12/16/06
I'd never heard of Celia Green before this morning. A random walk through the Internet turned her up. She's my kind of thinker:
If it were possible to leave school as soon as a certain level of proficiency at reading, writing and arithmetic has been attained, as it was in my grandfather's day (who had a high IQ and left school at 12), it is easy to imagine that many of the brightest might leave school at about 8 and set about making their way in the world.
Exactly. Schooling should be something gotten through with as quickly as possible, so real life and learning can begin. Proficiency and mastery should be the reasonable goals, and when those goals are reached, you graduate.
Modern state-funded schooling is mainly based on an idea from over-run courts: time served.
On her main website, she takes the education racket rather personally:
State education should be abolished. If it could ruin my education and life, it could ruin anybody's.
This scrolls down at the bottom of the browser.
I get her point, though I would have rewritten it:
State schooling should be abolished. If it could sidetrack my education, it could ruin anybody's.
But even that's a bit strong for me. For one thing, just because something can do harm doesn't mean it can't also do good. More importantly, I realized, early on, that whatever talent I had at learning didn't flow naturally from the standard teacher-student relationship, and certainly not from state-funded, compulsory school attendance. I've always been content to be an auto-didact. Even when I was in school.
But then, I never tried to become an academic, as Ms. Green apparently has. The current system sure would gripe me had I placed any stock in it.
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