Skip to main content

School is prison

Great article on schools as prison and unschooling by Peter Gray
Published on Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com)

“Why Don’t Students Like School?” Well, Duhhhh…

By Peter Gray
Created Sep 2 2009 - 4:40am

Someone recently referred me to a book that they thought I'd like. It's a 2009 book, aimed toward teachers of grades K through 12, titled Why Don't Students Like School? It's by a cognitive scientist named Daniel T. Willingham, and it has received rave reviews by countless people involved in the school system. Google the title and author and you'll find pages and pages of doting reviews and nobody pointing out that the book totally and utterly fails to answer the question posed by its title.

Willingham's thesis is that students don't like school because their teachers don't have a full understanding of certain cognitive principles and therefore don't teach as well as they could. They don't present material in ways that appeal best to students' minds. Presumably, if teachers followed Willingham's advice and used the latest information cognitive science has to offer about how the mind works, students would love school.

Talk about avoiding the elephant in the room!

Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you. "School is prison." They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, "School is prison."

Let me say that a few more times: School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison.

More.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NBC anti-life?

I would boycott NBC, if I ever watched it that is. I actually never watch anything on the old line networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX. Everything I watch is on the cable only stations... do they still broadcast over the air? Ah well, this story is about the fact that it seems NBC refused to air an ad put together by some Catholic outfit that features an embryo and all of the hardships it faced in early life ending up with the revelation that they were talking about Obama. Here is the ad , check it out and see how unoffensive it is. Like I said, if I watched them I'd quit now. :-/
Post a Comment
Read more

Wikileaks and police state censorship

I saw an article today on SF Gate about some nit wit Bush appointed Federal Judge ordering a website I'd never heard of called Wikileaks shut down because they were publishing some bank documents from some corrupt Swiss bank. The amusing thing is that they can't actually do it! Even more amusing is that this just draws attention to the site and makes it that much more visible, yay idiot goons! :-) There are mirror sites all over the world and it's almost impossible for thuggish police state goons to figure out how to close off all of the leaks :-) One mirror site is here: http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks The US site they tried to close down is still here: http://88.80.13.160 "Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe,...
1 comment
Read more

Child Driven Education

Here is a Ted Talk with Sugata Mitra on Child Driven Education... very unschooling-like I think.  :-)  I've seen videos of him before, this is an update on his research on letting groups of kids learn on the internet, mostly without any supervision at all.  Posted via email from The Angry Gnome
Post a Comment
Read more