Public Schools

[FireShield]

I'm listening to podcast 1127 right now, and in it you say that you're "attacked" (by which you mean ridiculed/punished) if you don't say the pledge of allegiance in school.  I went to a public school and teachers specifically told us that we didn't have to say it if we didn't want to, and quite a few people didn't say it and remained in their seats during it (or just mouthed it like I did, because I'm shy and didn't want to draw attention to myself).  Some atheists who said it left out the "under God" part too.

 

Also, my AP US History and AP US Government teacher (who also taught Practical Law and was the head of our school's chapter of the National Honor Society, and was one of the teachers who wrote my college recommendations) told us that he used to be a Republican, then a Democrat, and now was unaffiliated, but told us he considered himself to be a libertarian (he never advocated any specific positions, but rather always played devil's advocate when students brought up their perspectives on things - so at times he argued for liberal positions, other times conservative, etc.).  Also, at the end of the year of AP Gov, we had to write a "manifesto" of our political beliefs, and I wrote mine based on a lot of what was in your podcasts about DROs, and used the argument from morality in the introduction and conclusion, and I got a 100 on it (which is really good considering that I wrote the entire thing the night before it was due, as I always do) and my teacher specifically told me in front of the class the next day that he really enjoyed reading it and that it was really good, and recommended a book for me to read (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

 

My school was also ranked the 14th best school in Connecticut a few years ago, competing with both public and private schools (and Connecticut has some of the best schools in America).  So from my experience, a lot of what you say about public schools is completely false.

[Guest Ethan Glover]

You're an extraordinarily lucky person. I was yelled at for not saying the pledge, people would give me dirty looks it I didn't stand up and if I refused it would turn into a big deal with lots of ranting about "Everyone has to do it." and inevitably being sent to the principals office where my parents would be called. We certainly never did any of the kind of political discussions you talk about.

 

Point is this:"from my experience""what you say about public schools"

 

Nobody is talking about your experience, he's talking about his experiences and a common experience.

[ThomasDoubts]

In one breath you try to give credibility to your school by comparing it to favorably to others, and in the next equate it to the schools that compare unfavorably.  Well which one is it?  You don't have experience with public schools, but with a public school, perhaps a few. 

 

Your largest paragraph discusses your experiences with one teacher you presumably respect.  Why are you not discussing dozens of teachers?  Is this simply one example, with dozens more equally or more worthy examples?  

 

I had a teacher in high school that finished just short of a finalist (of which there were 5) for national teacher of the year in 2002.  The structure of the class was in every way I can think of almost entirely anarchic (so long as it wasn't abusive)  We spent months discussing the evolution of the Abrahamic religions and the associated fairy tales with equal validity granted to all.  We discussed all of the arguments for war overseas and the moral implications.  All of this was in the fairly immediate aftermath of 9-11 when everyone had to choose to be either a terrorist or star-spangled awesome.  That doesn't mean I went to a great school.  I had teachers that were lucky to figure out how to tie their shoes in the morning. 

 

Of course we had the right to do whatever we wanted during the pledge of allegience but was there any discussion about why we say the pledge, or whether it was right to grant your highest allegience to God and Country?  Of course not.  Nobody was ridiculed for not saying the pledge, but those that abstained were almost universally outcasts in most ways anyhow.  Not saying the pledge was just another reason to ridicule an outcast, even if it was never mentioned in the ridicule.  I wouldn't expect you to make the case that peers rarely attack non-conformity, whether reasoned or not.  If that were the case, anarchism would be an easy sell.  

[Pepin]

I had a completely miserable time in school, therefore what you say about public school is completely false.

[FireShield]

I'm not saying that all public schools were like mine, but Stef seemed to imply that ALL public schools were like the way he described it (by saying things like "you were attacked for not saying the pledge of allegiance," not referring to any specific cases, trying to universalize select cases).

