Why Schools Don’t Educate (1990)
&gt; But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic — because the community life that protects the dependent and the weak is dead.<p>Too many people has apocalyptic views of the world. And to push for individualistic behavior when you think that your society is disintegrating seems to just accelerate any problems that may exists. 30 years later the collapse still has not happened.<p>&gt; The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what little they do have is transitory;<p>I have yet to see a child that is not curious, you need some war-level trauma to stop children curiosity. I would guess that the author real complain is that children are not interested in the same things that him, and that is why he is pissed off.<p>&gt; they’re just nice kids from central Harlem, bright and alert, but so badly schooled when they came to me that most of them couldn’t add or subtract with any fluency.<p>I am all for better schools and I can not even imagine how bad schooling has been in mainly black neighborhoods but to &quot;just let the kids learn by themselves&quot; seems as absurd as the idea of &quot;tabula rasa&quot;. Kids need to learn to learn but they also need to be taught.<p>&gt; The Swedes realized this in 1976, when they effectively abandoned state adoption of unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted.<p>This one is interesting as Abortion laws are changing in the USA.<p>&gt; Family is the main engine of education.<p>This makes sense. I just think that schools also have their place no only for education but as socializing places.<p>&gt; to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds.<p>Sweden has a generous parental leave. That is a good way of achieving this goal.<p>In general the article expresses a too extreme view of things. But it has some good points even if I do not agree with all the conclusions.