Status Updates From Freedom and Beyond

"Schools work hard to transmit to children certain other beliefs and attitudes, perhaps without even being aware what they are, or that they are doing it." - Well, teachers do. John Holt included. It's only a problem if these attitudes are too uniform, or children are restricted in the number of teachers who teach them.

"People may often have had to decide which of a number of applicants they would employ or promote, but they did not decide on the basis of diploma's and school transcripts, because there were none" - diplomas help employers make that decision: they want them. In turn the candidate with a diploma is in a stronger position over the candidate without, they want them too. As a teacher, I don't want the responsibility.

"since we cannot at the same time and in same place be in the jail business and in the learning business, we must get oourselves out of the jail business" - learning (at least not to make the same mistake) is an essential part of the prison experience, the difference between that and the school experience is the ratio of learning to jail.

"To ask or expect the schools...given our present understanding of education, to be innovative and imaginative...seems to be asking for the impossible" - perhaps we should be working on our understanding of education rather than condemning schools.

"To go on talking about the sounds of single letters is, with very few exceptions, the worst thing we can do for the children we are trying to help." - a cheap shot, can't think he has thought about this.There is a problem with English in this, but not one I've ever seen a child blocked by. In any case the distinctions between vowel and consonant, and digraphs etc. follow quickly on.

"...in three critical respects [Freire's] 'schools' were altogether different...they were not compulsory...the neither required nor gave any credentials...they did not lock the student into a prescribed sequence of learning determined in advance." - how much are these constraints a consequence of schools and teachers themselves, and how much a consequence of the political economy schools operate in?

"Men learned as they worked, and the lives of everyone on board ship constantly depended on both the work and the learning being done well...This seems to me the model of a sensible educational system for a poor community, a poor minority group, or a poor nation." - Yep, fewer schools, more war - that'll motivate them!

"Hence the expensiveness of schools. They are expensive because they are wasteful and unproductive." I suspect that any parent they suddenly became responsible for educating their own children as a result of Covid would agree that schools offer astonishing value for money.

"Grades tell us little enough, as it is, but if we must use them, the very least we can do is use them to measure academic work and not as a disciplinary threat" - shocked to read of this happening in the US in the 60s. It happens now in Hungary because the schools don't have a disciplinary system with teeth. Likewise in the US, don't they have detention?

"a deschooled society would be a society in which everybody shall have the widest and freest possible choice to learn whatever he wants to learn" - as to 'learning what' the internet has deschooled society, but has also raised questions about the quality of what we we are all free to learn. But what about 'learning how to': resources are required and school has been our traditional way of allocating those resources.

"So the average knowledge job in the American economy today...requires a prior investment like $20,000" - the whole argument conducted without a consideration of the returns on that investment. His economic thinking is frustratingly hit or miss.

"...the serious gambler or swindler or corrupt politician or even the outright thief thinks his gambling or making deals under the table or stealing is his work" - in terms of time or energy it is. Whenever I have considered professional gambling or speculation, I have always been put off by the sheer amount of hard work that success entails...from speculation to trading anything - shades of grey, not black & white.

"In such a world, by making full and wise use of the inexhaustable energy resources of the sun and tides, we may be able to maytain a permanently high material standard of life for all men, without damaging our home planet Earth. That world is not...even within sight." - it is now and we have twice as many people, and they are 20 times richer.

"Schools are theoretically supposed to adjust their priorities to some degree, to take account of the jobs in the job market. But they are always too slow, there is too much time lag" - noticeable in the 1970's, unavoidable in the 2020's.

"[Poverty] is not caused by poor people not having enough schooling and cannot be reduced or done away with by giving them much more schooling" - this is probably true, if you see schooling as primarily about learning things.

"...why should an institution supported by public funds not be open to the public." - because it's primary function is the protection of young people, as in a school of fish.

'[the] first and most important job [of a head of a university] was to get out into the professor markets and hire away from other universities what he called 'stars'. Shades of pro football and show biz" - told you learning things is not the priority function of schools. This is a very bad system for teachers, who are put in the same economic situation as struggling actors, and second rate sportspeople.

"Clearly, we are not going to spend on schooling between a quarter and almost a third of our GNP. We now spend 8%, and there are man signs that this is about the limit of what people are willing to pay" - Norway currently tops the league at 8.5%, but I suppose the figures should be adjusted for the number of students.

"Schools are places people go to find things" - one, not necessarily the most valuable function of schools.

"To bow to superior force makes us feel impotent and cowardly for not having had the strength or courage to resist" - Wow, from the sublime to the ridiculous in one page.

"[Nature]...is a great teacher...[she] is impersonal, impartial, and indifferent. She does not get angry, or make judgements; she cannot be wheedled, bullied, of fooled; she does not get angry or disappointed; she does not praise or blame; she does not remember past failures or hold grudges; with her one always gets a fresh start, this time is the one that counts"

"We have to assume, or at least I choose to, that in the long run more choices and fewer constraints, less coercion, less fear, is good for most people" - except we're talking about a special group of people here, children.

"If [A teacher] gives up being a boss, he must find himself to some degree an entertainer. He has no business in the classroom except to think up things for children to do. If they don't want to do any of them, he can hardly help feeling something of a failure." - I'm miles away from Holt philosophically, but I read him because his observations about teaching are so acute.

"Perhaps the most painful tension, particularly for high school students, is that on one hand they want to get out from under all those adults...On the other hand, they find that a world away from adults is no world at all" - because of covid my students have discovered this: I'm curious to know what long term effect, if any, it has on them.

"...in a free society you can find out where the limits are; in a tyranny you can never be sure." - as has been observed about press freedom in Hungary.

"The distance between A and B is the Behaviour Gap." - There are similarities here, in style, in vocabulary, and in concept with de Bono's Happiness Purpose. I can only assume Holt was an inspiration for de Bono.