And that's precisely why we must make major changes. Whether these problems were created by design or accident, we can't fix them by continuing the status quo. We need to create a society that chooses action over consumption, that favours relating to others over developing new weapons, that encourages conservation over production. And this just won't happen unless we de-institutionalize learning. Too Beginning in Junior Kindergarten, young people are treated as unneeded and legally minor.
School is a substitute for everyday life, and childhood a rehearsal for personhood.
It replaces real experiences with pseudo experiences. It dismisses the value of children's own experiences, thoughts and opinions, substituting the opinions of a textbook author who often has a different worldview than the student. At the end of the school assembly line, students with little authentic knowledge are bumped out into the adult world like so many sausages - and expected to suddenly make mature decisions. And that's not surprising. The chief function of state-run public education is not to empower citizens to make responsible decisions about the future of the earth or the harmonious cohabitation of the people on it.