There are several good sites on liberation of education, on taking the oppression out of it. It is a cause that matches perfectly with this site’s causes: but this site does not seek to duplicate those sites. Unnecessary to. David Gribble’s Authoritarian Schooling a Catalogue of Damage is the outstanding library site on this, and the periodicals Lib Ed and PEN, and Alfie Kohn’s campaign against homework, and Local Futures’ really important article Strangely Like Gulag, that shows the developing world seeing that the propaganda of getting opportunities through the forcing model of school is a foul con. The Education Consent site created by school students internationally in 2020, is much missed, why did they let it expire after 1 year?
But in Apr 2021 there has newly appeared the site “School is difficult”, a project to report on reform of school for all the neurodivergent conditions. It lists: autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, Tourette’s. Collecting experiential responses from folks with any of them, of all ages. It is unusual that it does not confine itself to present kids, but wants experiential evidence of any historical age learned from.
Great to pass on the link for that: www.schoolisdifficult.co.uk/; but also, it is in the social reform spirit of this site to share my answer to that site’s survey –
10. If the school system was completely redesigned, what should it look like?
《 There shall be no streaming, no forms or need to belong to the same class long term. Classes will only exist as one-offs for each course in each subject, like in adult education now. Indeed, subject to small kids’ safety there will be no separation of kids and adults as students, except that for initial literacy the age-typical provision for it for small kids will be separate from adult literacy.
The classes’ composition shall be of the folks voluntarily interested in that course: entirely self-selecting, except that there will be the sanction of exclusion for bullying or for serious enough disruption of others to prevent the class running, and a person who hogs the same class repeatedly will be challengeable as to having good cause. Classes in remote locations would have preferentiality for remotely located residents. Where there is enough demand to serve an additional need by a need-specific class, in one subject or a combination, this may be done. But all these sanctions will not be by decree, they will be challengeable on facts by both the sanctioned person and any other affected party, including classmates, exactly like the due process around adult chairing of a society. This will be in writing for all students whose writing level is up to it.
Discrimination law shall be used to enforce that all classes containing kids will hold them to the same standard of social inclusion and anti-ribald policy between class members as would hold between adults. But also, no student shall be obliged to stay in the same class long term if they find it socially not to their liking, they can change to another at any location.
Costume choices shall never be interpreted as a disruption, and instead, gender or age prejudice towards them shall. Within a gender equal line of minimal decency, every choice of clothes shall be a human right protected under the biological need of sensory issues.
Students and teachers shall, as equals, be equally entitled, towards each other, to defend themselves and the class against violence by any means to hand before assistance arrives, and to shout back standing up for themselves if shouted at. Voices getting emotionally worked up in a discussion that is part of the lesson shall not be seized on and called shouting if they are not overwhelming the other person’s ability to respond. Loud calling for emergency attention of course is allowed. These apart, first use of shouting shall be equally wrong on both sides. There shall be no culture that teachers shout at kids.
From age 5 because it is a seen average age for startability of literacy, the state shall verify that each child has been informed of and knows of education’s existence and these options, as much as they can grasp. Where they can not grasp them all at that age, then return informings every couple of years until they can. No child who has enough language state in words their own wishes shall be prevented from choosing any piece of education by their parents’ conscience, e.g, religious. It shall be the child’s own conscience that counts, not parents’.
To no course shall there be attached any assumption of taking a test or exam. But tested qualifications taken optionally, shall still exist for practical skills, for purposes of skilled employment or qualifying to do dangerous things. This shall include languages, as there are sometimes practical needs to record skill levels in speaking them.
There shall be no homework or coursework, even optionally. Instead, course materials shall include exampled guidance on what the student could expect they could now do if they have learned successfully, and optionally available personal coachings where the student can see they have not acquired that ability. For the skills courses that have tested qualifications, of course model and practice tests must be available, but can never be ordered. Personal tuiton or coaching shall exist alternatively to classes or complementarily, in subjects where practice finds a demand for them, the same as it increasingly exists now outside school and at university, and for low demand subjects among the skills and languages.
There shall be an automatic right of impact scale publishing and media notice for it, for any claim of evidence of a harmful, damaging, self-defeating, traumatising, experience getting done to folks. Where educational practice exists either that directly does it, or that allows or enables it to happen. This is a common sense piece of accountability in democratic society that should apply across the whole of society, not only in education; but it is very proved needed in education, by the media elite’s status quo bias and long term ignorement of many of school’s traumas. 》
Next? In 2023 the contradictions pile on. For now we are told.
- re the fall of Deputy PM Dominic Raab, that there should no longer be “intimidating” “aggressive” “tough taskmasters”.
- re a head teacher’s suicide over her school’s grading by inspectors: that bad grading labels in 1 or 2 words, like “failing” or “needs improvement”, are unfairly sweeping and demoralise and cause anxiety and psychological blows. But this is said for adults, for teachers, while nobody mentions the obvious fact that through all the generations of compulsory school, teachers have been doing exactly this to the kids ! The media fall over themselves to care about pressure on teachers and never question the structure of pressure on kids.
court change 