, forcing it into
 -> them isn't going to change that.
 SK> This sounds nice, but I don't know that it's always true. There are
 SK> cases of students learning things they didn't care about, and
 SK> sometimes a student may not initially be interested by a topic, but
 SK> when "forceably" introduced to it by compulsory education, they may
 SK> find that they develop an interest in it.
I think this occurs in a small percentage of cases.  Most people could
care less.  Are you going to base the entire school system on the success
of a small percentage of cases?  That is what is done.  But does it make
sense to you?
 SK> I disagree with the following three remarks:
 
 -> Now, most people in our country learn all they need to know from
 -> they're own lives, not from school.
 
Yes, but why do you disagree with it?  Tell me something that you
absolutely must learn in school, in order to survive in our world.
I can't think of any knowledge that you need to survive, which you
dont' learn from your family and friends.
 -> Schools aren't institutions of _learning_.   They are institutions
 -> that weed out and groom various degrees of people to serve various
 -> functions in society.
Please explain why you don't agree with this statement.  What is high
school, but the process of weeding out the delinquents?  What is 
undergraduate school but the process of weeding out people who aren't
capable of graduate school?  What is graduate school but the process
of weeding out those who aren't capable of teaching college in the
same manner as they were taught?  What is all of this except weeding
out people who aren't equipped to think in a business way, serve
a corporation successfully, think in a scientific way, serve the
scientific industry successfully, think in a lawyer's way and serve
the American justice system the way it wants to be served?
In college, you don't learn to _distrust_ the current way of doing
things, the current laws, the current scientific system, you learn
to trust it, to believe in it, to agree with it.  And what else is
this except preparing yourself to be a successful member of the
industrial, scientific, corporate world?
 
 -> You can't _plan_ to learn.
Most learning, SK, truly comes from spontaneous inspiration, not
from planning.  "Planning to learn" is somewhat of an oxymoron, a 
contradictory statement.  If learning was largely the result of
planning to learn, then you would not fail to understand the concepts
which you set yourself out to understand.  But we all know our 
intellectual limitations.  You can't tell yourself you are going to
understand the general theory of relativity in the way that Einstein
understood it.  You can't guarantee yourself that kind of thing.
You can work at learning, and some learning does result from work.
But even here, the moment in which you gain understanding, is 
unanticipated.  It is a mysterious act of inspiration.
Since the act of learning is fundamentally based on this, don't you
think that an educational system which is based on the complete opposite,
like ours is, is doomed to fail in its efforts with most people?
And isn't it improper and unethical to justify the forced schooling of
everyone only to enlighten the few?
 SK> OTOH, I find some merit in some of these remarks:
 
 -> [a true institution of learning] is one that offers a service
 -> to the student on the student's own
 -> terms. It is dynamic, not stagnant.  It is vibrant, not dead.  It is
 -> at the student's beck-and-call, not the other way around.
Yes, and out of these characteristics, which ones can we use to
describe our school system?  School doesn't offer itself to the
student on the student's own terms.  School is quite stagnant, the
same methods are generally used today as they were decades ago.  School 
(at least high school, where most students are) is definitely not at
the student's beck-and-call.
 
Every one of the important characteristics to learning, each one that
is absent from school cuts into schools ability to help students learn.
I don't think we should accept compromise.  The imporant characteristics
need to be the conscious foundation of a good, successful institution
of learning. Otherwise, it rapidly falls off to poverty.
 -> A teacher in a true institute of learning does not need a certificate
 -> to teach.  He only needs the consensus of the people who are
 -> interested in learning what he has to offer.  A bad teacher won't
 -> last very long in this situation.  A good teacher will thrive.  So,
 -> it's a very efficient, self-monitoring process.
 
I'm glad you agree with this.  I believe this is fundamentally important.
 SK> I am curious what makes you feel so strongly about the formal ed
 SK> system this way, and what you would suggest instead?
I see a lot of people grumbling about school and not enjoying it.  When
I tutored undergraduate students in science, I have noticed that if
I make it interesting and exciting, the students are ok with it, even
if they don't like the topic.  When I tutored, I saw a lot of students
who complained about their college professors.
Math is one of the hardest subjects to learn, and that's what I tutored
a lot of.  I found that the college professors were very deficient in
teaching it.  In fact, I wouldn't recommend you to learn math from
a college professor if the light of day depended on it.  I am quite
serious.  They are very, very poor.  I believe that many, many more people
would not have math fear, and would even have a good fundamental grasp of
math, if it were taught by people who loved math, and loved teaching,
and didn't have to teach it because their internship required
it or they have to do it in order to maintain a university position.
And then these top-notch professors?  Why are they even at the university?
I think that's very pompous of them.  You never see them teaching.  They're
too important for that.  I think if they need to be protected for their
intellectual standing or whatever, it shouldn't be in the guise of or
funded by "education".
If you're a high school teacher, do you get to teach what you really love?
No.  You relagated to teaching a hodge-podge of things you aren't even
really familiar with.  Sometimes, you're get what you like.  I remember
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]
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