“So you point to a tree and say, ‘See that car?’
Jon Rappoport writes some pretty interesting stuff. Today he came up with something that wraps up in a nutshell a recurring concern I have, like a sore that won’t go away, about “education”: “Education tends to define what is there before a person can experience it on his own.” Here’s the context, but click the [...]
“Hours of idleness”
Pop quiz: how old would you say the writer of the following lines was? In submitting to the public eye the following collection, I have not only to combat the difficulties that writers of verse generally encounter, but may incur the charge of presumption for obtruding myself on the world, when, without doubt, I might [...]
New York public schools do not enforce discipline
Cover of The Blackboard Jungle: A Novel David Roemer writes: I was a teacher at three public high schools in New York City. Students got an excellent education at two (Edward R. Murrow and Midwood) and a poor education at one (Erasmus). The reason was that there is in NYC a two-tier system. At good [...]
Book Notes – Deschooling Society (2)
Image via Wikipedia Following on… For most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. ((From the introduction.) the existence of the university is necessary to guarantee continued social criticism (p. 37) The man addicted to being taught seeks his security in compulsive teaching. (p. 39) once the self-taught man [...]
Book Notes – Deschooling society
Image via Wikipedia Here are some quotes from chapter 1 of Ivan Illich‘s classic Deschooling Society, which I recently re-read. The quotes are sentences or ideas that caught my attention. They are not necessarily representative, either of the book itself, nor of Illich’s or my thinking; that is, you won’t get an objective summary of [...]
“The students will not tolerate the teacher having power in the classroom”
This is a reply to a comment kindly left by OldAndrew of Scenes from the Battleground blog, which was a reply to this blog entry. I originally just replied to OldAndrew’s comment in a comment, but my reply got too long for a comment. if students object to the very idea of the teacher being [...]
Scenes from the Battleground responds
Image by Getty Images via Daylife OldAndrew, blogger of Scenes from the Battleground, took the trouble to comment on my earlier post (his comment is here, my original blog post is here). Thank you, OldAndrew. I’ve been reading more of his blog posts. At first, it was horrified fascination that kept me reading his stuff, [...]
Scenes from the Battleground – a secondary school teacher reveals the horrors of British classrooms
Image via Wikipedia I’ve just spent the last few hours reading the Scenes from the Battleground blog. Andrew Old is old-school: a believer in teaching facts and knowledge, in the importance of effective discipline, and he does not believe in progressive education. He writes well, with zest and humour. Here’s a good example: someone sent [...]
The truth about (American) colleges
Gary North writes regularly for the libertarian, free-market economics website LewRockwell.com. I’ve been impressed by his no-nonsense, fact-filled, humour-laced style (a combination of honest businessman and high-powered professor). Links in these articles led me to Dr North’s own website. Here, there’s free stuff and a subscribers-only area. The free stuff includes sections on college finances [...]
Something is destroying British education, says former Chief Inspector of Schools
Image via Wikipedia Chris Woodhead, a man many teachers loved to hate when he was Chief Inspector of Schools under the Conservative and then Labour governments, 1994-2000, has written a book in which he expresses his views about British education. An excerpt was published in the Times (online), May 10, 2009. Fifty years ago the [...]