 

My other teachers were pretty good too.  I can't think of one teacher I disliked.  A few were boring (my physics teacher was a genius and a millionaire, and was extremely entertaining when going off on tangents, but everyone wanted to fall asleep when he was actually teaching) and some weren't good at teaching (mainly English teachers, and my AP chemistry teacher), but the rest were likable, entertaining, friendly, helpful, and good at teaching.  I'm just saying: so often when people (not just Stefan) make claims about things, they talk as if it's true for all cases - if there are exceptions (which clearly there are in this case), I would have no problem with them doing that if they added the word "most" to avoid sounding as if they're talking about all cases.

 

Another oddity about my school system is that everyone in the two towns that it was composed of got to vote on its budget, rather than having it be determined by the government (of course, everyone had to pay for it regardless of whether they had kids going there or not, so it's not voluntary by any means).

[ThomasDoubts]

I think we would disagree about what constitutes a good school.  Can you tell me how many philosophy courses you took from K-12? 

 

I won't put words in his mouth but I don't suspect Stefan was universalizing.  Provided you proved your argument, you'd be right if Stefan was making a universal claim; all it would require is one instance of falsehood.  Your problem in proving your argument arises from the fact that you can only be in one classroom at a time.  Tell me about your experiences with the classrooms you didn't experience.  I highly doubt Stefan is making a case that in every classroom, of every public school, children are attacked for abstaining from the pledge.

 

I'm listening to podcast 1127 right now, and in it you say that you're "attacked" (by which you mean ridiculed/punished) if you don't say the pledge of allegiance in school.  I went to a public school and teachers specifically told us that we didn't have to say it if we didn't want to, and quite a few people didn't say it and remained in their seats during it (or just mouthed it like I did, because I'm shy and didn't want to draw attention to myself).  Some atheists who said it left out the "under God" part too.

 

Given a choice between non-comformity with something you presumably didn't support, and blending in with the crowd as a blurry faced go-alonger, you chose the latter.  For what reason would you make that choice?  It's like saying, I disagree with this but I'll pretend to agree because the consequences of disagreeing are uncomfortable to me.  What school would make a child feel uncomfortable expressing their preferences or acting on their beliefs?  What school would allow students to attack another student for expressing their preferences and acting on their beliefs.  If neither of these conditions would have applied to you, why pretend at all?  I don't pretend to like mint chocolate chip ice cream or sweet potatoes just because a lot of people do.  Did you fear you would be wrong for disagreeing with the pledge, or that you wouldn't be given a forum to explain why you didn't agree with it?  Did you think it was unimportant?  I'm genuinely curious why you pretended.  You say because you didn't want to draw attention to yourself, but the opposite of that is to have nobody pay attention to you.  Who should prefer to be a ghost?

 

I must admit I'm a bit perturbed by your defense of public schools.  They are by definition, the manifestation of no free market.  If you aren't defending public schools, it seems to me like anecdotal nit-picking on a peripheral issue.  You are attempting to anecdotally falsify Stef's claim that students are attacked for abstaining from the pledge, and yet you pretended to say it every day.  It's no wonder YOU weren't attacked. 

[ThatAtheistPlace]

I have first hand experience working in the "offices" of a public school system and I'll tell you right now, Stefan is dead on.  The people that make the real decisions about children are absolutely batshit crazy.  They are almost all religious, and they like to believe that what they're doing is right and good.  They make a ton of decisions on a daily basis that affect kids without once talking to the children directly.

 

I would have to start a whole new thread, or write a novel, about how fucked up it is; but to address your arguments specifically, FireShield...  You may have enjoyed your classes and your teacher and found it to be a wonderful place, but ultimately, the kids in your very same classroom that did not find it to be so great, still had no choice but to be there.  Could those same children have disagreed with their parents or their teachers about anything?  No.

 

No matter how nice a teacher is, they are complicit in forcing those students, and parents that do not want their children in schools, to be there.  And while they're there, do you really think that they will say anything bad about the system that pays them?  The types of propaganda that roll around in schools is staggering!  Everything from respect violent authority figures, like police and resource officers, to praise teachers because they "deserve" our admiration, to the prevalence of ROTC programs (I'll include a pic I made about that...)

 

I apologize that these thoughts aren't well formed, but I agree with Rex, you're nit-picking on things because you don't want to accept the fact that by your teacher teaching you the various political parties, that it makes you, as a nubile young man take the word of an authority figure that political parties are relevant at all.  You say your Physics teacher was a millionaire?  I'm 1000% sure he lied to you, or is misrepresenting himself knowing what you think he means by that.

