"Don't Stay in School"

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I'm sure alot of you have already seen this, but for those of you who haven't...

8xe6nLVXEC0

There really is no arguing with this. Modern public education is a joke and everybody knows it. But what's especially infuriating is the fact that many of these things that aren't taught in school could very easily be taught in the classroom if given the appropriate amount of time and materials. There is NO REASON a person should go through 12/13 years of public school and yet have zero knowledge about paying taxes and buying a house with a mortgage.

For a society that prides itself on its 'free market', it sure doesn't seem too concerned with giving its citizens the tools needed to operate within it.

'Course, maybe that's the whole point....:rolleyes:

[Invader Zim]

Actually, there is plenty of arguing with that. First, the guy takes a completely naive view of knowledge, as if the purpose of education is and should be purely vocational and practical. Second, that the theoretical concepts taught have no baring on the practical issues he complains he fails to understand. Well, actually, being able to solve an equation is actually useful in a vast array of fields. Third, many of the topics which he says should be taught require a grasp of that which is already taught. Without the abstract scientific knowledge of anatomy he moans about, how precisely does he imagine the kind of advanced knowledge that thinks should be imparted came to exist? As the adage goes, you need to be able to walk before you can run. All advanced knowledge requires some grasp of fundamental principals. Fourth, education does, in fact, cover many of the topics claimed not to be taught. Everybody in Britain, with a very few exceptions, is taught a foreign language. Admittedly, rather badly as I was, but they are mandatory subjects. Fifth, that the kinds of knowledge imparted do have utility post-education.

Even the most arbitrary knowledge noted, the wives of Henry VIII does, in fact have utility. Where are you going to need to know that, you may ask. Well, you aren't. However, historical education isn't merely about the rote learning of facts (though knowledge for its own sake is important and is its own reward) but the ability to marshal those facts, analyse them, construct an argument, and think both logically and thematically. That will actually help you get a job. But you need to know some facts before you can begin to understand how they come together.

Moreover, encouraging people to leave school does them absolutely zero favours. For many school age people it might seem difficult to see the value of the boring shit they have learn, but more often that not it does come in handy. I wish that I have paid far more attention in school and applied myself better -- but at the time I often found myself thinking like this guy. That decision and attitude has caused me nothing but regret. It has limited my options -- and I actually finished school with reasonable grades, went to uni and even stayed on to do a higher degree. But dicking around in school, and not taking what was offered to me, has closed doors that might otherwise have been open. For a lot of the people I went to school with, who did drop out, well a lot of them have had it pretty rough, particularly in this current period of recession where jobs are very tight.

Of course, that isn't to say that modern education is not problematic -- it obviously is. But this guy has a totally warped view (and indeed a very conservative one) of what education should be about.

[Rafiq]

EDIT: Zim beat me to it.

Actually, we should draw the opposite conclusion: Schools, more and more, are slowly replacing what is necessary for the worldly development of the individual, humanities, etc. with "useful", practical information. It is barbarism in practice.

We should always be suspicious of this kind of disgusting logic - "Oh, schools just teach kids a bunch of useless things", that these are useless for present day society does not mean we ought to turn schools - not content with being capital's ideology factories - into actual, direct factories of capital churning out miserably ignorant masses whose "knowledge" only extends to its direct practical use in present day society. Of course public school is garbage today, of course the masses remain ignorant anyway, of course it doesn't do a good job teaching kids what it claims to want to - but that's not the point, the point is that at least formally the STANDARD for doing it is there, i.e .the axiom that all children should be thoroughly educated about the world is there. If public schools, right now, were to do away with all the "useless" stuff, the end result is more cultural illiteracy, and probably a more docile, uncritical workforce. Of course, the high-end private schools will NEVER do away with all the "useless" stuff, the children of the bourgeoisie will cultivate the treasures of mankind, enrich their minds, and so on.

The demand for more "practical" schooling is inevitably bound up with the offensive wave by capital against the achievements of working people. People think, for example, Calculus is "practically" worthless. Have they ever considered that it might actually induce you to think harder, exercise your brain, etc. ? That what you're really being taught is an extensive kind of intricate LOGIC? Schools are, yes, ideology-factories, but they can at least PROVOKE critical reception, i.e. the space to question it is at least there. Astrology (before astronomy) reproduced feudalism, but if there was no information or study about the cosmos at all, that's not much better.

Communists should actually incorporate into a kind of minimal demand - opposition to the technocratization of the educational system. We should never forget that public education, for all its faults, was fought for bitterly in previous struggles. We should be fighting for better quality education, i.e. MORE "useless shit" being taught in schools.

[Sewer Socialist]

I agree that public education should teach such "useless" things, but I would also like to see, in a pre-revolutionary world, efforts to make education on these things accessible outside of schools, to make it easier for people like me, who haven't gone to post-secondary school, but are interested in learning, which is a large amount of the working class.

I joined this forum in an attempt to learn more, have access to knowledgeable people, and work out my thoughts and understanding through discussion. Revleft so far has really helped me with learning - most existing lefty organizations are not very good at education, and while they may have fruitful discussion, it isn't extensive enough for those of us who have much to learn.

[Hatshepsut]

Reminds me of Pink Floyd:


We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
...
Teacher, leave them kids alone

They don't need thought control, but they could use a little grammar. I dik-dik'd around in my school days and didn't learn a foreign language. But at least I know what a dik dik is.

[Bala Perdida]

Seriously? Ya'll are defending public school. I don't know why I'm so surprised, I've seen y'all do it before. Well, I'm not looking to establish anything so I guess that's one difference. Even then, it's not that I care weather or not school is useful. I probably lost some of you putting "I" in the last sentence but fuck it. It's that the institutionalizing of education is only a more exploitable form of socializing violence and enforcing assimilation. School's burn in ideology, we know that. That's how the assimilate people appropriately, some of you think that's a good thing. Conditioning people to live in communism. Then there's the violence, which I've related to school ever since I was small. What happens to those who can't learn? They don't pass them, they knock them down in the standards, they segregate them, put them on lists, crack down on them with pressure, threaten them with disadvantages and crippling them in life. That's just what happens at school. Shit, the parents that care, even the slightest, will make life worse at home. I've had this happen to me and all my friends in variations. Some worse at school, better at home and vice versa. My cousin, who was trying at his best and taking home average grades, got beaten every time report cards went home. I know people who's lives were so unstable that they couldn't graduate high school. I work at a hardware store that hires the randomest people who quite after a week (if I could I would've too), pays barely dollars above the minimum wage, and requires no complex math or critical thinking. It's a fucking retail job, and you still need to have a High School Diploma or GED to get hired. Still, some of my friends can't get hired because school didn't deem them worthy of being able to earn a living wage. Shakespeare and Calculus was more important than being able to fund a stable house-hold. Don't give me any of that critical thinking standardized bullshit. The standardized tests, which deem my old high school good, are contributing to the rising rent where I live and making this apartment more expensive a month. Also, the average grade level math classes (which I barely graded into every year) where more painful than they ever where rewarding. When I was young, I was punished at home for being bad at math. When I was in my last year of grade school, I had to give up my free-time unwillingly because my math teacher told me to stay after because I wasn't learning the material. At least that helped me get into college right? No, because my grades didn't qualify for college. Just like most of the people I talk to. I haven't been interested in university even when I was younger. Still, I have to throw away over ten grand on a trade school to peruse a career in labor because education is also a commodity. Hopefully I can get scholarships though. A lot of that is my experience and I know a lot of people who have it (and have had it) a lot worse. Fuck the grading system and fuck standardized education. I'm tired of teachers seeing me and my friends as a problem. All education relying on standards and grading is bullshit. Just creating more violence and alienation.

I'd recommend just getting a general school diploma or GED (equivalent). This is capitalism and we gotta eat. Other than that, I regret spending as much time in school as I did. I should've ditched more, shown up later to more classes. It's cool to ditch, if you're not getting it why waste your time there. Just go enough to keep the law off your back and get your diploma or GED.

[Antiochus]

Most of what Campesina Fuerte wrote is just utter bullshit disguised in proletarian speak in order to seem like the palatable "non-conformist" type. Zim and Rafiq covered it pretty well but I'll just add that while not everyone will be (or can be) an Aristotle; to disregard a holistic education as "useless", to disregard public education as a whole, is a total absurdity.

It wasn't very long ago that most people couldn't even read. Reading was probably about as utilitarian (to a half-starving factory worker) as knowing Henry VIII's wives; it didn't matter to them because they got the 'big picture', which I am flabbergasted people in the 21st century don't seem to get. Knowledge opens the world to possibilities, at the risk of sounding like a cliche. The computer you use has a long history, dating back to a bunch of ancient Greek men toying around with gears and calendars that, yes were "pretty useless". Yet today computers give humans a very real possibility at completely removing say bureaucracies and give a 6 year old a greater library of knowledge than the library in Alexandria could have to a king.

It should not be a coincidence either that every single "anti-intellectual" movement in history has been inextricably linked to some sort of reactionary cesspit.

[Atsumari]

Seriously? Ya'll are defending public school. I don't know why I'm so surprised, I've seen y'all do it before. Well, I'm not looking to establish anything so I guess that's one difference. Even then, it's not that I care weather or not school is useful. I probably lost some of you putting "I" in the last sentence but fuck it. It's that the institutionalizing of education is only a more exploitable form of socializing violence and enforcing assimilation. School's burn in ideology, we know that. That's how the assimilate people appropriately, some of you think that's a good thing. Conditioning people to live in communism. Then there's the violence, which I've related to school ever since I was small. What happens to those who can't learn? They don't pass them, they knock them down in the standards, they segregate them, put them on lists, crack down on them with pressure, threaten them with disadvantages and crippling them in life. That's just what happens at school. Shit, the parents that care, even the slightest, will make life worse at home. I've had this happen to me and all my friends in variations. Some worse at school, better at home and vice versa. My cousin, who was trying at his best and taking home average grades, got beaten every time report cards went home. I know people who's lives were so unstable that they couldn't graduate high school. I work at a hardware store that hires the randomest people who quite after a week (if I could I would've too), pays barely dollars above the minimum wage, and requires no complex math or critical thinking. It's a fucking retail job, and you still need to have a High School Diploma or GED to get hired. Still, some of my friends can't get hired because school didn't deem them worthy of being able to earn a living wage. Shakespeare and Calculus was more important than being able to fund a stable house-hold. Don't give me any of that critical thinking standardized bullshit. The standardized tests, which deem my old high school good, are contributing to the rising rent where I live and making this apartment more expensive a month. Also, the average grade level math classes (which I barely graded into every year) where more painful than they ever where rewarding. When I was young, I was punished at home for being bad at math. When I was in my last year of grade school, I had to give up my free-time unwillingly because my math teacher told me to stay after because I wasn't learning the material. At least that helped me get into college right? No, because my grades didn't qualify for college. Just like most of the people I talk to. I haven't been interested in university even when I was younger. Still, I have to throw away over ten grand on a trade school to peruse a career in labor because education is also a commodity. Hopefully I can get scholarships though. A lot of that is my experience and I know a lot of people who have it (and have had it) a lot worse. Fuck the grading system and fuck standardized education. I'm tired of teachers seeing me and my friends as a problem. All education relying on standards and grading is bullshit. Just creating more violence and alienation.

I'd recommend just getting a general school diploma or GED (equivalent). This is capitalism and we gotta eat. Other than that, I regret spending as much time in school as I did. I should've ditched more, shown up later to more classes. It's cool to ditch, if you're not getting it why waste your time there. Just go enough to keep the law off your back and get your diploma or GED.
For me personally, the defense of public education is similar to a defense of child labor. Yes, children should not be working at all, but simply saying that children should not work while not changing the current structure of labor is unhelpful and counterproductive given that there are many horrors in life that are preferable to starvation and debt. The same thing applies to education, yes it is abysmal and incredibly destructive, but should I have any kids, I would rather have them enter a degenerate institution rather than none at all. Just look at all the people who were alienated or refused education for most of their lives.

