When I was in middle school, we had two or three recess periods per day AND occasional physical education classes on top of that.
I don't think that's the norm any more.
---
They didn't serve school breakfast, either. (I don't mind schools serving breakfast given the ridiculously long bus rides kids endure, but school breakfast should not be pancakes, waffles, or toasted sugar bombs.
Nice post. Schopenhauer has much to say on this exact point in his essay On Education:
“The human intellect is said to be so constituted that general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observations, and therefore come after them in point of time. If this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for what he learns — who has no teacher and no book — such a man knows quite well which of his particular observations belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas. He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his experience, and accordingly, he treats everything that comes in his way from a right standpoint. This might be called the natural method of education.
Contrarily, the artificial method is to hear what other people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of extended acquaintance with the world as it is, and as you may see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular observations which go to make these general ideas will come to you later on in the course of experience; but until that time arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly, you judge men and things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind.
This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about them; so that our demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety, at another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last: it is putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people. The mistaken views of life, which spring from a false application of general ideas, have afterwards to be corrected by long years of experience; and it is seldom that they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of learning are possessed of common-sense, such as is often to be met with in people who have had no instruction at all.”
How can we expect the masses of indoctrinated people, educated in a method of repetition which ignores reason and experience, to defend their own interests when they cannot figure out what their own interests even are? Worse, the level of formal indoctrination is getting cruder: do we expect California public school children, raised on anti-white race-grievance books (see their Department of Education recommended reading list: https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?lid=10718 ), with classic books banned and IQ tests for black students banned, to even be able to function as a drone in a 21st century tech economy?
Kids are ALWAYS on their cell phones or playing computer games. They endlessly engage in gossip, porn, and online violence if allowed. There are NO. Frisbee, kickball, waffle ball games outside let alone hiking, biking, fishing, boating and building treehouses. It isn’t just school and parents: IT’S THE ENTIRE CULTURE. Electronics have destroyed us. Kids certainly have no issues reading the internet.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who had the experience of learning more over summer break than during any three months of the school year, because I had more time to read what I wanted instead of the unimaginative and uninteresting nonsense that comprised the school's curriculum. I only wish the schools taught television watching and video games instead of reading/writing/arithmetic, because then they'd destroy everyone's desire for those palliatives and people would escape into literature and science instead.
What better way to control a population than to make them sick, fat, and weak? And even better - make them believe that being sick, fat, and weak is the highest ideal.
I honestly can’t think of a more profitable strategy for Big Food than to taint the food supply with toxic chemicals that will break endocrine systems, wreak havoc with hormones, and as a bonus force captive students to eat such crap. Then let Big Pharma pick up after with eighty-four different vaccines and fifty prescriptions for little Johnny before he’s even 30. There’s a pill for that, don’t you know. Too bad there’s no cure for the mind virus.
"The failure of the pubic school system to suitably educate children is the most significant fact of American life..."
This is plainly nonsense. American Whites score almost the same as Canadians and basically the same as Japanese. South Korea and Hong Kong post better test scores, but their education systems are, if anything, more soul-crushing than America's. There really isn't a country you can point to that's doing demonstrably better than America with the same inputs.
"According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress"
-which has shown steadily improving national results since the 1980s, especially when adjusted by race and ethnicity.
As for the ghetto residents, it's very difficult to educate students who don't want to be educated (unless, of course, one has an unconscious mind suited to the ghetto teaching profession -which about 90% of the general population do not).
"Why the hell are we tolerating institutions which given that power, makes children obese."
This is at least a good point. But education has not changed since the 1950s (or has it? the dark age of physical therapy had to have arisen at some point between now and then), so it's difficult to attribute to it America's high calorie consumption.
U.S. public education is uniformly un-uniform, despite the desire to standardize inputs and outputs.
There are exceptions school to school, teacher to teacher, kid to kid. People, after all, including ghetto blacks. Though American blacks have had foisted upon them inputs containing a higher % of poison contaminants for more generations and more consistently than the whites.
When they reduced physical education classes, got rid of music classes and part-time librarian in schools, we should have known that schools had jumped the shark, at that point....but we replaced them with gender and political causes.....disgraceful.....we can't read or write so how can we expect society to do their own research about anything ......
Well, we don't have music in the curiculum anymore in elementary....you can then choose to take band in high school.....when I grew up, music, physical education, art, were all on the curriculum....we had a full-time librarian and the libraray was the heart of the school...now, I work in elementary and there are none of these courses on the curriculum, not even spelling.... I am in BC, Canada and when I speak to other school districts acrosss the country, it appears that it is the same ... we are instead spending time on teaching kids how to be social justice warriors, which is ok in small doses but everyday is too much....it's a "wear a different shirt/button/flag day", everyday now......
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
Older article, but one I agree with wholeheartedly.
