NYgs23
11-12-2009, 10:43 AM
Most people, even most libertarians, I'm sure, have a very tough time conceiving of alternative ways to educate children from the traditional "prison school" method of desks, chalkboards, textbooks, bells, exams, divided subjects, and age-segregation. Even most homeschoolers borrow this notion that education must be imposed on children from some authority. In fact, children learn instinctively, through the God-given method of playing. Children, like all human beings, have an amazing ability to run their own lives, if only we'd let them.There are other ways, ways that don't involve everyone being imprisoned and miserable for the better part of their first eighteen years.
Since 1921, democratic schools (http://www.democraticeducation.com/) have attempted to instill the principle of learning through student freedom and choice, beginning with Britain's famous Summerhill School (http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/), where all courses are optional. In the United States, institutions like the Albany Free School (http://albanyfreeschool.com/testing/node/24) attempt to put similar principles into practice. While the horrendous No Child Left Behind Act imposes an ever-growing welter of tests and arbitrary standards on the failing and increasingly centralized state-school system, at the Albany Free School, "there are no grades, no mandated curriculum, no standardized tests, no homework and unnecessary rules are generally avoided." Perhaps an even more radical alternative is the Sudbury Valley School (http://www.sudval.org/index.html) and three-dozen offshoots worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools). At Sudbury, a weekly meeting, in which all students from the age of 4 to 19 have an equal vote with the "staff members," decides nearly every aspect of school governance, including the hiring and firing of the staff members!
A related movement, though more problematic for free-market-supporting libertarians, is the anarchist free skool (http://tribes.tribe.net/freeskool) movement, which attempts to "share skills, information, and knowledge without the limitations of hierarchy and the sterile institutional environment of formal schooling." Many of these schools, brainchildren of the anarcho-syndicalist types, attempt to operate on the basis of a "gift economy" rather than a market economy.
Finally the homeschooling parallel to the the democratic education movement is no doubt the unschooling (http://www.unschoolingamerica.com/) philosophy, by which children are more or less allowed to teach themselves. Radical unschooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Unschooling) is the more extreme version of this. Here, parents avoid punitive discipline and rule-setting in favor of cooperative and non-coercive methods of interacting with their children.
In the end, only the dynamic competition of a free and voluntary society can determine what methods of child-rearing and child-education are best. Nonetheless, I think it unlikely that the decrepit prison-school paradigm so loved by the central state would survive in such an atmosphere of educational competition. The children, no doubt, would boycott it.
Since 1921, democratic schools (http://www.democraticeducation.com/) have attempted to instill the principle of learning through student freedom and choice, beginning with Britain's famous Summerhill School (http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/), where all courses are optional. In the United States, institutions like the Albany Free School (http://albanyfreeschool.com/testing/node/24) attempt to put similar principles into practice. While the horrendous No Child Left Behind Act imposes an ever-growing welter of tests and arbitrary standards on the failing and increasingly centralized state-school system, at the Albany Free School, "there are no grades, no mandated curriculum, no standardized tests, no homework and unnecessary rules are generally avoided." Perhaps an even more radical alternative is the Sudbury Valley School (http://www.sudval.org/index.html) and three-dozen offshoots worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools). At Sudbury, a weekly meeting, in which all students from the age of 4 to 19 have an equal vote with the "staff members," decides nearly every aspect of school governance, including the hiring and firing of the staff members!
A related movement, though more problematic for free-market-supporting libertarians, is the anarchist free skool (http://tribes.tribe.net/freeskool) movement, which attempts to "share skills, information, and knowledge without the limitations of hierarchy and the sterile institutional environment of formal schooling." Many of these schools, brainchildren of the anarcho-syndicalist types, attempt to operate on the basis of a "gift economy" rather than a market economy.
Finally the homeschooling parallel to the the democratic education movement is no doubt the unschooling (http://www.unschoolingamerica.com/) philosophy, by which children are more or less allowed to teach themselves. Radical unschooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Unschooling) is the more extreme version of this. Here, parents avoid punitive discipline and rule-setting in favor of cooperative and non-coercive methods of interacting with their children.
In the end, only the dynamic competition of a free and voluntary society can determine what methods of child-rearing and child-education are best. Nonetheless, I think it unlikely that the decrepit prison-school paradigm so loved by the central state would survive in such an atmosphere of educational competition. The children, no doubt, would boycott it.