Your children’s education can be like jail or a journey – a self-drive safari, where you are the driver and you can stop anytime to soak in something that delights your family – or it can be like a sentence imposed on you that you endure till you’ve served the time!
No education is neutral. All education is religious, even if it claims not to be. Why? Because it gives answers to a range of vitally important questions about our value, our purpose, our priorities, our origins and our destinations in life. These beliefs are the eyes of the mind. They are the lens through which we view the rest of life and if that lens is distorted, it can derail us on our journeys.
In his book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, New York Teacher of the Year (1991), John Taylor Gatto wrote: “School is the first impression we get of organized society and its relentless need to rank everyone on a scale of winners and losers; like most first impressions, the real things school teaches about your place in the social order lasts a lifetime for most of us.”
Every one of us who has ever been at school, at some point asked:
- Why do I have to be here?
- Why do I have to learn this?
- Why can’t I be free?
We received answers that conditioned us to accept compulsory schooling as the norm. We were told that schooling was for our own good. Most of us accepted that the only way to escape was to do the work, pass the exams, and move up, grade by grade or year by year, until we graduated from secondary school.
Some decided that the system wasn’t working for them. They either rebelled and got kicked out or they were smart enough to walk out by their own choice.
The sad part is that no matter which group we belong to, many of us spend much of our adult lives unlearning the thinking that was programmed into us by that experience. We have had to find new lenses on our lives.
The achievers who stayed in the system have to unlearn being compliant. Many have to stop themselves from being approval-seeking people-pleasers and learn to challenge systems and think for themselves. They have to learn to take risks and give themselves permission to fail on the way to success.
The kick-outs and walkouts have to overcome the stigma that comes with being a high school dropout.
John Taylor Gatto wrote, “the real wealth society throws away when it allows crazy social and political leadership to stigmatize and even commodify school dropouts, and those without college degrees, is incalculable.”
Every year, around the world, millions of students drop out of school. Some are angry, some are rebellious, some are confused. Some are forced out by difficult life circumstances… but what does it tell us about school, if millions of young people don’t want to be imprisoned in classrooms?
Instead of shaming them, we should praise the ones who have the guts to walk out, the ones who can resist the programming, the ones whose challenging, questioning natures can’t be tamed. We should treat them with much respect and recognise their potential as courageous non-conformists, who dare to take a different path. We should help them to heal from the hurt and labels that the system has imposed on them and help them discover their true worth. Home education is a liberating alternative!
We all have to learn that our value and worth as individual people (and that of others) is not tied to academic achievements.
Neither is it tied to our sporting abilities or high school popularity rankings. By the way, it’s not tied to the suburb we live in, the brands we buy or our financial status either.
We add value to ourselves when we discover that we have something useful to offer to others. We discover that we are not useless, but we have something worth giving.
We have to learn to think for ourselves.
That thinking is part of the conditioning that we get trapped in. School is not the only place we learn it, but it helps to entrench it.
Jail or journey?
I am not the first person to compare compulsory schooling to jail.
“A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.“~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Both school and prison systems aim to shape the minds of the interns to become what the authorities believe to be the ideal citizen. Governments state this openly.
But this is a flawed model. Think about what happens when a class finishes school.
Does the whole class go to the same institution?
To learn the same things?
To do the same work?
At the same time?
On the same day?
The world doesn’t work according to that outdated model. We need to shift gears in our thinking. We need a generation of creative, free-thinking individuals, who can bring new solutions to our societies instead of perpetuating the old!
Do your kids view authorities as resources?
In a fascinating talk entitled “Is Your Thinking Keeping You Poor?” Douglas Kruger retold an example that illustrates how some people are conditioned in the way they related to authorities.
Typically, a child from a poor family will be taught to have a healthy fear of people in positions of authority. So for example, when he goes to the dentist, the child will be instructed to do as he is told – to be a compliant and submissive patient because the dentist is the expert in authority in that scenario.
A child from another family will be taught that people are resources that you can procure to serve you. He will be encouraged to engage and ask the dentist questions about what needs to be done and why it needs doing because he is an expert in dentistry. A trip to the dentist will be a learning experience and he will view the dentist as a person hired to provide a service and information to him.