[Bala Perdida]

Most of what Campesina Fuerte wrote is just utter bullshit disguised in proletarian speak in order to seem like the palatable "non-conformist" type. Zim and Rafiq covered it pretty well but I'll just add that while not everyone will be (or can be) an Aristotle; to disregard a holistic education as "useless", to disregard public education as a whole, is a total absurdity.

It wasn't very long ago that most people couldn't even read. Reading was probably about as utilitarian (to a half-starving factory worker) as knowing Henry VIII's wives; it didn't matter to them because they got the 'big picture', which I am flabbergasted people in the 21st century don't seem to get. Knowledge opens the world to possibilities, at the risk of sounding like a cliche. The computer you use has a long history, dating back to a bunch of ancient Greek men toying around with gears and calendars that, yes were "pretty useless". Yet today computers give humans a very real possibility at completely removing say bureaucracies and give a 6 year old a greater library of knowledge than the library in Alexandria could have to a king.

It should not be a coincidence either that every single "anti-intellectual" movement in history has been inextricably linked to some sort of reactionary cesspit.
Go ahead. Play with your gears as you please. Just don't force me to learn the math behind it at the threat of lowering my living standard.

What? You think I'm prolier than thou? You think the violence of the education system is worth completely disregarding because you want flying skateboards one day? The education system and grading system is a violent and alienating force tied heavily to the state and capitalism. Teachers can search you more easily than cops. It's not a welcoming environment for a lot of people. If the system of grading and standards continues it's not going to be. Do you really expect students, who have been failing out of school most of their life, to want to go into a classroom that makes it obvious they're not as good as everyone else? Where the teacher holds them back every day because they don't understand a material they're never going to use? I don't. Why should they waste their time? Overwhelming them like that is just going to lead them to drop out anyways. Better to just ditch and get the pressure off. Do the minimum. Secure a diploma and find a decent job. Although if that school ranked good on the standards, they're probably gonna have to move out of the area.

Nonconformist? It's not like the school lets you pass so easily. Seriously, everyone thinks intelligence is only born from school.

[Hatshepsut]

Seriously? Ya'll are defending public school. I don't know why I'm so surprised, I've seen y'all do it before.

Not so much public school as the bourgeois run it, but the idea one should get an education. We’ve got another thread saying close up all the jails, the “community” will regulate behavior in a gentler way. This is sounding a bit like 1789 at the Bastille only I suspect the French had a better excuse for it than we do. No school, no cops, everyone’s free. Until warlords arise and start organizing something a lot nastier than the imperialism we have now.


My cousin, who was trying at his best and taking home average grades, got beaten every time report cards went home.

Please do accept my condolences as sincere. But closing the schools won’t solve the problem of children who are beaten by parents. Parents who beat their kids will find a reason to do it anyway. Ditto for kids who are bullied by other kids, which can happen with them running free on the street as easily as it can happen in a school.


I'd recommend just getting a general school diploma or GED (equivalent).

Sounds okay to me. For kids who can’t hack Shakespeare or calculus, sitting at a cramped desk in a hot, stuffy room all day—who need an alternative. The effort to teach culture, history, and science to as many youth as possible must continue, however, or we’ll be living like we did 12000 years ago.

[Counterculturalist]

While I am a staunch believer in education, I don't think CF is completely off base in what they are saying, either. I feel like some adults have a hard time remembering what school was like, but I can tell you that grade school and high school are utter hellholes for many children. It's where we first begin to internalize a class system and how to ostracize others for being different, and how to bow down to arbitrary authority. I don't think schools for children should be abolished, but that they must somehow fundamentally change the way they operate.

University has the potential to be much better, and usually is, but the corporate agenda that is trying to gut school programs of all meaningful content threatens to turn university into nothing more than an extension of high school.

And that's the crux of my disagreement with CF: It's not the subjects that schools teach that are wrong, but they way schools treat children. A well-rounded education is essential for our development as human beings, but when some kids are designated as "bad" or "troublemakers" or just undesirable because of their parents' backgrounds, they are automatically designated as being unworthy of access to this higher education. Unlike what somebody wrote above, I believe we can all be Aristotles if given the proper chance.

Finally - and I've written this elsewhere - going straight to university after high school can have devastating effects for some students. I strongly believe that people should take a break for awhile before enrolling in university, in order to better appreciate what university has to offer.

But the university must continue to offer "useless" knowledge. Our corporate boardrooms are already full of philistines who only learned what they needed to function as corporate robots. Any attempts to gut university programs only helps their agenda.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What I don't understand is why people seem to be making the link between standardised tests and "useless" subjects. The push for standardised testing comes from the same place as the push for getting rid of "useless" subjects and introducing more "useful" subjects like "being a wage slave"; the chambers of commerce and other organisations of the bourgeoisie who don't care about the cultural level of the work force but want a lot of little fachidiots to become workers as soon as possible.

People also seem to forget that socialism requires a proletariat with a certain cultural level. Workers being uneducated is not the problem. What is a problem is philistinism among the workers, being whipped up by the bourgeoisie against intellectuals, against teachers etc.


It's where we first begin to internalize a class system and how to ostracize others for being different, and how to bow down to arbitrary authority.

The place where we "first begin to internalize a class system" is the family. And yes, the class divisions in schools are awful. The point is that there is no realistic alternative to schools.

As for arbitrary authority, for the last few decades, at least here, there has been a sort of one-sided erosion of the authority of teachers within their own classrooms, giving way to the authority of parents and headmasters overeager to suck up to them. I don't think it has resulted anything except inflated grades and untouchable spoiled children.

[Bala Perdida]

Seriously, no one is addressing the point of my posts although I'm probably not being clear enough. I never said anything about closing all schools. Admittedly, I won't say I'm against that but I'd need to see that elaborated. Anyway's I'm not saying what should be done, but what's wrong with generalized school. On a separate note this whole talk of keeping authority around to prevent 'warlord-ism' is utter bullshit. What the fuck is the point of getting rid of the state if you're just gonna do what the state does anyway? I never advocated community control either, that's pretty much the same thing.

Anyway's the most violent aspects of school is the standardizing and grading which no one has yet to address, barely even acknowledge.

To Xhar-Xhar, standardized testing isn't standardized education. I'm basically talking about the fact that schools say you HAVE to study english, you HAVE to study math, you HAVE to study science, ect. Even if you don't like the works they're exposing you to, or you just really don't understand it and have no interest in torturing yourself with it, but they make you go through it anyway with more harm to you.

Grading too, which is just a form of segregating and ranking the students. Literally defining intelligence. Ranking 'dumbest' to 'smartest' and making it dead obvious. A lot of students actually like the subjects given the proper accommodation, but when you grade them on it there's nothing to enjoy out of it. It's all pressure, then you have to do it the way the teacher likes it or else you fuck up your life. It get's worse when you push them to learn to a standard, instead of letting them elaborate at a comfortable pace.

I don't understand what the point of trying to force out a bunch of smart well rounded students is. Like I said before, intelligence isn't born from school. I know people that dropped out of high school that have more talent and life skills than people at honor rolls in good schools. Those honor roll students know nothing but text book phrases and they're a pain in the ass to interact with. Arrogant as fuck, and the schools basically trained them to think they're better than everyone else because of the fucking grading system.

Sure education is nice, but you're restricting it with grades and standards. School complexes all together, which basically take the definition of education. Make it more voluntary, no one is gonna become a great scientific philosopher if they have no interest in science and literature but you force them into doing that anyway. Then doom them to a life of servitude when they don't do it adequately enough. You don't have to abolish schools, but then again if you can get educated without school that'd be cool.

[Counterculturalist]

As for arbitrary authority, for the last few decades, at least here, there has been a sort of one-sided erosion of the authority of teachers within their own classrooms, giving way to the authority of parents and headmasters overeager to suck up to them. I don't think it has resulted anything except inflated grades and untouchable spoiled children.

I agree, and this illustrates the paradox that a more enlightened, progressive way of dealing with children and education seems doomed to fail, yet strict authoritarianism doesn't seem like the answer either.



Grading too, which is just a form of segregating and ranking the students. Literally defining intelligence. Ranking 'dumbest' to 'smartest' and making it dead obvious. A lot of students actually like the subjects given the proper accommodation, but when you grade them on it there's nothing to enjoy out of it. It's all pressure, then you have to do it the way the teacher likes it or else you fuck up your life. It get's worse when you push them to learn to a standard, instead of letting them elaborate at a comfortable pace.

I don't understand what the point of trying to force out a bunch of smart well rounded students is. Like I said before, intelligence isn't born from school. I know people that dropped out of high school that have more talent and life skills than people at honor rolls in good schools. Those honor roll students know nothing but text book phrases and they're a pain in the ass to interact with. Arrogant as fuck, and the schools basically trained them to think they're better than everyone else because of the fucking grading system.


There is a lot of truth here, and I would say that kids' futures are often decided far too early, based on their behavior in class at much too young an age. At least that's how it was when I was in school. For example, I was a bright kid who taught myself to read before even starting school, yet I did poorly in grade school and was constantly in trouble. In high school I coasted by with a 50% average. Meanwhile I was going home and reading everything I could get my hands on. The school system utterly failed to engage me, and it was the same for most of my friends.

So is a more inclusive, egalitarian and socialist way to educate children possible?

[Tim Cornelis]

Campesino, of course there's room for improvement, much room. That's not what's been argued against, it's that a better alternative is to drop out of school. "don't stay in school". Democratised public education > current public education > dropping out

[Antiochus]

A simply way to 'improve' education would simply be to mimic the top private schools in capitalist society. This is, post-revolutionary. This would entail smaller class sizes, greater access to resources (most public school libraries have like 100 books, old as shit) and greater academic rigor. This doesn't mean more emphasis on grading, perhaps a more simplistic "Pass or Fail" would be appropriate.

And yes, you should have to study 'math' and 'english' and 'science' etc... Why not? Keep in mind the knowledge spewed in a high school classroom regarding "math and science" is abysmally low. No, not everyone will be the next Einstein, but that isn't even the point. I would also say that perhaps less homework and more interactive (i.e group activities) could yield better results.

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't think the amount of books is the problem. The first step is to transform schools into pedagogical institutions, simultaneously deconstructing the bourgeois family. Extend the school day from morning to the evening, and lower the mandatory 'school' going age to 0. Reserve a few hours for structured lessons, a few hours of self-directed learning, and a few hours of play and sports. And increase democratic control by students and children.

[Redistribute the Rep]

I don't think the " don't stay in school" line was meant to be taken literally as advocating for people to drop out, I think it was just there as a catchy take on the "stay in the school" thing we always hear.

[Redistribute the Rep]

As for me, I feel a bit biased as I did well in the school system and I liked it, and I was motivated to learn more outside of school. He's right that school doesn't teach us everything we're supposed to know but I don't think it necessarily should, as students should also be learning by applying what they learned in school in their lives and doing their own research into what interests them. Unfortunately in the current system, students who don't perform well from the very beginning are labeled as dumb which causes them to question their abilities and not be motivated to learn more. Rethinking the grading system would help with this I think.

[Rafiq]

Even then, it's not that I care weather or not school is useful. I probably lost some of you putting "I" in the last sentence but fuck it. It's that the institutionalizing of education is only a more exploitable form of socializing violence and enforcing assimilation. School's burn in ideology, we know that.

