I'm sticking to this view, still.
"The daily misery around us is, I think, in large measure caused by the fact that --- as social critic Paul Goodman put it thirty years ago --- e force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with school's absurdities.
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinemnet with only people of exactly the same age and social class. The system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety. It cuts you off from you own past and future, sealing you in a continous present, much the same way television does.
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your youth, in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home, demanding that you do its 'homework'."
-My hero, John Taylor Gatto
More on: http://thesunmagazine.org/archives/937
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinemnet with only people of exactly the same age and social class. The system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety. It cuts you off from you own past and future, sealing you in a continous present, much the same way television does.
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your youth, in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home, demanding that you do its 'homework'."
-My hero, John Taylor Gatto
More on: http://thesunmagazine.org/archives/937