Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Views on government

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Views on government
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:49:52 EDT



> >How many examples do you need? Walk through any housing project for
> starters. Then walk through the barrios. Then observe the home lives
> of children whose parents are working minimum-wage jobs. All children
> deserve the opportunity to rise above their beginnings.

-----------------------

This, I am going to suggest, Gene, is based on a misunderstanding of the
nature of learning and the concept of unshcooling.

Throughout human history children have learned about adult life by being
exposed to the real world. As far as math and reading and such go, if a
child is
exposed to it being used, he picks it up. All children do. I am involved in
extended groups of unschoolers. Not one of several score of children ever
had
one reading, phonics, spelling, or math lesson in their lives but by an early
age they all read and all do whatever math is necessary to operate their
rather extensive world.

Did I mention ALL children. But, says you, what about this or that hard luck
example or this one particular individual .... you can't say 'all'. Read my
lips, ALL children.

Unschooling was the way of things from tribal societies all the way up
through the cottage indsustries and farm of pre-industrial times. With
slavery per
se falling out of disfavor, people who wanted to get rich on the backs of
others created what we recognize today as public schools. It's main function
was
to break up the family, indoctrinate the children to accept token rewards for
their labor, and instill the "work ethic" which means to go off into some
dismal place like a sweat shop or a cubicle and feel guilty if you don't.

The situation you describe above is a product of that form of societal
management. Children naturally learn from their surroundings. Fish swim,
birds
fly, children learn. It's their nature. The function of schooling to to
convince parents and children that they can't learn. If high priest and high
preistess of education does not perform the appropriate rituals over them,
the will
forever remain ignorant and illiterate.

In unschooling families this cycle is broken. Not knowing that they are
supposed to not be able to learn without the "professionals", children learn
instantly when they are ready to do so.

The argument to look into the enclaves of poverty and explain how those
people, sans the supervision of government schools, can ever hope t make
anything
of themselves, is exactly the same argument made in the 1860's about the
slaves. When emancipation was general, it DID cause a lot of social problems
for
those whom it was intended to benefit. Did that mean it shouldn't have been
done?

Also there will be some reading this who will stare and drool and fall into a
fit absolutism, much as people do about subsistence homesteading. When I
have advocated hand labor and simple methods, there is always someone who
will
say, slackjawed, "But you are using a computer so you really don't do that
yourself! So you using a computer is the same thing as me using a John Deere
to
till up my 20' x 30' garden." The absolutist thinks that for the minimalist
to
have any credibilty, they must wander off into the forest naked and find some
flint to knap out tools.

Like that, the same foggy mentality thinks that unschooling is locking your
child in a closet and never talking to them. It is the exact opposite.
Government schooled children are the ones locked into closets. The
unschooled are
in constant contact with people of all ages, all relationships, all skills,
all
beliefs.

The housing projects snd barrios are not a reason why we need the status quo
government education and nannyism. Rather it is the PRODUCT of these social
debacles. </HTML>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page