Ideology is absolutely irreducible to schooling, and while yes - it is true that schools "burn in ideology", their absence is not going to prevent this. People do not "spontaneously" become Communists only to be curtailed by having been "burned in" by ideology. Because as it happens, among being ideologically conditioned, a great many other things are derived from getting a public education, too - the fact that it is ineffective in fostering critical thought, and so on, is not an argument against the existence of public education or dropping out, but for its improvement.

I mean what you say is beyond stupid. It's not that the problems you mention are not real ones, it's the reality that passing these off as problems without presupposing public education itself as an achievement is laughable. What's the alternative, really? You claim that people should "just get their"GED instead" but again, as far as actual political decision making goes, broadcasting on a loud megaphone what you THINK people should do instead has no practical effect on anything but making yourself feel good. Not everyone is privileged with having stumbled upon Revleft or the ideas of Communism to be able to see the bullshit in it all in the first place. We should never forget how Marx and Engels conceived petite-bourgeois socialism:


This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.

What you suggest is amply petty-bourgeois, not simply because the "positive" implications of your attacks on public education is its destruction, but that it betrays a mentality that is incapable of approaching the problem outside of an individual level (and even then, this is ridiculous - public education is free, it brings people into association beyond the tyranny, isolation of the household, it establishes a common social space that challenges the "rights" of the family and the father, and so on. Public education is a necessary pre-requisite to socialism insofar as it constitutes COMMON SPACE, insofar as it brings children into association and establishes the formalization of society's collective standards of reason - irreducible to the family household).

[Rafiq]

Go ahead. Play with your gears as you please. Just don't force me to learn the math behind it at the threat of lowering my living standard.

But it doesn't matter what Antiochus wants, this isn't the situation today. The political controversy is not about whether a high school diploma SHOULD be a necessary pre-requisite to getting a job, because as it happens, whether there is public education or not some kind of equivalent will be necessary for such jobs.


What? You think I'm prolier than thou? You think the violence of the education system is worth completely disregarding because you want flying skateboards one day? The education system and grading system is a violent and alienating force tied heavily to the state and capitalism. Teachers can search you more easily than cops. It's not a welcoming environment for a lot of people. If the system of grading and standards continues it's not going to be. Do you really expect students, who have been failing out of school most of their life, to want to go into a classroom that makes it obvious they're not as good as everyone else? Where the teacher holds them back every day because they don't understand a material they're never going to use? I don't. Why should they waste their time? Overwhelming them like that is just going to lead them to drop out anyways. Better to just ditch and get the pressure off. Do the minimum. Secure a diploma and find a decent job. Although if that school ranked good on the standards, they're probably gonna have to move out of the area.

Explain how public education vis a vis none at all is the actual root of the problem here. "The education system and grading system is a violent and alienating force tied heavily to the state and capitalism" - meanwhile, what would inevitably serve as a substitute for it is the good ol' conventional family, or worse. You don't go backwards in the midst of these problems. None of the problems you're talking about will be solved by destroying public education. End of story.


My cousin, who was trying at his best and taking home average grades, got beaten every time report cards went home.

Which suggests that, if anything, public institutions need to have a heavier basis in the "private" family lives of citizens and students. Many are horrified about, for example, how in East Germany public schools had a lot of power over family life, i.e. students could report their parents for abuse very easily. This would be a good development. I mean isn't it quite a problem when there is absolutely no bridge between "family life" and what goes on at school? Teachers are told they've no business in such affairs. It is the family, not public institutions which is the problem.

[Rafiq]

Grading too, which is just a form of segregating and ranking the students. Literally defining intelligence. Ranking 'dumbest' to 'smartest' and making it dead obvious. A lot of students actually like the subjects given the proper accommodation, but when you grade them on it there's nothing to enjoy out of it. It's all pressure, then you have to do it the way the teacher likes it or else you fuck up your life. It get's worse when you push them to learn to a standard, instead of letting them elaborate at a comfortable pace.

Various bourgeois institutions, "modern" kinds of private schools understand this very well, which is why the students of the bourgeoisie receive excellent forms of education that encourage flexible, creative thinking, critical thought, etc.


Make it more voluntary, no one is gonna become a great scientific philosopher if they have no interest in science and literature but you force them into doing that anyway.

Except children aren't in a position to actually make such decisions. Why should it be voluntary? Also, why aren't kids interested? Is it some kind of inevitability, or is it owed to problems inherent to how they're being taught these subjects?

[willowtooth]

I'm sure alot of you have already seen this, but for those of you who haven't...

8xe6nLVXEC0



firts of all that video was awesome

second of all i did learn alot of the shit hes complaining about not learning in school, how to pay mortgage, i learned in business class, I learned basic chemistry of things like over-the-counter medicine and toothpaste in consumer science, and I learned "what laws of the country I live in" are in civics, i learned CPR in first aid class. I do agree taking trig or calc is worthless if your not pursuing a career in maths, but i was never forced to take any math class above algebra, I learned about current events in social studies I was however forced to take a 2nd language class since 6th grade, (granted i took 6 years of spanish and I can't speak it)

This person is just complaining about his personal experience of his shitty high school nothing more, he couldve also taken these classes in college electively and most likely he didn't go to college

[Cliff Paul]

u9ujEZfCRUU

[Bala Perdida]

Ideology is absolutely irreducible to schooling, and while yes - it is true that schools "burn in ideology", their absence is not going to prevent this. People do not "spontaneously" become Communists only to be curtailed by having been "burned in" by ideology. Because as it happens, among being ideologically conditioned, a great many other things are derived from getting a public education, too - the fact that it is ineffective in fostering critical thought, and so on, is not an argument against the existence of public education or dropping out, but for its improvement.

I mean what you say is beyond stupid. It's not that the problems you mention are not real ones, it's the reality that passing these off as problems without presupposing public education itself as an achievement is laughable. What's the alternative, really? You claim that people should "just get their"GED instead" but again, as far as actual political decision making goes, broadcasting on a loud megaphone what you THINK people should do instead has no practical effect on anything but making yourself feel good.
Listen to this fool!


Communists should actually incorporate into a kind of minimal demand - opposition to the technocratization of the educational system. We should never forget that public education, for all its faults, was fought for bitterly in previous struggles. We should be fighting for better quality education, i.e. MORE "useless shit" being taught in schools.
What? You really think I was intending to reach a loud crowd with that? On a forum barely anyone knows about. This forum asks for discussion and opinion and I gave discussion and opinion. You're over here acting like I'm demonstrating in front of city hall and shit. Even if someone wants to take the advice, good for them. If school is working for them, good for them too. Do that. Getting your GED or diploma isn't even an alternative. It doesn't remove or even change the existing education system. Just recommending you get the bare minimum done so it's easier to find a job. I never gave an alternative.

Not everyone is privileged with having stumbled upon Revleft or the ideas of Communism to be able to see the bullshit in it all in the first place. We should never forget how Marx and Engels conceived petite-bourgeois socialism:
I didn't figure out that school is bullshit by going on revleft or learning about communism. I learned that school is bullshit by going through school. I joined here in my last year of high school. In one of my posts I said that I haven't been wanting to go to college since I was young. To be exact when I was 12. When I was 16 I considered dropping out and taking an equivalency test instead of suffering in high school. I wish I did, but I wasn't able to. Also I don't give a fuck about Marx and Engels.


What you suggest is amply petty-bourgeois, not simply because the "positive" implications of your attacks on public education is its destruction, but that it betrays a mentality that is incapable of approaching the problem outside of an individual level (and even then, this is ridiculous - public education is free, it brings people into association beyond the tyranny, isolation of the household, it establishes a common social space that challenges the "rights" of the family and the father, and so on. Public education is a necessary pre-requisite to socialism insofar as it constitutes COMMON SPACE, insofar as it brings children into association and establishes the formalization of society's collective standards of reason - irreducible to the family household).
I've been through this before. I'm not a marxist, therefore anything I think that happens to be out of line with marxism is petit-bourgeois ideology. Be that as it may that doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not a communist. Also, sure, school brings students together. It also teaches students that some of them are better than others, and hinders a lot of interaction by enforcing education. So much, that it often leads students into isolation when they don't do the work teacher wants them too. You don't need school to socialize.

[Bala Perdida]

But it doesn't matter what Antiochus wants, this isn't the situation today. The political controversy is not about whether a high school diploma SHOULD be a necessary pre-requisite to getting a job, because as it happens, whether there is public education or not some kind of equivalent will be necessary for such jobs.
If they're interested in it go ahead. If not don't bother people with it. Don't force them into such subjects for their existence. There's not really anything to add. Other than that the situation today isn't revolutionary, but by that logic what's the point of even having this website.


Explain how public education vis a vis none at all is the actual root of the problem here. "The education system and grading system is a violent and alienating force tied heavily to the state and capitalism" - meanwhile, what would inevitably serve as a substitute for it is the good ol' conventional family, or worse. You don't go backwards in the midst of these problems. None of the problems you're talking about will be solved by destroying public education. End of story.
Take out the family, and you have the schooling system to replace it. Non of the problems are gonna be solved enforcing education.


Which suggests that, if anything, public institutions need to have a heavier basis in the "private" family lives of citizens and students. Many are horrified about, for example, how in East Germany public schools had a lot of power over family life, i.e. students could report their parents for abuse very easily. This would be a good development. I mean isn't it quite a problem when there is absolutely no bridge between "family life" and what goes on at school? Teachers are told they've no business in such affairs. It is the family, not public institutions which is the problem.
Sure, just handover power to the state. They'll wipe every child up into a fine young soldier. It's all the same shit.

[Bala Perdida]

Various bourgeois institutions, "modern" kinds of private schools understand this very well, which is why the students of the bourgeoisie receive excellent forms of education that encourage flexible, creative thinking, critical thought, etc.
Can they leave? Probably not.



Except children aren't in a position to actually make such decisions. Why should it be voluntary? Also, why aren't kids interested? Is it some kind of inevitability, or is it owed to problems inherent to how they're being taught these subjects?
Why should the teacher be able to decide weather or not I eat after leaving the classroom? Also kids are people so they get more diverse than one problem. If they're not doing good in a subject, and they consistently prove to be incompatible to it. Why force them through it? Why hold it against them?

[Antiochus]

Aristotle summed it up very well when he commented on the Spartan (utilitarian, 'worldly' i.e what you and the video advocate for) education:


It is the standards of civilized men not of beasts that must be kept in mind, for it is good men not beasts who are capable of real courage. Those like the Spartans who concentrate on the one and ignore the other in their education turn men into machines and in devoting themselves to one single aspect of city's life, end up making them inferior even in that

So yes, your views are reactionary with respect to a 2400 year old dead guy.

[Rafiq]

Listen to this fool!

What? You really think I was intending to reach a loud crowd with that? On a forum barely anyone knows about. This forum asks for discussion and opinion and I gave discussion and opinion. You're over here acting like I'm demonstrating in front of city hall and shit. Even if someone wants to take the advice, good for them. If school is working for them, good for them too. Do that. Getting your GED or diploma isn't even an alternative. It doesn't remove or even change the existing education system. Just recommending you get the bare minimum done so it's easier to find a job. I never gave an alternative.

Well no, because incorporating a fight against the ONGOING "standardization" or technocratization of the school system can be produced into a real minimal demand. Meanwhile, "personal opinions" about how people should live their lives, short-cuts on how to cheat the system "depsite what they tell ya" is relegated to libertarian talk shows a la Joe Rogan.

And I'm not attacking you, Fuerte, I'm just saying that what you say is politically irrelevant -it does not stand as a real argument against public education politically. That's all.


I didn't figure out that school is bullshit by going on revleft or learning about communism.

