Part 4: But don’t you need to know how to read?
Many people stop listening to my argument about compulsory schooling very early on before I get a chance to present it in full because they want to insist that things like “learning to read” are absolutely essential and they think I am against that. Or they argue basic numeracy is needed, at a minimum, in order to get some job or other and get on in life. Of course, I realise all this. But what I also realise is such objections are complete non sequitur. I am speaking here about how compulsory schooling is not necessary. Not how learning is not essential. Indeed the opposite. I begin the argument by trying to make the clear distinction between school, education and learning. Learning is essential. You will, literally, die very quickly without it. I agree knowing how to read is very important. People survive without it - but their lives are far better for being literate. I just don’t think one needs to be forced to attend school to do it. Indeed sometimes people are illiterate in spite of school and I would argue at times because of school. Children can and do learn to read outside school - often better. I know the best books I ever read were outside of school hours. I know I often couldn’t wait to get home to read what I wanted to - especially in primary school. One way to turn a person off a book is to force them to read it and then threaten them with punishments if they refuse to, and refuse to answer questions in an exam all about it. So in this part I’m going to present an argument that kids would choose to learn to read and write, and do maths and learn lots of other subjects all on their own - if they were not forced to go to school.
One thing it is worth knowing about schools if you did not already is that it is common to think that some children just are not capable of learning subject x or topic y. That it is beyond their capacity. This is false. They can. If they wanted. But they often don’t want to. And why should they?
I recall my own days at school: I was lucky. It just so happened I liked learning most of what passed for content at school. I actually knew from an early age that I wanted to study science when I was older - even before I got to school because I was reading books about dinosaurs and the planets. I was pretty sure I wanted to study astronomy. And I just happened to learn also at an early age that if I wanted to learn astronomy properly I would also need to learn physics, and chemistry and all the other sciences. And mathematics. And English - so I could write well just like those books about the planets I had read.
But I was also forced to attend art lessons where some lessons we would do pottery (that was fun - I actually enjoyed it) but other lessons we did art theory. About which artist painted which painting and what it meant. And it was torturous. It was so useless to me. And I knew it then and I still know it now. Because I knew then what I also know now: if I ever developed an interest in why Picasso did what he did - I could just read a book about it or take an adult class. Or these days of course - far better - hop onto the internet and for almost no cost watch YouTube lectures from professors and read art literature websites to my heart’s content.
And here is another terrible misconception: That as you get older you become less capable of learning. That is a pessimistic view and comes from, once more bad memes. It also comes from poorly controlled “scientific” studies and plain pseudoscience. It’s simply not true. Perhaps one thing that might change is that when you are young, you are not yet disinterested in as much. No one has yet made most subjects boring for you by forcing you to attend classes about things you are not interested in. So you are very interested and pay lots of attention early on because initially much is interesting to you - you haven’t yet figured out what you are not interested in.
For many children they attend school happily, at least for the first few years and because everything is so new it remains interesting. And for that reason they pay attention really closely. And they learn lots of new stuff really quickly. So of course it is the case that many kids seem to pick up languages really quickly - because it’s (at least at first) interesting to them. They have not yet had the chance to be exposed to other things that might interest them even more. Of course some kids even then are not quite so interested. And kids who are not - well we label them in need of “support” in some subject area or other. They don’t have a knack for Italian. Or maths. Or English.
Part 5
Many people stop listening to my argument about compulsory schooling very early on before I get a chance to present it in full because they want to insist that things like “learning to read” are absolutely essential and they think I am against that. Or they argue basic numeracy is needed, at a minimum, in order to get some job or other and get on in life. Of course, I realise all this. But what I also realise is such objections are complete non sequitur. I am speaking here about how compulsory schooling is not necessary. Not how learning is not essential. Indeed the opposite. I begin the argument by trying to make the clear distinction between school, education and learning. Learning is essential. You will, literally, die very quickly without it. I agree knowing how to read is very important. People survive without it - but their lives are far better for being literate. I just don’t think one needs to be forced to attend school to do it. Indeed sometimes people are illiterate in spite of school and I would argue at times because of school. Children can and do learn to read outside school - often better. I know the best books I ever read were outside of school hours. I know I often couldn’t wait to get home to read what I wanted to - especially in primary school. One way to turn a person off a book is to force them to read it and then threaten them with punishments if they refuse to, and refuse to answer questions in an exam all about it. So in this part I’m going to present an argument that kids would choose to learn to read and write, and do maths and learn lots of other subjects all on their own - if they were not forced to go to school.
One thing it is worth knowing about schools if you did not already is that it is common to think that some children just are not capable of learning subject x or topic y. That it is beyond their capacity. This is false. They can. If they wanted. But they often don’t want to. And why should they?
I recall my own days at school: I was lucky. It just so happened I liked learning most of what passed for content at school. I actually knew from an early age that I wanted to study science when I was older - even before I got to school because I was reading books about dinosaurs and the planets. I was pretty sure I wanted to study astronomy. And I just happened to learn also at an early age that if I wanted to learn astronomy properly I would also need to learn physics, and chemistry and all the other sciences. And mathematics. And English - so I could write well just like those books about the planets I had read.
But I was also forced to attend art lessons where some lessons we would do pottery (that was fun - I actually enjoyed it) but other lessons we did art theory. About which artist painted which painting and what it meant. And it was torturous. It was so useless to me. And I knew it then and I still know it now. Because I knew then what I also know now: if I ever developed an interest in why Picasso did what he did - I could just read a book about it or take an adult class. Or these days of course - far better - hop onto the internet and for almost no cost watch YouTube lectures from professors and read art literature websites to my heart’s content.
And here is another terrible misconception: That as you get older you become less capable of learning. That is a pessimistic view and comes from, once more bad memes. It also comes from poorly controlled “scientific” studies and plain pseudoscience. It’s simply not true. Perhaps one thing that might change is that when you are young, you are not yet disinterested in as much. No one has yet made most subjects boring for you by forcing you to attend classes about things you are not interested in. So you are very interested and pay lots of attention early on because initially much is interesting to you - you haven’t yet figured out what you are not interested in.
For many children they attend school happily, at least for the first few years and because everything is so new it remains interesting. And for that reason they pay attention really closely. And they learn lots of new stuff really quickly. So of course it is the case that many kids seem to pick up languages really quickly - because it’s (at least at first) interesting to them. They have not yet had the chance to be exposed to other things that might interest them even more. Of course some kids even then are not quite so interested. And kids who are not - well we label them in need of “support” in some subject area or other. They don’t have a knack for Italian. Or maths. Or English.
Part 5