It occurs to me that my little "adapt or die" rant may have scared some of my more idealistic followers. But think about it, all I'm really saying is that students will have to work about as hard as they would in the real world during school. If you're not willing to do that kind of work, than what did you plan to do once you got into the real world? Or are you part of the ELF simply because you're looking for a system that will let you coast through life, playing WoW and getting high? If you are, then the ELF system isn't going to work for you, but I'm positive you can find some politician willing to endorse your cause of ridiculous laziness.
For the rest of you, the problem with the school system isn't the workload. It's the sheer pointlessness of it all. Trust me when I say that when you care about what you're working on, there are days when you have to force yourself to stop working and get some sleep because it's 2 AM and it's beginning to impair your efficiency. There will also be days when you have to drag yourself through because you have deadlines, and it will probably feel a little bit like school feels right now, but that's life, and besides, there's one major difference. You won't be doing it for a piece of paper that says you have the right to be treated like a human being from here on out. You'll have that right already. Instead you'll be doing it because your ambitions depend on it, not your ambition to graduate high school and go to a good college just like everyone else, but your personal ambitions. The ones that make you unique from everyone else.
And also because you're hungry and need money.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Dazibao 5 (Adapt or Die)
Donnie Schultz, of Northern Colorado, recently posted this message on the wall of the ELF facebook group.
"You know, this is a good idea. Too bad it's entirely unrealistic. Have you ever thought about the acting forces behind the most effective school systems in the world? The German system, the Japanese system, the Norwegian system? Scheduling. Student-teacher distancing. Respect. Discipline. Your proposed "better way" sounds like a big excuse for lazy american students to be even lazier. I hate to break it to you, but the problem with modern schools only lies minorly on the administrations of these schools. Most of it lies on the students themselves, who have learned that they only need to retain the information until the final. I agree with you that the school system is dysfunctional, but specializing and descheduling is the absolute wrong approach. We need to create a stricter environment, where students will learn the responsibility they need in our not-so-representative-republic real world. You want to talk about a beaurocratic dictatorship? Try to buy a house."
Regrettably, the character limit on wall posts for facebook is 1,000, which isn't nearly enough for one of my tirades, so my response is listed here, as another dazibao.
------------------
Donnie, your criticism is appreciated, and I don't mean that sarcastically, but you appear to have largely misunderstood the point of this. I largely blame myself for this, in my attempt to pack as much bile into this dazibao as possible, I've largely glossed over one very important point. Capitalism. That's the society we live in, for now at least. A society which, given the increasingly globalized nature of the world, lives by only one rule. Adapt or die.
The most effective school systems in the world demand a lot from their students. But stricter environments are incidental, I believe. Students must remain flexible, and so too must their schedules, but not flexible to their own needs alone. No. Teenagers, in this system, are the newcomers to the scene, and thus will largely be required to adapt their schedules around those of other people, or else they will be choked out by others who -are- willing to do so. Adapt or die.
Respect is bred naturally when the other person has something you want: money. If you can't sell your skills, you've failed the class, haven't you? Haven't I said the very purpose of these classes would be to breed marketable products? Respect came naturally enough to the blacksmith's apprentice, when he learned the trade from his master. It was as clear as could be that his master's trade brought him life, and that without that trade, without those skills, the apprentice would starve. Adapt or die.
Discipline? It's easy enough to be disciplined when your future is on the line. You want to be a writer, you want to be an engineer, you want to be a geneticist? Idly pursuing these skills isn't enough. You must prove you have learned in the free market, prove it by producing, by being a part of society. You must meet deadlines and satisfy customer demands. Adapt or die.
What makes you think you know so much about the real world, having lived in it for, what, all of one year? Sit and think. Do you think I went into this flying blind? I ran all of this past adults much wiser and more experienced than I, who've been living in the real world ten, fifteen, twenty years. Perhaps I got a bad sample. Or maybe they know something you don't. Maybe they know the secret to success is to do what you do for the sake of itself, not becauase you need to get a grade, or a paycheck. Maybe they know that the only way to excel is to fight tooth and nail for your vision of your future. Maybe they know that it isn't enough to just survive in the world, that to truly live you must chase your dream, and never, ever just put it off 'till later, that you have to be willing to defend it from your competition, from anyone who would threaten it. Adapt or die.
You think real estate is a bureaucratic dictatorship? Welcome to the free market, friend. Even now there are greedy, money-grubbing capitlists who have been cut off from the real estate money, and who are prepared to cut through the red tape with a flamethrower to bring you much, much easier housing prices, because that's what will get them paid: being nice to you. Freakonomics. Adapt or die.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't give students the chance to make mistakes or experiment. Teenagers still deserve some kind of safety net, as they're very prone to making mistakes. People make mistakes when they learn. But I'm not suggesting we let teenagers sit around and do whatever they want all day. This is not a mindless dream. I am not an idealist. I am a heartless capitalist, -literally- without compassion. This system wasn't designed to be fun, that was just a happy side-effect. This system was designed to be efficient, to produce adaptable, flexible employee's. And it will.
Why are you fighting this? Are you, perhaps, afraid, that your hard earned GPA is suddenly going to go up and smoke? That the last four years of your life will prove useless? I don't know. But if that is who you are...Well...
Adapt or die, Donnie Schultz.
"You know, this is a good idea. Too bad it's entirely unrealistic. Have you ever thought about the acting forces behind the most effective school systems in the world? The German system, the Japanese system, the Norwegian system? Scheduling. Student-teacher distancing. Respect. Discipline. Your proposed "better way" sounds like a big excuse for lazy american students to be even lazier. I hate to break it to you, but the problem with modern schools only lies minorly on the administrations of these schools. Most of it lies on the students themselves, who have learned that they only need to retain the information until the final. I agree with you that the school system is dysfunctional, but specializing and descheduling is the absolute wrong approach. We need to create a stricter environment, where students will learn the responsibility they need in our not-so-representative-republic real world. You want to talk about a beaurocratic dictatorship? Try to buy a house."
Regrettably, the character limit on wall posts for facebook is 1,000, which isn't nearly enough for one of my tirades, so my response is listed here, as another dazibao.
------------------
Donnie, your criticism is appreciated, and I don't mean that sarcastically, but you appear to have largely misunderstood the point of this. I largely blame myself for this, in my attempt to pack as much bile into this dazibao as possible, I've largely glossed over one very important point. Capitalism. That's the society we live in, for now at least. A society which, given the increasingly globalized nature of the world, lives by only one rule. Adapt or die.