Well that wasn't my point. Clearly most ordinary people can see that it's bullshit (especially in the American ghettos), but my point is that how they see that doesn't translate into the necessary practicality that Fuerte, as enlightened as he is, tells us is possible. In other words, for many people the alternative to schooling is turning to gangs, drugs, conditions of destitution, the military, and whatever you want. So no, "bullshit" in this context isn't realizing the faults of the school system or not taking it seriously, but recognizing that this doesn't have to be inevitably bound up with all education in general, that these problems are of a systemic nature and so on. You don't arrive at that conclusion from any practical experience - quite on the contrary, practical experience gives people hopelessness and misery.


Also I don't give a fuck about Marx and Engels.

Certainly we do not ask you to, however, the argument being conveyed here, whether having its origin in either Marx & Engels or my ass, needs to be addressed. No one really cares if you're not a Marxist, because this isn't an identity contest.


I'm not a marxist, therefore anything I think that happens to be out of line with marxism is petit-bourgeois ideology. Be that as it may that doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not a communist.

I've provided thorough, consistent qualifications for what constitutes a "petite-bourgeois" ideologue. Frankly, fuerte, as it happens no one cares about this "I'm not a communist" 3edgy5me attitude. You make it seem like your ideas are just spontaneous, as though you're not inevitably identified with the Left if we juxtapose you with all other political discourse - sorry, when you criticize something, when you attack something, that has POSITIVE implications. By what merit do you attack public education? The alternative you give us is much worse.


Also, sure, school brings students together. It also teaches students that some of them are better than others, and hinders a lot of interaction by enforcing education. So much, that it often leads students into isolation when they don't do the work teacher wants them too.

Yes, there are plenty of problems. That's not the point. The point is that it brings students into association, regardless of how this is specifically expressed. This alone is an achievment, because in contrast to the alternative - the tyranny of the household, it is an acheivment. In contrast to bringing students in association while totally revamping the educational system on Communist lines (i.e. like the Soviet pedagogic experiments), of course it is to be opposed. But that's not even on the table right now, what's on the table is a real campaign to defund public education, or at worse technocraticize, standardize it while the children of the bourgeoisie enrich their minds with the treasures of mankind, express themselves to the fullest possible extent, etc.


You don't need school to socialize.

No, you don't, but you need it - in present day society - to constitute an institutional basis for socialization that has a formal basis. This is a necessary pre-requisite to socialism.


If they're interested in it go ahead. If not don't bother people with it.

Free will isn't real. In other words, people's interests are not sufficient unto themselves - there's a reason for that. There's every reason to think all people are curious about such things. And there is ample evidence, even in our society, to show that - how the curiosity of children is curtailed, punished, and so on. In a Communist society, KNOWING the world you live in to its fullest extent would be a pre-requisite to living it. Conversely in our society, we simplify, water down the most complex things (i.e. like a computer) with absolutely no practical knowledge of how such things that are so pivotal to our lives and survival work. Just an example (take the evolution of the computer OS, more and more a glamorous disparity between directly relating to the the mechanical basis for the computer and how we interact with it).


Take out the family, and you have the schooling system to replace it. Non of the problems are gonna be solved enforcing education.

You have the schooling system on one hand, and the basis of a child's socialization, cultivation of knowledge, and learning in general. On the other hand, you have the family, which only teaches children insofar as it relegates back to the whims of the family - and not the commons as a whole. Sorry, do you even know how these problems work? Or, excuse me, are they relegated to how society "infringes" upon a child's "natural" development? In which case sorry yes, none of us find it that the family will be replaced by running around naked in the forest.


Sure, just handover power to the state. They'll wipe every child up into a fine young soldier. It's all the same shit.

As good Trotsky told herr Kautsky, the difference is that our soldiers are fighting the class war, defending the proletarian dictatorship, while the soldiers of the bourgeois state are reinforcing conditions which are amply not in their favor. In his own words, this difference suffices for us Communists.


Can they leave? Probably not.

Virtually none have any reason to leave. This is what you don't get. If you don't believe me, go ahead and compare drop-out rates in later years.


Why should the teacher be able to decide weather or not I eat after leaving the classroom?

The teacher isn't deciding that anymore than your parents are, or that one guy who fucked you over, or your boss, etc. however, this exists within a wider systemic context. If I'm misreading you, correct me. In which case, if you're referring to lunch schedules: because kids aren't magically embedded with the ability to know what's best for them.


If they're not doing good in a subject, and they consistently prove to be incompatible to it. Why force them through it? Why hold it against them?

Because no one is "naturally" incompatible with subjects. If certain children need certain types of learning methods, all of this will have to be dealt with and sorted out. Children aren't a bunch of unique special little snowflakes - definite patterns can be found. But no one is "incompatible" with subjects. That is nonsense! If you're "incompatible" with a subject, you're incompatible with life, because subjects constitute nothing more than knowledge, consciousness of it.

[Bala Perdida]

Aristotle summed it up very well when he commented on the Spartan (utilitarian, 'worldly' i.e what you and the video advocate for) education:



So yes, your views are reactionary with respect to a 2400 year old dead guy.

lol civilized men. Also I just realized this thread is in music.

[Bala Perdida]

Well no, because incorporating a fight against the ONGOING "standardization" or technocratization of the school system can be produced into a real minimal demand. Meanwhile, "personal opinions" about how people should live their lives, short-cuts on how to cheat the system "depsite what they tell ya" is relegated to libertarian talk shows a la Joe Rogan.

And I'm not attacking you, Fuerte, I'm just saying that what you say is politically irrelevant -it does not stand as a real argument against public education politically. That's all.



Well that wasn't my point. Clearly most ordinary people can see that it's bullshit (especially in the American ghettos), but my point is that how they see that doesn't translate into the necessary practicality that Fuerte, as enlightened as he is, tells us is possible. In other words, for many people the alternative to schooling is turning to gangs, drugs, conditions of destitution, the military, and whatever you want. So no, "bullshit" in this context isn't realizing the faults of the school system or not taking it seriously, but recognizing that this doesn't have to be inevitably bound up with all education in general, that these problems are of a systemic nature and so on. You don't arrive at that conclusion from any practical experience - quite on the contrary, practical experience gives people hopelessness and misery.



Certainly we do not ask you to, however, the argument being conveyed here, whether having its origin in either Marx & Engels or my ass, needs to be addressed. No one really cares if you're not a Marxist, because this isn't an identity contest.



I've provided thorough, consistent qualifications for what constitutes a "petite-bourgeois" ideologue. Frankly, fuerte, as it happens no one cares about this "I'm not a communist" 3edgy5me attitude. You make it seem like your ideas are just spontaneous, as though you're not inevitably identified with the Left if we juxtapose you with all other political discourse - sorry, when you criticize something, when you attack something, that has POSITIVE implications. By what merit do you attack public education? The alternative you give us is much worse.



Yes, there are plenty of problems. That's not the point. The point is that it brings students into association, regardless of how this is specifically expressed. This alone is an achievment, because in contrast to the alternative - the tyranny of the household, it is an acheivment. In contrast to bringing students in association while totally revamping the educational system on Communist lines (i.e. like the Soviet pedagogic experiments), of course it is to be opposed. But that's not even on the table right now, what's on the table is a real campaign to defund public education, or at worse technocraticize, standardize it while the children of the bourgeoisie enrich their minds with the treasures of mankind, express themselves to the fullest possible extent, etc.



No, you don't, but you need it - in present day society - to constitute an institutional basis for socialization that has a formal basis. This is a necessary pre-requisite to socialism.



Free will isn't real. In other words, people's interests are not sufficient unto themselves - there's a reason for that. There's every reason to think all people are curious about such things. And there is ample evidence, even in our society, to show that - how the curiosity of children is curtailed, punished, and so on. In a Communist society, KNOWING the world you live in to its fullest extent would be a pre-requisite to living it. Conversely in our society, we simplify, water down the most complex things (i.e. like a computer) with absolutely no practical knowledge of how such things that are so pivotal to our lives and survival work. Just an example (take the evolution of the computer OS, more and more a glamorous disparity between directly relating to the the mechanical basis for the computer and how we interact with it).



You have the schooling system on one hand, and the basis of a child's socialization, cultivation of knowledge, and learning in general. Sorry, do you even know how these problems work? Or, excuse me, are they relegated to how society "infringes" upon a child's "natural" development? In which case sorry yes, none of us find it that the family will be replaced by running around naked in the forest.



As good Trotsky told herr Kautsky, the difference is that our soldiers are fighting the class war, defending the proletarian dictatorship, while the soldiers of the bourgeois state are reinforcing conditions which are amply not in their favor. In his own words, this difference suffices for us Communists.



Virtually none have any reason to leave. This is what you don't get. If you don't believe me, go ahead and compare drop-out rates in later years.



The teacher isn't deciding that anymore than your parents are, or that one guy who fucked you over, or your boss, etc. however, this exists within a wider systemic context. If I'm misreading you, correct me. In which case, if you're referring to lunch schedules: because kids aren't magically embedded with the ability to know what's best for them.



Because no one is "naturally" incompatible with subjects. If certain children need certain types of learning methods, all of this will have to be dealt with and sorted out. Children aren't a bunch of unique special little snowflakes - definite patterns can be found. But no one is "incompatible" with subjects. That is nonsense! If you're "incompatible" with a subject, you're incompatible with life, because subjects constitute nothing more than knowledge, consciousness of it.

I already laid out my view on generalized school. I don't think I can do anything at this point except repeat myself. Also I felt it necessary to explain my position in regards to Marx and communism, since you keep criticizing me in regards to Marx and communism. Also keep justifying generalized school as a pre-requisite to socialism. As well as some talk of my alternative, which I've never provided or claimed I had in mind.

[Invader Zim]

The standardized tests, which deem my old high school good, are contributing to the rising rent where I live and making this apartment more expensive a month.How so?


Also, the average grade level math classes (which I barely graded into every year) where more painful than they ever where rewarding.I thought the same at the time and for several years after. Then I grew up. Now I wish that I had made the most of my time in mathematics classes.


When I was young, I was punished at home for being bad at math.What do the decisions made by your parents have to do with the merits of formal education?


When I was in my last year of grade school, I had to give up my free-time unwillingly because my math teacher told me to stay after because I wasn't learning the material.http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k1HVh7Ugstc/Tg0MtkdfCHI/AAAAAAAAAIA/YgCMkIvtK4Y/s1600/wambulance.jpg

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

i think that rather than arguing about whether 'school is useless' or not in this thread, we should concentrate on how communists and anarchists can work towards creating an inclusive, participatory and liberatory education outside the current capitalist school system, particularly those (like some posters in this thread) who have been penalised and failed by the current paradigm, either by inability or unwillingness to fit in or by a prescribed 'lack of ability.'

As a side note, in the current system all learning can be considered 'vocational', and i would not be surprised if there was a strong element of class in how 'vocational' is applied to different students. I went to a school with a wide cachement area, and i distinctly remember that by A-level, different subjects were dominated by people from one background or another. It goes without saying that students described as 'gifted' or 'talented' were usually from better off backgrounds.

[Ele'ill]

the shit people defend on this forum, school, religion, cops, prisons, work, family, lol

[Tim Cornelis]

If opposing dropping out as a standard advice is defending current school institutions, then is opposing "going of the grid to fight capitalism" support for capitalism?

[DOOM]

the shit people defend on this forum, school, religion, cops, prisons, work, family, lol

Yeah because a mature (? mündig is the term I mean) working class will pop outta fucking nowhere.

The bourgs are laughing up their sleeves while masses of working class people are denied of education. Of course, the bourgeois school is inherently tied to the valorisation process and the place for learning capitalist (self) discipline. But this doesn't mean that working class people should refrain from visiting schools.

[Ele'ill]

"hey what do you think of school?"

