Great video, and thank you for collaborating with me! The education system definitely needs an entire rehaul, from both a social and ecological perspective.

I watched a video about someone being against universal basic income. He argued that without a job, people lack meaning in their lives, and they become lazy. But what is stopping someone on universal basic income using their free time and money to take the initiative and educate themselves, learn a new skill, and find their own meaning of life? Society assumes that people need to be wage slaves to derive meaning in their lives.

In elementary school I was punished for saying that it seems we were being schooled how to be taught, not how to learn. The thought came from the reference librarian who helped me with books on how to develop better study habits, introducing me to the word 'autodidact'. Many white children left our school, and told me they were learning higher-order thinking skills. I was told we couldn't be taught that by our Black teacher, and I was punished for asking that too. I was diagnosed autistic, which to this I'm told is a made up thing for whites. As a child, it meant I was lacking intelligence, so my teacher were obsessed with proving my high grade ere from cheating. That is still a common assumption of black autistic children, while white children with autism are seen as an evolutionary leap forwards. Neither of the assumptions are true, and are inherently destructive. I eventually transferred into Ohio's first free school project, which outraged my father, but my he did nothing to stop it. Black children told me their parents said I was being taught to be a socialist who is against god, racist, and anti-Black. They mistakenly believed Nazism, socialism, communism were all vaguely the same and evil. I'm 67, live in Berkeley, CA, but here and everywhere, I travel in the US, I still find this disinformation regurgitated as fact be people regardless of their degree of "education".

Korean school survivor here. I used to go to school by 8am and comeback home on 11pm every weekdays. I took breaks in every weekends in guilt in that everyone else was likely toiling away with studying and I was "exceptionally lazy" for even daring to do so since that was the society's standards. Those few numeric values I received every month were objective measurement of my worth and I constantly struggled to get those up even at least a few points, actually thinking that it would make me better than anyone else. The thing with competition is that not only it devalues you but everyone around you as well. Since there would be many others that are worse off and schools and society have decided that means they worth less as human beings Recently couple more news broke out about the schools here. One was about a student attacking a teacher with a knife. And the other about a male high school student hurting a female classmate on the face and throwing himself off from 9th floor of an apartment. Hearing both made it alive should have relieved me but it has only made it worse for me since I can already imagine the physical and emotional damage they could have received and the aftermath they would face. The comments were all about how teachers need more authority and use more cruel punishments and how those kids daring to oppose such authorities cannot be forgiven. Also that the cause in all of this is "how their parents have not given them proper family education" which I believe it is the generic equivalent to more parent authority and mandating obedience.

“We get so used to other people telling us what to do, that we can’t imagine a world without someone ruling us” preach brother this is the shit 👊💪 the sooner we take responsibility for our lives and stop relying on other people to lead us through life, the quicker we can find our own sense of purpose and value

Nothing is sadder than convincing kids that their worth is measured by a number and grading. Me and so many other people at every point and walk of life, broke when we could never meet arbitrary expectations. And if you fall under a line or out of the mold, you are not worth the effort.

I recently found my joy of learning after removing the boredom and trauma mixed in from schooling. To hell with a system that chooses to traumatize young children.

I came upon this during my universities Palestinian solidarity encampment has been under threat from well basically all levels of state and school authorities. It made me realize I think for the first time, how the structure of the university system itself, especially here in canada, is an active and often violent arm of the state. In many shocking and horrific ways that probably shouldn’t be typed out in a KZfaq comment. Anyone who steps out of line is on the line. And if they are Indigenous or Black particularly, they may be in physical danger. I kinda “knew” this. But it never really all came together for me without the context of the Taylorist construction, and state propagation. My father is a public school teacher and has been for over 30 years now, and he is a great teacher, one that has definitely taken many approaches described here, not because he’s an Anarchist, but because he always genuinely cared about his students and wanted them to learn together, and at most of the schools he’s taught at. He’s been able to change a small group of other teachers to take some more student student approaches and trying to reduce quantification of worth through grades. Sadly at public schools grades are required. So that can’t happen anymore. But at the old private school. He just gave basically everyone an A and it was more based on like how much they grew rather than like how many out of 10 they got correct on a test.

