Podcast #112
John Steppling, , Dennis Riches, Shaenah Batterson, Johan Eddebo, Max Parry, Hiroyuki Hamada, Varun Mathur, and Lex Steppling
https://www.disclose.tv/id/azeqj4c25a/
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN16428960/
https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/129523
https://www.nyrb.com/products/growing-up-absurd-1
https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf
https://monoskop.org/images/1/17/Illich_Ivan_Deschooling_Society.pdfhttps://www.ver
sobooks.com/en-gb/products/1362-sentimental-education
“From the diary of a six year old boy at the American School in Tangier Morocco: “I get up at 8:30. I eat my breakfast. Then I go to the job.”
When asked what he meant by the job he said, “school of course.”
William S. Burroughs , The Job
My own experience of education is that it was only the earliest period that was beneficial. This was the primary school phase where the basics (reading, writing and arithmetic) were taught. But there was also a sense of flowering in which the pupils felt valued individually and I recall the encouragement of discussions and those wonderful times when we were asked to write stories and then read them out to the class.
Then came secondary school and all that promise was undone by a switch to a much bigger arena in which the pupils went from class to class as if on a conveyor belt in an assembly line. The education was divided up into topics that didn’t seem related to each other.
I did a teacher training course later on where one of the lecturers made an astute observation. He noted that many children experience a huge regression when moving to secondary school and the underlying feeling in the pupil is that “These people don’t love me anymore”. It sounds sentimental but it’s true. The pupils no longer feel valued. And the fragmented nature of the system makes it much tougher for even the most conscientious teachers to show an interest in any specific pupil. Indeed, the inevitable effect in terms of the impression made on the pupils is that the teachers are a cold and remote lot who are mainly fixed on their necessary roles as wage earners.
And this is the true education in this phase. This is what the teachers REALLY teach though they are unaware of it. What they are really saying is: “You will have to eventually make a living by earning money. And no matter what you choose to do, it will be dreary and dreadful. Meanwhile, that which you truly value is of no use to this world. Thus you can devote what little free time you have on your own interests but these will only ever be a private matter. No-one else will care about them.”
The atomisation of modern society is enacted in this sad educational progression.