Another move

I've now moved this blog to TheIcy.net. Its new address is http://schoolfools.theicy.com.

Yay! I have finally made up my mind to switch from Blogger to Wordpress. The new blog is here.

As of now, I still have some things to set up there (such as the template and RSS feed), but everything should be figured out soon.

Against School

Today, I randomly stumbled across this enlightening essay, called Against School and written by John Taylor Gatto. Basically, this guy taught in public schools in New York City for thirty years, and as the result of his experiences, is now strongly against the way public schools are taught. Not just in the United States, but in the whole world. For a minute, I identified with his loathing of current teaching methods since that's basically the subject of this whole blog. But as I read, I realized that our viewpoints are quite different.

This guy's a radical. Of course, I'm a conservative, so a whole lot of viewpoints will seem really liberal or radical to me. And neither do I claim to have complete understanding of which viewpoints should be classified under which label. But basically, this guy thinks that public schooling is just wrong by principle. He thinks it's unnecessary, and that all it does is prepare children to be servants to the government by making them dumb, conforming, and childish. At least, this was the gist of the essay as I interpreted it.

As I read the essay, I understood and appreciated the writer's point of view until I reached one part. This part is describing the six goals of public education as Alexander Inglis (author of Principles of Secondary Education) and Gatto see them. They include the adjustive function, or accustoming children to respond to authority; integrating, to force them into conformity; diagnostic and directive, to direct them into their proper social roles; differentiating, training them only as much as required for that role; and propaedeutic, ensuring that a few kids are taught how to carry this on. But the one that really stopped me was the "selective" function. This is just ridiculous. To show how ridiculous it is, I will now quote that part of the essay:

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

So basically, one of the functions of public schooling is to embarass the dumber kids so that the rest of us will not want to mate with them? Something seems out of whack here. Has it ever occured to the people who believe this that punishment in school is intended to show the child that they have done wrong? Besides which, I don't see dumb people having any trouble reproducing. Personally, they often seem to have less trouble. As a matter of fact, the repressed burnouts in high school who are constantly being embarassed by their teachers seem more likely to go out and have underage sex, or to drop out of school altogether.

But that's just my two cents.

school , essays, teachers

School Bans Flag Waving

At Skyline High School, the administrators have now banned waving the American flag (or any flag, for that matter). Apparently, some students have been insulting Hispanic students by waving the flags at them "brazenly".

The story's actually longer than that (see the post on Michelle Malkin's blog), but the point is clear. And I don't think this was the right way to deal with it. Since they think that "brazenly" waving flags is considered insulting to other students, it should considered as such and the students should be punished accordingly. Not every flag waving incident is meant as an insult or otherwise rude action.

Say I bought a whole wardrobe of expensive clothes and started wearing them all to school. Then I would insult some girl who doesn't wear expensive clothes like mine by pointing out my clothes in comparison to hers and laughing at her. Would the school ban wearing expensive clothes since they could offend someone else? Or say I belong to a religion that doesn't allow girls to cut their hair. My friends of the same religion and I would taunt the other girls who do cut their hair. So then what would the school do?

Sure, those are extreme cases. But sometimes, I wish that principals would find more inclusive ways of solving behavioral problems at school.

Review Basketball

Review basketball? Gimme a break. We all know our student teacher's obsessed with basketball, but this is a little too much. Today we had a big test in history, so yesterday, of course, was the review game. Each person answered questions and then tried to throw a ball into a wastebasket from either of 7 spots, each giving a different amount of points if you made it in. Your team only scored points if you made it in, even if you already answered the question perfectly.

Yeah, it was fun. But it's stupid for school. No way should one's basketball skills affect whether they will receive extra credit on the test or not. My favorite part was when a girl spoke up and said, "What does this have to do with our World History skills?" I almost laughed out loud. Finally, someone else other than me and my friend share this viewpoint.

By the way, remember my English essay? My teacher loved it. She told me that she enjoyed reading it, and that she showed to her husband, she'll show it to the director of the literature magazine at our school, and she'll share it with her other classes. You know, if a teacher likes that kind of anti-current-education-methods kind of essay, perhaps my ideas aren't that unpopular, after all.

school, history, sports, activities, English , essays, writing, teachers

"Sim City"

So, when I saw the reference on the blackboard to this computer game that I happen to like, I was excited. But I soon realized that today's history lesson had nothing to do with computer games. We're studying the Industrial Revolution, right? Yes, we are. So for today's assignment, we were supposed to take a piece of grid paper, we had a "budget" of $100,000 and we were supposed to plan a city. Then, we would give it a name and explain in a detailed paragraph why we designed it the way we did and - get this - why we picked the name.

And yet again, it is simply impossible to do this activity without, of course, coloring in all the zones and buildings on the grid paper. Why? WHY? What does this teach us? It's not even fun. So the teacher cannot argue that she's trying to make learning fun, because this isn't. The real Sim City game is fun. This - no.

I guess it's just busywork. What that means is that our teacher just couldn't stand the thought of us going home tonight and not doing any homework from her class. No. We MUST do homework from this class tonight, or else our time will be mercilessly wasted. And the homework we do must be as totally pointless as possible, because after all, she's not supposed to actually teach us anything. She's supposed teach herself how to teach.

school, history, coloring, activities

Clarification

In response to a comment someone left on here (thanks for commenting, by the way), no, I'm not a bookworm. Haven't read nonfiction for years, actually. Just because I don't want to grow up not knowing shit about the world around me doesn't make me a bookworm. It makes me a teenager who's a bit different from everyone else. Other than that, I'm very normal. NOT a nerd, geek, bookworm, loser, or any other nice high school terminology. I have lots of friends, go to parties, get up at 6 to do my hair and makeup, and love shopping. That all is not very bookwormy behavior right there.

The reason why I didn't reveal what I really thought was because, don't forget, I'm stuck in this school until graduation. There's no reason for me to encourage people to call me a bookworm. If you've ever been in high school, you know to avoid confrontation. It's how people like me, who're not exactly like everyone else, survive without having their high school years made miserable. If you want to flaunt how different you are and how much contempt you have for average people, you're going to pay. Tough.