The most effective school systems in the world demand a lot from their students. But stricter environments are incidental, I believe. Students must remain flexible, and so too must their schedules, but not flexible to their own needs alone. No. Teenagers, in this system, are the newcomers to the scene, and thus will largely be required to adapt their schedules around those of other people, or else they will be choked out by others who -are- willing to do so. Adapt or die.
Respect is bred naturally when the other person has something you want: money. If you can't sell your skills, you've failed the class, haven't you? Haven't I said the very purpose of these classes would be to breed marketable products? Respect came naturally enough to the blacksmith's apprentice, when he learned the trade from his master. It was as clear as could be that his master's trade brought him life, and that without that trade, without those skills, the apprentice would starve. Adapt or die.
Discipline? It's easy enough to be disciplined when your future is on the line. You want to be a writer, you want to be an engineer, you want to be a geneticist? Idly pursuing these skills isn't enough. You must prove you have learned in the free market, prove it by producing, by being a part of society. You must meet deadlines and satisfy customer demands. Adapt or die.
What makes you think you know so much about the real world, having lived in it for, what, all of one year? Sit and think. Do you think I went into this flying blind? I ran all of this past adults much wiser and more experienced than I, who've been living in the real world ten, fifteen, twenty years. Perhaps I got a bad sample. Or maybe they know something you don't. Maybe they know the secret to success is to do what you do for the sake of itself, not becauase you need to get a grade, or a paycheck. Maybe they know that the only way to excel is to fight tooth and nail for your vision of your future. Maybe they know that it isn't enough to just survive in the world, that to truly live you must chase your dream, and never, ever just put it off 'till later, that you have to be willing to defend it from your competition, from anyone who would threaten it. Adapt or die.
You think real estate is a bureaucratic dictatorship? Welcome to the free market, friend. Even now there are greedy, money-grubbing capitlists who have been cut off from the real estate money, and who are prepared to cut through the red tape with a flamethrower to bring you much, much easier housing prices, because that's what will get them paid: being nice to you. Freakonomics. Adapt or die.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't give students the chance to make mistakes or experiment. Teenagers still deserve some kind of safety net, as they're very prone to making mistakes. People make mistakes when they learn. But I'm not suggesting we let teenagers sit around and do whatever they want all day. This is not a mindless dream. I am not an idealist. I am a heartless capitalist, -literally- without compassion. This system wasn't designed to be fun, that was just a happy side-effect. This system was designed to be efficient, to produce adaptable, flexible employee's. And it will.
Why are you fighting this? Are you, perhaps, afraid, that your hard earned GPA is suddenly going to go up and smoke? That the last four years of your life will prove useless? I don't know. But if that is who you are...Well...
Adapt or die, Donnie Schultz.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Dazibao 4 (I'm Getting Better at Writing These)
Have you ever wondered why schools try to prepare teenagers for life in the real world, a representative republic, by subjugating them to a bureaucratic dictatorship? When the teacher asks your class at the beginning of the year if you remember anything from last year and no one raises their hand, has it ever crossed your mind that perhaps if it only takes three months to forget an entire years worth of schoolwork, maybe school isn't doing a very good job teaching anything? Have you ever thought that maybe your math teacher could make better use of your time than teaching you how to calculate projectile motion on Mars?
ELF has the answer for all these paradoxes: School doesn't work. The school system wasn't developed to teach children, it was developed to turn farm hands into factory hands, but we have Chinese eleven-year olds working ten cents an hour for that, now, so our school system is a bit outdated.
The biggest problem with the current school system is that it's supposed to be a general education. Anyone interested in math and science doesn't have much use for fine arts, and anyone interested in a career in art, while in need of a backup (the art industry is pretty dodgy), doesn't need to know calculus because s/he'll hate it and forget it five minutes after the test. It's a specialized world and I don't see why we don't allow students to specialize. You know, like the real world we're supposed to be preparing them for.
Also like the real world, the information they receive shouldn't be dissonant pieces of random trivia, designed to help students pass tests. Passed tests don't do much good for anyone, they're still just a bunch of paper and ink that no one in their right mind would pay for. Instead of science teachers spending twenty minutes on the scientific method and then diving into the "exciting" world of obscure black scientists who didn't actually do anything particularly important but who have been included in the book in order to be politically correct, what if they focused on the scientific method and experimentation, and let the students figure things out more or less on their own through research for said experiments? The information would be connected to their experiments, not dissonant trivia, and thus it would be more easily retained. What if, instead of teaching math, math teachers taught architecture or economics or physics or computer programming or some other useful application of math? It would all be a lot easier to hold onto that way.
A happy side-effect of this is that students would be producing marketable products and learning marketable skills. There aren't terribly good odds that students would be able to compete with professionals in regards to quality, but given they have no living expenses they could probably offer pretty competetive price tags. In fact, a lot of them would probably be willing to give them away for free, just to build a good reputation with a potential future customer who might come back to them once they're actually good at their job.
And there's also no need to go on with the current overly strictly scheduled setup. Of course there has to be some kind of scheduling, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be more like the class schedule of a university, except, of course, that factories run on shifts that are begun and ended with a whistle, just like classes are begun and ended with a bell, and if you want to train factory workers you need to get them used to factory scheduling.
ELF has the answer for all these paradoxes: School doesn't work. The school system wasn't developed to teach children, it was developed to turn farm hands into factory hands, but we have Chinese eleven-year olds working ten cents an hour for that, now, so our school system is a bit outdated.
The biggest problem with the current school system is that it's supposed to be a general education. Anyone interested in math and science doesn't have much use for fine arts, and anyone interested in a career in art, while in need of a backup (the art industry is pretty dodgy), doesn't need to know calculus because s/he'll hate it and forget it five minutes after the test. It's a specialized world and I don't see why we don't allow students to specialize. You know, like the real world we're supposed to be preparing them for.
Also like the real world, the information they receive shouldn't be dissonant pieces of random trivia, designed to help students pass tests. Passed tests don't do much good for anyone, they're still just a bunch of paper and ink that no one in their right mind would pay for. Instead of science teachers spending twenty minutes on the scientific method and then diving into the "exciting" world of obscure black scientists who didn't actually do anything particularly important but who have been included in the book in order to be politically correct, what if they focused on the scientific method and experimentation, and let the students figure things out more or less on their own through research for said experiments? The information would be connected to their experiments, not dissonant trivia, and thus it would be more easily retained. What if, instead of teaching math, math teachers taught architecture or economics or physics or computer programming or some other useful application of math? It would all be a lot easier to hold onto that way.