 

...you pretended to say it every day.  It'sno wonder YOU weren't attacked. 

 

There's nothing redeemable about public schools, and had you not said the pledge, you very well would have received the scorn, weird looks, and "he's better than us" sneers by your teacher and peers.  I think, as libertarian/anarcho-capitalists, we have a habit of thinking that an action we took, that didn't meet our goals, still helped to move our objectives forward in some way, (for instance, the Ron Paul people thinking that even though he didn't get into office, that more people were turned onto Libertarianism... which is fallacious, but I digress)...  I think you need to look at your schooling in the way a correct application of that argument is intended:

 

If you had been taught by someone genuinely interested in your learning, and did not have to sit through boring physics classes and things that were never going to be of use to you, you could have finished school years earlier, could have started your life sooner, could have found and stoked your passions in life without objection, could have been contributing back to society as a whole, could have developed friendships with people of your choosing, not just who you happen to sit next to in school...  The lost potential that exists because of all public schools is what is so sad, to me, about your blind praise of one.

[FireShield]

I'm not trying to defend public schools, I'm just saying that my experience was different, so he knows that not all public schools were like that.

 

I pretended to say the pledge because:

1. I knew it didn't mean anything (I never really meant what I was saying back when I actually spoke the words, which I presume is the case with most people)

2. Most said it, so I didn't want to stand out.  Nobody ridiculed or commented on the people who didn't say it, but it's not like they didn't notice them.  And I don't want to be noticed.  Yes, I would "prefer to be a ghost" in public.

[PatrickC]

I've often heard people defend their schooling. Mostly women actually, which given the prevailing gender bias, would seem to fit of course. However, I think it's perfectly reasonable that someone assumes they had a good/ great /awesome time at school. How would I know any other way, despite my own less than pleasent experience.

 

The point about schooling, is not whether you enjoyed it or not. It's about the way it's funded and provided for. I pay property taxes in London that goes towards paying for all my local schools. This whilst I have no children of course. Since I have no choice to pay for it, otherwise face imprisonment, the schools have no incentive to improve, other than perhaps a mild ego boost if they become the higjhest rank school in the area.

 

Schooling is mostly not voluntary for children. Sometimes it is state enforced, other times parent enforced. I will certainly be unschooling any children I have myself in future.

[Mike Fleming]

It's just the waste of time that gets me about public schooling.  12 years!!!   For God's sake!   It felt like for much of that I was just marking time.  I'm sure I could have done it in half the time.  Certainly primary school.  But people just get dragged back to the average student.  And the average student doesn't much care at all.  It's a disaster imo.

 

We need competition in schooling.  One size does not fit all.

[Guest Ethan Glover]

It's just the waste of time that gets me about public schooling. 

 

Yup! School holds people back to an unbelievable level. You know when people say there are just some normal everyday obstacles you must overcome? That's how I view public education. I'm going to college on the GI Bill right now (sorry for joining) and I go to class, do my crappy meaningless homework and then head to the library to try and learn something before the sun goes down. It's all depressingly boring and slow, and it's almost impossible to get anything worthwhile from it. There's no way I'd pay for this crap if I didn't already have it guaranteed by contract.

 

I could definitely, with no doubt in my mind, be achieving and growing so much right now. But you know, the governments got a monopoly on accreditation and that's what people still look at for whatever reason. Gotta' play the game for a few more years.

[Think Free]

 

Hi, PheePhyPhoPhum. I don't disagree with anything you said, but I just had to reply to this image you posted.

 

If you feel there is an inconsistency in protesting abortion and not protesting war, I would just like to point out some statistics:

 

If you total all the high estimates of death due to all wars worldwide since 1973 (including all the deaths in the Vietnam war) on Wikipedia you get 16.4 million. (These figures include the deaths of civilians from diseases, famine, etc., as well as deaths of soldiers in battle and massacres and genocide.) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll )

 

In contrast, "From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions occurred [in the United States]." ( http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html ) "An estimated 44 million abortions are performed globally each year, with slightly under half of those performed unsafely." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion )

 

I am not saying that one should protest abortion and not war, but it seems to me that if your objective is to save lives, there's nothing inconsistent about focusing on abortion.

