Philip Bobbitt says that the death of the nation-state will be accompanied by the death of one of its most ambitious and valuable projects: the obligatory primary and secondary education of all citizens provided by the state free of charge. I would absolutely hate to see that happen and so would Bobbitt. But it’s going on already.
I haven’t had cable TV at home for several years. Now I switched it on again and one thing that I’m noticing is how aggressive, shameless and I’d say even angry the advertisement for online schooling (meaning, no schooling at all) of K-12 kids is.
The curious thing is that the destruction of the compulsory education is not (yet) being promoted by the worshipers of free markets. They obviously will participate with glee in the project but for now it is an affliction that people are happily inflicting on themselves. Here is, for instance, an example of the so-called “unschooling.” It makes my hair stand on end precisely because I know what an enormous civilization achievement was the creation of a compulsory, free, inclusive system of education. It took our civilization millennia to get there. I’m now fearing it will take all of two seconds to destroy it.
Today, I was talking to students about the Roman Empire and the Caliphate of Córdoba. The constant refrain of the lecture was, “And then – as tends to happen all of the time – barbarians came and destroyed this great civilization.” I don’t want to be saying this about us twenty years from now.
And then again, I might not even have any students to say it to if things continue this way.
Clarissa's Blog 
“The curious thing is that the destruction of the compulsory education is not (yet) being promoted by the worshipers of free markets.”
I would disagree. The neoliberals hate state education with a passion. Look at the situation in Chicago with the education budget being pared down to nothing, the slow death of teacher unions, the rise of organizations such as Teach for America (promoted by NPR, no less!), etc. It’s happening right now, and being supported by both parties.
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AND the craziest shit is that regular people are embracing this development happily and joyfully.
Idiots.
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Our civilization literally has few better things to offer.
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Yup, no other group is demonized more in this country than public school teachers.
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I went to public schools that were interesting and not prisonlike, although people tell me this was unusual. I had a year out of school, when the family traveled, and it was nice but I missed school as a non family space. I also had a year as an exchange student and the school was boring, so I can see how people who go to boring schools may find it a little useless.
My father was homeschooled and unschooled for elementary school due to poverty and transience (the Depression). His parents were educated and taught him all the elementary school material, so he was not behind academically when he could finally go to school, but he was REALLY happy to get to go to school, create a stable and independent life outside home, know people, have there be a variety of teachers, and so on.
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Ah and yes — the reason my daughter hated school was that the school was such a bad one, not that it was a school.
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I mean, I *get* how school is an ideological state apparatus and everything, but so is the mall and it is a worse one.
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“I mean, I *get* how school is an ideological state apparatus and everything, but so is the mall and it is a worse one.”
– Truer words were never spoken.
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My impression of unschoolers is that they’re a mirror image of the rabid evangelical Christian homeschoolers whose kids I tutored and mentored in Montana once they left home for college. They’re both victims of parents who are more interested in the idea of their children as extensions of their ideology than the actual intellectual and social development of their children.
I also think unschoolers who label their kids as “wild” or “turned loose” or “in nature” is that they need to read Jean-Jacques Rousseau and realize both how unoriginal and how stupid their views on humans and nature are.
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They would realize it if they were less ignorant. But in that case, they wouldn’t engage in this to begin with.
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It’s interesting that Americans can have the notion that they are dumbed down by schooling, whilst in all other respects they believe in congenital human nature.
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What an odd story you linked to. He’s determined to turn his sons into 19th century farmhands…
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Yes, and manual labor is all they will be qualified to do unless they inherit a private income. I also didn’t see any mention of his son’s reading books.
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Yeah, supposedly these new farmhands are great at school when they’re interested in something but without some kind of structured program they’re not liable to come across anything they’re really interested in. You can’t learn about organic chemistry if you don’t even know what it is (hint: you’re not gonna find it while looking for berries in the woods or by building a new outhouse).
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