A happy side-effect of this is that students would be producing marketable products and learning marketable skills. There aren't terribly good odds that students would be able to compete with professionals in regards to quality, but given they have no living expenses they could probably offer pretty competetive price tags. In fact, a lot of them would probably be willing to give them away for free, just to build a good reputation with a potential future customer who might come back to them once they're actually good at their job.
And there's also no need to go on with the current overly strictly scheduled setup. Of course there has to be some kind of scheduling, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be more like the class schedule of a university, except, of course, that factories run on shifts that are begun and ended with a whistle, just like classes are begun and ended with a bell, and if you want to train factory workers you need to get them used to factory scheduling.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
ELF is on Facebook
The Education Liberation Front is now on facebook. If you support us in any way, shape, or form, join up. ELF also has an official Internet Public Relations Head, Joseph Amato, who's been trying to get the word out across the web. It's very important that we get as much internet support as possible. While I still expect that we won't be able to make our presence known to the world at large without stirring up some trouble on the ground, cyberspace will allow us to lay an effective groundwork in schools across the country, which means we'll have a large support base waiting for us when we arrive. So look us up on facebook, join us, and spread the word.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Dazibao 3 (Anti-test)
Imagine with me for a moment, a corporation. Let's call them Widgets Inc. White Collar John walks into Widget Inc. for his first day on the job as, let's say, an engineer. He's expecting to spend his day designing widgets and widget-related items, working out problems with widgets, and so on. When he shows up to work, his boss comes by and dumps a bunch of scantron multiple choice tests on his desk and tells him to spend the next four years filling them in. Meanwhile, Widgets Inc. goes out of business because all of its employees are wasting time filling in tests instead of designing widgets to be sold.
High school is similarly useless, the difference being that it's government funded, so it won't go out of business until the state collapses, at which point inefficient education policies will be the least of our worries. And education shouldn't be a for-profit venture anyway, but the point here isn't that the school system should be turning a profit, but rather that the school system should do something.
One of the things the school system claims to achieve is to prepare students for real life. I think I've proven above that school and real life don't have much in common. I suggest we reform school so that it does. Specifically, in real life, the goal is always to create a product or provide a service. Students should also seek to create a product or provide a service. Being that these will be created/provided by students and not professionals, these can be expected to be of much lower quality, of course, but it will still act as a practice run for reality.
Another supposed objective of the school system is to teach students valuable skills. In this it also fails, which is why a large percentage of high school students entering college require remedial courses in math and science. Something that educational professionals have recently caught onto, however, is that hands on learning is more effective than classroom lectures. Conveniently, the system I proposed above is very hands on.
Teachers, then, would truly be teacher, not wardens. Their job would be to teach students how to do things, not pass tests. A lot of the details would be left to the discretion of the students, the only real requirement of any given assignment being to demonstrate the ability to apply certain skills by giving the finished product certain features, similar to real life where the only real requirement is to satisfy the demands of a customer. The details don't matter to the customer and they shouldn't matter to the teacher, either. The student would then be free to do whatever he wished with the finished product, whether that product be a literal material good, the results of an experiment, a piece of writing, or what-have-you. The student would willingly come to classes to learn how to do these things, because the student would have a project to complete, which is much more compelling than the threat of a test. It give one and immediate sense of purpose and an immediate sense of satisfaction upon its completion.
Teachers would also likely have a good deal more job satisfaction. Their students in general would have much more respect for them because the knowledge they are imparting has clear and immediate use. Students and teachers alike would also have more flexible schedules. In a system like this there is no need to have set class periods. You see, the day is already split up into twenty-four units of time known as "hours," which are not only more numerous and thus more flexible than the seven periods a day in High Schools, but which can also be broken up into even smaller units for even greater flexibility. Universities figured this out, and I don't see why High Schools should be different.
This would also hypothetically give teachers something to compete for; students. Teachers who are available more often and who are helpful and knowledgeable in their subjects will get more students, which would hypothetically translate directly into more money. Teachers may not find the concept of having to compete with other teachers appealing, but considering that right now you're paid a pittance to herd cats who make fun of you behind your back, I honestly think that any job that actually makes use of your ability and desire to teach would be an improvement.
-Ashen, educationliberationfront@gmail.com
High school is similarly useless, the difference being that it's government funded, so it won't go out of business until the state collapses, at which point inefficient education policies will be the least of our worries. And education shouldn't be a for-profit venture anyway, but the point here isn't that the school system should be turning a profit, but rather that the school system should do something.
One of the things the school system claims to achieve is to prepare students for real life. I think I've proven above that school and real life don't have much in common. I suggest we reform school so that it does. Specifically, in real life, the goal is always to create a product or provide a service. Students should also seek to create a product or provide a service. Being that these will be created/provided by students and not professionals, these can be expected to be of much lower quality, of course, but it will still act as a practice run for reality.
Another supposed objective of the school system is to teach students valuable skills. In this it also fails, which is why a large percentage of high school students entering college require remedial courses in math and science. Something that educational professionals have recently caught onto, however, is that hands on learning is more effective than classroom lectures. Conveniently, the system I proposed above is very hands on.
Teachers, then, would truly be teacher, not wardens. Their job would be to teach students how to do things, not pass tests. A lot of the details would be left to the discretion of the students, the only real requirement of any given assignment being to demonstrate the ability to apply certain skills by giving the finished product certain features, similar to real life where the only real requirement is to satisfy the demands of a customer. The details don't matter to the customer and they shouldn't matter to the teacher, either. The student would then be free to do whatever he wished with the finished product, whether that product be a literal material good, the results of an experiment, a piece of writing, or what-have-you. The student would willingly come to classes to learn how to do these things, because the student would have a project to complete, which is much more compelling than the threat of a test. It give one and immediate sense of purpose and an immediate sense of satisfaction upon its completion.
Teachers would also likely have a good deal more job satisfaction. Their students in general would have much more respect for them because the knowledge they are imparting has clear and immediate use. Students and teachers alike would also have more flexible schedules. In a system like this there is no need to have set class periods. You see, the day is already split up into twenty-four units of time known as "hours," which are not only more numerous and thus more flexible than the seven periods a day in High Schools, but which can also be broken up into even smaller units for even greater flexibility. Universities figured this out, and I don't see why High Schools should be different.
