And she says, they will not be solved with more money, more schools, more teachers or even student codes of conduct. In a controversial new book entitled Challenging Assumptions in Education , she shows how the current education system served admirably for the age of industrial expansion, training laborers to become willing workers in the manufacturing system and helping create unimaginable material wealth. But the industrial age is over, Priesnitz points out. Today, we face a new form of society, and new challenges created by the material consumption that past centuries produced. However, our youngest citizens, during their most formative years, are still locked away in teaching factories, being prepared for the future with the methods of the past.
Schools Have a Noble Purpose.
After thoroughly demonstrating what is wrong with these assumptions, Priesnitz presents a variety of ways that individuals and policy makers can begin to solve the problems created by these assumptions. The book then invites readers to participate in a website-based dialogue to define concrete steps that policy makers and citizens can take to create a true learning society. But every attempt at fixing public education reinforces these assumptions. Only by challenging these assumptions will we be able to take the first steps towards replacing a system that is not relevant to the lives of today's young people. We must give up on the hierarchical, coercive, industrial model of education whether it looks like a public school, a charter school, a private school or a home school because it impedes learning and enslaves children.