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Jizz-Fritter · 02-20-2004, 10:25 PM

There are people who believe that the public schools are very good at crushing the creativity of children. Public schools were created to prep children for factories.

Little Johnny: "I want to draw."

Teacher: "I'm sorry honey, but you have to learn math, or you will bomb the standardized test, and I'll be out of a job."

If you want social skills + creativity and willful pursuit pursuit of education check out a montessori school. If you don't have one in you area, you should go to the nearest one and understand how you can facilitate a child's education instead of shoving it down their throats.

Also, if you home school, make sure that your children take piano or violin lessons. It has been proven that music helps children's brains to develop and helps them later on in math and spacial reasoning.

Here's something you might find interesting that was in the footnotes of Noam Chomsky's "Understanding Power":

Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, New York: BasicBooks, 1991, pp. 60-61. An excerpt:

"Employers found the first generation of industrial workers almost impossible to discipline. Attendance was irregular, and turnover high. Tolerance for the mindlessness and monotony of factory work was low. "The highlander, it was said, 'never sits at ease at a loom; it is like putting a deer in the plough.'" Employers devised various schemes to instill obedience. They posted supervisors, levied fines, and fired their workers. Beatings were common, especially among slaves and child laborers. One early factory owner explained: "I prefer fining to beating, if it answers . . . [but] fining does not answer. It does not keep the boys at their work."

Many employers and social reformers became convinced that the adult population was irredeemably unfit for factory work. They looked to children, hoping that "the elementary school could be used to break the labouring classes into those habits of work discipline now necessary for factory production. . . . Putting little children to work at school for very long hours at very dull subjects was seen as a positive virtue, for it made them 'habituated, not to say naturalized, to labour and fatigue.'"

Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1959. An excerpt (pp. 218-220, 228, 230, 203):

"Hardly an annual meeting of the National Education Association was concluded without an appeal on the part of leading educators for the help of the teacher in quelling strikes and checking the spread of socialism and anarchism. Commissioners of education and editors of educational periodicals summoned their forces to the same end. . . . In his report for [1877] John Eaton, Commissioner of Education, insisted that the school could train the child to resist the evils of strikes and violence and declared that capital should "weigh the cost of the mob and tramp against the expense of universal and sufficient education. . . ." In his presidential address in 1881 James H. Smart, admitting that it was reasonable for the poor man, particularly after middle age, to demand a "division of property," declared that the free school did more "to suppress the latent flame of communism than all other agencies combined. . . ." Again and again educators denounced radical doctrines and offered education as the best preventive and cure. . . .

Education was considered a good investment. Among the benefactors of the public schools were Henry Frick, John D. Rockefeller, George Peabody, John F. Slater, Robert C. Ogden, Andrew Carnegie, Elbert H. Gray, and Pierre S. Dupont. . . . The Commissioner of Education in 1896 told superintendents that they would find their best support in conservative business leaders. . . . Educators accepted, in general, the business man's outlook and consciously or unconsciously molded the school system to accord with the canons of a profit-making economic system. . . . [As the social reformer Jane Addams stated in 1897:] "The business man has, of course, not said to himself: 'I will have the public school train office boys and clerks for me, so that I may have them cheap,' but he has thought, and sometimes said, 'Teach the children to write legibly, and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of punctuality and order; to be prompt to obey, and not question why; and you will fit them to make their way in the world as I have made mine!'"

02-20-2004, 10:25 PM	#30 (permalink)
Jizz-Fritter Crazy Location: Bowling Green, KY	There are people who believe that the public schools are very good at crushing the creativity of children. Public schools were created to prep children for factories. Little Johnny: "I want to draw." Teacher: "I'm sorry honey, but you have to learn math, or you will bomb the standardized test, and I'll be out of a job." If you want social skills + creativity and willful pursuit pursuit of education check out a montessori school. If you don't have one in you area, you should go to the nearest one and understand how you can facilitate a child's education instead of shoving it down their throats. Also, if you home school, make sure that your children take piano or violin lessons. It has been proven that music helps children's brains to develop and helps them later on in math and spacial reasoning. Here's something you might find interesting that was in the footnotes of Noam Chomsky's "Understanding Power": Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, New York: BasicBooks, 1991, pp. 60-61. An excerpt: "Employers found the first generation of industrial workers almost impossible to discipline. Attendance was irregular, and turnover high. Tolerance for the mindlessness and monotony of factory work was low. "The highlander, it was said, 'never sits at ease at a loom; it is like putting a deer in the plough.'" Employers devised various schemes to instill obedience. They posted supervisors, levied fines, and fired their workers. Beatings were common, especially among slaves and child laborers. One early factory owner explained: "I prefer fining to beating, if it answers . . . [but] fining does not answer. It does not keep the boys at their work." Many employers and social reformers became convinced that the adult population was irredeemably unfit for factory work. They looked to children, hoping that "the elementary school could be used to break the labouring classes into those habits of work discipline now necessary for factory production. . . . Putting little children to work at school for very long hours at very dull subjects was seen as a positive virtue, for it made them 'habituated, not to say naturalized, to labour and fatigue.'" Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1959. An excerpt (pp. 218-220, 228, 230, 203): "Hardly an annual meeting of the National Education Association was concluded without an appeal on the part of leading educators for the help of the teacher in quelling strikes and checking the spread of socialism and anarchism. Commissioners of education and editors of educational periodicals summoned their forces to the same end. . . . In his report for [1877] John Eaton, Commissioner of Education, insisted that the school could train the child to resist the evils of strikes and violence and declared that capital should "weigh the cost of the mob and tramp against the expense of universal and sufficient education. . . ." In his presidential address in 1881 James H. Smart, admitting that it was reasonable for the poor man, particularly after middle age, to demand a "division of property," declared that the free school did more "to suppress the latent flame of communism than all other agencies combined. . . ." Again and again educators denounced radical doctrines and offered education as the best preventive and cure. . . . Education was considered a good investment. Among the benefactors of the public schools were Henry Frick, John D. Rockefeller, George Peabody, John F. Slater, Robert C. Ogden, Andrew Carnegie, Elbert H. Gray, and Pierre S. Dupont. . . . The Commissioner of Education in 1896 told superintendents that they would find their best support in conservative business leaders. . . . Educators accepted, in general, the business man's outlook and consciously or unconsciously molded the school system to accord with the canons of a profit-making economic system. . . . [As the social reformer Jane Addams stated in 1897:] "The business man has, of course, not said to himself: 'I will have the public school train office boys and clerks for me, so that I may have them cheap,' but he has thought, and sometimes said, 'Teach the children to write legibly, and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of punctuality and order; to be prompt to obey, and not question why; and you will fit them to make their way in the world as I have made mine!'"