This would also hypothetically give teachers something to compete for; students. Teachers who are available more often and who are helpful and knowledgeable in their subjects will get more students, which would hypothetically translate directly into more money. Teachers may not find the concept of having to compete with other teachers appealing, but considering that right now you're paid a pittance to herd cats who make fun of you behind your back, I honestly think that any job that actually makes use of your ability and desire to teach would be an improvement.
-Ashen, educationliberationfront@gmail.com
Dazibao 2 (Distribution Grade Attack on the Public School System)
School is not for learning. It's not about preparing you for the real world. It's not about teaching you valuable skills. And it's certainly got nothing to do with satisfying curiosity. Most students believe that school is, in fact, meant to prepare you for the real world and teach you valuable skills, and most of those who don't can't explain what school really is for. After all, the government pours millions of dollars every week into the Department of Education, so school must be about something. But it's not about what you think.
School does not prepare you for the real world. Ask any teacher why they make rules that almost all of their students disagree with, and they will tell you, point blank, that their class is a dictatorship, not a democracy, sometimes using those words exactly. The real world is a democracy, not a dictatorship. It would seem illogical to contend that subjecting students to a fascist police state will prepare them for life in a democratic republic. It doesn't help that most of what you do in school is pointless busywork meant to keep you busy. No real life manager is going to give his employees work for works sake if he wants to stay a manager for very long.
School does not teach you valuable skills. The things you learn in school are designed to help you pass tests. A teacher will list off for you a bunch of facts without bothering to connect them to the real world in any way (and indeed, the teacher probably doesn't much care how they're connected to the real world), and then will ask you to regurgitate the facts on a test a week later. Once the test is passed, you will most likely forget the dissonant information almost immediately. If you hold onto it, it is because you made connections to the information yourself. That's why, when the teacher asks if anyone remembers what they learned last year, no one raises their hand.
The purpose of schools is to keep teenagers in school for eight hours a day so they don't spend their time kicking puppies instead. More than eight hours, actually, homework takes up plenty of time as well. Of course, the teachers probably don't know this. I don't blame them, they've been just as brutally abused by this system as the students. They come into the profession usually intending to teach the next generation, to instill a love of learning in them, or some equally idealistic goal. They're then taken by the system and reduced to petty wardens of a glorified prison.
The primary problem with the school system is that almost no one cares to think about its effects and side-effects. Without sitting down to think things through, we all simply believe what we're told. So what are the effects of school? Students are indeed kept in school for eight hours a day, and presumably are kept quiet at home for however long it takes them to do their homework. But they're also left to their own devices to build their own society within the school. Within this society there is no source of resources except the superior society that exists outside it, and all physical violence is strictly regulated by that society, so the only resource left to the students is status. Popularity, being a zero-sum game, naturally breeds fierce competition and, thus, lots of spite between rival factions. This was never true historically, and thus it must be assumed that either hormones are a recent invention, or else they are not the culprit. This hostile environment is self-propogating, and cannot be undone unless it is directly reformed. Despite the good
intentions of the anti-bullying programs, they cannot succeed. They're fighting the very nature of the society students live in.
The true purpose of school is to educate. I suggest we do just that. I suggest that instead of having students mindlessly regurgitate facts a week after they've been shoved down their throats, that we allow the students to prove their knowledge by using it. There are no multiple-choice tests in real life, but there are projects, thus projects and not tests will be the true measure of a person capabilities.
Further, there is no need to continue wasting students time with specialized information. Algebra in general is a generalized skill that everyone benefits from learning. The ability to calculate projectile motion on other planets, a skill inexplicably taught in some Algebra classes, is highly specialized and need not be learned by any student who isn't interested in such things. I believe the only reason this unit was added in is because it is tangentially related to Algebra and they need to fill up space.
What I suggest is a system that will make teenagers happier, more respectful of other people, and better respected by other people. I suggest a system that is more rewarding to students and teachers alike. I suggest a system that is more efficient in producing effective employees. I suggest a system that will render the bulk of the Department of Education’s bureaucracy useless, and that’s where I expect to find most of my opposition. Everyone else has a lot to gain.
-Ashen
School does not prepare you for the real world. Ask any teacher why they make rules that almost all of their students disagree with, and they will tell you, point blank, that their class is a dictatorship, not a democracy, sometimes using those words exactly. The real world is a democracy, not a dictatorship. It would seem illogical to contend that subjecting students to a fascist police state will prepare them for life in a democratic republic. It doesn't help that most of what you do in school is pointless busywork meant to keep you busy. No real life manager is going to give his employees work for works sake if he wants to stay a manager for very long.
School does not teach you valuable skills. The things you learn in school are designed to help you pass tests. A teacher will list off for you a bunch of facts without bothering to connect them to the real world in any way (and indeed, the teacher probably doesn't much care how they're connected to the real world), and then will ask you to regurgitate the facts on a test a week later. Once the test is passed, you will most likely forget the dissonant information almost immediately. If you hold onto it, it is because you made connections to the information yourself. That's why, when the teacher asks if anyone remembers what they learned last year, no one raises their hand.
The purpose of schools is to keep teenagers in school for eight hours a day so they don't spend their time kicking puppies instead. More than eight hours, actually, homework takes up plenty of time as well. Of course, the teachers probably don't know this. I don't blame them, they've been just as brutally abused by this system as the students. They come into the profession usually intending to teach the next generation, to instill a love of learning in them, or some equally idealistic goal. They're then taken by the system and reduced to petty wardens of a glorified prison.
The primary problem with the school system is that almost no one cares to think about its effects and side-effects. Without sitting down to think things through, we all simply believe what we're told. So what are the effects of school? Students are indeed kept in school for eight hours a day, and presumably are kept quiet at home for however long it takes them to do their homework. But they're also left to their own devices to build their own society within the school. Within this society there is no source of resources except the superior society that exists outside it, and all physical violence is strictly regulated by that society, so the only resource left to the students is status. Popularity, being a zero-sum game, naturally breeds fierce competition and, thus, lots of spite between rival factions. This was never true historically, and thus it must be assumed that either hormones are a recent invention, or else they are not the culprit. This hostile environment is self-propogating, and cannot be undone unless it is directly reformed. Despite the good
intentions of the anti-bullying programs, they cannot succeed. They're fighting the very nature of the society students live in.
