<\/strong><\/em>Traditional schooling and Sudbury schooling have one central idea in common: the result of schooling should be that young people are prepared for life as adults.<\/p>\n The similarities, of course, more or less end there.<\/p>\n One difference I find very curious.<\/p>\n While anyone involved in education of any sort will admit that there are certain skills which every young adult should probably have \u2013 setting aside the question of who gets to identify what those are, and how, on which Sudbury schools differ radically from traditional eudcation.<\/p>\n It is also generally accepted that not every student will acquire all of these important skills perfectly.\u00a0The curious thing is this: traditional schooling seems to be based on the belief that “at least we have to try”.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n So on the one hand, the argument is that it’s critical that young people know things like English and math, and hence the state and its schools have to make every effort to ensure that young people learn them.\u00a0On the other hand, the system and its supporters can’t escape the simple fact that they’re not going to succeed completely \u2013 but the system is still justified, because what matters is the attempt<\/em>.<\/p>\n In some situations, that’s a fair argument. But let us be clear here: this is not some trivial pass-time being justified.\u00a0It’s an enormous state mechanism that requires huge numbers of public servants, bucketloads of public money, and severe limitations on individual rights for every single human currently between the ages of (more or less) 6 and 18.<\/p>\n But it’s okay \u2013 at least they’re trying<\/strong> to help them out!<\/em><\/p>\n What matters is not what happens to the learner, not even what happens to society, but only that the state has “done its best” to equip the next generation with skills and knowledge.\u00a0How much more could you possibly ignore young people?\u00a0What are they, iPods?<\/p>\n State education is no longer about making sure students acquire key skills \u2013 it’s only about giving the adults the good feeling of having really given it a go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[30,40,579,75,478,96,97,101,102,135,139,147],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2613,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/2613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?x-id=ba887c34-1c35-4098-8b4f-40203300104e\")
<\/div>\nFootnotes<\/h3>\n
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