"well it didn't work for me and scores of other people, here's a suggestion and why"

"NO YOU'RE WRONG THINK ABOUT THE PROVERBIAL CHILDREN"

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

in case it wasnt clear i'm not defending school at all, i hated almost every individual second i spent there with pathological intensity and resented having to be there deeply. over the almost 15 years i ended up spending in full time state education i reckon i could count maybe three or four teachers/classes i did that i genuinely took valuable learning from, everything else at best filled me with a sense that i was just doing this to become the mythical 'well rounded person' whos haunted my life since the age of 12 or so.

[Comrade #138672]

Karl Marx never went to school either. He wrote Das Kapital because of his practical skills in daily life.

[Antiochus]

Karl Marx never went to school either. He wrote Das Kapital because of his practical skills in daily life.

You are without a doubt, a complete idiot.

[Comrade #138672]

You are without a doubt, a complete idiot.No need to insult me. I was being sarcastic. I thought it was obvious, but I guess I was wrong.

[Bala Perdida]

How so?
The school district being deemed good raises the property value. They told us this every time testing came around. "Do good because then you're parents house is worth more." I intentionally just guessed on the whole thing after they cleared up that it doesn't affect how you actually do in school. That didn't stop the rent increases, and got me some mad teachers the next semesters, but oh well.


I thought the same at the time and for several years after. Then I grew up. Now I wish that I had made the most of my time in mathematics classes.

What do the decisions made by your parents have to do with the merits of formal education?

That older and wiser bullshit doesn't fly here. Staying after to do work and then spending a lot time at home doing work for math class, I did just about all I could. I'm not looking to advance in any field that requires extensive use of math because I'm bad at math. Why waste my time? I don't even like doing it.

There are no merits. That's why I was being punished. The system deemed me as knowing less than what I'm supposed to, said it was my fault too.

I thought by using stuff I went through I could provide some real world examples to help elaborate my point. Some of the flaws with grading and standards happening now. Instead I get a meme with a bad pun.

[Hatshepsut]

Public education is a necessary pre-requisite to socialism...it brings children into association and establishes the formalization of society's collective standards of reason - irreducible to the family household.


As a side note, in the current system all learning can be considered 'vocational', and i would not be surprised if there was a strong element of class in how 'vocational' is applied to different students.

Interesting to see “Who’s to blame: Family or Schools?” enter leftist debate as it’s long been a favorite bourgeois diversionary tactic. Alongside much individualism on the other hand. Capitalism is causal here. The arrangement where families “own” their kids as near-private property is an artifact of feudalism carried forward into capitalism. Communism proposes to break this linkage—although there’s nothing wrong with family living per se, if the families raise the new generation in a way compatible with socialist principles.

On recent thread I traced the concept of curriculum violence back to Erhabor Ighodaro’s beginning to use it at the turn of the century. Jonathan Kozol (Harper’s, Sep. 2005) described a young black lady in the Fremont, California system who was programmed into sewing and hairdressing courses, told they were required, while richer kids nearby had residential architecture to meet the state’s technical arts curriculum. So “violence” makes sense in terms of the mental cesspool capitalism has made of schooling, unless you prefer “sham.” Yet it was capitalism that brought humankind up from universal illiteracy and communism intends to retain education outside the home.

Workers don’t live simply to have a vocation and make money. They live to uplift their spirits through educational, recreational, artistic, and athletic pursuits and the enjoyment of time spent creating the social weal, which does not emphasize individualism. The latter is linchpin for capitalism and a lie—It promises more personal freedom even as it can’t deliver it. Socialism also doesn’t emphasize the family, a thing the campesinos have gravitated toward because states have brutalized them for so many centuries that they can’t get support elsewhere.

There’s a balance: Young people can choose to leave school if it’s not working out for them, but they’ll need to be at least 16.

[BIXX]

Seriously, fuck everyone who is dogpiling Campesina. This is why this forum is bullshit, when you encounter a stance that you don't understand you never even bother trying to understand it before screaming that it's reactionary of petty bourgeois or whatever the fuck.

I love how everyone thinks that school will magically become better "when the bourgeoisie don't control it!"

Holy shit, really? Shool will do something that it has never done it history ever? I don't think so.

Why does everyone insist on an authoritarian mode of education? Be sure your society needs that. Your society inherently needs to violence against individuals so that they will fall in line and not break status quo. Because realistically, its not like people just didn't learn when there was no school, if they learned, they did it on their own, perhaps asking someone to help them. They didn't need some massive violent institution to make them learn.

But whatever. Just like was said earlier in this thread, this forum is full of dumbasses who want to work and have police watching over them so they can send the "bad guys" to prison and some of you even want money to regulate what people can and can't have access to. You fucjs just want capitalism with the surface changed.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

i'm not usually one to go in for quote-dropping but i think a lot of users would do well to remember that “To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders. ” in Paulo Freire's words. It is absolutely in error to think that we can just continue using the 'banking' model of education because the Universal Panacea of Communism will somehow divest the traditional model of schooling of its reactionary nature.

[BIXX]

I think however that learning, when removing all the violence from it, couldnt even realistically be called school because of its massive qualitative differences

[BIXX]

There’s a balance: Young people can choose to leave school if it’s not working out for them, but they’ll need to be at least 16.

"Young people can leave school but only when they decide to"

"Young people can leave school but only when they'd have been able to graduate school at that time anyway"

Seriously what the fuck? Why even bother?

[Hatshepsut]

Seriously, fuck everyone who is dogpiling Campesina....Why does everyone insist on an authoritarian mode of education?

I'll try not to pick on Campesina and others who didn't have good experiences with school. I'll even admit it's a hotbed for kids who bully weaker kids as well. Yet it's indispensable if you want a society that operates at a technical level higher than farming with hand tools.

They have to be mandatory too. Otherwise half the children opt out, or their parents won't let them attend because they're needed for dishwashing in the family restaurant. When they grow up, you have millions of people who aren't fully employable and will be relegated to lives of hard labor even if wage unfairness is eliminated. Not to school throws away the skills and potential of children, a criminal thing for a society to do to them.

The Lakota had Tiposaye for raising children collectively to live the way they did on the American prairie. I doubt a school that must provide education in quantity, covering reading and mathematics, can duplicate the childhood experience of being able to play with model tipis and arrow launchers while running free under the trees that line the streambanks. But honestly, can we provide that lifestyle for the 7 billion people the world must feed today? And was it even as idyllic as we're told it was?

Unregulated societies can have their own peculiar problems, sometimes including tyrannical regimens imposed by heads of household, elders, or peers. Amish societies pretty much governed themselves, albeit via a deep and religious strictness. The hippie communes from the 1960s couldn't govern themselves adequately and failed down to the last one.

Everyone advocating for schools on this thread has given arguments. It's easier to rail against those arguments with emotional one-liners than it is to rebut them.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

the shit people defend on this forum, school, religion, cops, prisons, work, family, lol

Yeah, that's my general assessment of this site, but I don't think it's the same thing in this case. People aren't saying there are going to be schools as such in socialism (obviously with the abolition of the family the way in which education works is also going to be radically restructures), we're (1) saying that in most cases it's not a good idea to drop out of school (just like in most cases it's not a good idea to run away from your family even though the family is a problematic social form), and (2) we oppose this sort of "they made me learn maths" ideology, it's not radical, in fact it's bourgeois to the core.

[Ele'ill]

My reply wasn't being directed towards everyone in this thread or everyone who had good experience w/school or liked aspects of it but with what looks like a latent fetishization of democracy and ordered process- of accepted marginalization. What are the numbers? How many people does school and family fail? This makes 'most' completely meaningless even if it is an accurate assessment of the situation. We still end up with say a miniscule percentage representing 'people who can't hack it' that equals out to be hundreds of thousands of people. Mental health is another excellent example of this. An acceptable loss? Clearly you don't feel that way but some of the other users come to pretty bizarre conclusions.


Also to note is that we, myself included, can fall into the way of thinking that our current society has taught us, where we see situations with the limited good/bad dichotomy and argue the positions accordingly. Simply because people have left family/school, does not mean that they are doing well, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't be doing worse had they stayed.

[BIXX]

Everyone advocating for schools on this thread has given arguments. It's easier to rail against those arguments with emotional one-liners than it is to rebut them.

It's not that you don't have arguments its that your arguments don't respond to the criticisms put forward by those critical of school and how it relates to civilization and society. And presenting it as if it's just emotional one-liners being posted ITT against school is stupid, or rather, purposefully ignorant.

[willowtooth]

Yeah, that's my general assessment of this site, but I don't think it's the same thing in this case. People aren't saying there are going to be schools as such in socialism (obviously with the abolition of the family the way in which education works is also going to be radically restructures), we're (1) saying that in most cases it's not a good idea to drop out of school (just like in most cases it's not a good idea to run away from your family even though the family is a problematic social form), and (2) we oppose this sort of "they made me learn maths" ideology, it's not radical, in fact it's bourgeois to the core.

so what would schools look like in socialism, we still need to teach people to read and write, we still need doctors, and engineers. teaching and learning are 2 of the most natural and social activities there are, in fact were all doing it right now. ;)

Since we wouldn't advocate a kid dropping out of school just like we wouldn't advocate a child running away from home, what should we be advocating other than reforms to the current schools?

[Hatshepsut]

It's not that you don't have arguments its that your arguments don't respond to the criticisms put forward by those critical of school and how it relates to civilization and society.

There are a few one liners plus lots of words like "fuck" and "shit" being tossed on this thread, so mentioning "one-liner emotional responses" isn't out of order. Most of the criticism I've seen here is based on personal experience and feelings. Politics itself comes from the heart, with reason brought in to justify things already decided upon.

Where there are real criticisms, I've answered them in posts #10 and #43, where I agreed the phenomena of "curriculum violence" and the standardized testing game are two farces that don't belong in the schools, but did not agree that abolishing education outside the home, or making it optional, are solutions. I stated why: For instance, "optional" can mean parents who want their kids to work full time will decide whether they attend school.

Unlike liberals and "moral leftists," communists cannot stand categorically opposed to violence, especially when their favoring the overthrow of bourgeois states would make such a stand pure hypocrisy from the start. Violence inheres in life, beginning with the fact that every one of us will die someday. Do you think cancer isn't violent? Try having it. Likewise, the process of socializing children from birth is violent to some degree. Life's sole noncoercive experience is the utter comfort and freedom when we are in no pain and under no constraints from the outside world. A thing we rarely enjoy, although the moments we do have this joy make our lives worthwhile.

[Bala Perdida]

There are a few one liners plus lots of words like "fuck" and "shit" being tossed on this thread, so mentioning "one-liner emotional responses" isn't out of order.
Isn't out of order? No, it's out of this fucking world. There's like three one liners coming and those are hardly emotional at all. One just summarizes the situation and doesn't even make a point that could be considered a response. The others hint at some views which are already in dispute on the forum in general, so we're just attempting to keep the talk focused on school. There's some one-liners coming from the people advocating for schools. Although I'm not intellectually self-absorbed enough to say that everybody criticizing school has elaborated fully, and everybody advocating it is just tossing out one-liners.

Also, this isn't a fucking parliament. So if "fuck" and "shit" disturb you, try taking that powdered wig off and going outside. Those words don't change the content of the argument anyway, that's just some holier than thou shit there. Trying to treat me like I'm in a fucking classroom now. Lol. I'm 19 you said I'm allowed to be clear of that shit.

Most of the criticism I've seen here is based on personal experience and feelings. Politics itself comes from the heart, with reason brought in to justify things already decided upon.
based on personal experience and feelings
Politics itself comes from the heart
from the heart
Really? Are you fucking serious? Did you even proof read that shit? "oh, your opinions suck! They come from feeelings. Politics are better! They come from deeeper feeelings." Seriously, I already cleared up that the personal experience was added on there to show some of the realities of the situation happening today. I don't even know what the hell you're trying to argue by saying it's guided by feelings. It's still a position to be held to be against schools. Not from a christian perspective, or bullshit pro-family perspective. A perspective against the alienation and violence of school, which you so far have said you intend on keeping. Only with the change of letting kids out once there just about finishing up being kids. Which the current system already does in a lot of places.


