Protecting kids from schools

As I traveled, I discovered a universal hunger, often unvoiced, to be free of managed debate. A desire to be given untainted information. Nobody seemed to have maps of where this thing had come from or why it acted as it did, but the ability to smell a rat was alive and well all over America.
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In a prologue to his book on the failure that is the American school system, John accidentally touches on a core point of blogging: untainted, unmapped, yet somehow critically important information flow is the key to communication.

His book, "The Underground History of American Education", is definitely worth reading, if you ever plan to allow a child near the public school system. Along with Paul Graham's paper, "Why Nerds are Unpopular", it may save your child from a thousand incomprehensible, incurable harms.

An unexpected discovery in this is a reference to an eerily-similar precursor of modern blogging:

Shortly afterwards a printer gave Edison some old type he was about to discard and the boy, successfully begging a corner for himself in the baggage car to set type, began printing a four-page newspaper the size of a handkerchief about the lives of the passengers on the train and the things that could be seen from its window.

Blogging used to be for money; these days, we're just restricted by payment schemes. I'd give a penny a day to Slashdot, and I bet 20,000 other people would do. That's a lot of pennies, and that's a lot more than zero.

Link:

The concept of an educational system in itself can be viewed as an archaic holdover from pre-industrial society. When information is so readily available to educate children more efficiently, to give them personal attention to what and how they need to learn, why do we force children who are undeniably unique to be 'educated' in large groups catering to the lowest common denominator?

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Comments

[AKMA]

Why we teach ’em at home. . . .

[floating atoll]

Yeah; alternative schooling is a great way to solve this problem, too. I recommend it, when possible – though it would be even more interesting combined with public school (say, an extra hour a day to decompress, ask questions, etc.). I dunno.

I picked up a lot of my education outside of the usual boundaries of the school system, which helped somewhat in surviving it all the way through 9th grade (amazing, eh?).

[Milo]

Howdy. I found your blog by accident and this particular post inspired me to write an entry in my blog. Perhaps it was just something I haven't thought about in awhile.
(not that I had it rough in school or anything. I just went to catholic school. ::play ominous tones:: )
-M

[Adam Hill]

Crys,

Are you aware of Scott McCloud's efforts to promote the idea of micropayments (www.scottmccloud.com)? He has an online Flash comic called "The Right Number" that uses a micropayment system called "BitPass" Check it out.

adam...