I am really glad some people on the libertarian right are beginning to take on the school system's intrinsic problems. The truth of it is, schools are a fairly recent historical phenomenon and yet some right-wingers I meet defend them to the death as an institution, in the meantime I saw some early 1900s education texts that recommended children who were born in summer and behaved hyperactively compared to the classmates should start school later. No one was drugged with ADHD meds. Needless to say, there was no drag queen story time either.
Same with healthcare, some people are incapable of imagining it can exist without the state.
I was talking to someone the other day who was convinced there was no education or healthcare in Ireland prior to the 19th century because that's when the British government started providing it.
This is why I believe that there is a way to get children - at least, those of the UMC strivers - to be physically fit.
ADMISSION OF THE HOCK.
Those with SATs over 1300 who are in the top 15 percent of their high school class are eligible for the Hock. In early March, participants are parachuted onto a frozen lake in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They're allowed anything they can carry on their back except for firearms, maps, and communication devices. No rescue beacons, either. If they survive by making it back to civilization under their own power, they receive admission to an Ivy League school.
If you want something - if you truly, honestly believe in something - that means being willing to risk your life for it and to suffer for it. There's very little of that nowadays in America outside of the combat arms. The likes of Harvard and Yale and by extension the American aristocracy would thus be leavened by large numbers of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ascend the class ladder. These people would know suffering and want as they had not in their sheltered childhoods. They would understand the whims of Mother Nature; they would know viscerally for the rest of their lives that the universe will not bend to their will.
People WILL die in the Alaskan wilderness to wild animals, hypothermia, and their own fuckups. However, after a couple years of the Hock, you would start to see cramming of a very different sort taking place. "Good" public school districts would begin offering their break in the winter for high-school students, so that they could participate in Hock-prep camps. Students would be hectored to remain physically fit so as to better survive the demands of the Hock. There might even be boarding schools for the upper middle class in Fairbanks, staffed with a disproportionate number of Marine Corps veterans and NOLS instructors. Is this relevant to modern life? No. But imagine how great Harvard might be if it was not uncommon for the sheltered son or daughter of the rich to sit next to an ambitious Montana redneck that's missing a few fingers because he lost them in the goddamn Hock. Imagine what it would be like to walk the hallowed halls of Harvard not only with the sons and daughters of the rich...and the insanely brilliant that are publishing in top journals and winning international competitions in high school...but those who put their very LIVES on the line and watched people make the ultimate sacrifice in an attempt to better themselves and their families? "Damn...my dad's not putting enough money on my credit card" kind of pales when your roommate has a pair of artificial legs and watched his friend die because he fucked up a river crossing.
My alternative would be to bring about the return of the militia. Have militia training be part of the norm kids go through growing up. They should join a scouting group to learn to hike, shoot, run etc. That way when they have a PE class it has a purpose, they're using the time to get better at their militia activities.
Then it continues into adult life as the default weekend activity for the vast majority of red blooded males.
I can't seriously consider a document written about education and they can't spell many words, or even use a spell check program!
For instance (1) "DAY 1: First thing a child learns upon entering kindergarten is how to sit at a desk, on the teachers instruction, and not rise, disruptively fidget, or generally employ there body...." . "there body" ?
school may be hell for some kids, but many kids enjoy the order and rules
to compare public schools, at least schools in upper middle class white communities (I live i one such, Newton MA) to prison is just absurd
Public School is a system of violence, a total institution akin to the Military or Prison.
Children and young adults have no choice but to be there and there minds and bodies are entirely controlled whilst they're there.
DAY 1: First thing a child learns upon entering kindergarten is how to sit at a desk, on the teachers instruction, and not rise, disruptively fidget, or generally employ there body in any manner except the teacher instructs
European Waldorf was much more integrated in early years. Play, movement, story, singing, gardening, work with the hands (kneading bread, watercolor painting, fruit cutting w real knives, beeswax modeling while listening to stories), with not a desk in sight until later. Also, no academic fretting and training until about the time of the second dentition.
Remember: for every rigid minute at a desk at the kinder level, or God forbid in a horrid, barren pre-k classroom, a minute of rich, developmentally rewarding play and nurture is forfeit.
I've spoken to white homeschoolers who claim they cover a week's work on a standard curriculum in around two schooldays total. Given how much time public schooling wastes I'd believe it.
The remainder of the time can be devoted to more physical activities.
When I was in middle school, we had two or three recess periods per day AND occasional physical education classes on top of that.
I don't think that's the norm any more.
---
They didn't serve school breakfast, either. (I don't mind schools serving breakfast given the ridiculously long bus rides kids endure, but school breakfast should not be pancakes, waffles, or toasted sugar bombs.
Yeah, my school did not serve food. I _sometimes_ brought a sandwich (which I didn't always eat).