[In the belly of the beast]

The Whitest kids U Know - Pledge of Allegiancehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2BfqDUPL1I

[Guest darkskyabove]

School district suspends teacher over pledge issue

 

Follow-up:

 

Teacher Anne Daigle-McDonald back in class after suspension for forcing Jehovah's Witneess student to recite Pledge of Allegiance

[ThatAtheistPlace]

 ...If your objective is to save lives, there's nothing inconsistent about focusing on abortion.

 

My objective is to point out the hypocrisy of it.

 

Also, it would depend on whether or not you consider a fetus a "life".  (I do, but I respect women's rights to do what they choose with their bodies.)

[Josh F]

I'm listening to podcast 1127 right now, and in it you say that you're "attacked" (by which you mean ridiculed/punished) if you don't say the pledge of allegiance in school.  I went to a public school and teachers specifically told us that we didn't have to say it if we didn't want to, and quite a few people didn't say it and remained in their seats during it (or just mouthed it like I did, because I'm shy and didn't want to draw attention to myself).  Some atheists who said it left out the "under God" part too.

 

Also, my AP US History and AP US Government teacher (who also taught Practical Law and was the head of our school's chapter of the National Honor Society, and was one of the teachers who wrote my college recommendations) told us that he used to be a Republican, then a Democrat, and now was unaffiliated, but told us he considered himself to be a libertarian (he never advocated any specific positions, but rather always played devil's advocate when students brought up their perspectives on things - so at times he argued for liberal positions, other times conservative, etc.).  Also, at the end of the year of AP Gov, we had to write a "manifesto" of our political beliefs, and I wrote mine based on a lot of what was in your podcasts about DROs, and used the argument from morality in the introduction and conclusion, and I got a 100 on it (which is really good considering that I wrote the entire thing the night before it was due, as I always do) and my teacher specifically told me in front of the class the next day that he really enjoyed reading it and that it was really good, and recommended a book for me to read (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

 

My school was also ranked the 14th best school in Connecticut a few years ago, competing with both public and private schools (and Connecticut has some of the best schools in America).  So from my experience, a lot of what you say about public schools is completely false.

I went to a prestigious gifted/magnet program in Los Angeles.  The favored teacher was an avowed Communist.  We studied the history of class conflict.  The teachers in my program considered themselves all feminists, and what they called "active anti-racists".  Similarly I didn't have to pledge allegiance, but I did have to read the Communist Manifesto.  We were subjected to some extreme psychological techniques, like public humiliation.  Students, in one example, were forced to stand on a pyramid of tables in front of the entire grade.  Teachers ranked them from top to bottom, handsome white male jocks, then attractive white girls, then athletic people of color, followed by attractive women of color, and lastly kids were selected as ugly freaks.  One girl selected for the bottom row began to cry.  This didn't stop teachers in another setting from stacking children on chairs, white kids standing on chairs, Asians and Latinos sitting on the chair, and black kids forced to lay at our feet.  Then students were invited to move if they felt they shouldn't be where they are, afterwards the teachers went person to person ridiculing them until they returned to their positions.  The amount of teachers who had sex with students, if even half the rumors and accusations were true, made it a cesspool of under age sex.  Many teachers actually shared students as well.  They accused students of racism and contributing to rape culture. 

 

So yeah... you got lucky. 

I'm just saying: so often when people (not just Stefan) make claims about things, they talk as if it's true for all cases - if there are exceptions (which clearly there are in this case), I would have no problem with them doing that if they added the word "most" to avoid sounding as if they're talking about all cases.

Why do you have a problem with people generalizing?  I personally prefer people who don't tip-toeing around statements by saying things like "so often" or "in most cases." This kind of language and your history of mouthing the pledge of allegiance sounds like an attempt to avoid ridicule.  This is generally the message of public schools, conform to social ridicule, which was being criticized. 

