 Authoritarian Culture Caused by Schools and it May be Too Late |
Editorial by Jerry Mintz
'There is much talk and hand wringing these days about the authoritarian turn in our government and the racism that seems to be bubbling up in our society. But none of this should be surprising when you consider the environment that most Americans have experienced as they have grown up.
Perhaps 95% of Americans, in public or private schools, have experienced a basically authoritarian system for 12 years in which they were expected to sit quietly at their desks most of the time, study the things that the teachers told them to study, not veer off into other directions, and prepare to be rigorously tested on these things (rigor, as is rigor mortis).
They also, for the most part, grew up in segregated or resegregated communities, based largely on discriminatory housing and economics. Many have not had much of a chance to really get to know people of other races or ethnic backgrounds.
All of this is effective training for craving the continuation of what they became used to, of authoritarian political rule and racist beliefs. It is therefore no wonder, as some have noted, that we now have an authoritarian government with racist tendencies.
By happenstance I was in Russia for the First New Schools Festival of the Soviet Union in August of 1991. There was a lot of positive optimism there about the future. After the conference we were hosted at Yeltzin's While House in Moscow. While I was on my way back by train to England, the very next day, Yeltzin faced down the tank during the coup, from the very spot I had been standing the day before. There was no more Soviet Union.
This ushered in a period of real experimentation and change in Russia and people hoping to work toward real democracy. But because the population was very used to authoritarian dictatorship they seem to have devolved back to it. The majority seem comfortable with that while dissidents are again squashed.
If we want to avoid a similar fate in the United States I believe it is urgent to change our schools to empower students, to have them grow up experiencing responsibility and making real decisions about their education and their lives.
But how can we do this? We've only found one way so far, but it is too slow. We help change or create one learner-centered school at a time.
We truly need an Education Revolution now, before it is too late, and it may already be too late.
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Learned Helplessness, the Connection Between Homeschooling, Voting, and College
Exclusive to AERO |
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By Wylie Kuhn
Ed: Wylie Kuhn is a lifelong unschooler
I won't hide it, I'm a very political person. While a lot of people dislike politics, and trying to follow its intricacies I revel in interpreting current events both at home and abroad. I'm the kind of guy who tracks voting statistics across time, states, and demographics. One of my favorite books is The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
I'm a huge proponent of civic engagement. I'm that guy who calls every single one of his friends on election day and tells them they need to go vote, no matter what their political ideology. I am of the firm belief that when you live in a democracy you have a duty to maintain it, and that you should always make your voice heard in political decisions from the local to the national. I wholeheartedly believe that when everyone is involved in the decision-make process you not only get a better, more balanced result, but that when everyone feels that they have been heard and represented and that it was a fair process, they are more cooperative with the outcome than they otherwise would be.
I have often heard people talk of the connection between education and politics. Like the fact that College educated voters tend to be more liberal (The Democrats hold a seven-point edge among voters with college degrees, and 22 points among those with post graduate degrees[1]), and voters without a college-level degree are more likely to vote republican. Such research observations are common because they can be easily found by simply assembling data. What was this person's level of education? What's their party affiliation? What's their voting record? Assemble all this data and you can easily reach these conclusions.
Fingers get pointed. The Republicans say the Democrats want more funding for education because it benefits their party, ignoring that Democrats want to teach science to counter climate change and drive medical research. The Democrats claim that the Republicans want the opposite because they think that college education hurts their numbers, ignoring the fact that large numbers of homeschoolers in red states are faith-based, and that Republicans are also focused on reducing the size of government and cutting regulations, both things that influence education in the public-school system. Neither of these positions on education are necessarily bad, but they reflect the reality of both sides of the political spectrum.
But I tend to look at the effect education has on politics in a more abstract way. My thought process is more opinion based but it stems from statistics. I think that there are more important, more telling statistics than how certain demographics vote. That matters less to me than what I see as a more important statistic that I believe is heavily connected to education: voter turnout.
Read the rest
here.
[1]
"A Deep Dive Into Party Affiliation" Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, 17 April 2015 Published. Web. 4 October 2017.