I'm very excited to check this video out. I'm a public school teacher, and I've been thinking a lot about this topic for the last few years. I've also been looking into the Anarchist Pedagogies Collective, the Human Restoration Project, and a lot of literature on the topic of free schooling etc. I even presented last year about all the changes I've been trying to implement in my own classroom. I'm trying my best, but there are so many barriers for an individual teacher. I hope we can work together and move forward towards crafting something better.

As a school teacher myself this is a much needed video and I definitely appreciate to. Also I plan on working on a framework for Black Liberatory Education that aims to build a community to education pipeline that is cyclical in its function as the negation to the school to prison pipeline.

I remember having a deep love for learning as I wanted to be a scholar growing up. I would really become focused on my studies but by the time I was in high school and moved, I notice a seriously deep hatred for learning in everything except a few people. I felt other'd for spending my time at the library and despite my good grades I was treated like a potential problem by teachers and staff who generally saw all students as obstacles or even potential criminals. I remember being told to "shut up" while asking a question in class and the teacher didn't back me up, he just kept going. That was a reality learning experience for me and while I'm glad I know see the world of education for what it is in my country, I don't want any kid to experience what I went through.

meanwhile, parents are unschooling and neglecting their kid's education for all the wrong reasons.

Being a teacher myself, I was reluctant to watch this video. There's so much that happens behind the scenes of modern (in my case, American) education systems that makes it difficult for even students to judge, despite them growing up in that same system. However, you brought up some good points I wish to discuss. Again, I have a limited viewpoint of education. I've only ever taught in the US, specifically in NC and VT, but let's continue. 1. Students nowadays are constantly questioning a teacher's knowledge. They don't wish to blindly follow. Social media, while being immeasurably frustrating to deal with in the classroom, has given students a different point of view. Not that I ever expected students to blindly trust me, but it's definitely given students a voice they wouldn't have otherwise had. 2. You state that our modern education system, while desiring genuine outcomes, has basically become a method to churn out as many young and mindless working people possible. This is 100% correct, and causes so many teachers constant frustration to this day. We're told in university that our job is to educate, but we're constantly bombarded by the priorities of... other things from other people [who aren't students]. (I'm withdrawing a lot of my personal opinions here. I just don't want you to think that us teachers are also mindlessly following what we've been taught. We know the system is broken, but we can't realistically do anything about it.) 3. The core structure remains unchanged because there is less and less education funding to make those changes, and less and less support for educating students as a whole. Teachers know how people best learn, and we're well informed of modern educational methods. However we are constantly being told there's not enough to support students in that way. At the end of the day, we can only do so much, else it'll encompass our entire livelihood. I don't mean to end the comments here. Like I said, you brought up good points that need to be addressed. However it's brought some unexpected anxiety. Hopefully I'll continue tomorrow. I just want you to know that this teacher hears you and also desires significant change, and I do my best to encourage that every year.

'Incapable of thinking clearly' really hits. So much rote learning, so little opportunity for creativity, exploration and engagement to develop the ability to reason, problem solve, research and think through ideas and their implications.

Dear lord Andrew, you have no idea how much this video is a gift from the heavens for me. I'm currently at the tail end of my second semester (2nd year) of university and continuously through the experience I've been wrought with the thoughts that the school system is a horrendous experience if you aren't the "ideal student". Expected to sacrifice everything to win the system and be the perfect little pawn. I just can't do that, my focus on studying courses I don't find interesting is miniscule, I'm terrible at memorizing when I need to and I'm not exactly the best at managing my time. All these factors keep making me think that I'm not worth anything until I have to remind myself that the grades are just a measurement for the juiciness I would bring to whatever Upper Management suit decides to pluck me like an apple. As I speak now I've got an exam tomorrow which I understand from a fundamental level the topics and discussions had in class, but if I'm not able to recall the answers to hyperspecific scenarios with the terms and wording my lecturers deem as "right" then I'm no different from someone who doesn't even know anything at all. Francisco's Modern school sounds like a damn dream to me, I love to learn things I can apply, but when I'm being judged by some hierarchal standard, I just can't function. It drains my soul and kills whatever interest I have. It just goes from wonder to trying to maximize arbitrary points

If school was actually to help us, we wouldn’t ignore nearly everything about child psychology, disability, learning differences and disabilities, and neurodivergence at nearly every turn to save money. And if it worked, kids wouldn’t be coming self-ending to get out of the pressure, stress, PTSD, etc. I say this as a disabled person with school-related-PTSD from years of ableism and lots of direct harm medically, caused by the school.

