Public Schools are Killing Democracy

The American public school system is flawed. Teachers are too overworked, underpaid, and restricted to produce the quality of education we need to maintain our global economic superiority. We have police officers living at schools (even elementary!), and there’s a call for even more. This is not the way to produce the kind of creative, intelligent, independent people we need to ensure democracy spreads around the globe.

In fact, the current public school system is the quickest way to produce a populace incapable of thinking for itself. Because there are such limited resources for all children, teachers can really only focus on the kids that are most promising (to them). The majority of kids get left to fend for themselves, and recieve very little attention. They have only a small chance of realizing their self worth. Most of these kids just assume that they’re “dumber” than the kids that recieve the majority of the attention. And then things get worse, as they continue to believe that into adulthood.

Why should a country supposedly founded on independence, creativity, and intelligence have a massive government bureaucracy in charge of shaping it’s most precious resource – its children? Hell, we’ve all been to the DMV before, imagine being put in that kind of restricted, stupid environment every day. It’s no wonder the majority of kids are bored and hate school. Only the kids that recieve constant praise can tolerate it, but even then they may realise the scam and rebel.

Because the structure of a school is fundamentally non-democratic. Orders are given from the top down, and children have little say in what they should be learning. Their lives are completely ordered for them, and they never realise how to run their own lives. When kids leave school, they have no idea where to start without orders from above. So they run to the dull comfort of a job, where they can continue to recieve orders.

And that’s scary. There are a whole lot of countries out there right now that deliver all of their citizen’s orders from above. That control exactly what its citizens are and are not allowed to know. Why do we let our government do this to our children every day?

It’s even worse than that. The current public school system was modeled after the Prussian’s in 1819:

“So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:

1. Obedient soldiers to the army;
2. Obedient workers to the mines;
3. Well subordinated civil servants to government;
4. Well subordinated clerks to industry
5. Citizens who thought alike about major issues.

Schools should create an artificial national consensus on matters that had been worked out in advance by leading German families and the head of institutions. Schools should create unity among all the German states, eventually unifying them into Greater Prussia.”

- John Taylor Gatto, The Public School Nightmare

American schools were designed to create a socialist state.

Creating educated humans that think for themselves is the most important task for America in the coming years. Public schools are built in a way that such people can never be made by them. We need a new approach to education, one designed to create the kind of people we need to lead our country into the future.

I doubt schools will ever produce true individuals. A real education begins with a journey inward, and that’s something we can’t do from behind a desk. But, it is only after we understand ourselves, and our relation to the world that we can truly become productive individual, the kind that the world desperately needs.

If you’re an adult, and want to become a self-reliant individual, start here. There are a whole lot of resources for you (uggh, self help), but this is probably the best place to start. Not a lot of fluff, and straight to the point.

If you’re a teenager, and ready to take responsibility for your own education and life, get this book. Read about kids who have left school to pursue their own higher calling, and then make the leap for yourself. I did, and it was the best decision I have ever made. Ultimately, nobody is going to motivate you to do or become anything except yourself. Starting down this path when you’re a teenager will give you a huge head start on everyone else.

If you’re a parent, I strongly recommend you homeschool your children. It doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds, and there are plenty of resources to help you out. Creating a self-reliant child is probably the greatest gift you can give to the world and your child. The The Unschooling Handbook the best book out there to design a real education for your child.

Then pass the word on, that we can educate our children better, so long as we take responsibility for it ourselves.