Our 11 year old is going to a Waldorf School now. It’s not home schooling, but it’s wonderful. He’s turned on to everything. There is nothing stifling about it. He’s learning piles of stuff, and there hasn’t been a single test yet.

The testing system is a tragedy, isn’t it? I always did well on them (I’m good at “gaming” standardized tests), but one of my best friends always scored really low. However, now he has a masters and speaks multiple languages fluently, including Mandarin (he lives and works in Beijing). My mother is a public school teacher, so I have many, many more stories like this – and where she teaches, they are really pressured to teach to the tests, because otherwise they will lose funding -thanks, No Child Left Behind!.

Fortunately, we have someone in education of Dr. King’s eloquence, but sadly not of his influence: John Taylor Gatto. Follow the links, especially to Gatto’s writing.

Here’s one history lesson.

I suppose we should be glad that Gatto isn’t more well-known, or he’d have been shot by now too.

Perhaps in the fullness of time. I can be optimistic about that, at least.

Fortunately, however, I was a nerdy kid who read voraciously, so I made up for what was lacking by basically reading everything I could get my hands on, history books included. And like Mike, I read ahead in my textbooks because I was bored (that drove my teachers nuts). However, I doubt that many of my peers did the same.

Back to the point of the post –

This quote gets to me: ““A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

But this one gives me hope, in a way – “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – because the growth in citizen journalism and publishing tools on the web mean that breaking the silence has become easier than ever.

Jesse Jackson

not pretty, is it?

People my age and younger don’t generally know ANYTHING about the state of the world, and how we got here because they teach history in the wrong order… least relevant stuff first. Who cares about the Sumerian empire? Why not start with the stuff we care about, and build from there?

Anyway… back to the point. I grew up after all that stuff, and disconnected from all of it by an education that placed no value on learning from history… more focus on how to pass tests than actual, you know… education. I think this is pretty much how all of my peers experienced it as well.

Having no solid foundation in history or critical thinking, it took a long time for me to start to get it… somewhere around 1995 or so… I don’t know how well my classmates are doing as far as getting a clue… but I’m not very hopeful.

We’re an MTV nation, disconnected from our past, with no critical thinking skills, no heros, and no real sense of community…. it’s not a good place to be, considering the shit that’s we’re in for ahead.

I hope I’m wrong, and that those with a clue have enough skills and resources to help the rest wake up to reality once we go post-oil, post-consumer, and enter the maelstrom ahead.