🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct1.220939.29903@cbfsb.cb.att.com> dal3@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (dale.e.parson) writes:

>I guess this is like the Willy Horton business. No revolving doors.
>Lock 'em up & keep 'em locked up. They won't forget what they learned
>the year before: sit still and shut up.
>
>I keep thinking about most of the housing developments that have gone
>up in eastern Pa. in recent years. Big houses, little to no yard, and maybe
>a small collection of swings, slides etc. at the end of the development.
>I never see kids on those swings or slides; I never see kids playing in
>those yards.
>
>Where are those kids? Watching TV? In some other jail when the legally
>mandated ones are closed? I remember spending evenings & summers sledding
>or softball playing or bicycling or fishing or reading or star gazing
>or doing a million other things for which school only got in the way.
>Is this country so out of imagination, curiosity, and compassion that it
>quietly discusses locking its kids away for the whole freaking year as
>though it were talking about auto inspections or something? Instead of
>sending 'em off to internment for another 3 months, FIND SOME TIME & GO
>DO SOMETHING INTERESTING WITH THEM! Might be educational for all involved.
>
> Dale Parson, dale@mhcnet.att.com

I think it is fair to say that the proponents of year-around schooling are
not unanimously in favor of the authoritarian/totalitarian approach to
"education", with which I agree full-heartedly is a monstrosity and a mockery
of education.

My own thoughts are that a year-around schooling system would be beneficial,
but that the school itself should be dramatically cut down on overt structure.
I.e., have the materials available, have the teachers available and offering
suggestions and answering questions (ANY questions - this is one pet peeve
I have about primary education which is that the only questions a teacher will
generally answer at that level during "class" time is what the "material" is
on - after two or three years of this, I think it a wonder that anybody has
any curiosity left.) In actual practice this has been shown to work remarkably
well, and despite the problems inherant in a set-up like this, I think it
would behoove us to examine such a system to some degree, something which I
do not feel has been done to any marked degree in any official or mainstream
capacity.

	Geoff Tuffli