TOTW: Education Reform

**visual Unhelpful Teacher Meme and/or Bad Teacher movie poster with teacher feet up on desk**

I was initially turned off by the nun with the ruler and the specific use of the word “reform” throughout the Topic of the Week. For anarchists, the word has a lot of baggage and is one of the many things anarchists are by definition against. As for the nun with a ruler, seemingly threatening to beat some kids up with it – this was the standard in education in the USA up to at least the late 1990s. All the older people in the USA today, just around retirement age or so, grew up in schools where kids would literally get beaten by their teachers to various degrees. This is a dramatic change, where today if you beat up a kid you’re losing your job, getting publicly shamed and going to jail for years. When I think about old people (okay boomer), I often try to remind myself that this was the standard for them in education, getting punished with physical abuse by adults, who were supposed to be there to help you see the world in different ways.

Public, private, charter, and alternative schooling in the USA is vastly different depending on where you live, largely based off of States and their education standards and practices. Although, the USA Federal government plays a large role as well, especially since Drumpf and his hiring of the former World Wrestling Federation (fake wrestling) spouse as Education Secretary, who had literally no experience in the field of education. Even within each state, school districts throughout a region can vary drastically depending on the funding and wealth of each locale. Some States have high standards where teachers need the schooling equivalent of lawyers and other highly trained professionals and in other States, no post-secondary experience is required. It’s not necessary to have more education to be a good teacher, whatever that means – but, it can help filter out those people who definitely should not be doing the job.

Where do anarchists send their kids to school? Charter schools are getting all the attention currently by Drumpf with their lack of basic workplace and educational standards required largely by public schools. Private schools can be a fortune and indoctrinate religious and other ideas and just as bad, if not worse than public. Alternative schools like Montesorri and Waldorf as also expensive and incredibly few and far between. And what about home school? No thank you. The Modern School is dead and anarchists have failed at education. Overall education in the USA is at a very low water mark and it looks like it’s going to keep getting worse.

The banking model mentioned in the TOTW can also be described as general education requirements. These general education requirements at the secondary and university level at creating the metaphorical “cogs” and “gears” in the “machine” to help keep it running. Education at the secondary level can also be thought of as a place to keep your kid for a number of hours during the day, while you go off to your job, keeping capitalism running. In other words, teachers are underpaid and over-trained babysitters while the other adults are off spinning around the machine.

Too much liberty in anarchist schools? I’m reminded of a talk by Dominic Barter[1] some years ago about a free school they worked on in Brasil (and Italy?) where to sum up, some kids from the street, who struggled to be in normal school, met and were able to design and practice their own learning. Did it sometimes look like goofing around and having fun for the day? Definitely, yes! I’m with the anarchists of today doing anarchist free schools (skool!) and do-it-yourself workshops. On the very opposite end of this idea, one can find academic anarchists at the university level, writing their papers, leaving footnote referenced comments on ANews, as one way anarchists have found a way to make an unfortunate living within society!

I want to end my non-comment response to the TOTW questions with a text about Voltairine De Cleyre who this prompt largely cites, as an example of understanding where this person was on other ideas and how that can be impactful overall when digesting her ideas. Shining a light on who she was - “Voltairine de Cleyre, like her fellow historical anarchists of Euro-American (or simply European) descent, took contradictory stances on colonialism and Indigenous peoples throughout her life. Her case is just particularly extreme, and due to that, especially instructive.”[2] If Volt were my teacher today, I might throw a pie in her face and drop her class.

[1] Dominic Barter. https://www.euforumrj.org/dominic-barter

[2] “Voltairine De Cleyre and Colonialism” by K. C. Sinclair. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/k-c-sinclair-voltairine-de-cley…

What do we think education is for? Who do we think education is for?
Now, it seems, education is for the smooth running of capitalism, schooling the mass of us in how to sit still and do repetitive and/or unnecessary tasks just because or to look busy.

My anarchist world would have adults who knew themselves enough to be able to sense the capabilities and capacities of the not-yet-adult around them. So, first, these adults would have been through an Initiation themselves, to start to gain a grasp on their own capabilities. Then, as children are born, they are able to guide or encourage or facilitate etc, the youth into appropriate or fitting or desired etc roles. Like, the midwife would train the next midwife, the plant person the next plant person etc.

Further, this society can look and be almost infinite ways, but however it is all adults know all its rules or laws or customs etc which would be few but enforceable by all, when necessary.

I guess this is considered "informal" in terms of education but it seems to me to be optimal.