American education, schools, and learning

What’s going on in America’s schools? John Stossel’s ‘Stupid in America’ is there to find out.

Another video suggests that: The real reason our standards in education are falling isn’t lack of money but a government monopoly.

Sir Ken Robinson, in a TED talk, asks the question, “Do schools kill creativity?” and makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

But after watching these videos, if you want to learn more, read: How Children Fail by John Holt; Lockhart’s Lament (link at bottom of page) which relates to math; or John Talyor Gatto’s articles Against School or Why Schools Don’t Educate; and the article called School is not for Learning, by Grace Llewellyn.

And if you want to know what others think about education, here are some quotes:

Albert Einstein:

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

Oscar Wilde:

Education is an admirable thing, but it is worth noting that there is nothing worth knowing that can be taught.

John Taylor Gatto:

Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes any more that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.

Winston Churchill:

I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.

George Santayana:

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

John Holt:

Education – compulsory schooling, compulsory learning – is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can.

Walter Karp on the public school system:

Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority.

A teenager has had multiple experiences at public school: the police were called on him, his yearbook pictures were censored, with internet censorship, and with the New World Order being taught in his US history textbook.

But the big question is are Americans stupid?

So, what do you think? Is there a flaw or flaws in the education system? Is it just government schools or is it all schools?