School is a Prison

[kregener]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE6ZONL1guA&feature=player_embedded

[Twisted Titan]

On and on your just.......... another brick in the wall............

[kregener]

"How can you have any pudding if you won't eat your meat?"

[BrewTech]

Interesting that you should post this video when you did. A high-school student I know has just been swatted by his school bureaucrats for violation of 48900(k) - Disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied the valid authority of supervisors, teachers, administrators, school officials, or other school personnel engaged in the performance of their duties.

"XXXXX refused to follow the directive of the Associate Principal regarding going to class after lunch today. He stopped and talked with friends after several verbal warnings. When AP followed student after the bell rang he refused to stop and go to the AP office. The AP had to call for the Deputy to get XXXXX to go to the AP office. XXXXX has a pattern of habitual tardies and unserved SWS. He was defiant and disrespectful to the Associate Principal during the entire investigation."

Apparently the kid doesn't like to be herded like common livestock...

::)

[po14015]

The Public School System is designed for Indoctrination not Education.

[Ponce]

School now days only teaches you how to do and not how to think.........

First post of the day.............good morning to one and all.

[Quad]

When my older sister was in high school (mid 1970’s), and the weather was nice, students smoked weed, drank beer, and made out, on the lawn, often lying on blankets, in front of the building.

When I was in high school (early 1980’s) intimate physical contact between students was forbidden, movement on campus grounds was strictly controlled, and loitering of any sort was prohibited.

When my nephew was in high school (mid 1990’s) he received a three-day suspension for wearing a jacket to class. (Jackets = concealed weapons, in the minds of modern educators.)

And the results are in!

My older sister (despite being a scatter-brain) graduated with honors, and is a gainfully employed productive member of society. (Boomer)

I survived, but only just barely: Part-time worker, full-time slacker. (Gen-X)

My nephew dropped out: Unemployed, convicted felon. (Gen-Y)

[onceseen]

My inlaws are all teachers, administrators, principles, et al. Because of this, I've got somewhat of an inside perspective on the way things really are out there:
There are videocameras everywhere in the schools. If a student is caught on a cel phone, the teachers think nothing of stealing the kids phone and looking through it. If a student is caught drinking in school, they call the cops and the kid gets arrested. Educators routinely search the kids possessions. With all this, my inlaws are constantly complaining about the attitude of the kids. Can you really blame these kids for having an attitude? I don't blame them one bit.

dys

[po14015]

A child will spend 14,000 hours in school.

How many hours do you get helping deprogram people?


There is your answer why it is so hard to wake people up.

The Public School System is designed for Indoctrination not Education,

[Ponce]

Back in the 50's when I went to school the law was the law and you better be in class.......one day myself and four others decided to go to the beach because is was a beautifull day, the next day we went before the principal and the principa went down the line asking where they were at and telling them to bring a note from their parents..........I was #5 and whe he asked me where I was at I told him "Sir, it was to nice of a day to come to school".......well, I was the only one that din't have to bring a note from his parents hahahahahahahahahah.

I don't mind telling that I was the worse student in scholl and that was because I was always thinking about something else not related to class but rather about what was going on in the world.....maybe that's why Civics was my best class..........I believe that we no longer have Civic classes, do we?

[Hillbilly]

All but a hand full of School Teachers are Soul Raping scum of the earth. They should all be out of a job and I'll have no sympathy for the lot of them.

[ShortJohnSilver]

Yes it is "indoctrination" but it is also "acclimation" and/or "acculturation" ... school is designed to turn you into a good little worker drone, you are to follow bureaucratic orders, even if you hate your boss, there is no way out if you want to have a credit score, and be given the privilege of going into debt to get a shoddily built townhouse on 0.08 acres of land, built by other worker drones.

[Buddha]

When my older sister was in high school (mid 1970’s), and the weather was nice, students smoked weed, drank beer, and made out, on the lawn, often lying on blankets, in front of the building.

When I was in high school (early 1980’s) intimate physical contact between students was forbidden, movement on campus grounds was strictly controlled, and loitering of any sort was prohibited.

When my nephew was in high school (mid 1990’s) he received a three-day suspension for wearing a jacket to class. (Jackets = concealed weapons, in the minds of modern educators.)

And the results are in!

