The Dangers of Public Schooling
...t least twenty times in one week. They have very little time to themselves, and are thus never learning to learn on their won. Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do, as “It is the most important lesson they learn, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives” (Gatto, 1997: 45). As a result, good people wait for an expert to tell that what to do. Our entire social sector could fall apart it we were not taught to be dependent. Counselors and therapists would vanish. Being taught to finish tasks on time rather than taking the time necessary for each child to learn will create consumers and employers who are unable to consider the logic behind the decisions they are asked to make as a result of an inability to independently think on their own. This absence of consideration is not only seen and reflected within the confines of the classroom, but as well as in the outside environment, and yet “As far back as 1999, some 40 percent of sampled school districts have eliminated or cut back recess” (Axtman, 2004). We find it increasingly difficult to recognize the linkages that once gave us a sense of place and belonging. After all, we are flooded with food and goods that come fro all parts of the world, so we scarcely notice that in the middle of winter we are still able to buy fresh strawberries and cherries. The constraints of locality and seasons are pushed aside by the global economy. This is why schoolyards are important. They can provide an opportunity to watch the seasons change, observe the succession of plants through the year, and witness the interdependence of insects and plants and birds. However, schoolyards are seldom designed for the joy, play and discovery of nature. “School land is constantly being taken over for more parking, new portables, sheds for tools, and specialized playing fields” (Suzuki, 2002: 295). Green playgrounds can be used as a classroom for composting, sharing and respect. Right now, children are learning that nature is frightening, as well as unnecessary, as we nuke weeds and insects with chemicals or cover the soil with asphalt of gravel, making it impossible for children to have any need for or care to learn new lessons from nature. Our children, just as we have, will see no inherent value in nature, and will continue to expoit its unknown used just as we have done before them. Schools also have done a great job of turning children into children. “Thinkers from Plato to Rousseau knew that if children could be grouped with other children, stripped of independence and responsibility, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of geed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never tryly grow up” (Gatto, 1997: 72). Aristotle said that fully participating in a range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human. Today, the young as well as the elderly are hidden away with no opport...