The true purpose of school is to educate. I suggest we do just that. I suggest that instead of having students mindlessly regurgitate facts a week after they've been shoved down their throats, that we allow the students to prove their knowledge by using it. There are no multiple-choice tests in real life, but there are projects, thus projects and not tests will be the true measure of a person capabilities.
Further, there is no need to continue wasting students time with specialized information. Algebra in general is a generalized skill that everyone benefits from learning. The ability to calculate projectile motion on other planets, a skill inexplicably taught in some Algebra classes, is highly specialized and need not be learned by any student who isn't interested in such things. I believe the only reason this unit was added in is because it is tangentially related to Algebra and they need to fill up space.
What I suggest is a system that will make teenagers happier, more respectful of other people, and better respected by other people. I suggest a system that is more rewarding to students and teachers alike. I suggest a system that is more efficient in producing effective employees. I suggest a system that will render the bulk of the Department of Education’s bureaucracy useless, and that’s where I expect to find most of my opposition. Everyone else has a lot to gain.
-Ashen
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
ELFCON 5
Hello, everyone. This is Ashen, just informing you that the nation is currently at ELFCON 5. This means that ELF has little to no effect on the nation at large, and is thus not much of a threat to any bureaucracies. Look on the bright side, at least we don't have a whole lot of work to do.
ELFCON 4 means that we have begun to draw attention and support. Local news is starting to pick up on us and has maybe given us a few reports slipped in at the end of the broadcast, or shoved into some spare space on the newspaper.
ELFCON 3 is when the nation at large starts noticing us. It means that people know we're here and that lines are being drawn between various politicians and organizations. It means that ELF is beginning to become a national issue, and that the battle between ELF and bureacracy is about to begin. At this point, the government may begin making minor reforms.
ELFCON 2 means that ELF is a major national issue, that everyone who follows the news knows about us, and that our ideas for education reform are being seriously considered by the government.
ELFCON 1 is the critical moment. It means that the government has actually begun implementing meaningful reform concerning the education system, has begun testing the ELF system of education in certain school districts. It's the final moment that will decide who wins the war between reform and stagnation.
ELFAGEDDON means we won. It means the ELF education system, or some variant of it which we have agreed is equally desirable, has been implemented throughout the entire nation.
Things are cushy and safe in ELFCON 5, but they're also annoyingly repressive and dystopian. The higher the ELFCON scale gets, the harder life will be for all of us, but if we can achieve ELFAGEDDON, it will be worth it.
-Ashen
ELFCON 4 means that we have begun to draw attention and support. Local news is starting to pick up on us and has maybe given us a few reports slipped in at the end of the broadcast, or shoved into some spare space on the newspaper.
ELFCON 3 is when the nation at large starts noticing us. It means that people know we're here and that lines are being drawn between various politicians and organizations. It means that ELF is beginning to become a national issue, and that the battle between ELF and bureacracy is about to begin. At this point, the government may begin making minor reforms.
ELFCON 2 means that ELF is a major national issue, that everyone who follows the news knows about us, and that our ideas for education reform are being seriously considered by the government.
ELFCON 1 is the critical moment. It means that the government has actually begun implementing meaningful reform concerning the education system, has begun testing the ELF system of education in certain school districts. It's the final moment that will decide who wins the war between reform and stagnation.
ELFAGEDDON means we won. It means the ELF education system, or some variant of it which we have agreed is equally desirable, has been implemented throughout the entire nation.
Things are cushy and safe in ELFCON 5, but they're also annoyingly repressive and dystopian. The higher the ELFCON scale gets, the harder life will be for all of us, but if we can achieve ELFAGEDDON, it will be worth it.
-Ashen
Philosophy 1 (Light and Dark)
This isn't Dazibao in that, being philosophical it's not really meant to convert a lot of people to our cause. It's just me, musing about life, but you can feel free to pass them around if you want. Most of the things here are metaphorical. In the post below, for example, I refer to the Light and the Dark as two components of the spirit, however Light and Dark do not, to my knowledge, physically exist except as a particle/wave and the absence thereof. I use them as metaphors in the post below.
There are two basic components to the human spirit. The Light, the good side, contains our hopes and our dreams, our empathy and our compassion. This side is what makes us want to become a Hollywood script writer, start our own business, or find the cure for cancer. It wants to accomplish things, to be important. It is ambition and love. This side of us is the force for progress in the world.
The Dark side of the spirit, on the other hand, contains our primal desires, our anger and our lust. It’s what makes us want to lash out at the people who hurt us, shut ourselves in our room for the rest of the day when life goes horribly wrong, or fill our days with cheap, hollow thrills. It wants to have fun right now and worry about the future when it gets here. It broods, it hates, and it lusts. This side of us is primarily a force for decay.
If my reputation has preceded me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with the public education system. Well, guess for me which side the public education system wants you to embrace. Given I don’t like the public education system at all, you’d probably think the Dark. Wrong. The Dark is rebellious and angry, and doesn’t want to do homework.
But the Light isn’t very useful either. The Light wants to chase dreams and make the world a better place. You can’t do that in school. Being told to sit down, shut up, and do your homework (sometimes in as many words) is not good for the Light. The best you can get from Light is to say "Okay, fine, I guess I have to get a diploma in order to get out into the wide world, so wake me up when we're done with school." But that doesn’t add up. If the system doesn’t want you to be Dark and it doesn’t want you to be Light, what does it want?
It wants neither. It wants your spirit gone. Dead, or at least in a coma. They don’t acknowledge it, of course. Not many people could live with themselves if they woke up every day, looked in the mirror, and said “I’m going to crush hundreds of human spirits today!” They honestly think they’re helping you. But the Dark and the Light are what make life fun. Darkness may be ultimately self-destructive, but at least it feels good in the moment. Light, of course, is hard at the start but simply so much more fun in the end, because unlike the Darkness, where there’s really no point to anything you do except to do it, Light let’s you win at life. The void doesn't feel good at all. And whether they’ll admit it to themselves or not, the purpose of the public education system is to generate high test scores, and they aren’t about to let your spirit get in the way of that.
No, the public education system wants your spirit to be neither Light nor Dark, it wants your spirit to be a void, to be Nothing. Nothing, when your dreams are crushed and even your cynical, jaded Darkness has scurried off, when you become like a living machine, no longer truly enjoying even such simple pleasures as the taste of good food. I know that can’t possibly sound anything like good to the teachers and bureaucrats reading this, but ask yourself, while you obviously advise your students to avoid drugs, how often do you tell them to follow dreams? And I don't mean just saying the words, how often do you actually help them? And no, helping them graduate doesn't count, because the whole point of the ELF movement is that the education system is an obstacle getting in the way of life instead of a tutorial to prepare you for it, that it shouldn't be an obstacle, and that we intend to change it.
