The purpose of school is to enforce homogeneity. This is useful in terms of having a populace with a common base of education. It's pretty useful to society to have a means to indoctrinate children-- and not all indoctrination is bad, like peer pressure isn't all bad, that's what keeps us from picking our noses in public.-- but there are definitely people who don't fit the mold and have to be crushed up a bit.
As an adult, I've found that all my weird angles that didn't fit right into the mold of what was expected of me as a schoolchild are the same things causing me problems as an adult.
I was reading on my Network page yesterday and there was a post by someone who has jury duty and said a great deal of the mechanics of moving people through the steps relies upon expectations of a common schooling background: raising your hand if you have a question, not talking while the [teacher] is talking, answering when your name is called while attendance is being taken, and so on.
Another recent thought, was in an email where I said to someone who isn't adapting very well to life here in California compared to the midwest, is that we have a lot of diversity here. Not that this is a bad thing, but it makes things seem more crowded. You can't nest spoons in a drawer when they're not all the same brand, let alone when some of them are forks. It means there are more things poking out everywhere and eventually no one even tries to stack or sort the silverware, so it takes up the whole drawer.
We don't have a place in our society for people who don't want to be educated. But we should. And we should send children who fail out to be trained in that, then they should repeat the grade they failed. If you had to spend the summer picking cabbages, you wouldn't be lazy about doing your math homework. The children who really didn't or couldn't learn academics would get funneled into trades and stop diluting the academic experience for everyone else.
Everywhere has bullies. It's not restricted to schools. Those people grow up and lord it over their staff members. They grow up and abuse their children. There are always people who see a loophole in what is fair and take advantage of it because it benefits themselves over others.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-30 05:20 pm (UTC)As an adult, I've found that all my weird angles that didn't fit right into the mold of what was expected of me as a schoolchild are the same things causing me problems as an adult.
I was reading on my Network page yesterday and there was a post by someone who has jury duty and said a great deal of the mechanics of moving people through the steps relies upon expectations of a common schooling background: raising your hand if you have a question, not talking while the [teacher] is talking, answering when your name is called while attendance is being taken, and so on.
Another recent thought, was in an email where I said to someone who isn't adapting very well to life here in California compared to the midwest, is that we have a lot of diversity here. Not that this is a bad thing, but it makes things seem more crowded. You can't nest spoons in a drawer when they're not all the same brand, let alone when some of them are forks. It means there are more things poking out everywhere and eventually no one even tries to stack or sort the silverware, so it takes up the whole drawer.
We don't have a place in our society for people who don't want to be educated. But we should. And we should send children who fail out to be trained in that, then they should repeat the grade they failed. If you had to spend the summer picking cabbages, you wouldn't be lazy about doing your math homework. The children who really didn't or couldn't learn academics would get funneled into trades and stop diluting the academic experience for everyone else.
Everywhere has bullies. It's not restricted to schools. Those people grow up and lord it over their staff members. They grow up and abuse their children. There are always people who see a loophole in what is fair and take advantage of it because it benefits themselves over others.