Schools versus Prisons

One of the funniest sections of the movie The War on Kids for me is when a chorus of children try to identify photos by noting which is a school or a prison; the humor occurs because it is so hard to tell the difference. The movie then sadly shows, in a variety of ways, how much like prison modern schooling has become. The saddest thing, to me, is that most viewers support this vision of education, feeling that school should be prison-like (though a humane, soft prison) because children can’t be trusted to learn anything worthwhile unless forced to do so. As a result, the word education has been misconstrued to mean something done to us rather than something we do for ourselves with help from others, and school, which was a leisurely activity for ancient Greek aristocrats, has been turned into a form of jail for most children.

The original meaning of the word education is something every person and animal does: nurture and rear children. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the Latin word educare is the root of the word educate, and defines it this way: “To bring up (young persons) from childhood so as to form (their) habits, manners, intellectual and physical abilities.” This is not the same meaning as the often used and substituted word educere—to lead forth—that is related to our modern word, educe, and is typically used by schools to justify their compulsory and authoritarian methods. By confusing the origins of the word educators give themselves license to lead, or draw forth, whatever they feel they need to put in or pull out from a student. This is totally different from the suckling, nurturing educational relationship of the original word.

Is it no wonder then that today our politicians talk about educating the public about their positions, meaning to convince the public to support them? Dictators in various regimes use educational techniques like compulsory attendance and rote, or entire facilities, such as the Vietnamese re-education camps, to make the public believe or see reality as the government or other institution wishes them to. The ironic use of the word education hit a new height for me as I read about the problems associated with the Community Education Centers, a for-profit company that operates halfway houses for prison systems in different states. By taking a word like education and continually using it to refer primarily to obedience to authority we lose sight of its original meaning—growth through nurturing from concerned adults—and replace it with compliance to a mandatory process that has very little to do with nurturing natural growth and everything to do with managing the contents of another person’s brain.

PS

Columnist James Altucher wrote a column about unschooling recently and he compared schools to prisons. Here is his list of similarities, FYI.

The Complacency of Sentimental Education

As another school year begins so too are the media stories with their formulaic reporting about homeschooling: Talking heads debating the pros and cons of learning at home; education experts concerned about gaps in homeschooler’s knowledge; “Wife Swap”-types of videos that contrast strict school-at-home moms with loosey-goosey unschoolers; and the common lead to so many articles and TV segments that I’ve heard since 1981, “The school bus drives past the Farenga home but their children aren’t on it. They are part of the growing and controversial homeschooling movement…” There are occasional well-done stories, of course, but I’m struck by the large amount of cookie-cutter reporting about homeschooling that I’ve seen over the decades and am now re-seeing, as I look through my back issues of Growing Without Schooling magazine, my work files, and the current news in print and online.

Why can’t the media, educators, and most parents get past the standard questions about socialization, college and employment for homeschoolers that I, and many others, have responded to with studies, case histories, anecdotes and the evidence of at least two generations of socialized, college-educated and employed homeschoolers? Why can’t we get into the real meat of the issues, such as: How can society/local communities capitalize on such dedicated parental involvement in education? Why do colleges accept homeschoolers without conventional high school degrees and what can that mean for reforming our schools? Do students who have autonomy in their studies and lives become employees who are team players?

Our sentimentality about children often gets in the way of seeing them as real people and we are further bound by our own sentimentality about our schooling and upbringing. It “worked for us” goes the thinking, so it will work for our kids. The problem is, our kids are growing up in a completely different environment than we did. Talk about socialization should not be about whether or not homeschoolers feel hurt because they don’t get Valentine’s Day cards from classmates (this was how the socialization question was phrased to me on a national TV show), but about the sort of socialization our kids experience from bullies in school, Colombine-type threats and experiences, and the “teach ‘em and test ‘em” policies we have that make test scores more important than social experiences in school, such as playing at recess, art, sports, drama, choir and music. Our “lens of sentimentality” limit not only our expectations of what children can do, but also our relationships with children. Can it be that our sentimental memories and expectations of schooling and youth make us ignore the realities before our eyes? When I came across this piece of unpublished writing by John Holt that we printed in GWS 68, I felt Holt had, again, summed up a complicated issue very plainly and neatly and pointed my thoughts in a new direction.

Here’s what Holt wrote:

…I fear and dislike sentimentality because I’ve learned from experience that it is one side of a coin whose other side is callousness, contempt, and cruelty.  The trouble with the people who think that some of the time children are little angels is that when the children are not behaving in ways they like they think they are little devils.  The people who at one minute are ready to shed crocodile tears at the thought of an eight-year-old doing actual work will in the next minute become indignant to the point of rage or panic if I suggest that that same eight-year-old be given some kind of say about his learning or the conditions of his life.  This dainty angelic creature, who at one minute we had to protect, in the next minute turns into some kind of dangerous criminal monster.  In fact children are not angels or devils, saints or monsters, not naturally good or naturally wicked, simply human beings very much like the rest of us, with the additional assets of having rather more energy and hopefulness than we do, and the liabilities of being somewhat smaller, weaker, and less experienced.  If we could only agree not to take advantage of their weakness and inexperience, not actually and positively to prey on them, they would be safe enough making a great many decisions which we now don’t let them make.