Failed Indoctrination Campaign

Reflecting on 15 years of schooling and a new vision for nonschool

“Must we always teach our children with books? Let them look at the mountains and the stars above. Let them look at the beauty of the waters and the trees and flowers on earth. They will then begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real education.” -David Polis

I had the government schooling experience. The one we all had. My senior quote was “I’m leaving and I’m not coming back to this government funded torture chamber.”

Turns out college is high school but with more binge drinking. 

I did the schooling. The one where you’re confused why you are there and soon you don’t want to be there anymore, but you have 12 years left. The fear of humiliation and solitary confinement keeps you in line. The reward for obedience is a letter “grade” and toxic candy. A literal carrot hanging from a stick would be more humane. It’s a society-wide state-funded Pavlov experiment.

The weight of it is too much to contemplate. 

We didn’t know what we were in, like fish in a tank. There was nowhere else to go. There is now and will be more places soon.

Early on, I learned the cost of listening to authorities, to bureaucrats, to strangers, given power by un-elected state bureaucrats. 

In first grade, I was 6 years old, and it was near the end of the school day. Childrens are required to ask the teacher to use the bathroom. I had to go. She fucking told me no. What a bitch. Then I pooped in my pants and sat on the bus in shit. That is the consequence of listening to authority.

Sit in shit.

Looking back, I should not have asked, but since I did and she said no, I wish I told her to suck a dick.

When I was 19 I wrote the following paragraphs:

In Elemenary school there was 30 minutes of free time per every 7 hours of desk time. If you misbehaved, a common punishment was sitting against a wall at recess while watching the other kids play without you. “The wall” was to be feared.

In high school in 2016, a common punishment was receiving in-school suspension. ISS was the typical punishment for a transgression such as leaving the building without permission. For example, going to your car or going out to lunch could result in ISS. In-school suspension is when they put you in a room alone, but supervised, with nothing but schoolwork, for roughly 8 hours. ISS is a euphemism for solitary confinement. 

When you’re not in ISS, there are guards in the hallways and if you leave the building you are put in solitary confinement. Furthermore, an administrator can search both you and your car without your permission. These searches and seizures are violations of the Fourth Amendment which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In-school Suspension (solitary confinement) is an unreasonable seizure called false imprisonment. It is even argued that solitary confinement violates the 8th Amendment which bans “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Wikipedia page for Solitary Confinement reads “Opponents of solitary confinement hold that it is a form of cruel and unusual punishment^[69] and torture^[70] because the lack of human contact, and the sensory deprivation that often go with solitary confinement, can have a severe negative impact on a prisoner's mental state^[71] that may lead to certain mental illnesses such as depression, permanent or semi-permanent changes to brain physiology.”

Google search “solitary confinement in schools.” 

I wrote while in college: “Now I’m in college and there is a lot less class time and a lot more binge drinking - so from a student’s perspective it’s basically an improved version of high school that low-key buries most students in unforgivable debt.”

Fast forward six years.

I’m sending my kids to a place where there’s one “administrator.” Every day she eats with the young people. She eats roughly the same delicious food as them. They create the meals together. She is the queen of lunch. She is ultra fit and kind. The kids fight to sit next to her. 

She decides on the menu. She works with local farmers, butchers and wholesalers. 

She buys local oats, rice, chicken, squash, eggs, berries, and local raw milk and yogurt. The kids’ favorites.

There’s no pizza or pasta. There’s no Doritos.

The kids' favorite morning activity is peeling potatoes and frying eggs. 

Lunch is more or less 1 hour.

There’s no need for recess because the kids’ enjoy the activities. If a pupil or group wants a recess, they can go outside (or inside) and do whatever they need to do, at any time, for any duration. 

Pupils rarely take a recess. Some never do. There’s plenty of extra time for games and boredom on weekends and holidays. Anyway, the games played in school are equal to or more fun than any recess game.

The youngsters want more school, not less. They hate vacations because, if they’re not traveling, it’s boring. 

A cohort is building a tree house today.

They have already calculated how much weight the structure can support. Now they are sourcing materials and tools.

This is a pre-requisite for next year's project: home building. It’s a two year class and at the end they will have a house which they will sell to fund the next cohort’s project. If there’s extra money, they get to keep it.

In management and accounting, they budget, estimate, analyze and plan the operation. 

Throughout the 2 year project, the cohort learns about materials, real estate, ladder safety, masonry, carpentry and interior design. This is how they learn math, science, communications, digital design and marketable skills. 

The teacher/student ratio is 10:1. That is ten teachers per 1 student. These are not 8-month authoritarians like the government schooling I grew up with. My children’s mentors are for as long as they want. It could be 50 years or 5 weeks. 

Every person receives 1 on 1 instruction every day for at least 45 minutes. It can be 1 mentor and 2 young people, of similar ability.

There’s a birding competition. The students who identify and log the most bird species win a trip to a cool birding location of their choosing.

Children develop skills as they choose, guided by skill development trees, using tools from the Collins Institute.

A cohort is cutting firewood for the upcoming full moon festivities. 

A cohort is building chicken coops from a recycled house. There’s a lot to do. No time for multiple choice exams. There’s a cohort building a Time Machine. There’s a cohort pouring over old maps looking for shipwrecks to recover lost treasures. There’s a cohort learning to breathe once a minute for 20 minutes. There’s a cohort bicycling across America. There’s a cohort making blimp. 

There’s a cohort showing a cohort the bushcraft they learned to survive on their barefoot AT thru-hike.

There’s a cohort making a documentary about how Prussian government schooling spread across the West. The title of the film is “A 200-year Mind Virus.”  

My actual high school senior quote was “Predict the future by creating it.”

“If they are not learning the way that we teach, then perhaps we should teach the way that they learn.” -Association for Experiential Learning

“What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I know.” 

Thanks For Reading!

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