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Janice Campbell
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Articles:
Fictional Learning - Some Ways Modern Schooling is Not Real "It's absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does..." -- John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing us Down Can we afford to give our children a fictional education in an uncertain world? I make the claim that much of modern schooling is fiction. What do I mean by that? Actually there are many fictional aspects to what we do to our children all rolled into one. Each of these unreal pressures is operating on a child in the educational system all at the same time. First there are the years of being surrounded, overwhelmingly, by other children all of your same age. Looking back at my own school years, it was my peers who were my teachers. The adult at the front of the room called the "teacher" was on the periphery of things. What the kids your own age said and thought and how they acted was everything. A second huge problem is that we have created, or allowed to have created for us, a culture in which children are just not needed. They are in the way, but they must be watched and occupied while the adults go about the business of real life. We tell the children that sending them off to 'school' is for their own good, but in their hearts they know they are not needed. Another psychological travesty we impose on our children is that for all the years of their childhood we have them do work that has no value. Every bit of labor that a child does is immediately wadded up and thrown into the trash when completed. It has no value and no one would pay a penny for any of it. We try to convince them that their work has value for them 'someday,' but the present reality is a far more convincing voice. The physical environment we send our children to is isolated from all the real activities of life. They go from cube to cube, rushing through confusion, isolated subjects, activities cut off from each other. Everything is ruled by the bell. Inside this warehouse environment there is no growing things or raising things or building things or fixing things or running things for the purpose of meeting the real needs of real people. None of it. But underneath all of that, our modern system of education sits upon a foundation of violence. Our children are there, not by personal choice, but because violence will be directed against them if they do not come, and violence is directed against them (or they are drugged) if they do not sit quietly and endure the years of mind-numbing boredom. And all of it is paid for by money taken by force. Can this be healthy? Private schools are slightly less bad than the public school, but there is little real difference. A 'Christian' school takes all the fundamentals of modern education, puts a 'Christian' face on it and calls it 'Christian.' But underneath that mask are all the warped psychologies of modern 'behaviorist' education. Is it necessary for homeschoolers to follow any aspect of this fictional anti-human system we call education in today's world? I really do not think it is. Help your child build his or her own business with Micro-Business for HighSchoolers, a nine month course that guides step-by-step in the creation of a real-world business, while learning a whole lot. This course could easily become a central part of your child's high school education. Check it out at http://www.YguideAcademy.com/MicroBusiness.html Copyright 2009 by YGuide Publishing. Freely use without changes, including links. http://www.yguide.org Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Yordy
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