Good little consumers
p2pnet.net OT News View:- A recent p2pnet Top of the Page lead was headlined, They’re brainwashing YOUR child and discussed the danger children around the world face from venal entertainment and software corporations which are trying to capture their young minds to turn them into good little consumers.
It’s something the mainstream media rarely bothers to highlight but IMHO, it’s a terrible danger, especially where younger, highly impressionable, children are concerned.
Anyhow, at the end of the piece I wrote that we home school our daughter, Emma, who’ll be nine this month, and the post prompted a number of emails from parents. Since Liz, my partner, does the real work, it seems only appropriate that she should answer the emails in an open post.
Most of the emails I received wanted to know why we decided to home school Emma and how we go about it. Big Questions. But for now, we were concerned about the low standards of education at most schools and decided to do what we could to give her the best instead of the worst.
It’s meant considerable personal sacrifice. We took a very big drop in income when we decided to figure out how we could both be at home so we could both be involved in giving her the skills she’ll need to become a happy, fulfilled and successful person.
And as we see The Corporations encroaching more and more into schools, where they should have no presence or influence whatsoever, we’re even more thankful we decided on making ourselves personally responsible for Emma’s education.
If you’d like to get into this even further with Liz, please email me (jon[at]p2pnet.net) and I’ll pass you on to her.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
One of the reasons we decided to home school Emma was our belief that kids will learn at their own speed – when the time is right for them to become interested in a particular subject. So although Emma can’t yet multiply very well, or name the capital of every Canadian province, she can give you the lowdown on the Tudor dynasty and tell you how to help an egg-bound budgie. And she knows a huge list of songs from traditional folk to modern hits by heart. She can also get a decent sound from her dad’s didgeridoo, and Jon is teaching her guitar and hand-drums. The two of them are also gearing up to put a web page together for Emma so she can do posts and talk to kids around the world.
She reads every chance she gets and her selections include Archies, Asterix, The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes series, Junie B. Jones, fact and fiction books on the Tudor and Elizabethan ages, fact books on animals, books on period costumes and anything to do with Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome.
I don’t think any parent in Canada and the US can remain unaware of the many debates centering on what can be done to improve the quality of schooling. And it’s probably the same in other countries.
The general tone seems to be that schools should be doing more, meaning they should do more of the quantifiable, ie standardized, teaching. Note that I said teaching – by the staff, not learning by the students. Because kids are individuals and not one of them will learn the same thing in the same way as another.
One of the things the pundits point out is that our world is very complex and increasingly driven by technology. And, right now, the consensus in educational establishments is that the goal is to become successful in one of the leading edge (hence money earning) professions. Therefore, the emphasis in schools is on maths and the sciences and I sometimes think if reading wasn’t essential for the initial introduction to these fields, schools might even cut it out completely.
But precisely because, as I said above, kids learn in such diverse ways, to me, it’s counterproductive to push increasingly narrow and homogenized curricula at them. Nor will this ’square-pegs-in-round-holes’ approach give us the range of skills which our 21st century needs.
Some of those who decry the current educational methods say schools are very bad at teaching kids to be independent, critical thinkers, able to take the initiative, to strategize and to formulate and carry out long-term projects.
How can you expect schools to deliver such children when everything students do is compartmentalized into short lessons, one after another, throughout the school-day? When are software developers or financial analysts ever asked to come up with projects in daily bursts of fifty minutes each punctuated by shrill bells and followed by time spent on totally unrelated topics?
A child who’s become habituated to the rule of the school-bell in the early years might never be able to outgrow that rhythm in university or professional life.
If we believe children learn best when they’re young then, instead of pushing shape families at them in kindergarten, we should be teaching them from an early age the value of spending time on interesting and challenging things. We should allow them to stretch their minds and to delve deep.
If you want independent thinkers, you have to let kids be and what’s interesting to the average nine-year-old is, nine-tenths of the time, not something an adult would see as challenging.
In our daughter’s case, it’s Barbies, comics, horses and her aviary, which currently houses 20 birds. But through them, she’s learning all the time. Right now she’s designing and making her own Barbie outfits, finding out about sewing and different fabrics: where they’re made, and how. She’s finding that some fabrics work together and others don’t. Her interest in horses leads to all kinds of questions, for example when did they first appear in North America and who brought them? And when one of the budgies finally has a chick, it’ll be the reason for a lesson in Mendelian genetics and its effect on colour mutations. She has a tremendous sense of humour and as well as reading comics like Asterix, she’s been writing and illustrating her own books since she was about three. She doesn’t do this often, but when she does, the results always show how much she’s learning.
See what I mean? I don’t think Sony BMG or Microsoft is going to do much for Emma in the classroom.
And I don’t think the matter of intellectual copyright can possibly be of the slightest educational benefit below the age of fourteen, and possibly even sixteen.
It’s a topic for kids who are cognizant of ideas such as national wealth, intellectual as opposed to real or fixed property, and the question of personal rights versus the rights of big business.
In the proper circumstances, it would make a great topic for a free discussion where kids could demonstrate their ability to think through complex ideas and where they’re allowed to take sides naturally rather than being forced to take a particular side by a “copyright-crusading ferret”.
The educational machine shows as little understanding for its charges as Big Music shows for its customers.
Precious few kids below the age of fourteen are going to get excited over intellectual property rights and they’re probably of very limited value, even to the corporations.
On the other hand, many of the older, more cynical kids will see right through these ‘educational’ programs and the vast majority of the students will simply, and very intelligently, just tune out.
( By the way, Emma is learning about copyright issues by virtue of the simple fact they’re a frequent dinner table topic at our house : )
Liz Newton
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July 13th, 2005 at 12:05 am
Congratulations! It sounds as though you are doing an excellent job. I think that one of the most important things that youngsters should learn is ‘practical philosophy’, which you seem to be including by ‘default’, along with many other excellent lessons. They should be taught to think for themselves before the ‘psycho-paedophiles’ that run international capitalism turn them into over spending zombies. A fate that has all ready befallen so many.
July 13th, 2005 at 1:11 am
At the risk of veering slightly off topic, I was wondering what P2Pnet readers think of the big soft drink company’s presence in schools. Not sure how widespread it is in Canada & elswhere but in the US they are everywhere in the public schools, grades K thru 12. In a doucumentary about it I heard a Pepsi exec (who had a daughter in gradeschool at the time) quoted as saying that if they could establish brand loyalty before age 7 (it was somewhere right in that age range, I forget the exact number) they would have them for life. Good BIG consumers?
July 13th, 2005 at 1:14 am
“establish brand loyalty before age 7″ sums it up. p2pnet is about entertainment, etc, but its not just them. Its every kind of company trying to get a grip on school kids. Its seriously bad.
July 13th, 2005 at 3:50 am
As for soda, you can trace the rise in obesity & diabete to high fructose corn syrup, added as a cheap sugary additive because of US farm overproduction & corporations’ finding out it’s a cheap substitute. Also, as soda companies go, google stories about Coke being accused of hiring Columbian paramilitary groups to kill union members. A divestment by a major shareholder preceded this, leading one to believe that person had the inside tip on what was going on & high tailed it out of there.
July 14th, 2005 at 2:08 am
As someone who has recently left the halls of “standardized education” i can tell you that regardless of intention, the public school system has marked negative effect on creativity and independence.
I entered school with artistic aspirations and despite my best efforts had it quashed from me. Luckily, unlike many of my peers, I still have the capacity for independent thought.