I've undergone every form of education save for private school. Yes, even unschooling for a year. I'm the eldest and therefore experimental child after all. And from all that, I learned one thing: The best way to learn is to just teach yourself. 💀

I would have loved a school like this in k-12. This system trains us to serve those who have “more” than we do. It’s never served people like me. Even in the expensive schools they will find a way to gatekeep and bully you into servitude.

Ever since I fell for the okey doke of rich kid school (both sending my first born to one and working there) I've been feeling this. Rich kid school is a whole mind f and everyone is rushing to catch up to Japan and S. Korea where kids are literally killing themselves?!?! MIMS😵‍💫

As a former substitute teacher, this is one huge problem I have with education as a whole, the panopticon for surveilling students is now digital as well as in the real world. In addition to the behavior issues that spring from some kids not being able to do 7-12 hour days (a lot of kids have after school programs until 5 or 6 and have to wake up at 5 or 6 when parents go to work), it just leads to an environment that is stressful, exhausting for them, and not conducive to learning or becoming a self teaching student that pursues knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Andrew made this video just after the horrible entrance exam kids are forced to take here in Trinidad to place them in secondary school results came out. Great timing.

I know someone who was unschooled as a child, and as a result she can barely read and write, never mind higher order skills. We need a different approach to schooling than we currently have, but we also need to address the practical issues. How do we ensure that children being taught in alternative ways actually develop the skills they need?

So happy to see this come out now! I just got out of a ROUGH year of teaching, and have just been gearing up for some research and rethinking about what I can do going forward. I have to teach to put food on the table, but where I can, I enjoy teaching in ways that encourage students to think for themselves and challenge existing notions.

i’m bajan and i just finished my last year of secondary school this year. i was the president of my school’s students council and i tried to get my school heavily involved in the government’s “education transformation” initiative. we all wanted change in the system but the changes they proposed were just to overhaul our system and create and new one to mirror the american system without addressing specific needs of our people and criticisms and accomplishments of the current system and the people within it. it was difficult to get our ideas through to them for many reasons; adults didn’t want to listen to what we would say, we are the top school so ofc everyone thought we’d oppose the changes that could level the playing field and a whole lot of other preconceptions and barriers to communication externally and internally. i could go on for hours about this topic because it is so dear to me even if i have finished secondary school and plan to pursue tertiary education overseas (idk yet though because cxc is taking real long with these CAPE results) and i’m so glad to see one of my fav youtubers and caribbean comrade talk about it. sending love from barbados ❤🇧🇧

I read the book "The English Teacher" by R.K.Narayan and it depicted a professor exhaused with the teachings of literature studies in his school. To directly quote one of his lines,"..This education had reduced us to a nation of morons ;we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture feeding on leavings and garbage" Though this wasn't the fullest sentiment it was a reflection of the backwardness he considered current teaching techniques to be and how it can be evolved .Throughout be book the teacher moans and groans over even going to teach his students and it reminded me of how disillusioned teachers always seemed to be for me.This video really expanded on my beliefs that schools are only meant for indoctrination ,meant to be a cog to a machine and my teachers hated it.I was often corporal punished for not doing assignments or showing a general disinterest to school as a whole. I only studied subjects that intrigued me and abandoned the studies of other subjects.I'm glad to know that people have fought for the "decapitalisation" of education.I can only hope to encourage and even foster such changes within my community.