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| World Premier of Children's Village Documentary |
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Review by Jerry Mintz
Filmmaker Marvin Blunte has made an incredible documentary about Moo Baan Dek, The Children's Village, a very special school/orphanage in rural Thailand. I have known about it for decades, as it was inspired by Summerhill and runs democratically. The film,
"6 Weeks to Mothers Day," will have its world premier on Thursday November 16th
at the
DOC NYC
film festival in lower Manhattan at the
IFC Center
.
It was founded 38 years ago by Rajani Dhongchai, known as Mae Aew, or Mother and her husband, Piphop. The film centers around the celebration of Mothers Day 38 years after Mae Aew founded the Village. She will be at the showing and will see the film for trhe first time!
It is very skillfully filmed and has many insightful and dramatic scenes. For example one shows two young twins meeting with their birth parents for their first time in memory. There are also several scenes with democratic meetings. The documentary is not a public relations piece but shows a variety of real life situations and issues.
If tickets are sold out please email: 6weekstomothersday@gmail.com and let them know you would like to be put on the waiting list. Additional screenings my be added.
6 WEEKS TO MOTHER'S DAY is also collaborating with Google Expeditions to create a virtual reality (VR) field trip, where teachers and students can use Google Cardboard to be transported to Children's Village Thailand. This will be the first ever Expedition available in both English and Thai, further solidifying Mother Aew as one of the most progressive minded teachers in the country. Special edition "6 Weeks to Mother's Day" Google Cardboards will be handed out to the audience after the DOC NYC screening, and instructions will be posted on the film's Facebook page.
If you are further afield you can look for other places the film will show and you can reach the filmmaker at
or follow them on their social media pages here:
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| Survey: Teachers' Mental Health Declining Amid Job Stress |
A long list of anxieties - around school budget cuts, bullying, coarse political discourse and the shaky status of immigrant students - is taking a toll on teachers, a new survey shows, with more educators now saying their mental health is suffering than just two years earlier.
More than half of the educators point out their mental health is an issue: 58% said their mental health was "not good" for seven or more of the previous 30 days. A similar survey in 2015 found just 34% of respondents felt the same.
The findings are being released Monday by the American Federation of Teachers and the Badass Teachers Association, a national grass-roots organization focused on social justice.
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New Zealand is one of the few-perhaps the only-nation that abandoned national standards.
The national standards were driven by political, not educational, purposes. The ruling party pushed them and couldn't stop pushing them, ignoring all criticism.
Thrupp's book, co-edited with Bob Lingard, Meg Maguire, and David Hursh, "The Search for Better Educational Standards: A Cautionary Tale" teaches us that concerted efforts by educators, scholars, and parents can roll back ruinous education policy.
Read the rest here. |
| Banishing Fear: A New Look, Two Decades Later |
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By Daniel Greenberg
In 1992, I wrote an essay under the title "Banishing Fear". Since I wrote that, there has been a tragic resurgence of fear permeating western culture, a resurgence that has had devastating consequences for the children growing up in this new century. In fact, at a time when, more than ever, all the elements are in place to banish fear totally from our lives, the great majority of people in the "developed world" have succumbed to a wave of internal terror that threatens the future of our culture.
This essay examines the reasons for this resurgence of fear, in the hope that when these are understood, and when people face them squarely with clarity and a small dose of courage, they will free themselves from this awful condition and, once again, see the potential for living with hope and trust; see that Franklin Roosevelt's oft-quoted utterance, that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself", is more apt today than ever before.
Read the rest here. |
| The Stunning Story of How Our Government Segregated America and Shortchanged Our Schools |
In
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
, Richard Rothstein vividly describes how segregated neighborhoods-from San Francisco to Boston-were deliberately created by widespread government policies that violated the Constitutional rights of America's black families. Rothstein, also the author of
Class and Schools
, talks with NEA Edjustice about how this history has shaped our nation and concentrated generations of black students in underfunded schools.
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Coming soon; 2018 Black Friday sale. We get a REALLY early start.
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Links and Calendar
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Calendar
Please send us feedback on this issue. also, we would like to have more articles written by AERO members and about AERO school and organizations.
Thank you for your ongoing support. With
your help
, we will make learner-centered alternatives available to everyone!
In Service,
Jerry Mintz
Executive Director
Alternative Education Resource Organization
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