Private schools across New York City say they are thriving this fall, with record numbers of applicants and no significant decline in donations. Yet almost daily, even brand-name schools are finding that they have to reassure jittery parents about shrinking endowments and dispel rumors that requests for financial aid are pouring in, and that economically squeezed families are pulling their children out and enrolling them in public schools.
Part of me wishes they’d all go bankrupt. The schools, that is.
But, think of the children.
The rich children.
Whatever.
Normally I’d ad some comment about class wars and the growing inequality between the very, very, very (very) rich in the US and the rest of us. But I’m still chuckling like an erudite 12-year-old at the phrase “shrinking endowments.”
A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other
day:
“What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest
idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn’t
idiosyncratic — that this is some system to it all and it’s not just
raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That’s the task, to
understand, to make coherent.”
Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion.
Everything I teach is out of context… I teach the unrelating of
everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of
planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural
drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests,
fire drills, computer languages, parent’s nights, staff-development
days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers you may never see
again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the
outside world… what do any of these things have to do with each
other?
Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its
sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions.
Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger
they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed
off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is
that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon
derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to
leave with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails
learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too
many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest
relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an
expertise they do not possess.
To napsterize education, then, you need to somehow seize that credential-granting authority (or at least: make that authority non-exclusive), which would mean being able to offer some widely-accepted alternative credential system, or do something else that accomplished the same things; this would decouple measurement of educational attainment from the current institutional framework for granting such certification, and create an ecosystem in which alternative approaches can bloom.
Originally posted as a comment by wh on A VC using Disqus.
![portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
[March 21 1951]
Student explaining to me (after getting 55) that when reading a novel (“Ulysses” in this case) he likes to skip “passages and pages” so as “to get his own idea, you know, about the book and not be influenced by the author”.
Vladimir Nabokov.[via viz via the New York Public Library]](http://22.media.tumblr.com/jW9kYrMGyeee9izifRX8NzhZo1_250.jpg)
![portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
[March 21 1951]
Student explaining to me (after getting 55) that when reading a novel (“Ulysses” in this case) he likes to skip “passages and pages” so as “to get his own idea, you know, about the book and not be influenced by the author”.
Vladimir Nabokov.[via viz via the New York Public Library]](http://18.media.tumblr.com/jW9kYrMGyeee9izifRX8NzhZo1_400.jpg)
portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
[March 21 1951]
Student explaining to me (after getting 55) that when reading a novel (“Ulysses” in this case) he likes to skip “passages and pages” so as “to get his own idea, you know, about the book and not be influenced by the author”.
Vladimir Nabokov.[via viz via the New York Public Library]
muppetpants:onemoretimewithfeeling:
“This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention - by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly check new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact.”
Absolutely brilliant tactic.
I had a teacher in high school who used to do this. My history teachers in high school were brilliant—but this woman was either loved or hated. The people who were able to realize when she was fibbing were the ones who loved her. I was blessed enough to be one of those people.
I played this game with my high school teachers, too. Only they weren’t intentionally handing out misinformation, and when I called them on it, they usually didn’t realize they were wrong.
“Other than his fingers, Blake barely moves while playing. His feet are set in place and his eyes are locked on the screen as he peers through a mop of curly brown hair. Gaming for him is serious business. It’s his job.”
(article found through kotaku.com)
The new American Dream.
教育とエンターテイメントを区別する人は、そのどちらについても理解していない
Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either
”マーシャル･マクルーハン (Marshall McLuhan)
(thanks scrap book)
