Even though most of what we learn is not the result of teaching, school's lesson is that instruction produces learning. So schools produce the demand for more schooling. In order to shelter ourselves, to eat, to be healthy or entertained, or to manage the affairs of our communities, we look to other people rather than our own resources - to experts rather than to our relatives, friends and neighbours. Delivering 'Received Ideas' As author and schooling critic John Taylor Gatto explains, after we fall into the habit of having other people do things for us, we lose the power to think for ourselves. Maybe that's why so few of us challenge the premises of nursing homes, television, day-care centres, schools and the global economy.
School measures a student's mastery of a prefabricated curriculum on a standardized scale.
When we submit to others' standards to measure our own growth, we put ourselves and others into assigned slots. Ineffective Training Aside from these covert agendas, schools don't accomplish their stated goals very well. Experiments conducted 30 years ago in Puerto Rico showed that students were more effective at introducing their peers to the world of science than their teachers. Yet after having received 12,000 hours or more of teaching, many Canadians can't read well enough to function in their daily lives. Many high school graduates have no skills to make a living or even any skills with which to talk to each other.