Algebra teacher from WV, USA here! Awesome video, Paolo Freire has really inspired the way I view my profession. I used to be a wind turbine engineer, but I now truly believe that a liberated education is the core solution to all crises we face. Thank you for the reminder that while doing what I can within the system is good, I need to do concurrent work outside the system too. “The role of teachers, those obscure soldiers of civilization, is to give to the masses the intellectual means of revolt.” - Louise Michel

I agree. I wanted a good resource on anarchist schools, you uploaded at the perfect time. It's surprising and sad that lot of leftists think current schooling system has no problems when late 1800s and early 1900s anarchists were way more radical on this topic

We should have democratic education with service learning, experience learning, and learning by doing in some cases (e.g. food preparation and community gardening), student centered learning, child integration (no age segregation), self regulated learning, competency based learning, and no grading or homework. Education would include formal learning, informal learning, and non-formal learning. Assessment would be more qualitative and less quantitative, more formative and less summative, more criterion-referenced and less norm-referenced, and, in some cases, ipsative. Operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and gamification would also be used far more beneficially when used. Students would participate in the management and maintenance of their school and use natural resting positions rather than sitting in a chair or on a ball unless unable to do so. They would learn with context, understanding, and orientation. Food would be healthy, and dining rooms and kitchens would be part of local regenerative food systems. Education would mostly be cooperative, but be competitive to an extent in some cases like with sports. The curriculum would be socially oriented and structured like an outline of academic disciplines. Although, in the case of service learning, experience learning, and learning by doing, that wouldn't always be the case (e.g. plunging a toilet and cleaning the school). Students would learn some knowledge at places like repair cafes, during the management and maintenance of their school, possibly through the manuals, and by helping with local regenerative agriculture and homemaking. For people who are interested in doing so, some knowledge, such as music, could be learned at leisure centers or other places.

Heck yeah! More talking about education! There is so much important work and imagining to be done about how education can work better for people.

Bro, your channel is so good. I have learned so much about socialism, anarchism, and leftism in general and it has really help me understand why I believe what I believe so much better. Keep up the good work seriously!

Something you might be interested in Andrew is Ireland's preschool curriculum framework "Aistear", which I believe avoides the authoritarian relationship between teacher and student to focus on the child's agency and observing their periodic growth and interests. Our primary school curriculum was actually updated very recently, taking on board some of Aistears' framework. Aka, plagiarised it 😂

I would love it if anarchist efforts could think big. What would it take to eventually build your own schools? Provide your own food? Housing? Security? Taking over capitalism isn't enough. We have to build durable institutions we can pass on to our children.

As an educator, I want and try so badly to have these ideas implemented in how I operate within the institution of traditional general education. Thank you for sharing this!

I was kind of nervous about this video when I first saw the title, but this is well-researched and thoughtful, with real solutions from actual experts. I am getting my master’s in curriculum and instruction, and everything you talked about, we learned in our classes and discussed. One topic I researched recently was adult education, aka andragogy. As the amount of needed knowledge grows, it’s something I think we need. We need to let everyone be able to learn at the pace they want to and are able to learn.

As someone home educated for a while, before going back to schooling for 6th form in the UK. I hate the education system it's so strangling.

There exists a system that works: agora. I'm 17 and I'm attending a new experimental school system where i don't have teachers or classes. Rather, i have mentors and projects. Instead of covering the corriculum by listening to how a teacher interperated it, i get to cover it by exploring ideas that peak my own curiosity. I can have a project about some random topic like gaming, there is a lot gaming can teach us about society, and how humans behave in groups. I personally have taken an interest in philosophy and have covered a lot of social science subjects by studying the work of people like peter sibger, kafka, and edgar allan poe. I also have friends who have had more sciency projects about aerodynamics, and i myself have studied mushrooms and potatoes. This became a bit ranty, but I would encourage to look agora up. It is a system that produces independent, critically thinking, lifelong learners, and research has shown that people graduating from this system have had more success in university than the average learner because of the research skills and independence we gain. Rant over.

i teach english and design at a few schools in italy, and it drives me insane how heavily they lean on standardized testing. specifically the cambridge curriculum for english learning, which feels absolutely awful for learning a language. the focus on tests and certificates as a gauge of "language proficiency" is miserable, and seems to drain the willpower from learning a foreign language. i've been far more successful in learning italian than every other time i tried learning a foreign language in US schools, specifically because my personal approach has been completely different from how schools taught me. but trying to impart that to students while also staying within standardized testing parameters often feels like a square-peg-round-hole approach, and it's really demoralizing. there's a little more flexibility in teaching design & technology, but even that tends to be fairly restrictive. still, even when i *do* try doing things differently, it's very difficult for the students to really grasp it, when their other teachers follow the banking approach & punish students for making mistakes

At my primary school they had a Montessori, a school system which I think is good and fits within this ideology, I would love to see someone talk about this!

