Main educational freedom message

Have you considered that school operates like a fascist regime? So much for "democracy" and "diversity" and "equality" and "liberty" or whatever buzzword comes next.

In school, at least in my experience, the only official option is to do what the government says, when the government says. Choice is negligible.

Does the government check with each child what they want to do and what they want to learn?

No, because it's an authoritarian regime of mind-numbing, to imbue servility and render inability to question the state.

The child is there to obey, under the guise of empowerment, opportunity and investment in the future. 

If school is good for the future of the people, why are there six soldiers with low morale for every one with high morale? Why is there increasing violence in some categories, high drug death, increasing suicide and obesity, declining healthy life expectancy, sub-replacement and declining birth, declining testosterone and sperm count (trending towards infertility by 2045), declining employment, increasing depression and anxiety, increasing prices, increasing taxation, an increasing welfare bill, inflation and less real economic growth?

Clearly, the state is doing something terribly wrong.

Politicians, having sought power, are not the kinds of people to really change anything for the better.

The status quo worked for them to become politicians, so that's good enough for them.

You can tell that politics is overrun by certain types of people who may enjoy social power too much, because, of MPs in the party called "Labour", there's twenty-seven ex-lawyers and zero ex-binmen.

They're more interested in luxury politics like debating the definition of a woman and doing a proxy war with Russia than the basic politics of maximising their people's health and happiness.

They advertise "change", "reform" and "renewal" because they know that doing so would exceed their will and mental capacity, whereas advertising is easy.

They say "fight", "tackle", "battle" and other violence-related words because they know they'd be unwilling to fight for anyone or anything but themselves, so they have to trick people into thinking they're passionate.

The "Liberal Democrats", who claim to value liberty and community, "fight" for a “fair, free and open society” where nobody is “enslaved by conformity”, yet Ed Davey, Lib Dem leader, said the best education policy he can come up with is helping carers who are in school.

He also suggested giving £10,000 to new army recruits to increase the size of the army.

The guy is either a moron or not taking his position seriously.

Every child should learn core skills like reading and counting, and important information like about dangers and places and their rights and what their school offers. That's about all of the educational overlap that is important.

Schools should not be evaluated on exam results. Exams aren't real life. Schools should be evaluated on the sought feedback and real life outcomes of former attendees (and non-attendees in their catchment areas), and schools should have the freedom to and incentive to figure out their own services in competition for the best feedback and outcomes. In the long-term, winning strategies should be replicated in other schools, and those responsible rewarded. For the short-term, staff pay should be influenced by weekly feedback from children and their parents.

Children should be invited to attend courses and use educational resources — not pressured to. There should be no "exam diet". Examination and qualification should be optional, and not age-based, meaning that a six-year-old might sit the same exam as a sixteen-year-old.

The purpose of qualification is proof of ability to potential employers. Ability is not limited to exam content, so it should be possible to receive individualised certification. For example, there was a self-harming truant in my high school who was phenomenal at basketball. 

He was probably crushed by the system and I wouldn't be surprised if he died in a bad way. I was a phenomenal programmer, in my own way crushed by the system, and may be lucky to be alive given the (mostly traffic-related) risks I've taken in my years after school.

The truth is that everyone is crushed by school. Well, everyone bends to fit the mould and some are less bendy than others. Some are hard, some are soft and fluffy, all are fed into the hungry machine and come out the other side a shred of what they could have been. The home-schooled and truanting are affected by the system given their isolation from other children and lack of access to resources and experiences.

I've written more detail on my education system design here.

Parents send their kids to school because school didn't destroy them personally — because they passed the filter. It's survivorship bias.

When I worked for Biffa and did leaflet distribution, I heard basically a couple of horror stories regarding drug deaths, of past and present.

I had a young colleague at Biffa who'd been suicidal, on top of being a smoker and "ADHD". That must have been when he was at school (or "should have" been). I didn't hate school, but I did suffer physically in sleep deprivation, and I hate it now that I'm certain that it's garbage.

I used to think I was OCD but in a good way, and then I thought I was OCD in a bad way, but really I was just way too cool for school.

That's not natural. Only abused people are so inclined to be suicidal, depressed, diagnosed and get addicted to things, basically like this:

https://youtube.com/shorts/XVFGEDs95MI

Politicians, including Labour with their "teaching grit" in school, the Conservatives with their "national service" and the Lib Dems with their "mental health professional in every school", should have taken a step back and realised that maybe there isn't really something wrong with people, but there's something wrong with the system that people are funnelled through.

It was never an optimal system, it's far from optimal, all sub-optimal systems are ultimately self-destructive, and no amount of obedience to the state, hypocritical ideological indoctrination or mental health talk can fix that. One way or another, it's going down — hopefully because of soon being replaced by an accountable and adaptive service which is liberating, not oppressing, as you'd expect of a "liberal democracy".

He called it "of capitalism" which doesn't make sense to me because education systems are not businesses, but rather, they are "public services".

Besides that, he's right.

Wikipedia:

“The content of contemporary dignity is derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, summarized in the principle that every human being has the right to human dignity. In Article 1, it is stipulated that 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Well clearly “every human being” is not, in practice, “born free and equal in dignity and in rights”, given the treatment of children as little slave learners for the government.

“Look at the government’s fashionable little slave learners with their uniforms and their timetables! This is so productive and is going to be great for society!” – thought no intelligent person ever

Google AI says:

"A command economy is an economic system where the government or a central authority controls all major aspects of production, distribution, and pricing. In this system, the government decides what to produce, how to produce it, and for whom, often owning the means of production and setting goals for industries. This contrasts with a free-market economy, where private enterprise and market forces primarily determine these factors"

And that there are two command economies: North Korea and Cuba.

Now imagine the same text but about education:

Command education is an education system where the government or a central authority controls all major aspects of education. In this system, the government decides what people learn, how they should learn it, and for whom, often owning the means of education and setting goals for people. This contrasts with free-market education, where private enterprise and market forces primarily determine these factors

The market will run itself. Need something? The market will likely supply your demand.

The market just needs some regulation to make sure it's actually a market which is honest and benefits the people.

The people will run themselves. Need something? The people will likely supply your demand. The people just need some regulation make sure they're actually interacting and organising in honest ways that benefit each other.

But what if the people aren't supplying their own needs?

Like, what if they're not making enough babies, and are increasingly depressed and obese, just to name a few actual problems?

Should the government intervene?

Yes, but Crash Course European History taught me that history has many examples of "tyranny solving the problems that tyranny has created".

It's impossible to go through the education system and not come out a failure in one way or another:

Health failure, moral failure, intellectual failure, parenting failure, economic failure, etc.

It affects people differently, depending on their personality, but that's why like everyone is a failure and most things are failing.

School sets people up to fail. It does not set people up to succeed.