Where there are real criticisms, I've answered them in posts #10 and #43, where I agreed the phenomena of "curriculum violence" and the standardized testing game are two farces that don't belong in the schools, but did not agree that abolishing education outside the home, or making it optional, are solutions. I stated why: For instance, "optional" can mean parents who want their kids to work full time will decide whether they attend school.
You didn't answer dick. You just said that school is unavoidable and that the family sucks. That kids can leave school after it's already been fucking with them till they're just about adults. Also, no one has advocated for abolishing education. If that's what you think, then no wonder you keep talking non-sense about education being gone and the family taking it's place. Apparently, capitalism isn't destroyed in your scenario.


Unlike liberals and "moral leftists," communists cannot stand categorically opposed to violence, especially when their favoring the overthrow of bourgeois states would make such a stand pure hypocrisy from the start. Violence inheres in life, beginning with the fact that every one of us will die someday. Do you think cancer isn't violent? Try having it. Likewise, the process of socializing children from birth is violent to some degree. Life's sole noncoercive experience is the utter comfort and freedom when we are in no pain and under no constraints from the outside world. A thing we rarely enjoy, although the moments we do have this joy make our lives worthwhile.
Violence and aggression against capitalism is necessary because capitalism imposes violence and aggression against those under it. That's why a person agitates to achieve liberation, not to get whipped by a different person. Life is shitty under capitalism, so your solution is to make life shitty under communism? What the fuck is that? What's the point? Limiting our lives to a few moments? 'Life is violent so let's make it harder for everyone'. That's fucked up.

[Puzzled Left]

Also to note is that we, myself included, can fall into the way of thinking that our current society has taught us, where we see situations with the limited good/bad dichotomy and argue the positions accordingly. Simply because people have left family/school, does not mean that they are doing well, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't be doing worse had they stayed.

Nobody is claiming the current form of public education is great and not full of flaws. But such statement makes people wondering how far you are removed from the reality. Do you have any idea what life looks like for the vast majority of people who do not have a decent education (for capitalist standard) in most parts of the world. Just go any part of the world whose capitalist development is less advance, in which large part of the population are largely deprived of the access to school, and you will witness a level of misery far worse than "doing well." I repeat: school is shit, but the implication that people may be better if they left is mindless romanticism at its worst.

[Antiochus]

I just don't see Campesina or anyone else making any sort of coherent argument other than whining that they don't want to learn math because they'd rather be out jerking off or having "free time".

Off course the reason that people say these things is precisely because they live in an advanced capitalist economy with (minimal) standards of social welfare.

I mean seriously, do you know how hard people in developing countries or in the past fought for public education? The debate here isn't improving it, everyone here I assume agrees that it should be improved, the debate is whether public education is obsolete or not, and it is not.

And your "I am not against education.... I am just against the school", is a fucking fantasy.

[Ele'ill]

Nobody is claiming the current form of public education is great and not full of flaws. But such statement makes people wondering how far you are removed from the reality. Do you have any idea what life looks like for the vast majority of people who do not have a decent education (for capitalist standard) in most parts of the world. Just go any part of the world whose capitalist development is less advance, in which large part of the population are largely deprived of the access to school, and you will witness a level of misery far worse than "doing well." I repeat: school is shit, but the implication that people may be better if they left is mindless romanticism at its worst.


Those hundreds of thousands, millions, who had access to the standard capitalist education and were failed by it, those written off as statistical anomalies and acceptable losses, with no other options offered to them, would increase in number. The numbers of those dropping out and seeking alternatives to the standard education would increase as well. If we expanded current mental health practices, and a score of other shit, the problems inherent with them wouldn't go away. Idk, maybe your vision of future communism carries with it vast deserts of misery from the old world because those things worked for you, but at least recognize that expanding the proverbial children of society, even if its a majority, leaves a lot of people in a world not worth living, or at least, a world worthy of insurgency.

[Hatshepsut]

Also, this isn't a fucking parliament. So if "fuck" and "shit" disturb you, try taking that powdered wig off and going outside. Those words don't change the content of the argument anyway, that's just some holier than thou shit there. Trying to treat me like I'm in a fucking classroom now. Lol. I'm 19 you said I'm allowed to be clear of that shit.

The use of cuss words doesn’t bother me particularly; whatever shock value they might have once had is long gone. Besides we hear President Johnson shouting those words in his phone conversations on tape. Because some folks learned enough math, physics, engineering, and machine shop in the schools to make tape recorders a reality.

I didn’t address you in the post above you chose to quote, so it can’t be “treating” you whether pedantic or not. This forum structures like a parliament in some ways; otherwise it becomes a horseshoe pit where people toss insults trying to hit that metal rod. Getting older won’t necessarily imply I am wiser, as memory and certain other aspects of mental function decline with enough age. It’s made me realize distinguishing even a small amount of truth from bullshit takes a long time and costs a lot more than I thought it would. Good reason to shun offering unsolicited advice to younger generations who think they’ve been burnt when their trip through the wringer hasn’t even started yet.

As for “comes from the heart,” I simply mean historically that’s how it’s been. Marx and Engels attempted to put politics and economy on a scientific basis, the alternative to having it come from emotionalism. Given the frequency of personality cults and value-laden political ads, I’d say they had mixed success although the scientific approach remains worth doing. Economics and history can be analyzed, which beats reacting to them without forethought.

We well know that power and violence corrupt. Hence, if we execute violence against capitalism, likely we’ll face dealing with power struggles and repression after capitalism is overthrown. The history of Communism teaches us this. It’s a difficulty the Revolutionary Left habitually papers over. Reducing personal violence and abolishing its larger manifestations such as nuclear war are both possible, otherwise I couldn’t favor revolution. But it won’t be easily achieved and it will take time.


You just said that school is unavoidable and that the family sucks.

I never said the family sucks. You may be putting words into my mouth which aren’t there. However the comment shows you’ve reached fair inferences, for which you deserve praise from your comrades here.

Communists are suspicious of the family, given that violence begins at home. Homes vary greatly in quality while, politically, we want primary loyalty toward the goals of communism instead of toward the family and clan institutions of the human past. At the same time we recognize families provide a love not readily available elsewhere. In the moderate solution to this societal contradiction, the influence of parents and next-door neighbors will be tempered by daytime education in schools.

If I recall you said we’ll have voluntary school attendance or some unspecified mode of teaching not done in a school. That won’t work. A shared culture being what holds society together, up to now public schools are the only place the required socialization, broader political awareness, and needed skills can be taught. Parents do not own their children and cannot claim a right to keep them out of it, nor can children too young to enter the workforce be given this choice.

[Ele'ill]

So I don't personally care that much but does anyone think that this thread should be moved out of Music and into Theory or something? Yes there is a pretty significant disagreement but the posts from both sides are for the most part pretty articulate and representitive of specific positions on the issue. Maybe I am the only one who feels that way idk.

[Sinister Intents]

So I don't personally care that much but does anyone think that this thread should be moved out of Music and into Theory or something? Yes there is a pretty significant disagreement but the posts from both sides are for the most part pretty articulate and representitive of specific positions on the issue. Maybe I am the only one who feels that way idk.

Sounds like a good idea.

As per my position I oppose schooling and education as well as the family as they currently exist. As per a defined position on a solution: I don't know what to say other than to echo the fact that a change in the mode of production will change how this exist whether it be a change backwards or an expansion upon what currently exists, or radical change which we can't exactly articulate in a proper manner of what that could be. We can certainly use the past to extrapolate what may come, but we can't predict what will happen.

Education will certainly be a necessity under the next stage in history, whether it's mandatory or not, it will be necessary to educate people for specific circumstances which often times can be done on site or in some other manner directly. I think I remember reading something by Emma Goldman on this, I'll visit that and come back with a more nuanced position if I have the confidence.

[BIXX]

I just guessbi don't understand why people think that without school people would stop learning. That makes no sense.

[Sinister Intents]

I just guessbi don't understand why people think that without school people would stop learning. That makes no sense.

Learning is a constant process, certainly. We all learn something new every day, and education can only help. What do you propose for education?

[BIXX]

Learning is a constant process, certainly. We all learn something new every day, and education can only help. What do you propose for education?

Nothing.

[Sinister Intents]

Nothing.

Why nothing? Because you see it as pointless or to a similar effect?

[Црвена]

I essentially agree with SI on this, but I'm not sure "education," is a good word to describe whatever a schooling equivalent will look like in socialism. To me, "being educated," implies being a passive object of the process of education, rather than learning, growing and creating of one's own accord. Thus "being educated," is a good way to describe what happens under capitalism, but not what will happen in a classless society where people are free to pursue what they love. I'm probably overthinking this, but that's just my impression. Also, since work and leisure will merge in communism, so will education and leisure, so "education," will in effect cease to exist in the same way as "work."


so what would schools look like in socialism, we still need to teach people to read and write, we still need doctors, and engineers. teaching and learning are 2 of the most natural and social activities there are, in fact were all doing it right now. ;)

Since we wouldn't advocate a kid dropping out of school just like we wouldn't advocate a child running away from home, what should we be advocating other than reforms to the current schools?

Again, I imagine it would be similar to "work," under socialism. More integrated, if not completely integrated, into home life, based around pursuit of one's own interests and democratically managed by students, teachers and general society. It would probably also be something everyone could choose to attend or not to attend, regardless of age, and classes may be based on difficulty as opposed to age (although there would generally be a positive correlation between difficulty and average age). That's just how I see it, of course, not some kind of blueprint.


I just don't see Campesina or anyone else making any sort of coherent argument other than whining that they don't want to learn math because they'd rather be out jerking off or having "free time".

Off course the reason that people say these things is precisely because they live in an advanced capitalist economy with (minimal) standards of social welfare.

I mean seriously, do you know how hard people in developing countries or in the past fought for public education? The debate here isn't improving it, everyone here I assume agrees that it should be improved, the debate is whether public education is obsolete or not, and it is not.

And your "I am not against education.... I am just against the school", is a fucking fantasy.

Jerking off is probably a lot more stimulating (heh, I'm so mature), enjoyable and productive than going through the education system, to be honest.

Do you know how hard people fought, and still fight, for voting rights? That doesn't change the fact that voting is utterly obsolete and futile. The same applies to public education (and it's not like there will be a state in socialism to provide public education anyway). Public education was born with capitalism - it became widespread as capitalism did - and it will die with capitalism.

What is fantastical about opposing school but not education? It's perfectly possible to oppose the way something is done without opposing the thing itself.

[BIXX]

I just don't see Campesina or anyone else making any sort of coherent argument other than whining that they don't want to learn math because they'd rather be out jerking off or having "free time".

Off course the reason that people say these things is precisely because they live in an advanced capitalist economy with (minimal) standards of social welfare.

I mean seriously, do you know how hard people in developing countries or in the past fought for public education? The debate here isn't improving it, everyone here I assume agrees that it should be improved, the debate is whether public education is obsolete or not, and it is not.

And your "I am not against education.... I am just against the school", is a fucking fantasy.

Do you know how many proles have died fighting communism? Obviously communism is bad!

I don't really care who fought for what. I don't want to pretend my desires are the same as those who precede me.

[Puzzled Left]

Those hundreds of thousands, millions, who had access to the standard capitalist education and were failed by it, those written off as statistical anomalies and acceptable losses, with no other options offered to them, would increase in number. The numbers of those dropping out and seeking alternatives to the standard education would increase as well. If we expanded current mental health practices, and a score of other shit, the problems inherent with them wouldn't go away. Idk, maybe your vision of future communism carries with it vast deserts of misery from the old world because those things worked for you, but at least recognize that expanding the proverbial children of society, even if its a majority, leaves a lot of people in a world not worth living, or at least, a world worthy of insurgency.

