Musings on Education Pt. One

Apparently my field of expertise is education and one of the areas in which I am most critical of. I will be teaching a course called Principles of Teaching in a month or so and I'm looking forward to deconstructing some of the pedagogical models that schools utilize in both the States & Canada. I encourage my students to read a number of radical approaches (Gatto, Waldorf, Montessori, etc) to education proposed by such people such as John Gatto who suggests that students are taught six things in our public school system:

1. Stay in the class where you belong.
2. Students should turn on and off like a light switch.
3. Students should surrender to a predestined chain of command.
   
4. Only the teacher or school can determine the curriculum you study.
5. A student's self-respect is depends on observer's measure of the student's worth.
6. Students should be taught they are watched.