Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
Growing up, I was told that my schools were among the good schools. If you have seen my blog, you know that my experience didn't match the reputation. My teachers were consistently anti-educational, intolerant, and abusive. There was nothing positive about my experience.
My issues weren't with one or two teachers. It was all of them. This was an indication that the problem was likely deeper than simply problems with my teachers. There were plenty of reasons to believe that the problems were foundational.
Have you ever looked at the history behind our schools? They started in Prussia to promote obedience to the government. We brought the Prussian model to the United States and insisted that the schools were "scientifically designed to prevent over-education."
Over the years, we have pushed to strengthen the model we have in place. We have pushed to strengthen rather than fix our problems. Instead of trying to create the best educational system possible, we are trying to perfect our implementation of a model that will never work.
Some schools are better than others, but that doesn't mean that they are doing an adequate job. Most measures are shallow and reflect performance as a school rather than practical value for the students. This can make some schools appear good, but that doesn't mean they genuinely are good.
We have normalized the status quo. We overwhelmingly accept the conventional schooling model as the way things must be. Even alternative schools tend to start with the conventional model. They think that minor tweaks are sufficient to fix the problems.
When we view schools as how things have to be, it skews our perspective. We are not truly looking at whether schools are doing a good or bad job. Instead, we fixate on how well they perform at a model that will never work. The best schools are indeed the best schools within context of the conventional model. That doesn't automatically make them good outside the context of the disastrous model they embrace. If you look instead at schools in terms of whether they are good or bad for society, the answer will be the same for every school. There are no good schools. They are all horrible.
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