"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...

snip

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I will put the book on my list and try to get to it. I've been catching up
lately. d8-)


I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

Citizen Jimserac

The late '60s was a very strange time. I was in college then, too, and I can
imagine there were plenty of rabid ideologues in teacher's education, as
there were in many other fields. But those three were important thinkers who
had a powerful effect upon education, and, to some extent, upon politics. As
historical figures and original thinkers they were all important; you can't
teach the history of education, or understand how we got where we are,
without a serious study of their lives and ideas. I'd need to know the
context in which they were being taught to appreciate your judgment in this
case.

When education was extended to the general population, as someone else
commented in this thread, the question arose about what they were to be
educated *for*. Until that time education was for the elite, the future
leaders in government, business, religion, the professions, and so on. It
wasn't until our lifetimes that the general socialization objective came
under scrutiny.

So, here we are in 2008. What would you have kids learn today? What is it
that you think the schools are failing to teach? And what, specifically,
would you remove from the current curriculum?

--
Ed Huntress