Got an email yesterday with the following question regarding our Open Source Learning Future Salon:
Mark, thanks for putting on a great lecture series. I got a lot out of Jamais Cascio's seminar. The description of Gatto's presentation sounds like a diatribe against our current education system, which we all agree could be improved. Does he has any positive suggestions? The talk as described sounds like a bummer.
I asked John about any positive suggestions to our education problem and here is his responds: An article he wrote a couple of years ago. Once you read it, you may understand why I am so looking forward to our Open Source Learning Future Salon on the 21st of August. RSVP: http://snurl.
Compulsion-schooling tries to shoehorn every style,
culture, and personality into one ugly boot that fits nobody.
Admit there is no one right to grow up successfully.
One-system schooling has-had a century
and a half to prove itself. It is a ghastly failure, Children need the widest
possible range of roads in order to find the right one to accommodate
themselves. The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead
wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly
boot that fits nobody. 1fax credits, vouchers, and other more
sophisticated means the necessary to encourage a diverse mix of different
school logics of growing up. Only sharp competition can reform the present
mess; this needs to be an overriding goal of public policy. Neither national
nor state government oversight is necessary to make a voucher/tax credit plan
work:
a modicum of local control, a disclosure law with teeth, and a policy of client
satisfaction or else is all the citizen protection heeded. It works for
supermarkets and doctors. It will work for schools, too, without national
testing.
Continue reading "John Taylor Gatto: School is a liar’s world. Let us be done with it." »