Concerning the Last Dazibao...

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.

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.

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 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.