Schools were Unsafe Before this Deadly Virus
Dear Youth of Today,
You’ve been off school for a fair few weeks already, and there are no indications that you’ll be returning very soon.
They say it’s all your fault, they say you’re irresponsible and reckless, mooching around with your hoods up, unprepared for the future, incapable of contributing anything of value to our society, stealing from shops and taking drugs probably. I don’t believe a word of it. Like most adults — tax payers, model citizens, disillusioned servants of social expectations — I was a kid once too. I went to school. Like you, I hated most of it. I learnt little of any lasting consequence, I was bullied by power-tripping teachers, I was treated with contempt and told what thoughts to think, what answers to write to conform to someone else’s worldview. I feel a deep sadness that so many hours (something like 16,720 to put a number on it) are wasted of children’s precious childhoods, learning things that have hardly any relevance or usefulness. I’m desperate to see schools change drastically when we all return after this lockdown.
When children are able to follow their own interests and learn because they want to, they stay curious and grow in their power and potential. Learning is the most natural thing in the world — if there’s something you want to do, you learn how. We have all had the experience of learning new things when the subject matter is relevant to us. You want a pretty garden, so you get some gardening books from the library. You enjoy watching the bake-off show, so you start to take an interest in baking yourself. Your car has broken down, so you look up some suggestions on internet forums and watch a few youtube videos to learn how to fix it. I strongly believe that if children never went to school, they would retain their innate curiosity and learn more of much greater relevance, they would learn more deeply and retain what they have learned for much longer. Schools do more damage than good.
This is in spite of teacher’s best intentions. It’s a systemic problem, based on deeply rooted conventions and beliefs. Adults who participate in schools often believe that they are helping children by providing them with information that they need to get on in life. Adults believe that if they lecture at children, maybe some of what they’re saying will stick. But the transmission model or lecture approach is hopelessly ineffective for most learners. As an adult, how do you like to learn? Sitting at a desk being talked at, or through conversations, through your own investigations at your own pace? When I go into schools (which I don’t do often, because I find them quite traumatic places), I see adults that have taken these beliefs too far. They appear to feel some inner conflict when the children in their care disregard what they’re being taught or disobey some arbitrary rule. They justify their sudden anger with logic such as ‘children need to learn how to observe conventions if they’re going to adjust to civic life’. This is nonsense. Children need to be children, to explore the wonderful world around them, to go where their interests take them. They don’t need to be pinned to the wall, screamed at, forced to sit quietly for hours on end without any natural interaction.
The more self-directed space and time we can give to children, the happier they’ll be, the more they’ll learn and the brighter their future will look. My message to the youth of today: stay out of school for as long as you possibly can, until school culture changes enough that you feel you’re treated as a human being, able to follow your natural interests and joy.
With solidarity,
Danny