Nice post. Schopenhauer has much to say on this exact point in his essay On Education:
“The human intellect is said to be so constituted that general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observations, and therefore come after them in point of time. If this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for what he learns — who has no teacher and no book — such a man knows quite well which of his particular observations belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas. He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his experience, and accordingly, he treats everything that comes in his way from a right standpoint. This might be called the natural method of education.
Contrarily, the artificial method is to hear what other people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of extended acquaintance with the world as it is, and as you may see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular observations which go to make these general ideas will come to you later on in the course of experience; but until that time arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly, you judge men and things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind.
This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about them; so that our demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety, at another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last: it is putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people. The mistaken views of life, which spring from a false application of general ideas, have afterwards to be corrected by long years of experience; and it is seldom that they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of learning are possessed of common-sense, such as is often to be met with in people who have had no instruction at all.”
How can we expect the masses of indoctrinated people, educated in a method of repetition which ignores reason and experience, to defend their own interests when they cannot figure out what their own interests even are? Worse, the level of formal indoctrination is getting cruder: do we expect California public school children, raised on anti-white race-grievance books (see their Department of Education recommended reading list: https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?lid=10718 ), with classic books banned and IQ tests for black students banned, to even be able to function as a drone in a 21st century tech economy?
Kids are ALWAYS on their cell phones or playing computer games. They endlessly engage in gossip, porn, and online violence if allowed. There are NO. Frisbee, kickball, waffle ball games outside let alone hiking, biking, fishing, boating and building treehouses. It isn’t just school and parents: IT’S THE ENTIRE CULTURE. Electronics have destroyed us. Kids certainly have no issues reading the internet.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who had the experience of learning more over summer break than during any three months of the school year, because I had more time to read what I wanted instead of the unimaginative and uninteresting nonsense that comprised the school's curriculum. I only wish the schools taught television watching and video games instead of reading/writing/arithmetic, because then they'd destroy everyone's desire for those palliatives and people would escape into literature and science instead.
What better way to control a population than to make them sick, fat, and weak? And even better - make them believe that being sick, fat, and weak is the highest ideal.
I honestly can’t think of a more profitable strategy for Big Food than to taint the food supply with toxic chemicals that will break endocrine systems, wreak havoc with hormones, and as a bonus force captive students to eat such crap. Then let Big Pharma pick up after with eighty-four different vaccines and fifty prescriptions for little Johnny before he’s even 30. There’s a pill for that, don’t you know. Too bad there’s no cure for the mind virus.
"The failure of the pubic school system to suitably educate children is the most significant fact of American life..."
This is plainly nonsense. American Whites score almost the same as Canadians and basically the same as Japanese. South Korea and Hong Kong post better test scores, but their education systems are, if anything, more soul-crushing than America's. There really isn't a country you can point to that's doing demonstrably better than America with the same inputs.
https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/legacy/2019/12/2018-PISA-Results.png
"According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress"
-which has shown steadily improving national results since the 1980s, especially when adjusted by race and ethnicity.
As for the ghetto residents, it's very difficult to educate students who don't want to be educated (unless, of course, one has an unconscious mind suited to the ghetto teaching profession -which about 90% of the general population do not).
"Why the hell are we tolerating institutions which given that power, makes children obese."
This is at least a good point. But education has not changed since the 1950s (or has it? the dark age of physical therapy had to have arisen at some point between now and then), so it's difficult to attribute to it America's high calorie consumption.
The NAEP be trippin'.
U.S. public education is uniformly un-uniform, despite the desire to standardize inputs and outputs.
There are exceptions school to school, teacher to teacher, kid to kid. People, after all, including ghetto blacks. Though American blacks have had foisted upon them inputs containing a higher % of poison contaminants for more generations and more consistently than the whites.
> American Whites score almost the same as Canadians and basically the same as Japanese.
American schools are financially incentivised to fake test scores.
Agreed
When they reduced physical education classes, got rid of music classes and part-time librarian in schools, we should have known that schools had jumped the shark, at that point....but we replaced them with gender and political causes.....disgraceful.....we can't read or write so how can we expect society to do their own research about anything ......
"got rid of music classes"
Who writes music these days? It's pretty easy to do on the computer if you know how. Instead, we listen to Coldplay.
Well, we don't have music in the curiculum anymore in elementary....you can then choose to take band in high school.....when I grew up, music, physical education, art, were all on the curriculum....we had a full-time librarian and the libraray was the heart of the school...now, I work in elementary and there are none of these courses on the curriculum, not even spelling.... I am in BC, Canada and when I speak to other school districts acrosss the country, it appears that it is the same ... we are instead spending time on teaching kids how to be social justice warriors, which is ok in small doses but everyday is too much....it's a "wear a different shirt/button/flag day", everyday now......
