Here we go deep into public schooling and home education again, figuring out if school is or should be a form of poorness/poverty. We talk about the dead whore in the bathtub, how awful school really is, how parents don’t spend time with their kids, how to talk home education, what types of people went to school, helicopter parenting, conditioning for misery, learning, grades, un-learning for learning, programming, college and maturation, worthless diplomas, double losses, the “problem” with Praxis, giving college back to the rich, the future of schooling and why we are optimistic for change, how school makes people poor, how poor people will be stuck with school, and why the idea that school is for poor people is critical.
Just my outline, no need to read:
Public School is for poor people
Homeschool
The dead whore in the bathtub and homeschooling.
School barely makes sense.
- The time!
- Spend all day, all childhood with people from the government
- Hating learning
97% of you parents don’t spend much time with your kids at all.
How to tell people you home educate without getting yelled at, spit on, or punched in the face (aka the biggest, most destructive waste of time ever invented by humanity. A grubby day care for poor people)
Outcomes
Every loser, dipshit, failure, shithead, fuckface, asshole, faker, asshat or criminal you’ve ever met went to school.
What happens when the helicopter parented, participation award children grow up? We are terrified that it is happening but is anyone prepared for their adulthood?
If you condition people to accept misery, they will accept misery as the standard.
Learning
For those that desire knowledge
Don’t get excited about school subjects (because you can’t)
- Everything interesting
- Everything necessary
- Short of reading, writing and math, only “harmless” subjects,
- But what does this do to you?
There’s no “should” in knowledge and learning
- Should should only be something you apply to yourself
You don’t need grades or a competition or external approval
How to cure “there’s more to it than that”
Critical thinking requires the ability to blank out knowledge. And…
Unlearning is often a critical step in learning something new
Learn like a programmer
College
My conflation that college built maturity or “how I needed to shake the idiot out of me”
The diploma disappears after your first job, maybe just skip to the first job, even if it costs you thousands.
The double loss of income for college; the current loss and the future loss
The Praxis problem (forget what this was) (why it was ever necessary)
Give college back to the rich
Future
Good kids skip school, good parents insist on it.
Reasons why homeschooling could get more popular:
- Rich people are doing it
- School is getting worse, more oppressive, less useful
- More people are telecommuting
- Information doesn’t have a gatekeeper (Internet)
- New world skills are evolving faster than ever
- Dimensions of wealth, money, consumption, time, happieness, relationships
- Explain why school is for the modern, 2-income family. Can this become something better?
Explain how it makes you poor (time, prision, unhappiness). The future should not be poorer, but richer.
Should education be priced like other commercial services?
A business idea: Hire an educator to partly do some networking/edu stuff with the kids and then use half her time to build a homeschooling product/content. Then open an online store and have the kids man it. Make money, learn real stuff.
Changing
Adults NEED to go through the school revalation, a Sudbury school model is insufficient if just tricks parents into thinking they are just doing school+alternative.
Explain why it must be seen this way (the only way for people to fight it, people hate it). We all hate poverty in some fashion and it is good nature to do so.
- Some feel empathy and want to help
- Some feel disgust
- Some feel fear
Poorness is a disgusting thing, so if school is seen as a feature for poor people, and it will, normal people will begin to hate it.
2 Comments
Steve Cousineau
Do know/read/follow James Altucher…I think you’d like his postings; heard him speak out in western ma. He has similar themes…Choose Yourself, Do What You Love, College bad investment…classic header “Habits Can Make You Stupid and Then Kill You”. Here’s an older link: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-parents-should-not-send-their-kids-to-college/
Jeff Till
Hi Steve, I’m a fan of Altucher. Love his writing and ideas. I find his podcast hard to listen to though.