[PatrickC]

I went to a prestigious gifted/magnet program in Los Angeles.  The favored teacher was an avowed Communist.  We studied the history of class conflict.  The teachers in my program considered themselves all feminists, and what they called "active anti-racists".  Similarly I didn't have to pledge allegiance, but I did have to read the Communist Manifesto.  We were subjected to some extreme psychological techniques, like public humiliation.  Students, in one example, were forced to stand on a pyramid of tables in front of the entire grade.  Teachers ranked them from top to bottom, handsome white male jocks, then attractive white girls, then athletic people of color, followed by attractive women of color, and lastly kids were selected as ugly freaks.  One girl selected for the bottom row began to cry.  This didn't stop teachers in another setting from stacking children on chairs, white kids standing on chairs, Asians and Latinos sitting on the chair, and black kids forced to lay at our feet.  Then students were invited to move if they felt they shouldn't be where they are, afterwards the teachers went person to person ridiculing them until they returned to their positions.  The amount of teachers who had sex with students, if even half the rumors and accusations were true, made it a cesspool of under age sex.  Many teachers actually shared students as well.  They accused students of racism and contributing to rape culture.

 

I'm glad you pointed this out TT, as I have strongly suspected this. But wow, I know school for me was a slightly different affair, being that little bit older of course (canings, molesting and humiliations). But your experience sounds like things have barely moved on as I'm always told these days that they have. Except they seem to use cultural marxism as their tool (or weapon) of choice these days.

[Josh F]

In 9th grade my teacher taught us "Only white people can be racist."

 

Our 10th grade final was about Karl Marx.

 

In 11th grade, another teacher said "You kids only use logic and reason to control and dominate each other.  You need to think emotionally."

 

I told the teacher he was just using emotions to dominate and control us.  He cried, literally, and stopped the class. 

 

We studied philosophy, but the choice of philosophers was subject:  We started with Thales, moved through Socrates and Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, Descartes, then we got into Kant, Hobbs, Nietzsche, and Hegel was the last person we studied in 10th grade.  Then in 12th grade the teachers taught Post Modernism, people like Richard Rorty and Wittgenstein.  The entire course of philosophy was designed to push us towards Post Modernism, which, to the uninitiated, is just some pragmatic statist crap.  Richard Rorty for example is responsible for a lot of the thinking behind political correctness, like calling policeman police person or police woman.  He makes a claim that truth is created not discovered, and ultimate objective truth is unknowable. 

[FireShield]

I know this is from a few months ago, but I didn't want to create another thread on the same topic.  Listening to some later podcasts, Stef says that in public schools, questions are discouraged, it's all about memorization, no critical thinking involved, it's boring and too easy, and teachers would make fun of students.  Well, my experience was different.

 

Questions were actively encouraged.  They always told us "there's no such thing as a dumb question," that if we didn't understand something, we should ask.  History, government, and English classes always involved arguing for our perspectives on issues.  Memorization was really only for vocabulary words in elementary school, biology class (because that's inherent to parts of biology), and for the names of places, people, treaties, and laws in AP US History and AP US Government (because they would be on the AP test).  Otherwise teachers always preferred to teach us to understand the topics, and look at things in history conceptually (we NEVER had to memorize dates).

 

As for critical thinking, they specifically taught us how to think critically since the early years of elementary school.  As I said, we would always analyze and debate in history class, English essays were all about writing critically about topics, and math usually involved us figuring things out for ourselves, with guidance from the teachers if we couldn't.  I agree that topics that I had no interest in but were forced to take anyway were boring, but as for easy, that's why there are honors and AP classes starting in high school.  Core level classes are for people who have a hard time understanding the material, and just cover the basics, academic level classes are for the average student, honors level classes are for the smarter students (or the ones who study to get good grades), and AP level classes are college level courses.  I never heard anyone complain about classes being too easy, only too hard.

 

And if teachers made fun of students, they would be fired immediately,  The idea of a teacher making fun of a student is inconceivable to me, seeing as teachers would always stop students from making fun of other students.  Some teachers would be sarcastic (usually science teachers) and would have inside jokes with the class, poking fun at other students, but never in a mean spirited way.  And they always said that if you don't want them to do that to you, to speak with them after class and tell them (and shy kids like me were almost never "made fun of" by the teachers because they knew how sensitive we were - it was almost always the extroverts, the cool kids, that were "made fun of," and they enjoyed it, "making fun" of the teacher right back at them; it was all light-hearted fun, and many teachers even become Facebook friends with students after they graduate).