I’m about a year away from getting my teaching degree. I hope I can introduce some radical initiatives in my classroom like creative writing, basic ecology, astronomy and theater. I also want to integrate visits to parks, museums etc. into the overall education, as well as outside classrooms in fields and forests If that’s possible. Overall, I’m pretty new to teaching, and I have still a lot of stuff to clear out and understand, and that video was perfect as another step in that process.

Bravo! It's utter sadness how much real human potential has been, and continues to be, wasted...

I love your videos criticizing education systems so much. I'm getting annoyed with the way in reaction to right wing attacks on public education, liberals and leftists both have been getting into the habit of glorifying the education system despite it's role in perpetuating capitalism and traumatizing most disabled kids at least who are put through it.

The Dutch kids are the happiest kids in the world according to UNICEF. Part of that happiness is in the school system, where kids are taking seriously. And their opinions are valued. Just like they are at home. Dutch kids in elementary school call their teachers by their Christian name. The authority of the teacher is based on his knowledge, not on his position. I’m a retired high school teacher. Students are debating and having discussions with their teachers a lot. My best argument always was: “because I say so.” They were perplexed, they were so unfamiliar with that concept. 😀

The Kamala joke was perfect 😭

There is an increasing amount of critics of the education system, which makes the timing ripe for change. Thank you Andrewism for posting this. I was surprised John Talyor Gatto was not mentioned as there is a KZfaq channel of his works. His book "Weapons of Mass Destruction" documents the influence of Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al on American education. As a geoscientist with a Master's degree in Education, i became aware of the shortcomings of schooling to make me a competent geoscientist, which requires a systems thinking perspective. Public schooling diminished that ability. Watching Americans in their divide over political leaders is evidence of the effects of public schooling. Their choice of who will be next President is heartbreaking, although the control of these figureheads is Corporate elites. This trend is global. Parents play a major role in pressuring their school boards to adopt programs now being offered, such as High Tech High, Moonshot Incubator, Take Me Outside, Forest Schools..... We have the ability to take back control, through real education!

I couldn’t find any other way to explain it but your videos always fill me with a sense of joy. All your videos have history, a thorough explanation of the problem w an analysis and an offering of solutions that fills me with hopeful optimism. I think that’s a problem with left is that we don’t have enough discourse about what our world could be because we’re too busy defending our position against bad faith actors and fascists who don’t even read theory enough to care. Feels good to get a different more optimistic perspective once in a while.

Great to see this! Greetings from your friends over at the Human Restoration Project!

Another beautiful expansive and expanding video essay. Much appreciation and sharing it all around.

Enjoying these videos. Thought provoking

Man, you get my dreaming glands going ;) ... i just turned 30 but im still yearning for a productive and free learning experience with other people of all ages. All the instututions of learning that are yet available have always stifled me and my journey in life, even arts university. I sincerely hope something more along our lines becomes available in our lifetimes. Im down to working towards setting up such an environment if I find other likeminded and driven people...

I am grateful to the internet, despite all of its flaws, for giving me access to so many resources and allowing me to learn about a variety of topics. Like a library, i could access what i wanted to and thus fostered in me a great love for earth and art. I also think that the ability to see the perspectives of so many people has allowed me to be more empathetic, and likely lead me to my anarchist philosophy today. Love the video as always!

