Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The School Sucks Project - Part 2

A new philosophy magazine called Kontext is looking for readers and contributors. The magazine is published bimonthly out of the United Kingdom and its first issue as a pdf is available for free download. The hard copy may be purchased for about $12US.
Stefan Molyneux is a contributing author (my link), and the first issue is entirely about education which is what tweaked my interest, see Part 1.
The website of Kontext has links to Freedomain Radio and Mises.org which also makes it interesting to me. But what really got me involved was the link to The School Sucks Project.
As a former teacher, I am painfully aware of some of the problems in the government-run educational bureaucracies that exist in the English speaking Western democracies, particularly Ontario. The School Sucks Project (TSSP) uses a surgeons precision to splay open the entire body of the educational system (especially in the United States) and examine the entrails, and it's not pretty. TSSP looks at everything, the origins, the purpose, the immediate and long lasting effects of the school system that has shaped each us in some way for good or ill.
This first issue of Kontext and its link TSSP, asks the right questions about our school system.  How can a system that is regulated and funded by a government bureaucracy, administered by bureaucrats whose primary job is to manage public funds, and executed by unionized teachers whose allegiance is to the system and each other rather than the clientele, deliver good service, a good education? How? It boggles the mind. Mass-produced indoctrination and socialization must by its very nature create oddities, freaks, widgets that don't work. Whose child is so worthless that s/he can be tossed aside as unfit to proceed (like a malformed widget) as so many children are now? The system truly sucks. Is it any wonder that today the political structure of these same Western democracies employs the same sorts of coercion that were ingrained into each of us by the school system? If you are instilled with collectivist ideas for 12 years you begin to think that is normal, to think like a collectivist. It's not normal, we are each of us different in some way, and those differences cannot not be accommodated by the school system as it is.
Kontext offers its readers an alternative to the established model, its worth reading and promoting. I look forward to the next issue in April that will look at "People and Movements." Good luck!

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