(2017-11-11) The New95 Theses Of Schooling

The New 95 Theses of Schooling

I’m rallying against the classroom-to-cubicle pipeline with the New 95 today, what will you rally for? #new95

A “well-rounded” student is often only a euphemism for a ruthless workaholic in a greyhound race for a useless mechanical lure

We have to have the freedom to be the only person who believes something

We put adults in correctional institutions because of their crimes; we put children in them because of their age.

The power of the government should not be used to compel everyone to learn the same things in the same way at the same place at the same pace at the same age.

In most schools, boredom with tedium has been diagnosed as a psychological disorder. It is as if we diagnosed orca whales as mentally ill because they lost energy floating in tiny tanks at SeaWorld.

The problem in schooling is not that we have invested too little, but that we get so little for so much

That education is best which teaches us to educate ourselves

The foundation for any real education is not only to take responsibility for who we are but also for who we might become.

The best institutions blend learning with experience, such as University of Waterloo’s co-op program

Examples:

• Plato, Shakespeare , Keats , Austen , Shelly , Dickens, Whitman, Dickinson — no college.
• Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis. The Beatles — no college.
• Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer — no college.
• Jay Z, Kanye, Drake.
• The Wright brothers — with a home library, no college degrees, and a bike shop — kicked off the age of flight. Their main competitor, Samuel P. Langley, a professor of mathematics with grants from the U.S. government and the Smithsonian, crashed into the Potomac.

Occupational Licensing is a tool to obtain and enforce monopoly.

The liberal arts and what colleges call the liberal arts are as different as civilization and insolent barbarism.

What good is all the philosophy in the world if it keeps you from becoming a philosopher?

Schooling doesn’t improve skills, but rather reveals that you have them. Employers pay degree holders because assessment is hard

When more than a third of a graduating class disappears each year into the gaping maw of financial services, it begs the question whether Ivy League schools are teaching critical thinking after all.

Where one went to college should not be the most interesting thing about a 22-year-old.

The hypocrisy of postmodernism as a philosophy concerned with power structures is that its authority depends on the accredited university.

Imagine you could study physics with Einstein or playwriting with Shakespeare. But part of the deal is you could never say who you studied with or for how long. Or, you could just have a PhD from Harvard. Which would you choose? Which would get you tenure track?

We have done more to infantilize young people than to help them mature