When I was in high school, our history teacher gave me an award for "critical thinking". Later that day we were chatting and she explained that she gave it to me for my willingness to question what I was being taught, and question the authorities around me. One of the coolest teachers I had. She also gave me thumbs up when I got kicked out of class for "being a nuisance"

I loved the ending where you explained because that always gets me. The guild idea imo is fantastic. I also think a increase in apprenticships is a big one.

this video really made me rethink home schooled kids. Most of them I've talked with have great relationships with their parents, and in this context it makes way more sense and makes it seem conversely weird that I saw them as odd seeming from their very calm and non chalant attitude. Their parents probably had a much more collaborative atmosphere (or at least less authoritative) and especially in the sense of focusing on getting through the state mandatory education vs the tumultuous nature of dragging out primary education years with memorization and busy work tasks; most of the home schoolers I know also finished their diplomas much earlier than public school kids. On the flip side I at the time had a giant anti-authoritarian chip on my shoulder that prevented me from challenging and moving past some of these toxic systems to better my own education even when I saw that we were not truly being educated for learning.

You have incredible timing, and this for two reasons. The first, that I randomly thought to see if there was anything new on your channel one hour after this upload. The second, that I've lately been fixated on the fact that the education system, for all its (evidently spurious) claims that it prepares one for life, fails to cover many everyday skills. It clicked back when I began trying to learn to cook that that's a skill I should have been taught in my teens. Later, I caught word that in some countries, a subject used to exist named home economics that covered such things as cooking, housekeeping, finances, etc. But even that subject was part of the true, hierarchical purpose of the education system, as the goal was to mold women to patriarchal gender roles. Thing is, I was thinking of setting off a campaign to get my country's education system to implement a modern version of home ec that isn't patriarchal and instead is built on the premise of "this is stuff _everyone_ should learn". However, seeing this video makes me wonder if this really is the optimal approach to the issue. Whether trying to introduce courses providing actual life skills into a system not designed for it would be a doomed, "square peg, round hole" project. And how else the goal of "ensure people learn this necessary skillset they probably aren't learning" could be achieved instead. I'll need to give it a lot of thought, but I was thinking something like organizing community workshops? ❤

We should have created a K-12 National Recommended Reading List decades ago. Most people do not seem to discover what they are actually interested in by high school graduation. The teachers expect students to be motivated by competing with each other. We got gold stars in early grammar school. I started reading Science Fiction in 4th grade. That exposed me to information and ideas that were not being taught. So to what degree is school mind control? I decided to go to college for engineering in 7th grade. *Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics* by Stan Gibilisco

I came from solar punk alana's video and the shift from British to a hard french accent was something, really cool collaboration on a very important topic

Thank you. I really enjoyed this thorough exposé.

Many thanks for your great summary - I read Ivan Illich much earlier in life, but I'll re-watch this video to pick up about some of the other people you talk about. My experience of schools is in the UK; a great hindrance to reform is that probably 99% of people who decide to be teachers actually enjoyed school as they experienced it, and have very little empathy with the quite large number of people who find it difficult. From talking to people who go through 'teacher-training', I know that some issues are being tackled, such as that different people learn in different ways, but I still meet dreadful teachers who declaim at social gatherings that 'all children need to be pushed'. One thing I learned at my school was not what the establishment intended - how people behave in a mob. While the teacher-warders were having their break, all sorts of nasty behaviours were going on! Look forward to your next video

Sheeeeeeeeesh, what an absolute banger. Gods, you are just bonkers eloquent. I love your shit, keep it up!

Thank you for your work!🖤🏴🖤

Appreciate the effort here

thank you so much for this video. ive hates the education system since i was in elementary which also shaped my view on US education as a whole which is part of why university never interested me. the path to get to where i am has been awry, but at the end of the day i’m glad i chose this path because it led me to this video and other likeminded ppl

Another amazing video.

amazing video c: ..also, to think that even just more freedom of movement could change the atmosphere of classrooms so much, it would be so easy too :c ..always pitch ideas for a better living environment to your local councils!

PLEASE. More videos like this. Anarchy and children. Really anything you have to say about children has been exactly the type of "parenting" content have been hoping to find. Love it. Thank you.

