Sublime

If one takes appropriate action, one receives praise. If one takes inappropriate action, one receives punishment. Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment. It leads to mistaken lifestyles in which people think, If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in i

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778),

In order to efficiently jam as much testable data into each generation of kids, we push to make those children compliant, competitive zombies.

To understand why, let’s start with three misapprehensions about learning common to supporters of ‘curiosity-driven’ education: 1. ‘Children don’t need teachers to instruct them.’

Dr. Joseph Mayer Rice toured public schools in thirty-six cities, he came away appalled at what he saw, calling one New York City school “the most dehumanizing institution that I have ever laid eyes upon, each child being treated as if he possessed a memory and the faculty of speech, but no individuality, no sensibilities, no soul.”

In embracing Rogers, Americans took important parts of themselves to heart—parts about which, however, the nation remains ambivalent. Does individualism imply fresh exploration of values by each person in each new generation, or must individualism be linked to fixed traditions and a view of man as selfish and competitive? Returning to established c

He was a wonderful educator, and he always told us to question assumptions. “There’s an assumption,” he said, “that schools are for students’ learning. Well, why aren’t they just as much for teachers’ learning?”

Paradoxically, many of these disciplinary policies are akin to the progressive vision espoused by eugenicists like Karl Pearson, justifying harsh discipline as a means to “close academic disparities.” Schooling becomes standardized testing without creative expression, arbitrary rules without room to breathe, Black Excellence without Black Joy.