Sigh. I repeatedly stated in my post that the current public education system is full of shit, and certainly not worthy of "future communism." And no, school do not "work" for me (if only everything is as simple as the dichotomy of working and not working). My point is that it is dangerous to think that somehow ignoring the public system/dropping out is going to helpful for the vast majority of the population. There will be and need to be a better alternative system (it may not be called "school" anymore), but there is not a comprehensive and reliable alternative now. Cutting schools does not provide any long-term benefit for most. Most school-aged people who are not attending public education cannot afford to seek alternative source of education and are often more susceptible to more severe forms of oppression (child-labor, violence of the family and economy in general, etc.).This is one of the reason why lives of children in lesser developed nations suffer even more, and we need not to be ignorant of that. This is why people there fight for schools because it is in the working class' immediate interest, and the children of the working class can get at least a modicum of knowledge and hopefully enough critical thinking skills to defend and challenge the ruling class and capitalist system, the downfall of which will change the education system itself. I believe it is true for children living in advanced economy as well.

[Antiochus]

Do you know how hard people fought, and still fight, for voting rights? That doesn't change the fact that voting is utterly obsolete and futile.

*YAWN*

Voting is obsolete? Off course not. Bourgeoisie elections might be useless, but that does NOT change the fact that it is a clear axiom (voting rights), the fact that no one should be denied a say in society. Off course, this is not the case in capitalism, but it is no longer overt, very few fuckwads argue that only a minority of people should have the right to vote (which off course will be entirely necessary in Communism anyway).

Seriously, do you people think of what you are writing? It is tantamount to arguing that overt chattel slavery should not be fought against because Blacks in the U.S have a shit life there, how ridiculous. It is nothing more than supporting the reactionary status quo, or worse, returning to some sort of macabre world.

Without public education you will almost certainly have a return to universal illiteracy, widespread ignorance and far more effective propaganda by the powers that be (in Capitalism). In Communism, public education will off course be an integral part since the organ that provided education before it (the family) will be abolished. That being said, some 'leftists' might harbour illusions that children will self-teach themselves calculus, and hey if they don't, who the fuck cares? Let them not be tainted by the evils of civilization and knowledge, lets return to the fucking garden of Eden and kill the snake before he tempts Eve.

INB4 "THATS NOT MY POSITION EVEN THOUGHT IT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM ARTICULATING BY OPPOSING PUBLIC EDUCATION WITHOUT ANY COHERENT ALTERNATIVE"



The same applies to public education (and it's not like there will be a state in socialism to provide public education anyway).

Fantasy. There won't be a 'state' in the sense that there will be an ideologically driven institution that mystifies class consciousness, ok. But you still need to administer healthcare, build infrastructure and so forth, it will be publicly owned and administered. If you want to call it "FRIDUMB HAUSE" instead of a state or government, be my guest. Nevertheless it will have all of the administrative functions of the state.



What is fantastical about opposing school but not education? It's perfectly possible to oppose the way something is done without opposing the thing itself.

The public school is more than simply about education thought. Others have touched on this, but the school is also a place of socialization and indoctrination (err Orwellian but w/e) into the ruling ideology (in this case, Communism). You can't have that without the public school. What exactly do you imagine will replace the school in the future? Regardless of your suggestion, I doubt it will be some sort of "individual" learning (akin to home-schooling etc...), and so it will carry the same functions as a 'school'.


It would probably also be something everyone could choose to attend or not to attend

This is ridiculous. A 6 year old cannot possibly "choose" what to learn in any meaningful sense.

[Invader Zim]

Nothing.


Short, snappy and pointless.

So what do you propose? This?:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/victorian_britain/children_in_factories/v_children_in_darton.jpg

[Invader Zim]

Those hundreds of thousands, millions, who had access to the standard capitalist education and were failed by it, those written off as statistical anomalies and acceptable losses, with no other options offered to them, would increase in number. The numbers of those dropping out and seeking alternatives to the standard education would increase as well. If we expanded current mental health practices, and a score of other shit, the problems inherent with them wouldn't go away. Idk, maybe your vision of future communism carries with it vast deserts of misery from the old world because those things worked for you, but at least recognize that expanding the proverbial children of society, even if its a majority, leaves a lot of people in a world not worth living, or at least, a world worthy of insurgency.


What does any of this have to do with the central point being made? And I love how your point goes from complaining that public education is currently a bit rubbish to flights of distopian future fantasy in a psuedo-socialist world -- all because people here are saying that school is actually important.

Nobody is saying that public education currently works the way it should, could, or how we would like it to. Note that the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie do not, at least usually, send their children to state schools. They provide something much better for their children and pay princely sums, well beyond the means of the masses, to do so. So, you're right, we know that education doesn't work properly. But the solution is not to just jack in formal mandatory education, nor is it to leave it to children to choose what is best for them, because, by and large, they don't.

[Црвена]

*YAWN*

Voting is obsolete? Off course not. Bourgeoisie elections might be useless, but that does NOT change the fact that it is a clear axiom (voting rights), the fact that no one should be denied a say in society. Off course, this is not the case in capitalism, but it is no longer overt, very few fuckwads argue that only a minority of people should have the right to vote (which off course will be entirely necessary in Communism anyway).

Exactly: bourgeois elections are useless, and the ability to elect some rich arsehole to order violence against you if you don't do what they want doesn't give you any say in society. So fighting for voting rights is futile. As is fighting for "education," in the capitalist sense.


Seriously, do you people think of what you are writing? It is tantamount to arguing that overt chattel slavery should not be fought against because Blacks in the U.S have a shit life there, how ridiculous. It is nothing more than supporting the reactionary status quo, or worse, returning to some sort of macabre world.

So...wanting to replace the capitalist education system with a - gasp - socialist method of organising learning, and not supporting any half-arsed compromises, is tantamount to supporting slavery. Riiight.


Without public education you will almost certainly have a return to universal illiteracy, widespread ignorance and far more effective propaganda by the powers that be (in Capitalism). In Communism, public education will off course be an integral part since the organ that provided education before it (the family) will be abolished. That being said, some 'leftists' might harbour illusions that children will self-teach themselves calculus, and hey if they don't, who the fuck cares? Let them not be tainted by the evils of civilization and knowledge, lets return to the fucking garden of Eden and kill the snake before he tempts Eve.

INB4 "THATS NOT MY POSITION EVEN THOUGHT IT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM ARTICULATING BY OPPOSING PUBLIC EDUCATION WITHOUT ANY COHERENT ALTERNATIVE"

I'm not talking about what happens within capitalism. I don't give a shit which method of oppression is used by the bourgeois. And in communism...neither education nor a "public," (i.e. state) entity for its provision would exist.




Fantasy. There won't be a 'state' in the sense that there will be an ideologically driven institution that mystifies class consciousness, ok. But you still need to administer healthcare, build infrastructure and so forth, it will be publicly owned and administered. If you want to call it "FRIDUMB HAUSE" instead of a state or government, be my guest. Nevertheless it will have all of the administrative functions of the state.

Yes, but none of the coercive functions of the state: no army, no police, no law-making, no maintenance of class rule. Therefore whatever administrative organs there are will not constitute a state. And since "education," will disappear in the same way as "work," and become more a way of life than anything, it won't be organised by these organs for the most part unless something really needs to be taken care of.


The public school is more than simply about education thought. Others have touched on this, but the school is also a place of socialization and indoctrination (err Orwellian but w/e) into the ruling ideology (in this case, Communism). You can't have that without the public school. What exactly do you imagine will replace the school in the future? Regardless of your suggestion, I doubt it will be some sort of "individual" learning (akin to home-schooling etc...), and so it will carry the same functions as a 'school'.

You're acting as though you think classes will still exist in communism. When there is no ruling class, there is no ruling class ideology, and there is no ideology to indoctrinate children into. Ideology will not exist in communism, and good riddance.

I think the comparison with "work," is a good one to make when thinking about education in a communist society. "Work," as such won't exist; people won't produce value, they will produce what they want to, when they want to, in a non-hierarchical and freely associated environment. If they want to change what they do, they can. If they want to change where they do it, they can. If they want to take a break from producing anything, they can do so whenever they want to, and during this break they could decide to go and learn something. This learning would be done in places - call them schools or colleges or centres or whatever - managed co-operatively by the people involved (students and teachers) and students would be free to follow their own impulses at their own pace. Bear in mind, though, that since communism will be much more community- as opposed to individual-oriented than capitalism, people are likely to consult those close to them (their communities, rather than just their parents) and collaboratively work out what everyone is going to do, although the choice will ultimately be up to the individual.

[Ele'ill]

Sigh. I repeatedly stated in my post that the current public education system is full of shit, and certainly not worthy of "future communism." And no, school do not "work" for me (if only everything is as simple as the dichotomy of working and not working).

I think there's a distinction to be made between flaws in the system that effect a majority, or certain challenges, and a minority subset of those who have access to the education we're talking about, but who are completely failed by it who will continue to be failed by it even after a revolution because the tangible aspects of the flaws may have been fixed but conceptually or structurally it is the same thing. This includes populations in the undeveloped world. I see Invader Zim misunderstood what I meant by future communism or simply didn't bother reading my post entirely. By future commuism I simply meant whatever comes around in the future.





My point is that it is dangerous to think that somehow ignoring the public system/dropping out is going to helpful for the vast majority of the population. There will be and need to be a better alternative system (it may not be called "school" anymore), but there is not a comprehensive and reliable alternative now. Cutting schools does not provide any long-term benefit for most. Most school-aged people who are not attending public education cannot afford to seek alternative source of education and are often more susceptible to more severe forms of oppression (child-labor, violence of the family and economy in general, etc.).This is one of the reason why lives of children in lesser developed nations suffer even more, and we need not to be ignorant of that. This is why people there fight for schools because it is in the working class' immediate interest, and the children of the working class can get at least a modicum of knowledge and hopefully enough critical thinking skills to defend and challenge the ruling class and capitalist system, the downfall of which will change the education system itself. I believe it is true for children living in advanced economy as well.

I understand this and I got it in your first post. It doesn't look like you are disagreeing with the other points in my previous post about there still being a comparatively tiny, seemingly insignificant, percentage of people still being failed and that the expansion of failing 'services' will still yield this as a significant problem because those tiny percentages, in whatever category we could talk about, are still hundreds of thousands of people. It is also coercion to not even allow people the option of public education. I largely agree outside of the criticism(s) I've presented. So if my observation on those points is valid, I feel like we are talking past each other. What is the actual thing we should be talking about in this thread. How do we approach this in reality? Is this going to become a discussion of reforms, how can we avoid that through actions, or in our theory, while addressing both sides of this discussion's concerns.

[Ele'ill]

What does any of this have to do with the central point being made? And I love how your point goes from complaining that public education is currently a bit rubbish to flights of distopian future fantasy in a psuedo-socialist world -- all because people here are saying that school is actually important.

I didn't do any of this but tbh a dinotopian world would be bomb. Learning is important the current structure or institution we know as school is not. We can destroy it and build something else we can change it until it no longer resembles its former self and still call it school but for theoretical discussion that makes no sense which is why there's such a split in this thread.


Nobody is saying that public education currently works the way it should, could, or how we would like it to. Note that the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie do not, at least usually, send their children to state schools. They provide something much better for their children and pay princely sums, well beyond the means of the masses, to do so. So, you're right, we know that education doesn't work properly. But the solution is not to just jack in formal mandatory education, nor is it to leave it to children to choose what is best for them, because, by and large, they don't.