When I was 11 years old, I went to an abusive private school in New Jersey. All of the teachers in that school as well as the administrators were very manipulative, condescending, overbearing, and domineering towards Me and, not surprisingly, it made Me very much afraid to go to school. In fact, I had this fantasy about that ridiculously oppressive private school burning down to the ground and being replaced with a parking lot. It was not until the end of the school year that My Parents found out exactly what was going on in that school and, lucky for Me, I never attended that school again.

As a former social worker this video is simply enlightening. Thank You!

I always come out of these videos from Andrew asking myself " how can I apply this in my classroom?" and even though it makes me excited to imagine all the possible changes, the reality of having to deal with the current school system at the same time and sometimes even when they act as a deterrent is scary, frustrating and paralyzing. This is coming from a US educator who learned in Brazil, where we love Paulo Freire in Education, he's our saint and our school system still isn't even close to resembling his ideals or many other incredible Brazilian educators. It's like punching a wall expecting it to say "uncle uncle I give up"... but walls don't talk. It's a long and arduous fight but I'll keep fighting. If anyone here is a teacher or just someone who would like to promote a knowledge sharing event in South Florida let's exchange some contacts and ideas!

This reminded me of Shantiniketan, a school founded by Rabindranath Tagore, a poet, novelist and humanist. I live in the homeland of Tagore, yet all I've ever been taught about Shantiniketan is that he wanted to teach the students under the trees and not in classrooms (which taught British curriculum at the time). Hardly any people know about how community and nature focused the original teachings of Tagore were at Shantiniketan.

💯 such a good video.

Love this. Another important element of the postcapitalist metasolutions. Rising property taxes - which are used as rationale for increased property prices and ever-rising "cost of living" - justify themselves as needed to pay for more public education. Our third space free makerspace café project integrates decentralized "open learning" - similar to the free school model and 42 in San Francisco and Paris, with no formal teachers and livestream options for everything. That's fascinating that you were home schooled. I think AI and AR can play a really helpful role too. See: the Primer in Neal Stephenson's nanotech epic The Diamond Age.

School never taught me anything except how to be a good slave to the system.

As someone who will likely become a teacher in the future, I love this video because it shows me exactly what I always believed, but never knew (I hate the idea of teaching as we have, but I can't help myself; everything that I like doesn't lead to any other professions)

As far as I'm concerned, any alternative model, so long as it is positive and life-affirming, of school, society, or life, is desperately needed now. Our societies are at a tipping point I believe and I truly hope we make the right decisions over these next 100 years.... If we good guys don't win out, I truly fear for the future of this planet. Whether one believes in an afterlife or not, shouldn't we strive to make life on this planet as positive and affirming for as many people as possible? I mean why not?? why strive for anything else BUT that? Why else are we here? You don't have to believe in religious thought to believe that we should strive to create a humane world versus an INhumane one. Isn't one more inherently right than the other???? I certainly think so.

As educators, this is nothing new to hear but always refreshing it is to see someone try and implement this. The french military academic model of Disciplines and lectures is quite _pasè_ and we now aim for continuous and lifelong learning models. Social learning, constructivism and decolonizing education models are always welcome for You all to try and set up. Watch out tho, for the empire strikes back

thanks for the vid! i would love to hear thoughts on what we can do as people who are employed full time seeking to give our kids creativity and initiative, a lot of these ideas seem like a great roadmap for longterm social change but leave me unsure what i would do if i had a kid today, but then i just worked a shift so maybe my comprehension is just low rn. anyway thanks, keep it up please!

This video fulfills my key good content requirements of - further clarifies the ways cannibalism of the electric soul both in self and superposition is really damn baked in there and the ways it manifests in creating authority, hatred of human life, and fixation on death - confirming something I always felt but gave benefit of the doubt and could never articulate the feeling of - both deep connection with my fellow humankind, and a deep connection to a superposition of horror and rage this has been done to us - would be soooo gratifying to slap across the faces of mid-2010s HP fans who were whole cloth endorsing some if not all of Joanne Rogan’s Thatcherite ideologies

I educate my child at home, I use Freire and Illich and bell hooks as my pedagogical models. She is thriving. Existence before essence. Scholé over school.