Neither is wrong, but the thinking patterns each child will carry into adulthood and the workplace are very different.
My daughter highlighted another example of this to me. She told one of her university lecturers at Massey that she didn’t like the assignment topic that the class was given and she suggested an alternative, to which her lecturer agreed. Having been homeschooled all her life, she is used to having a say in what she learns and negotiating about how and when she will do it. It struck me that most students are trained not to question or negotiate but simply to comply.
Similarly, many of us have been conditioned by the school system to be submissive and subservient to those in authority, instead of viewing government officials as public servants who are accountable to the people who voted them into office…. But that’s a topic for another day!
In the school system, what child is ever taught to see a teacher as someone employed by their parents (taxpayers) to provide them with a professional service? No, instead teachers train children to ‘serve’ and obey them. The students who excel in the system are rewarded and get to become the wardens, who perpetuate the cycle of programming masses of compliant citizens.
Get your thinking out of jail.
As author John Gatto pointed out, the state-run school system is part of a bigger system of political management. It is one of various government projects that takes a huge cut of the annual budget to create a large number of low-paying jobs.
Ask any teacher, they’ll agree that they are overworked and underpaid!
To sustain this job creation project, they have a not-so-subliminal marketing campaign that sells a self-perpetuating lie.
The lie is this:
- You must go to school to get a good education.
- Without education you can’t get a job.
- Without a job you will have no security, no future, no status.
Dr Caroll Quigley said, “People become dangerous when too many see through the illusions that hold society together.”
Many home educators are becoming “dangerous”. They have recognised the lies that keep people locked-in to the system.
1. Schooling is not the secret to success or job-security
We have realised that LEARNING not schooling is the requirement for success in life. We can learn anywhere!
We have realised that a job does not offer security in this economy. Having a job and working for a boss is like owning a business that has only one customer. If you lose that customer, you lose your only source of income. When Covid-19 mandates were implemented, many learned this lesson the hard way.
But if you are self-employed, or if you have a job but you also have multiple income streams, you have much greater financial security.
Free-thinking parents are raising up job creators, not job takers.
Many home educating families (and other free thinkers) are also choosing alternatives to the status quo in other areas of their lives, such as healthcare, birthing, food production and church.
Schooling is part of the conditioning and programming that society imposes on you. LEARNING is what you set out to do for yourself.
2. Schooling is limiting
We have realised that conventional schooling only develops a narrow set of skills and most people’s talents don’t even get discovered in that one-size-fits-all system.
Various educational experts refer to the school system as an outdated factory model. The late Sir Ken Robinson compared it with a conveyor belt or factory assembly line, where children pass from grade to grade having injections of knowledge added, then move along to university and finally exit with a degree, but very few employable skills.
He highlighted how this conveyor belt system kills creativity, by treating everyone the same. He described it as one where “students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture.”1
More and more parents are realising that NOT following the norm holds great benefit for their children. Jumping off the conveyor belt, opens up worlds of alternative opportunities and exposes children to unique experiences that can shape their life paths for good. They have opportunities to develop 21st-century skills and competence and this helps them avoid pursuing conveyor-belt educational paths that might disappoint them.
The 2020 pandemic, or PLANdemic as some believe, allowed many families to experience a locked-down version of learning outside of a classroom. For many, it was a challenge: having to work from home and school kids at short notice. However, for others, it was an eye-opening time or even the catalyst they needed to kickstart homeschooling.
Break out and learn free
If you’re considering home education or you are already schooling-at-home, you need to make sure that you don’t perpetuate the jail-based system and thinking that comes with it, in your home.
School is where our thinking, our children’s freedom, personalities, socialisation and creativity are restricted by rules and other systemic limitations. Home education, like the rest of life, is the self-drive safari….much more rewarding!
So, let me encourage you: You won’t fail your children if you give them a customised education. Many of us have been doing it for over 20 years and we’ve seen the fruit in our children’s lives.
Don’t replicate school at home.
Get out of jail. Join the learning safari.