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
― Bob Marley
Older article, but one I agree with wholeheartedly.
I am really glad some people on the libertarian right are beginning to take on the school system's intrinsic problems. The truth of it is, schools are a fairly recent historical phenomenon and yet some right-wingers I meet defend them to the death as an institution, in the meantime I saw some early 1900s education texts that recommended children who were born in summer and behaved hyperactively compared to the classmates should start school later. No one was drugged with ADHD meds. Needless to say, there was no drag queen story time either.
Same with healthcare, some people are incapable of imagining it can exist without the state.
I was talking to someone the other day who was convinced there was no education or healthcare in Ireland prior to the 19th century because that's when the British government started providing it.
This is why I believe that there is a way to get children - at least, those of the UMC strivers - to be physically fit.
ADMISSION OF THE HOCK.
Those with SATs over 1300 who are in the top 15 percent of their high school class are eligible for the Hock. In early March, participants are parachuted onto a frozen lake in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They're allowed anything they can carry on their back except for firearms, maps, and communication devices. No rescue beacons, either. If they survive by making it back to civilization under their own power, they receive admission to an Ivy League school.
If you want something - if you truly, honestly believe in something - that means being willing to risk your life for it and to suffer for it. There's very little of that nowadays in America outside of the combat arms. The likes of Harvard and Yale and by extension the American aristocracy would thus be leavened by large numbers of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ascend the class ladder. These people would know suffering and want as they had not in their sheltered childhoods. They would understand the whims of Mother Nature; they would know viscerally for the rest of their lives that the universe will not bend to their will.
People WILL die in the Alaskan wilderness to wild animals, hypothermia, and their own fuckups. However, after a couple years of the Hock, you would start to see cramming of a very different sort taking place. "Good" public school districts would begin offering their break in the winter for high-school students, so that they could participate in Hock-prep camps. Students would be hectored to remain physically fit so as to better survive the demands of the Hock. There might even be boarding schools for the upper middle class in Fairbanks, staffed with a disproportionate number of Marine Corps veterans and NOLS instructors. Is this relevant to modern life? No. But imagine how great Harvard might be if it was not uncommon for the sheltered son or daughter of the rich to sit next to an ambitious Montana redneck that's missing a few fingers because he lost them in the goddamn Hock. Imagine what it would be like to walk the hallowed halls of Harvard not only with the sons and daughters of the rich...and the insanely brilliant that are publishing in top journals and winning international competitions in high school...but those who put their very LIVES on the line and watched people make the ultimate sacrifice in an attempt to better themselves and their families? "Damn...my dad's not putting enough money on my credit card" kind of pales when your roommate has a pair of artificial legs and watched his friend die because he fucked up a river crossing.
Not a bad idea.
My alternative would be to bring about the return of the militia. Have militia training be part of the norm kids go through growing up. They should join a scouting group to learn to hike, shoot, run etc. That way when they have a PE class it has a purpose, they're using the time to get better at their militia activities.
Then it continues into adult life as the default weekend activity for the vast majority of red blooded males.
You missed the part about toxins in the food, water, and injections.
I can't seriously consider a document written about education and they can't spell many words, or even use a spell check program!
For instance (1) "DAY 1: First thing a child learns upon entering kindergarten is how to sit at a desk, on the teachers instruction, and not rise, disruptively fidget, or generally employ there body...." . "there body" ?
and use of the non-word "responcible"
Do you support school vouchers? I think that's the path forward.
It's certainly a lesser evil, but it still gives the state too much power to decide which schools and which curricula are eligable for vouchers.
This (quote below) is just utter bullshit
school may be hell for some kids, but many kids enjoy the order and rules
to compare public schools, at least schools in upper middle class white communities (I live i one such, Newton MA) to prison is just absurd
Public School is a system of violence, a total institution akin to the Military or Prison.
Children and young adults have no choice but to be there and there minds and bodies are entirely controlled whilst they're there.
DAY 1: First thing a child learns upon entering kindergarten is how to sit at a desk, on the teachers instruction, and not rise, disruptively fidget, or generally employ there body in any manner except the teacher instructs
What’s the alternative? How are we supposed to educate children to start reading and socializing and doing math?
European Waldorf was much more integrated in early years. Play, movement, story, singing, gardening, work with the hands (kneading bread, watercolor painting, fruit cutting w real knives, beeswax modeling while listening to stories), with not a desk in sight until later. Also, no academic fretting and training until about the time of the second dentition.
Remember: for every rigid minute at a desk at the kinder level, or God forbid in a horrid, barren pre-k classroom, a minute of rich, developmentally rewarding play and nurture is forfeit.
I've spoken to white homeschoolers who claim they cover a week's work on a standard curriculum in around two schooldays total. Given how much time public schooling wastes I'd believe it.
The remainder of the time can be devoted to more physical activities.