Traps set by the machine

[Verbal Mike]

@RWHN:

1.
So let me get this straight - I'm forced to go somewhere, forced to sit down, forced to listen to someone I don't have any personal interest in hearing, and then if I prefer to take out a book and use my brain for a bit I'm to blame for being disrespectful? Well, fuck that shit. It's not particularly respectful to not let me stay home and read like I want to, why the hell should I be respectful in return? Respect isn't a matter of authority. You have to give respect to get it.

2.
The point is, that by turning learning into something you are expected to do for others -- be it for your teacher, or for your parents, or for your grades -- you make it very likely this learning will turn into a chore. Sure there are people like you, like my sister, like other people I know too, who use this as an opportunity and actually enjoy it. But the whole system of external motivation is largely counter-productive.
A friend of mine is reading this book called Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. I'll borrow it once he's done I think. He says these guys tried the following:
They gave test groups 3-D puzzles to solve. One group was promised a dollar for each puzzle solved. One group was threatened with some kind of punishment if they don't solve the puzzles in time. One group was just given the puzzles and left on their own.
Guess which group performed best?
The one with no external incentive. Apparently, because nobody was trying to convince them to solve the puzzles to avoid punishment or to get rewarded, they really got into the puzzles, solving them for fun.

So sure, you can say it's up to the individual and I agree, to an extent. But when trying to understand a system you have to think in more generalized terms, and apparently when a system tries external motivation that actually is statistically counter-productive.

3.
Classroom? I don't want no classroom. Classrooms are only necessary if you need to group students together to put them together with teachers. Get rid of the teacher-student relationship, and you can do away with classrooms as well.

I'm actually speaking from experience here. It works beautifully, in my experience. Every Sudbury school I have visited was more relaxed and peaceful than the norm at the schools I went to before we founded Sudbury Jerusalem. (Israeli schools are full of violence and bedlam, more so than most other Western countries, but I can only speak from my own experience.)
If bedlam is what you're afraid of, you should go visit a Sudbury school. See for yourself how terribly chaotic a school is when you do away with teachers.

[LMNO]

St Vert, can you recognize that the above post was made from a completely subjective POV?  Every point you made essentially said, "I don't like it, so we should apply what I don't like universally."

You even admit that people like your sister, RWHN, and myself (well, I didn't say that I did well in public school -- "I did well in public school") had no problems with public school... but for some reason you think your lone subjective negative experience trumps at least 3 others' positive experiences.

[AFK]

Which is one of the points I've been trying to make here.  Yes the Sudbury thing worked for you SV, where public school didn't.  Obviously there are others in your situation, I mean obviously there is a supply of that kind of education being supplied to a demand.

HOWEVER, that does not mean because SOME flourish better under that kind of set-up, that other set-ups, such as public education, does not allow some to flourish as well.  I mean, as you are a living testament to Sudbury, I am a living testament to public education.  I guarantee you, if you had your way and replaced public education with the Sudbury model, you would have students who would not do well.  There would be students who would rebel against that system, who would wish they were doing something else.  Because the structure that is in place in a public school system DOES benefit many children and help them to learn.  If that wasn't the case, we TRULY would have many, many, many more brainless idiots walking around.  That a nation is able to advance with a work force dominated by public High School graduates, is a testament to this being so. 

So as in many things, to each their own, but just because your system ain't broke doesn't mean you have to try to fix mine. 

[Verbal Mike]

@LMNO:
Of course I know I was being subjective. I did it on purpose. Like I said, I can only speak from my own experience.
My opinion is supported by the experience of others, and if you ask my sister I know she'll agree with me on these matters, even though she loved the elementary school we both went to. But if I'm going to use anecdotal evidence, I prefer to use my own. Wherever I am aware of studies that can support me I mention them (like that book), but mostly I'm left to rely on personal experience.