Excellent content. This is why the school system is broken. That's what some students are not engaged because they are not truly learning. Thanks so much and the list of books.

SUDBURY VALLEY EDUCATION FOR THE WIN

new andrewism video yippee

I guess I am an outlier in that I really enjoyed the academic side of school, it was the social side of relating to other students that was hard for me. However I was always an avid reader and loved the freedom of spending hours in the library just perusing every topic under the sun, so I get that the school system is inherently limited. While I don't like the trend I see of getting rid of objective metrics in education as it doesn't make differences go away it just hides them, I do see that for most students the importance of getting good grades is mostly from social pressure and not how it impacts them in life. So then Andrew, when are you opening your first school? :)

I have teacher friends, many of whom understand this at a gut level but feel helpless to break the mold of industrial worker production.

I still have so much unlearning to do coming out of the institution…Of course as always learning and relearning things along the way.

The banking model of education sucks the life out of knowledge." Thank you for putting into words what I've been feeling for most of my life

I only attended high school for six months before I had to be pulled out and moved to a different, much smaller school. It was extremely traumatic, and I felt like harming myself was the only way to cope with that (which my teachers noticed and did nothing about btw). I likely would have done much better if I had an IEP, but no support was ever offered to me. I was expected to just know how to function, and when I couldn’t because I have ADHD and autism, the school abandoned me, and did nothing as I struggled. I know I’m not the only one who has slipped through the cracks like that, and no student should ever have that experience. School shouldn’t be hell, it shouldn’t make kids want to die, and I and many others have had that exact experience attending school.

Yessss I feel particularly excited about the possibilities of the virtual (even if sadly it has been rapidly taken over by gargantuan corporatism) spaces and digital interfaces to breach our physical limitations of connections. Online games with the correct level of player participation and ownership could foster empathy and collaboration across the world like very few other pieces of culture can! Open source is also such a blatantly simple way of accepting that knowledge is a common effort. We all build on top each other's work. The war for intellectual property is to education what Monsanto is to farming. Are we perhaps always collaborating, just don't have the ability to measure how much of our "individual" output is build on top of previous human effort? *And more relevant to educational experiences: Bullying is such an obvious byproduct of hierarchical-standardized educational institutions. I managed to survive it without getting too hurt. Some old friends didn't. And some classmates were bullied BY THE TEACHERS because of their different origin/situation, effectively creating a safe-spot for more bullying to happen. D I S T U R B I N G

I’ve always felt out of place in the school system (blame my neurospicy brain lol) I hated the idea of earning some arbitrary thing of success that legitimized whatever I was learning. It felt out of reach and I couldn’t feel like I had the ability to explore unless it was on the internet. The people around me built up university like it was more free and you had unlimited choice but when I got there it was even more restrictive than Highschool. Why can’t we explore topics or classes outside of a degree program? Why isn’t there an option for those who don’t wish to earn a degree to just explore courses at their leasure? It’s maddening!

I was just recently researching this topic, so this video arrives at the perfect time! I wanted to ask you: what's your opinion of Summerhill school? In my (brief) research it looked the closest existing school to the one you are describing in the video.

Best bit of learning at school I had was doing a BTEC in engineering. It was very much not what you get in regular education from 5-16 yrs in the UK.

38 seconds ago wow. Luv u Andrew PS fuck the capitalist school system

I think this might be my favourite KZfaq channel

14:30 this painting is simply divine, i cant described how powerful how much meaningful it is.

Please do a video talking about the Really Really Free Market Projects they are right up your alley

And sending people to jail for not going is crazy.

Glad to see that prussian education model mentioned. Crucial for critiqing education today

Every day I am more and more grateful that I left teaching at a traditional school to work for a Montessori elementary. Now if only we could go back to Maria Montessori’s intention and make it available for all children- not just those privileged enough to afford private education or who live within the boundaries of the few public Montessori schools.

Wow! This is so in line with my thinking on education. We need radical change in the US. ❤

It feels really difficult to articulate the problems with formal education to non anarchists. I appreciate you bringing this together.

The only thing I learned from school is that I am worth nothing.