Schooling

What are schools teaching children?  Useful skills?  Important knowledge?  Maybe.

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Peter Gray, a research professor of Psychology at Boston College, mentions that school is not as useful as one may think.  As Peter Gray mentions, school is a place where children are forced to learn things.

First, forcing people to learn will – in most cases – make them associate learning with something bad.  Then they will supposedly spend a long time avoiding learning.  But apparently most people grow out of this frame of mind.

Second, children are principally, through use of tests with correct and incorrect answers, to figure out what the teacher wants them to say and then say it, as opposed to critical thinking and understanding the subject thoroughly.

This is just a very quick look at this, for more info, read the Psychology Today article here.

Now take a moment and consider that.  Now, imagine a world without any schooling whatsoever.

Maybe after a few years, people will start to realise that they have to learn something or the human race will die out, but at first, in this age, I imagine that not a lot of things will get done.

Within in this paradox we live.  Schooling inhibits critical thinking and discourages learning, while no schooling would certainly lead to disaster and increased levels of worker-class people (thus slowing down technological development).

To combat this, a lot of teachers try to introduce critical thinking into their lessons and stimulate discussion, though it’s not always possible.

Meanwhile, Fairhaven School has another approach:  Let the children do whateverthey want.

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