But what I have little doubt of is that almost every teacher reading this, at one time, did want their students to follow their dreams. They probably went into teaching with something like a hope of helping students realize them. And that’s my dream, too. A world with a school system that helps its students instead of squashing them like bugs.
-Ashen
There are two basic components to the human spirit. The Light, the good side, contains our hopes and our dreams, our empathy and our compassion. This side is what makes us want to become a Hollywood script writer, start our own business, or find the cure for cancer. It wants to accomplish things, to be important. It is ambition and love. This side of us is the force for progress in the world.
The Dark side of the spirit, on the other hand, contains our primal desires, our anger and our lust. It’s what makes us want to lash out at the people who hurt us, shut ourselves in our room for the rest of the day when life goes horribly wrong, or fill our days with cheap, hollow thrills. It wants to have fun right now and worry about the future when it gets here. It broods, it hates, and it lusts. This side of us is primarily a force for decay.
If my reputation has preceded me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with the public education system. Well, guess for me which side the public education system wants you to embrace. Given I don’t like the public education system at all, you’d probably think the Dark. Wrong. The Dark is rebellious and angry, and doesn’t want to do homework.
But the Light isn’t very useful either. The Light wants to chase dreams and make the world a better place. You can’t do that in school. Being told to sit down, shut up, and do your homework (sometimes in as many words) is not good for the Light. The best you can get from Light is to say "Okay, fine, I guess I have to get a diploma in order to get out into the wide world, so wake me up when we're done with school." But that doesn’t add up. If the system doesn’t want you to be Dark and it doesn’t want you to be Light, what does it want?
It wants neither. It wants your spirit gone. Dead, or at least in a coma. They don’t acknowledge it, of course. Not many people could live with themselves if they woke up every day, looked in the mirror, and said “I’m going to crush hundreds of human spirits today!” They honestly think they’re helping you. But the Dark and the Light are what make life fun. Darkness may be ultimately self-destructive, but at least it feels good in the moment. Light, of course, is hard at the start but simply so much more fun in the end, because unlike the Darkness, where there’s really no point to anything you do except to do it, Light let’s you win at life. The void doesn't feel good at all. And whether they’ll admit it to themselves or not, the purpose of the public education system is to generate high test scores, and they aren’t about to let your spirit get in the way of that.
No, the public education system wants your spirit to be neither Light nor Dark, it wants your spirit to be a void, to be Nothing. Nothing, when your dreams are crushed and even your cynical, jaded Darkness has scurried off, when you become like a living machine, no longer truly enjoying even such simple pleasures as the taste of good food. I know that can’t possibly sound anything like good to the teachers and bureaucrats reading this, but ask yourself, while you obviously advise your students to avoid drugs, how often do you tell them to follow dreams? And I don't mean just saying the words, how often do you actually help them? And no, helping them graduate doesn't count, because the whole point of the ELF movement is that the education system is an obstacle getting in the way of life instead of a tutorial to prepare you for it, that it shouldn't be an obstacle, and that we intend to change it.
But what I have little doubt of is that almost every teacher reading this, at one time, did want their students to follow their dreams. They probably went into teaching with something like a hope of helping students realize them. And that’s my dream, too. A world with a school system that helps its students instead of squashing them like bugs.
-Ashen
What is Dazibao?
During the cultural revolution in China, children at school would plaster the walls with papers called Dazibao, which would involve various writings on Communism and counter-revolutionaries, which were usually geared towards defaming unpopular teachers. That isn't what I'm after, here. The Dazibao put up on this blog is meant to be distributed throughout as many schools as possible in order to get people to join our cause. The basic concept of using short essays as a method of communication in schools inspired the name. That, and the fact that I finished Born Red not too long before ELF was started.
Each Dazibao is written so that it should be able to fit on a single sheet of paper in your average word processor (you may have to use a smaller font to get it to fit). Then, it should be e-mailed or printed and physically given to anyone and everyone who might be interested, including random students at school, particularly those who might be interested in actually reading the thing all the way through. Also, if you're involved in any online communities, and I mean any online communities at all, put a link up every now and again. Put links in your forum signature to the latest ELF Dazibao and you could triple our numbers overnight.
You, the people who believe in this system, are the people who are going to make it work. The first step in that direction is just getting the word out. So get it out. Get us some support.
-Ashen
Each Dazibao is written so that it should be able to fit on a single sheet of paper in your average word processor (you may have to use a smaller font to get it to fit). Then, it should be e-mailed or printed and physically given to anyone and everyone who might be interested, including random students at school, particularly those who might be interested in actually reading the thing all the way through. Also, if you're involved in any online communities, and I mean any online communities at all, put a link up every now and again. Put links in your forum signature to the latest ELF Dazibao and you could triple our numbers overnight.
You, the people who believe in this system, are the people who are going to make it work. The first step in that direction is just getting the word out. So get it out. Get us some support.
-Ashen
Dazibao 1 (Railing against the public school system)
Perhaps you’ve heard that the education system is broken, and if you haven’t I’m telling you now. It’s run by the government and given for free to anyone who cares to attend, the downside being that it’s awful. People are constantly complaining about how American High School students regularly score lower on standardized tests than Japanese students still in the womb, and what-not.
Now then, private schools generally do manage to produce higher test scores, but there is one small problem with them. Specifically, they are also awful. They produce results, certainly. They produce them with ruthless efficiency. But there’s a problem with this. They’re not producing anything useful, just test scores. Test scores, ultimately, do no good for anyone. They earn diplomas for the people who get them, but think bigger. What are those diplomas supposed to mean? They’re supposed to be a symbol of education, they’re supposed to be proof that you know something, but a quick glance around the classroom when your teacher asks “How many of you remember X thing you learned last year” proves that High School teaches, approximately, jack squat.
The egg heads, the kids who are obsessed with school? They usually don't learn anything either. Most of the time, they know it all in advance. If you're interested in Math, you're going to learn a lot more Math on your own than you will with a bunch of other students who could all care less. Of course, advanced classes exist for these kinds of people, advanced classes specially geared towards helping them learn things they are interested in. This is a good thing. We need more of this.
