thoughts on education...

Reading this while the kids nap. Thinking, thinking.

"For quite a long time educators and theorists naively assumed that the fruits of a "decent society" would continue to grow on a tree whose roots had been cut away. This is romanticism.  How can fruit be produced without roots, a trunk, branches?  As the infrastructure becomes an increasingly dimly remembered idea, lawlessness and antisocial behavior have resulted.  These problems in turn trigger the demand for stronger and stronger measures of control from governments and any in authority.  We are trading in freedoms for controls that threaten to bring on the nightmare envisioned by George Orwell: 'Big brother is watching you'"....

"This trend has also been evolving in schools.  Without a framework-- an inner skeleton of truth and moral "bones" --and a clear aim, society is trying to rescue the younger generation by slapping on an exoskeleton.  Through rapidly increasing iron-fisted rules, regulations, and proscribed behavior requirements, some people think we can resolve the difficulties."