 

Now, I don't support public education, because obviously I'm against forcibly taking people's money to fund it even if they don't go there, but to say that it doesn't provide good education, that it's simply there to "indoctrinate children" and make them obedient to the state completely contradicts all the evidence that I have about public schools.  If Stef wants to say that that was HIS experience, then by all means, he can do so, but unless he goes to at least half of the public schools in the world, he can't justly say that the majority of the schools are like that.

 

I bring this up because if someone who wasn't an anarchist or libertarian heard the things Stef says about public schools, they'd probably think, "wow, what a bunch of nonsense propaganda," and be more turned off from libertarianism.  To see some of what my high school was like, here are some videos made by people in my high school (all were made my junior year, the first three were made by seniors, the fourth one was made by juniors, and the rest were made by people in one of our school newspapers):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The one on the right in the last video was my AP US History and AP US Government teacher that I mentioned earlier.  Also, I am currently a freshman at a state university (because it's super cheap and is around the 50th best university in the country, and I'm in the honors program), and so far, the things Stef has said about professors being super pro-government and anti-capitalist is completely false.

[PatrickC]

I bring this up because if someone who wasn't an anarchist or libertarian heard the things Stef says about public schools, they'd probably think, "wow, what a bunch of nonsense propaganda," and be more turned off from libertarianism.  To see some of what my high school was like, here are some videos made by people in my high school (all were made my junior year, the first three were made by seniors, the fourth one was made by juniors, and the rest were made by people in one of our school newspapers):

 

As I said before, I'm not going to doubt that some people enjoyed their time at school or college even. Your school looks like a nice middle class suburban area. Which probably doesn't experience the behavioral issues you might find in an inner city school. I mean even from my shitty education I recall maybe 2 very good teachers. Even then it's hard to actually quantify what I learned from them. Other than thankfully a teacher that doesn't treat me with disdain. I knew of friends that went to the local grammar school who said they had an excellent time. Sure enough pupils often remained in touch with their school and teachers. It's true Mister Pips does exist. Personally I think it has a lot to do with sentimentality as much as indoctrination

 

But the thing your critique overlooks or rather makes light of, is the enforcement part of state education. It really is the major objection anarchists have for it. From forcing kids to attend. Forcing the topics on them and forcing adults with or without children to pay for it from taxes.

 

Not only that, but if you are a free market guy then it doesn't make sense that this kind of enforcement at all corners in education can make it at all efficient or of high quality. You say your schooling was good and high quality. I say compared to what? Compared to inner city schools or compared to a child that is allowed to make their own decisions about what they learn.

 

Worrying that we might alienate some statist educated pupils from anarchism, I find rather ironic.

[FireShield]

But the thing your critique overlooks or rather makes light of, is the enforcement part of state education. It really is the major objection anarchists have for it. From forcing kids to attend. Forcing the topics on them and forcing adults with or without children to pay for it from taxes.

 

Actually, I said (in the post above) "I don't support public education, because obviously I'm against forcibly taking people's money to fund it even if they don't go there"

 

But anyway, I won't talk about it any more.  My main reason for bringing it up is that I get annoyed when people make generalizations about certain things and imply that it's true for all instances of that, when I had a completely different experience.

[LovePrevails]

sounds like luck to me as well

[dsayers]

My main reason for bringing it up is that I get annoyed when people make generalizations about certain things and imply that it's true for all instances of that, when I had a completely different experience.

 

Doesn't the word "generalization" denotatively concede that it does not apply to all instances?

 

On a side note, I just wanted to encourage those who refer to schooling as education and that which is coercive as "public" to be more precise with their language. If only for the purpose of not assisting those trying to conceal evil with language.

[LovePrevails]

I recommend the book Beyond Discipline - From Compliance to Community by Alfie Kohn for anyone and everyone who wants to know what is institutionally wrong with the average classroom. Read it, lend it to all your friends.