Another thing we could use some more of is hands on learning. It's more effective and it's more engaging for the students. It also has immediate application in reality. It's one thing to learn about X in class, and another thing altogether to learn about X and then use X to do Y. Suddenly, you feel like you've learned something useful. If national security ever depends on your ability to do Y, then America can breathe easy. It's a nice feeling, no matter how slim the odds are that the ability to do Y ever becomes relevent.
Fun fact: Math and Science, probably the hardest and most tedious classes in High School, are also the ones that require the most remedial courses in College. Due to their monotony, they communicate nothing. If the internet is anything to go by, English classes aren’t doing too well either, if u no wut I mean.
If we’re going to make an education system that works, we need to stop pretending that test scores mean something. We need to start focusing on producing real results because, though most people seem to treat school as something to fill up kids time so they don’t spend the morning kicking puppies, it’s actual purpose is to teach skills.
Mankind is a naturally creative, constructive being, and this creativity is actually more pronounced in youth, or at least it is whenever it isn’t being crushed by a cookie cutter “education” system that reduces both teachers and students value as human beings down to numbers stored in a server somewhere in Washington DC. A real education system would nurture this creativity instead of destroying it, and use students interests to teach them naturally.
-Ashen
Now then, private schools generally do manage to produce higher test scores, but there is one small problem with them. Specifically, they are also awful. They produce results, certainly. They produce them with ruthless efficiency. But there’s a problem with this. They’re not producing anything useful, just test scores. Test scores, ultimately, do no good for anyone. They earn diplomas for the people who get them, but think bigger. What are those diplomas supposed to mean? They’re supposed to be a symbol of education, they’re supposed to be proof that you know something, but a quick glance around the classroom when your teacher asks “How many of you remember X thing you learned last year” proves that High School teaches, approximately, jack squat.
The egg heads, the kids who are obsessed with school? They usually don't learn anything either. Most of the time, they know it all in advance. If you're interested in Math, you're going to learn a lot more Math on your own than you will with a bunch of other students who could all care less. Of course, advanced classes exist for these kinds of people, advanced classes specially geared towards helping them learn things they are interested in. This is a good thing. We need more of this.
Another thing we could use some more of is hands on learning. It's more effective and it's more engaging for the students. It also has immediate application in reality. It's one thing to learn about X in class, and another thing altogether to learn about X and then use X to do Y. Suddenly, you feel like you've learned something useful. If national security ever depends on your ability to do Y, then America can breathe easy. It's a nice feeling, no matter how slim the odds are that the ability to do Y ever becomes relevent.
Fun fact: Math and Science, probably the hardest and most tedious classes in High School, are also the ones that require the most remedial courses in College. Due to their monotony, they communicate nothing. If the internet is anything to go by, English classes aren’t doing too well either, if u no wut I mean.
If we’re going to make an education system that works, we need to stop pretending that test scores mean something. We need to start focusing on producing real results because, though most people seem to treat school as something to fill up kids time so they don’t spend the morning kicking puppies, it’s actual purpose is to teach skills.
Mankind is a naturally creative, constructive being, and this creativity is actually more pronounced in youth, or at least it is whenever it isn’t being crushed by a cookie cutter “education” system that reduces both teachers and students value as human beings down to numbers stored in a server somewhere in Washington DC. A real education system would nurture this creativity instead of destroying it, and use students interests to teach them naturally.
-Ashen
Monday, October 27, 2008
Grievances
To the public school system and all its supporters, we, the members and supporters of the Education Liberation Front (ELF) give this list of grievances and demand they be resolved. The public school system is a catastrophe. It is less an actual program of education than a nightmarish dystopia, and, factoring out future opportunities provided, it does more towards hindering the learning process than helping it. We of the Education Liberation Front are of the belief that school should not be a trial to be endured for the sake of higher education. We believe that it can, should, and will be made useful in and of itself.
First, the needless waste of time. It is not an uncommon practice to give out homework for its own sake, because students are supposed to have so much homework every day. In any give persons life, there are at least a dozen problems needing solving, and many of them can and should be solved through academic means. Beyond these personal problems are an army of problems plaguing the community, nation, and world, the solution to which every person can contribute to. There are problems enough to be solved. We do not need you to make up more for us.
Second, the stock nature of the education provided. Graduation requirements are geared towards a cookie-cutter education that provides every student with needlessly over-specialized information. I am not referring here to information that is widely applicable and simply not necesarry for every single job in the workforce, but to information which can be applied in so few situations that it ought not be taught to every student. You will be hard pressed to convince me that the bulk of students taking an Algebra II class will one day find the ability to calculate projectile motion on Pluto to be useful.
Third, the destruction of free speech. If a student speaks an opinion against a teacher or other authority figure, he or she will be lucky to get sympathetic apathy, and will quite possibly be rebuked for it. Any attempt to press the authority figures will most likely end in punishment for the student. There is no magic moment on ones eighteenth birthday when one spontaneously becomes worthy of free speech. The first amendment applies to everyone.
Fourth, the dehumanization of students. Any teenager who does anything noteworthy at all is considered a genius, a prodigy, and with the school system to struggle against, maybe that student is a genius. But the notion that teenagers are incapable of accomplishing anything is an utter falsehood. The People's Republic of North Korea has produced few innovators, but that is not because the Koreans are unintelligent. It is because they are not given the time or resources to innovate, to follow their own ambitions. Their will is usurped by the state. The same has happened in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and to the students of the public school system. I am not happy to see the future of America prepared for the real world in a dystopia.
Fifth, the breeding of ill feelings between students, intentional or otherwise. By crushing the students freedoms and will, the school system has left them with only one real resource to barter between them. Status. And many of them cherish this status and fight for it with vicious fury. It is because of the dehumanization of students that they fight each other so savagely for this one source of power left to them. Distant promises of future wealth and security offered by grades can never hope to compete with the immediate power granted by popularity. Given the ability to work towards a meaningful goal, students will be only as jealous of one anothers status as are adults.
Sixth, the destruction of the spirit. Students have had it drilled into their skulls that there are two roads in life, the road of blind submission to the state for the sake of a college education, and the road of crime, drug use, and despair. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps, without a High School Diploma, or at least a GED, only the truly brilliant can make something of themselves. But just because something is true doesn't mean it should be. Students are capable of giving back to the community now, can be useful now, if only people would give them the chance, and if people would stop drilling into them that they can't. They're much more competent than you think, and much more competent than most of them think.