My older sister (despite being a scatter-brain) graduated with honors, and is a gainfully employed productive member of society. (Boomer)

I survived, but only just barely: Part-time worker, full-time slacker. (Gen-X)

My nephew dropped out: Unemployed, convicted felon. (Gen-Y)


When I was in HS in early 2000, I walked through a metal detector everyday along with having my bag searched upon entering the premises. Was once suspended for attempting to sneak in a deck of playing cards. Playing cards are prohibited.

[tekrunner]

When I was in HS in early 2000, I walked through a metal detector everyday along with having my bag searched upon entering the premises. Was once suspended for attempting to sneak in a deck of playing cards. Playing cards are prohibited.





I was once detained by police for being late to school.

[Serpo]

Mikhail Petrovich Shchetinin - Kin's School - Lycee School at Tekos



A model school for the future has been established in Russia under the guidance of Academician Mikhail Petrovich Shchetinin.

In a small city in southern Russia there is a remarkable Lyceum school. Its students come from more than 40 different nationalities. New approaches to moral and intellectual education allow students to cover the full school curriculum in the space of a few years, and to earn one or more academic degrees by the time they are 15-17. The preservation and interfusion of ethnic traditions through folklore, song and dances of various nationalities affords the opportunity for children of different backgrounds, cultures and faiths to gain a deeper understanding of each other. The noble ideas of service to one's Motherland and highest moral standards, along with mutual assistance and support, unite children and adults of various nationalities in building a bright future together.


Mikhail Petrovich Shchetinin

---------------------------
What is Shchetinin's school?

This is a school in Southern Russia created by alternative educator Academician Shchetinin, where ordinary pupils with little if any help from adult teachers cover the whole 11-year curriculum of the Russian school system in just two years, get official bachelor's and master's degrees from accredited universities by the time they are seventeen, and also have designed, built and decorated their campus all by themselves.
Can I visit the school? Do they accept visitors?

Yes. Although no special invitation or prior arrangements have been needed until recently, it is now asked that you contact the school beforehand. Due to the overwhelming interest and the constant stream of visitors all year round, students have been distracted from their studies and it is requested that you do NOT drop in unannounced. The School's location is given in one of the books.

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Click on this link to view or print this document (including photos) regarding Mikhail Petrovich Shchetinin Bright Tidings: http://www.loveforlife.com.au/files/Mikhail%20Petrovich%20Shchetinin%20B...

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Bright Tidings - On The Pathway To Man

We see education gradually turning into a two-edged lie: the young ones pretend to study, the older ones pretend to teach. The mighty energy of the human spirit gets squeezed out by the rigidity and inflexibility of educational technology.

The integrity of the child as an individual - indeed, the integrity of the environment - this is the mutual relationship of the two basic principles underlying the concept of the school as shared by myself and my like-minded colleagues. The very first lesson in the school ought to touch upon the meaning of human existence.

In our world today the whole educational curriculum is divided up into divergent layers, isolated from each other. The world of perception is transformed into isolated 'corridors' to such an extent that it is sometimes hard for the pupil to believe that they are all part and parcel of a single whole. Art draws its very strength from the fact that it synthesises fractionalised phenomena, offers a holistic system of education and child-raising, and inculcates a holistic world-view.

But art cannot fully address this question if children are not immersed in an atmosphere where genuine life-values are affirmed - an atmosphere of shared labour and searchings, where every lesson is permeated with a sense of creativity. Then we have something to think about. Then we have a basis on which children will be able to appreciate art with understanding. For if there is no opportunity to live and experience this high ideal first-hand, then the high ideal is not truly perceived - it remains an ideal in word only, and hence begins to compromise itself.

In our educational process we work on the basis of a three-part harmony: "I see - I analyse - I act."

It is not just that we place our own tremendous emphasis on music, visual art and dance - they should make themselves felt in the school on a day-by-day basis, and this is the crux of the whole thing.

No programme, no methodology can in and of itself guarantee success in child-raising on the whole.

Together with the educators of the Children's Music School in Kizliar (Daghestan), we emphasise the direct dependence of success in music on the level of a person's overall development, rather than on any special, isolated musical talents. It turns out that skill on one area is manifest when skill is shown in many areas of life.

Young people often conquer summits simply because they have never been persuaded that these summits are unattainable. It is our view that skill in one area of activity is made up of skills in others. Talent is a whole network of different gifts. Which means the task of developing one set of skills is expanded when all of them are set in motion together. And to bring up a specialist, consequently, one has to bring out the overall Man - Man as a unified whole...