I think kids could choose what they're interested in. I wasn't developing software by the age of 13 but I could do basic networking and coding and I remember every single one of the computers I had down to their unique sounds and behavior. By the age of 13 I also had a knowledge base regarding biology that rivaled most adults, medical and physiology as well. School ruined it. So what are the specifics of the opportunities to learn, where do we take this discussion?

[Antiochus]

Exactly: bourgeois elections are useless, and the ability to elect some rich arsehole to order violence against you if you don't do what they want doesn't give you any say in society. So fighting for voting rights is futile. As is fighting for "education," in the capitalist sense.

No it isn't. They are "useless" in so far as toppling the power of the bourgeoisie, yes. But it is not "useless" to extend voting rights to everyone. Why on earth do you think Marx and communists in the mid-19th century supported movements like the Chartists?

Again, it is the axiom that every person should participate.


So...wanting to replace the capitalist education system with a - gasp - socialist method of organising learning, and not supporting any half-arsed compromises, is tantamount to supporting slavery. Riiight.

This is absolutely unintelligible.


Yes, but none of the coercive functions of the state: no army, no police, no law-making, no maintenance of class rule. Therefore whatever administrative organs there are will not constitute a state.

It doesn't matter if you call it 'the state' or 'the Timbuktu Express'. You will still need a centralized method of administering essential services. You are merely arguing idiotic semantics at this point. "There won't be a 'public' state, therefore no public education hur dur".


You're acting as though you think classes will still exist in communism. When there is no ruling class, there is no ruling class ideology, and there is no ideology to indoctrinate children into. Ideology will not exist in communism, and good riddance.

Bullshit. Do you think children are some sort of pristine biological entity that knows no wrong? Do you think children are 'perfect Communists by virtue'? That is vague idealism at its finest. There won't be 'classes', but the ONLY way to maintain that is to insure that Communism is the pre-eminent 'ideology' (again, if you are disturbed by choice words, in quotations, realize it is just semantics).



This learning would be done in places - call them schools or colleges or centres or whatever - managed co-operatively by the people involved (students and teachers) and students would be free to follow their own impulses at their own pace.

As Rafiq and Zim have already touched on this, the best way to (in the short term) improve education for children would be to mimic the top private schools in their organization. As far as letting students 'learn at their own pace', sure, maybe when they are 14-16, but not any younger. You fail to realize that a little kid simply is in no position to make these kinds of decisions on his own. In order for a child to say "damn, I really want to learn programming or study history", he must first be educated into these respective subjects, and guess what? If you ask a 5 year old, "Hey! Want to learn about William the Conqueror?" He will go back to the swing.

There will certainly be space for improvements and the incorporation of children (how much is up to the future) in the decision making process of their education. But what is being argued by people here is that compulsory public schooling that provides a holistic education is a must for any society, let alone a communist society that aims to stop alienation and end classes.

[Antiochus]

Short, snappy and pointless.

So what do you propose? This?:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/victorian_britain/children_in_factories/v_children_in_darton.jpg

But but! Look at the little girl on the right! She is smiling, clearly she has found her vocation for life. Now if only her kindly factory master will convince the nasty teacher to let her quit school so she can help feed her family.

[willowtooth]

noam chomsky's first school i think is a great model for what education should be, and this movie explains why the capitalist education models can do more harm then good

zex7yxN4GW0

[BIXX]

But but! Look at the little girl on the right! She is smiling, clearly she has found her vocation for life. Now if only her kindly factory master will convince the nasty teacher to let her quit school so she can help feed her family.

That's a misrepresentation of our position and bothbof you know it.

[Hatshepsut]

We may as well pass out the sickles and hoes. That's where the children of the revolution will spend their lives, in the fields scratching out enough food to keep one step ahead of starvation. None of them will know how to read; nobody can fix the rusted tractor left over from the bad old prerevolutionary days.

There's no analogy between voting and getting an education. The latter is crucial to modern society of any kind. And there is no known way to make children literate without teachers and schools. It doesn't matter that it came out of capitalism. So did all the machines, automobiles, and other modern goods we take for granted today and assume we'll enjoy afterward. Without schools all the other nice stuff will disappear too.

[Invader Zim]

That's a misrepresentation of our position and bothbof you know it.

Well, what is your position? Thus far, aside from railing against schools, and asserting that with or without schools people will still learn, you have yet to articulate an alternative to formal education or, failing that, how existing education might be made satisfactory. Aside from one post, everything you have contributed has been one or two-liners saying that everyone else is wrong. As ever, it appears that your position is without substance: superficially edgy but lacks any depth or attempt at analysis. Indeed, the closest you have come to articulating a position has been to deny that any formal provision of education is required at all -- that school be abolished and replaced with "nothing". Such a situation has existed, and I presented it to you.

The fact is that formal mandatory education, even in its current often problematic state, was a massive, hard-won, and thoroughly progressive victory for the working classes. Doing away with it, just because individuals like [email protected] Fuerte didn't enjoy having to read Shakespeare (and apparently even at the grand old age of 19 harbours a deep-seated resentment at this profound injustice: boo fucking hoo, talk about a nauseating failure to reflect on one's own good providence and privilege) is not a valid basis to suggest that formal mandatory education has been a failure that should be done away with. Rather, it is evidence that teenagers often fail to recognise the luxuries that have been most fortunate to inherit -- luxuries that would have been, to previous generations of children, offered only to the offspring of the most affluent in society, and which millions of children today could only dream of and whose parents are often willing to risk literal life and limb in an effort provide.

[BIXX]

We may as well pass out the sickles and hoes. That's where the children of the revolution will spend their lives, in the fields scratching out enough food to keep one step ahead of starvation. None of them will know how to read; nobody can fix the rusted tractor left over from the bad old prerevolutionary days.

There's no analogy between voting and getting an education. The latter is crucial to modern society of any kind. And there is no known way to make children literate without teachers and schools. It doesn't matter that it came out of capitalism. So did all the machines, automobiles, and other modern goods we take for granted today and assume we'll enjoy afterward. Without schools all the other nice stuff will disappear too.

I learned to read outside of school tbh. If someone lacks a desire to read I don't see the need to make them. If they have the desire they will. If someone wants to learn something they will (and all things necessary to learn that skill). And if they are so pathetic as to wallow in their own filth instead of going to do what they want (which seems to be what everyone here who approves of school thinks everyone is gonna do) then I don't think they should be forced to do anything otherwise. It's not my responsibility to ensure they become a productive member of society.

Furthermore, I don't think the factories and the tractors and all that "nice stuff" is really as important as leftists seem to think it is- rather its just an obsession with civ and making sure it continues.


Well, what is your position? Thus far, aside from railing against schools, and asserting that with or without schools people will still learn, you have yet to articulate an alternative to formal education or, failing that, how existing education might be made satisfactory. Aside from one post, everything you have contributed has been one or two-liners saying that everyone else is wrong. As ever, it appears that your position is without substance: superficially edgy but lacks any depth or attempt at analysis.

No I just think any attempt at coming up with an alternative is inevitably gonna fail, and that not having an alternative makes a critique any less correct. In fact I'd argue that alternatives are just alternative forms of coercion, but people here seem unable to hear that argument (or really any argument that is critical of civilized coercion).

You can't refuse to understand my posts at one time then decide that I'm not elaborating on them enough at another time, after you've made it clear that you refuse to actually pay attention to what my position is.

[Ele'ill]

That's a misrepresentation of our position and bothbof you know it.

"without the institutions, the monolithic bloc of people who i am a savior of won't know what to do with themselves, it'll be pure anarchy, they can't possibly have opinions, they can't possibly be susceptible to representative decision making that either doesn't work in their interest or condemns hundreds of thousands of others to a low quality of life, they can't even be aware of this and fight against reforms and such when has that ever happened, i mean, I created this omnipotent continuum of people in my mind so they def. serve only me and my program"

[Invader Zim]

"without the institutions, the monolithic bloc of people who i am a savior of won't know what to do with themselves, it'll be pure anarchy, they can't possibly have opinions, they can't possibly be susceptible to representative decision making that either doesn't work in their interest or condemns hundreds of thousands of others to a low quality of life, they can't even be aware of this and fight against reforms and such when has that ever happened, i mean, I created this omnipotent continuum of people in my mind so they def. serve only me and my program"

My grandiose internal monologue is rather more flamboyant than that. It is also correctly punctuated.

[Ele'ill]

My grandiose internal monologue is rather more flamboyant than that. It is also correctly punctuated.

Yeah there's no way I could top the reality. I considered Rafiq inspired font changes but it made me feel icky.

If it makes you feel better you weren't one of the users I was making reference to.

[Invader Zim]

Yeah there's no way I could top the reality. I considered Rafiq inspired font changes but it made me feel icky.

If it makes you feel better you weren't one of the users I was making reference to.


I didn't think I was, but I couldn't resist the reply.

[Invader Zim]

No I just think any attempt at coming up with an alternative is inevitably gonna fail, and that not having an alternative makes a critique any less correct. In fact I'd argue that alternatives are just alternative forms of coercion, but people here seem unable to hear that argument (or really any argument that is critical of civilized coercion).

Critique without constructive suggestion is just self-indulgent. Also, abandoning education will create far more problems than it will resolve.


You can't refuse to understand my posts at one time then decide that I'm not elaborating on them enough at another time, after you've made it clear that you refuse to actually pay attention to what my position is.Oh, I understand that you don't like education, but why remains a mystery because you haven't told us. You inform us, now, that it is "coersive" -- and my immidiate thought is: "So?" I was coerced into reading as a child. Funnily enough, that unwanted excursion from being left to my own devices has proven fruitful in ways that as a child I could not possibly hope to fathom. Amazingly, adults often do know better in the long run than their children do.

[Lord Testicles]

Furthermore, I don't think the factories and the tractors and all that "nice stuff" is really as important as leftists seem to think it is- rather its just an obsession with civ and making sure it continues.

Yeah, who needs medicine, heating in the winter and the productive forces needed to clothe, feed and house humanity? Not me! I was born in an industrialised first world nation where I can largely take these things for granted. All those starving fucks who die of easily preventable disease should be informed about how unimportant all this "nice stuff" actually is.

[Ele'ill]

Arguably the specifics regarding the institution of education prevent a lot of people from approaching reading, math, science, etc.. through routes that benefit their interests in those topics i.e. it becomes ingrained that certain areas are non applicable to their interests when it isn't the case. I loved reading and books and wanted to learn that as a kid and we could talk about family reinforcing flawed methods accepted in society but my point is that I always failed in math no matter how much time was spent. However I could apply math on my own regarding tech related stuff. The option for specific study was and still is largely non-existent.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

That is one of the more stupid videos I have ever wasted my time in watching.

I get that formal education is far from perfect, but though the system is fucked, the majority of teachers still teach for the sake of knowledge. If you think, like the dude in the video, that the only purpose of education is to know how to pay taxes then we may as well not bother. Education should promote a love of knowledge that lasts a lifetime. As long as there are educators working towards this goal, stay in school!

[Gotya]

Hey, they always told me to stay in school. And don't do drugs.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Why the fuck should schools teach you how to vote? If you want to vote you go down to your local government office, register to vote, and then go to the polling place on election day and vote. At least that's how it works here. Any idiot can do it (and idiots do frequently do it, as made evident by our elected officials). It's even easier if they do same day registration wherever it is that you live. Some of the other stuff he goes on about like learning about financial management/accounting is actually taught in school, including some public high schools. (They taught that and other college-credited subjects in my high school)

The educational/school system today operates largely the same way as it did during the birth of compulsory education (to train "obedient soldiers to the armies, obedient workers to the mines, well subordinated civil servants" etc) but that guy just came across as kind of whiny and annoying in that video IMO