I am not advocating that the public school system be destroyed. I am advocating heavy reform, an education that plays to the strengths of the individual students instead of offering a stock education. A student has no use for knowledge he despises. I am advocating an education that offers students the opportunity to prove what they have learned by actively applying it and making the world a better place, instead of mindlessly regurgitating facts which they will forget the moment the test is passed. I am advocating a system that will waste less time, providing more competent people to the corporations and government of the nation. I am advocating a system that will allow students to actively pursue their ambitions, a system that will give purpose to their lives, and so make them better people. I am not under the delusional impression that every person in America will use this system to its fullest, but perfection is impossible and the system we have in place now is both inefficient and malignant to those subject to it, and any system that removes these factors must be an improvement.
The students of America are awake now, and will not easily be put back to sleep.
-Ashen
First, the needless waste of time. It is not an uncommon practice to give out homework for its own sake, because students are supposed to have so much homework every day. In any give persons life, there are at least a dozen problems needing solving, and many of them can and should be solved through academic means. Beyond these personal problems are an army of problems plaguing the community, nation, and world, the solution to which every person can contribute to. There are problems enough to be solved. We do not need you to make up more for us.
Second, the stock nature of the education provided. Graduation requirements are geared towards a cookie-cutter education that provides every student with needlessly over-specialized information. I am not referring here to information that is widely applicable and simply not necesarry for every single job in the workforce, but to information which can be applied in so few situations that it ought not be taught to every student. You will be hard pressed to convince me that the bulk of students taking an Algebra II class will one day find the ability to calculate projectile motion on Pluto to be useful.
Third, the destruction of free speech. If a student speaks an opinion against a teacher or other authority figure, he or she will be lucky to get sympathetic apathy, and will quite possibly be rebuked for it. Any attempt to press the authority figures will most likely end in punishment for the student. There is no magic moment on ones eighteenth birthday when one spontaneously becomes worthy of free speech. The first amendment applies to everyone.
Fourth, the dehumanization of students. Any teenager who does anything noteworthy at all is considered a genius, a prodigy, and with the school system to struggle against, maybe that student is a genius. But the notion that teenagers are incapable of accomplishing anything is an utter falsehood. The People's Republic of North Korea has produced few innovators, but that is not because the Koreans are unintelligent. It is because they are not given the time or resources to innovate, to follow their own ambitions. Their will is usurped by the state. The same has happened in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and to the students of the public school system. I am not happy to see the future of America prepared for the real world in a dystopia.
Fifth, the breeding of ill feelings between students, intentional or otherwise. By crushing the students freedoms and will, the school system has left them with only one real resource to barter between them. Status. And many of them cherish this status and fight for it with vicious fury. It is because of the dehumanization of students that they fight each other so savagely for this one source of power left to them. Distant promises of future wealth and security offered by grades can never hope to compete with the immediate power granted by popularity. Given the ability to work towards a meaningful goal, students will be only as jealous of one anothers status as are adults.
Sixth, the destruction of the spirit. Students have had it drilled into their skulls that there are two roads in life, the road of blind submission to the state for the sake of a college education, and the road of crime, drug use, and despair. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps, without a High School Diploma, or at least a GED, only the truly brilliant can make something of themselves. But just because something is true doesn't mean it should be. Students are capable of giving back to the community now, can be useful now, if only people would give them the chance, and if people would stop drilling into them that they can't. They're much more competent than you think, and much more competent than most of them think.
I am not advocating that the public school system be destroyed. I am advocating heavy reform, an education that plays to the strengths of the individual students instead of offering a stock education. A student has no use for knowledge he despises. I am advocating an education that offers students the opportunity to prove what they have learned by actively applying it and making the world a better place, instead of mindlessly regurgitating facts which they will forget the moment the test is passed. I am advocating a system that will waste less time, providing more competent people to the corporations and government of the nation. I am advocating a system that will allow students to actively pursue their ambitions, a system that will give purpose to their lives, and so make them better people. I am not under the delusional impression that every person in America will use this system to its fullest, but perfection is impossible and the system we have in place now is both inefficient and malignant to those subject to it, and any system that removes these factors must be an improvement.
The students of America are awake now, and will not easily be put back to sleep.
-Ashen
ELF
What is the Education Liberation Front? Simple. We're an organization dedicated to education reform. I'm certain the world has enough of these already, but ELF is different. We're not interested in pumping higher test scores out of students. We're not concerned with how our stats compare to those in Europe or Asia. What we care about is actually improving the education system. Making it more efficient in accomplishing its purpose, which is not to produce high test scores but to teach students valuable skills that they can use later in life.
The current system is not very good at this. It teaches students exactly what they need to know, students learn it, pass the test, and immediately forget it all. While they will, likely, retain some slight knowledge of what they learned, it is not nearly worth the massive time investment. It is inefficient. It is repressive and dehumanizing. It is in heavy need of meaningful reform.
The objective of ELF is to bring about this reform. We intend to turn High School from what it is now, a series of obstacles on the way to a meaningful existence, into a meaningful existence in and of itself which will properly prepare students for the real world. A ruthless dictatorship does not prepare students for life in a democracy. Teenagers are capable of much more than people think they are. They respond to a dystopia the same way everyone else does, however, and have been convinced of their own incompetence and, in some cases, convinced of their own inhumanity. By toppling the dystopia that is the American public school system and setting up a better system, we believe that the teenagers of America will be given the chance to be meaningful members of society while still in High School.
For an exact list of everything we intend to resolve, see the next post, the list of grievances.
-Ashen
The current system is not very good at this. It teaches students exactly what they need to know, students learn it, pass the test, and immediately forget it all. While they will, likely, retain some slight knowledge of what they learned, it is not nearly worth the massive time investment. It is inefficient. It is repressive and dehumanizing. It is in heavy need of meaningful reform.
The objective of ELF is to bring about this reform. We intend to turn High School from what it is now, a series of obstacles on the way to a meaningful existence, into a meaningful existence in and of itself which will properly prepare students for the real world. A ruthless dictatorship does not prepare students for life in a democracy. Teenagers are capable of much more than people think they are. They respond to a dystopia the same way everyone else does, however, and have been convinced of their own incompetence and, in some cases, convinced of their own inhumanity. By toppling the dystopia that is the American public school system and setting up a better system, we believe that the teenagers of America will be given the chance to be meaningful members of society while still in High School.
For an exact list of everything we intend to resolve, see the next post, the list of grievances.
-Ashen
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