Anyhow, I don't think my own negative experience somehow invalidates your positive experience. I was mentioning my negative experience to illustrate a point -- that coercion is present in the school system. I applaud you guys and all those who had a good experience at school for making the best of it. I wish I had found ways to get along with the system, it would have saved me a lot of pain. But a coercive system is a coercive system, even if many of its subjects learn to get along with it well.

if you had your way and replaced public education with the Sudbury model

Where did I ever say that's what I want?
The opposite is true. A few months ago a group in Switzerland wanted me to come help them transform a school to a Sudbury school, as a paid job for a month or two. I told them I think it's an attempt doomed to failure. I was right -- they wrote me a month ago after three months of silence that it fell through. You can't just replace schools with Sudbury schools, and if a government would try, it would be the singly worst thing to happen to education in the post-WWII Western world.

I don't believe Sudbury schooling, traditional schooling, Montessori schooling, Waldorf schooling, Freenet schooling, or any other kind of schooling should be imposed on the entire population.

Yes, I strongly believe Sudbury schools are the best schools around today. But even more strongly, I believe that no government has the right to decide how children are educated.

[AFK]

 

[OneSeventeen]

Are we still talking about schools?

Okay. This is a valid point. Can we talk about a new trap now? What about bear traps? They're definitely tools of the machine.


117

[Reginald Ret]

hmmmm beer...

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Discordianism.
It's an obvious ploy to turn otherwise malcontented people with the potential to network outward and inflict damage to the machine, into harmless postulators of nonsense who will investigate anything from circus clowns to their own feces, find a few correlations between their experiment and larger societal patterns, then promptly publish their findings into a Kleenex and file it in the nearest wastebasket.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Discordianism.
It's an obvious ploy to turn otherwise malcontented people with the potential to network outward and inflict damage to the machine, into harmless postulators of nonsense who will investigate anything from circus clowns to their own feces, find a few correlations between their experiment and larger societal patterns, then promptly publish their findings into a Kleenex and file it in the nearest wastebasket.

Truth discovered.

[Requia ☣]

Discordianism.
It's an obvious ploy to turn otherwise malcontented people with the potential to network outward and inflict damage to the machine, into harmless postulators of nonsense who will investigate anything from circus clowns to their own feces, find a few correlations between their experiment and larger societal patterns, then promptly publish their findings into a Kleenex and file it in the nearest wastebasket.

I think you may be right, we must burn our copies of the PD and Illuminatus.

[Verbal Mike]

Hey, Illuminatus is a legitimate work of experimental fiction! Don't compare it with trash like that PD thing.

[barumunk]

Discordianism.
It's an obvious ploy to turn otherwise malcontented people with the potential to network outward and inflict damage to the machine, into harmless postulators of nonsense who will investigate anything from circus clowns to their own feces, find a few correlations between their experiment and larger societal patterns, then promptly publish their findings into a Kleenex and file it in the nearest wastebasket.

OMF Noooooo!! ive been had, my whole life is a lie......



wait... nevermind i knew that 




but really its a scary thought hey. though it would take some impressively inteligent super-secret-power to pull it off, but hey might just be true, and ALL the pro's and cons in modern society, even those "obviously" oppposed to the system, are/have been carefully contructed and nurtured of the years.

[Verbal Mike]

In a sense, it doesn't even require any direct, conscious effort on the part of a government for Discordianism to be a trap set by the Machine. It's a trap because of the way it can become organized for some people. People turn it into a trap because they refuse to go anywhere that's not a trap set by the Machine.

[Reeducation]

Discordianism.
It's an obvious ploy to turn otherwise malcontented people with the potential to network outward and inflict damage to the machine, into harmless postulators of nonsense who will investigate anything from circus clowns to their own feces, find a few correlations between their experiment and larger societal patterns, then promptly publish their findings into a Kleenex and file it in the nearest wastebasket.

OMF Noooooo!! ive been had, my whole life is a lie......



wait... nevermind i knew that 




but really its a scary thought hey. though it would take some impressively inteligent super-secret-power to pull it off, but hey might just be true, and ALL the pro's and cons in modern society, even those "obviously" oppposed to the system, are/have been carefully contructed and nurtured of the years.

Sad, that nobody can be told what the matrix is.

[TheLastLump]

Hey, Illuminatus is a legitimate work of experimental fiction! Don't compare it with trash like that PD thing.

It's times like this I wonder what we're all doing here in the first place.