...Years are behind us now. I have held on to the conviction that Man can do everything! It is precisely through making sense of this saying that our multifunctional school, the whole school complex, the whole school-Man, has been developed. Our purpose is not 'knowledge-know-how-habits'. It is not endless drilling and rote-learning, or the spoon-feeding of information. Rather, it is the raising of Man to live harmoniously, to act in harmony with society - a Man who, when he sees and analyses the phenomena of life which surround him, can feel their interconnection, can perceive the world as a whole. And no matter what he becomes - an engineer, physicist, chemist, builder, teacher etc. - he will understand that he is going out into a whole, complete, unified world!

We are in the process of shaping Man's ability to get along in this whole, unified world from a very young age. Right from childhood Man must be raised beginning with his roots, with his very essence. And the essence of Man is his humanity. And this consists in re-uniting, one way or another, his life-forces in the struggle against the forces of chaos and disintegration. But the development of Man's essence is not only the goal - it is at the same time the means to achieving this goal.

After all, why is the idea of the harmony of the individual so attractive and so productive? Because it alone is capable of appreciating the harmony of the world as the most valuable treasure, capable of preserving this integrity, this very harmony that has been in the making over millions of years of evolution...

In regular schools we notice how our once attentive, wide-eyed pupils seem to fall away from us. We see education gradually turning into a two-edged lie: the young ones pretend to study, the older ones pretend to teach. The mighty energy of the human spirit gets squeezed out by the rigidity and inflexibility of educational technology. It freezes up, only rarely causing faint and pitiful ripples of disturbance to monotonously long and boring classes. But just look at how the school's energy boils over between classes! During these long moments of despair it reminds one of the convulsions of a dying giant.

As a rule, the overwhelming majority of pupils have only two or three classes a day in which they are active, attentive, concentrated and participate as active creators in the learning process. More than two-thirds of the time spent in school is given over to inactivity. It is as though the brain were asleep. But this is not a sleep of relaxation. It is a sleep that is harmful to one's health.

The activity of exchanging information engenders the activity of energy exchange. A state of sleepiness and a sluggish flow of thought processes is reflected in a slowing down of psychophysical functions, in a retarded flow of energy exchange. The body and its nervous system are literally undergoing a slow death. The situation of the one who is 'sleeping' is exacerbated even further by being in a state of anxiety and tension resulting from an attempt to avoid being discouraged by one's inactivity...

The result is that for most of the time the body is in an oppressed state. Perhaps this is why the health curve on one's educational record falls from grade to grade, along with the extinguishing of one's mental forces. The traditional school is not in tune with children's nature. It is not really for them. It does not contribute either to the flourishing of their talents or to the development of their spiritual, physical and moral health. Like a knife-blade, it is aimed at a very narrow target: knowledge-know-how-habits. The focus is not on the child, not on the individual, not on the development of the immeasurable range of the abilities he is endowed with, of his whole universal selfhood, but simply on producing a product of the instructional process.

http://loveforlife.com.au/node/5173

[Serpo]

This forest school completely redefines our understanding of “education” !

At this school the children have designed, built, and decorated their own campus — without adult supervision! They cover the entire high-school math curriculum in one year and get official Master's degrees by the time they are seventeen. They cook their own meals, do the administrative work, and write their own textbooks. These students come and go as they please and their parents pay no tuition fees!

Megré describes his first visit to Tekos…

“… A narrow gravel road led from the main highway into the forest, to a valley nestled amidst the mountain peaks. The road soon came to an end in front of a most unusual two-storey mansion. It was still under construction. From one of the still frameless window openings wafted the sounds of children’s voices singing a Russian folk song.

“This building was part of the vision Anastasia had showed me back in the taiga forest, but now it was an altogether real experience.

“Without a word to anyone I made my way through various construction materials to touch this mansion with my own hands.

“As I approached, I saw a little girl, about ten years old, climbing deftly down a ladder. She went over to a pile of river pebbles and began selecting and dropping stones into an old herring tin. When she started back up the ladder, I climbed up after her, in the direction of the alluring music pouring forth from above.

“There on the second floor I watched as a group of kids like her, some a little older, were taking smooth pebbles out of a box and attaching them with a cement mixture to the wall, making an amazingly beautiful pattern. Two little girls at once carefully washed off each newly attached stone with damp rags. They set about their tasks in earnest, singing as they worked. No adults were present.

