US taxpayers spend nearly $700 billion each year on K-12 public schooling, and that eye-popping sum shows no sign of slowing. In fact, as more non-academic programs are adopted in schools across the country, the price tag for mass schooling continues to swell even as achievement lags.
Tag: schooling
The Value of Skipping Time
I think many people forget the intense boredom of schooling. I think they forget their feelings of being treated like an inferior. Too often it is just false/ingrained narratives and flashes of memorable positive moments that remain of people’s idea of schooling.
How School Districts Weaponize Child Protection Services Against Uncooperative Parents
In my advocacy work with homeschooling families across the country, I frequently hear stories from parents who decided to homeschool their kids because schools were pressuring them to comply with various special education plans, push medications onto their children, or submit to other restrictive procedures they felt were not in their child’s best interest. Even more heartbreaking is the growing trend of school officials to unleash child protective services (CPS) on parents, homeschooling or not, who refuse to give in to a district’s demands.
Stoicism, Schooling, Climate Change, & Elder Care (36m) – Editor’s Break 116
Editor’s Break 116 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: practicing the Stoic teaching of recognizing your own complicity in your emotional reactions to the speech of others; the insidious institution of schooling and its coercion and manipulation of children; how markets will respond to the grave and dire threat of climate change; the sad state of affairs in his culture toward care for the elderly; and more.
Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment
Parents don’t need Harvard researchers to tell them that a child who just turned five is quite different developmentally from a child who is about to turn six. Instead, parents need to be empowered to challenge government schooling motives and mandates, and to opt-out.
On Schooling
It’s no surprise to you I’m sure that I am not a fan of the institution of schooling. Among other things, I very much dislike the double threat of coercion that it engages in, which are the use of punishments to encourage desirable behaviors, and the use of manipulation, that is, telling children that without school they will be stupid.
Elon Musk’s Innovative Education Blueprint
In a 2015 interview about the school, the billionaire inventor said: “The regular schools weren’t doing the things that I thought should be done. So I thought, well, let’s see what we can do.” Ad Astra, which means “to the stars,” disrupts the very idea of school.
Can For-Profit Schools Revolutionize Education? One Entrepreneur Is Betting Yes.
As much as we (rightfully) decry the persistence of factory-style mass schooling, we should remember that this remnant of the Industrial Age was, at its time, quite innovative.
Why Teen Suicide Is Lower in States That Have More School Choice
Freedom is the precursor to happiness. When we’re free, we feel in control of our lives and able to direct our own path. If we’re unhappy, we can make changes and make different choices. If we are not free, we cannot make these choices. We cannot be our own agents, and so we suffer. This suffering due to lack of freedom is becoming increasingly apparent throughout our mandatory system of mass schooling.
Blindly Trusting the Experts
Years ago, my mother went to amazing lengths to provide formula for my baby brother. She boiled glass bottles; she boiled nipples; she boiled water to make formula, she boiled the spoon to mix it. My wife nursed our children, and my daughter nurses hers; this was “radical” 35 years ago, but is pretty “mainstream” today.