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Can We ‘Decolonize’ U.S. Schools?
Parents look to alternate education solutions
Nextcity reports on “unschooling,” or on alternative forms of education that do away with the systemic issues that are a part of traditional schooling. This article also breaks down how U.S. schools were created to train students to grow up and work in factory jobs.
So much of school has little to do with learning math and English. A lot of it has to do with being taught obedience.
The original impetus for public education, notes Farenga, was to teach the King James Bible. (Have you ever noticed how a classroom’s desks line up like pews, with the teacher at the front lecturing the way a preacher would?) From there, widespread education became a tool for assimilating immigrants. “The idea was that all these Irish Catholics and the Chinese working on the railroads needed to be Americanized, and taught a curriculum to make them American.”
Over time, mass public education became a tool of capitalism, a pipeline that prepared people for factory work. The ringing of the bell to switch classes echoed the ringing of the bell on the factory line. A “factory of learning” was meant to create obedient workers. Schools, Farenga says, became “places of control, where you learn to be controlled.