“Later I found out that the whole foundation, indeed, each brick of this structure, had been laid by a child’s hand. The children had come up with the whole design by themselves, including every corner of their building.

“And this is not the only such building on the little campus. In this amazing setting children are constructing not only their buildings, their campus, but their whole future in the process.

“And they sing! Here a ten-year-old girl is capable of building a house, doing splendid drawings and cooking meals, not to mention knowing ballroom dance steps and mastering the fundamentals of Russian martial arts.3

“The children of this forest school are acquainted with Anastasia. They themselves told me about her. Three hundred pupils from different Russian cities study here.

“At this school children take but a year to master the whole ten-year public-school maths syllabus, along with studying three foreign languages. They neither recruit nor produce child prodigies. They simply give the kids a chance to discover what already lies within.

“Academician Mikhail Petrovich Shchetinin’s school comes under the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Education. It charges no tuition fees. Even though the school does not advertise itself, it has no vacancies. Indeed, there is already a waiting list of 2,500 hopefuls for an unexpected opening.

“It is hard to find words to describe the joy on these children’s beaming faces… (cont'd)
* * *
Megré talks to one of the students:

“One gets the impression that each brick of your building here is filled with the bright energy of a great power.”

“Yes, that’s true,” answered an older, red-haired girl. “So much depends on the people who touch them. We have done all this with love, we are trying with our mental attitude to bring only what is good and happy to our future.”

“Who designed this building, the columns and paintings?”

“This was the result of our united, collective thinking.”

“Does that mean that while each one is outwardly working on their own individual task, in actual fact it represents a collective thought?”

That’s right. Every evening we get together and plan out, or visualise, the day ahead. We come up with the images we want to see expressed in the design of our mansion. Some of the pupils here take on the role of architect — they give specific form to our common work, tie it all together.”

“What image is expressed in the room we’re standing in now?”

“The image of Svarog2 — the primordial element of heavenly fire. You can see him here in the symbols, in the pebble amulets.”

“Does your group recognise one of its own as a principal or superior?”

“We do have a leader, but by and large it is the collective thought that is at work here — lava, we call it.”

“Say that again — thought is lava?”

“That’s right — a state of mind, an image, a desire.”

“Do you all work with such great delight, everybody smiling, everybody with such sparkling eyes — everybody so cheerful?”

“Yes, our life is like that, since we are doing what we want, doing what we can, doing what we love to do.”

“You said each stone has its own pulse and rhythm?”

“Yes, and this pulse beats once a day — just once.”

“Is it like that with all stones, or do some beat twice a day?”

“Every stone’s pulse beats once a day.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you that your mansion is something like a temple?”

“A temple is not a form, but a state of mind. For example, the cupolas — they simply help you access a particular state of mind. The form is moulded by feeling. And it is not by chance that the form of a cupola or hipped roof came to us — they represent our aspirations for heaven and the descent of Heavenly Grace.”

“This building, where every stone is laid with a good thought, is it able to heal?”

“Of course.”

“And does it heal?”

“Yes, it does… (cont'd)”
* * *

In the Ringing Cedars Series, Anastasia completely redefines the concept of “education”. She insists that universal knowledge is accessible to each of us — and she steers us toward an entirely new model of education whereby children are taught to look within to find their own innate questions and answers. She reveals to the author the existence of this “forest school” where children, by using the methods she describes, are accomplishing results beyond our wildest dreams.

. http://www.ringingcedars.com/tekos_school/

[Road Runner]

I am curious to the ones posting in this thread, that if you have children how have you decided to school them? I think it is such an important decision not to be taken lightly. Both my husband and I wish we would have known back when our children were small what we know and understand now. I would love to hear many of your thoughts and ideas on the subject.

[onceseen]

I am curious to the ones posting in this thread, that if you have children how have you decided to school them? I think it is such an important decision not to be taken lightly. Both my husband and I wish we would have known back when our children were small what we know and understand now. I would love to hear many of your thoughts and ideas on the subject.


I would love to homeschool but I doubt my wife will go for it.

dys

[Serpo]

steiner schools .....

[skid]

I am curious to the ones posting in this thread, that if you have children how have you decided to school them? I think it is such an important decision not to be taken lightly. Both my husband and I wish we would have known back when our children were small what we know and understand now. I would love to hear many of your thoughts and ideas on the subject.


My kids go to public schools, which are actually quite good in my neck of the woods. I do counter the propoganda with my own teachings of course...