About Schools

© 2008 by Glenn C. Koenig

Just this week (Feb 11, 2008) there are stories in the local newspaper about a school system funding shortfall of 1.25 million dollars.

When I saw that, I thought: "A financial crisis always indicates a cultural crisis underneath. That is, you never have money problems alone. There is always something else going on. Therefore, you cannot solve money problems by simply adding more money or shifting money around, ... until you determine what the underlying problems really are.

So, what is the cultural crisis? In my opinion, these repeated budget "shortfalls," as they call them, are a definite sign that the operation of public schools by government is already in a dramatic decline. In spite of all the lip service and hand wringing that we must "save out schools" we don't really want them anymore because we're not willing to pay for them anymore.

To some people, this is a tragedy. To me it says that we may finally be ready to drop the pretense that we're doing this for our young people and admit that we're largely doing it for the convenience and mistaken beliefs of the adults. What adults are these? Specifically, adults who are invested in maintaining our current school systems. For starters, take a look at my diagram on influences in public education. How can you possibly reform that? Clearly, the time is past. Much more fundamental changes are on the way.

Numerous books have been written on this topic. "How Children Fail," by John Holt or "Dumbing us Down," by John Taylor Gatto come to mind. The point is that, public schools as we know them are an artifact of the industrial revolution and the amassing of power by corporations that followed it. Schools are designed to maintain this status quo above all else. But we are leaving the industrial revolution behind. And we are now leaving schools, as we now operate them, behind with it.

Make no mistake about it. I am not against education. I love learning and I love to teach things to people. But to equate education with schools is a horrendous mistake in my experience.

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7 June 2010: Regarding bullying. This issue has been on the 'front burner' across the country after some high profile teen suicides attributed to bullying and it's latest form, cyber-bullying. In anticipation of a conference here in Boston tomorrow, I looked up a new segment that was carried on ABC News back in March 2009 about the principal of the White Pine Middle School in Ely, Nevada. Inspired by that, I wrote these thoughts on the topic.

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