Similar but not identical

If you bother to form your own opinions, you will discover that they are not going to be a perfect match with anyone else. You will not always agree with the mainstream.

If you don’t bother to form you own opinions, you will tend to side with the mainstream. You will believe in the fundamentals of our schooling system (although you might acknowledge some of the known deficiencies). You will absolutely hate people like me.

Mass mindlessness is a big part of the modern world. People fear the appearance of inferiority. If the mindless masses “know” something, most people will accept it as fact. After all, who wants to be the one person in this world who doesn’t know these well-known “facts.”

A supermajority of the population consists of products of the schools. The schools train us to believe that society can’t function without the wonderful benefits of schooling. The importance of schooling is now a part of the mainstream’s beliefs. People fear appearing ignorant, so they “know” just how important schooling is.

It is clear that a supermajority will view schooling as an important component for society, but it seems highly unlikely that the mainstream has convinced 100% of the population to mindlessly accept something with absolutely no basis. The minority that has truly explored what education is and how it should be treated should have no problems seeing the highly visible flaws that shaped my beliefs. If my beliefs are valid, the few people who form their own opinions will have beliefs similar but not identical to my own.

The beliefs that I decided to look for consisted primarily of two things. The first thing was that our schooling system is an obstacle to a healthy education. The second thing was that children should be allowed to take responsibility for their own educations. Unfortunately, I spent quite some time without knowing how to successfully find anyone with similar beliefs.

Search engines can be wonderful tools. I Really struggled to find something that would work to help me find the pro-education/anti-schooling crowd that must exist. Then it came to me. Most of the pro-schooling community misuses the word “education” whenever they refer to schooling. For that reason, they are less likely to use “schooling” than someone who truly believes in education. Since “schooling” is definitely the correct term, that isn’t enough. I had to find a term that the pro-schooling community would not likely use along with “schooling.” That term was “anti-educational.” I entered both of these words in a search engine. While the search didn’t eliminate all of the pro-schooling/anti-educational websites, the search was narrow enough that I found the following website:
http://www.mind-trek.com/reports/misc/minddest.htm

This website was exactly what I was looking for. The author provided a nice argument for the abolishment of our schools. He also provided references to John Taylor Gatto’s book, Dumbing Us Down. While looking up information on this book, I discovered that those who believe in enabling their children to learn outside of the confines of the schools’ control are referred to as “unschoolers.”

I now had another term to look up. The people in the unschooling movement might not match my beliefs point for point, but they appear to be very close. I piqued my sister’s curiosity, and she bought Grace Llewellyn’s book, Unschooling: The Teenage Liberation Handbook. Every time that I bumped into her while she was reading the book, she kept asking me, “Where have I heard that before?”