Thank you for the opportunity to respond. As I read Oko, I have mixed feelings (yin and yang). I do believe balance is crucial in every aspect of living. As an educator who has witnessed coercion in schools and universities for many years, I now believe a strong push is needed to reach balance. This strong push away from coercion is not necessarily to cooperate with those coercing. The coercion and subtle agenda of schools and many universities is to have students learn "obedience to authority." Balance and cooperation arise between equals when each is their own authority noticing that they share something that is bigger than either. A small group is now being formed to begin to "throw tea in schooling's harbor." This may be an attempt to accomplish what throwing tea in the Boston harbor began as a strong stand for freedom to avoid tyranny.
My sense now is that many schools are so involved with tyranny, the opposite of freedom, that we now need to move in the direction of allowing students, and almost all levels of schooling, to study what they find to be remarkable, interesting, and important in an non-graded atmosphere.
As Thomas Jefferson said,, the purpose of schooling is to help each one decide for oneself what will secure or endanger one's freedom. The military industrial complex promoting corporate training as a primary purpose of school avoids education for self direction. When self direction is not the goal of schooling, students are much less inquisitive, and frequently don't love learning and open inquiry. I strongly believe in mental stem learning one: "increase the tendency to allow events to happen rather than make them happen." yet too many teachers and professors cater to the pressure of teaching to the test and simply training. If a balanced Yin and Yang yields cooperative partners, each person must be their own authority yet we have allowed a small group to overly control, not only Wall Street, but also many aspects of our social and economic lives. Should you agree with what is said here, please write your senators, representatives and school boards about these matters.
Warm kind regards to everyone.
On Aug 17, 2012 Conrad P. Pritscher wrote :
My sense now is that many schools are so involved with tyranny, the opposite of freedom, that we now need to move in the direction of allowing students, and almost all levels of schooling, to study what they find to be remarkable, interesting, and important in an non-graded atmosphere.
As Thomas Jefferson said,, the purpose of schooling is to help each one decide for oneself what will secure or endanger one's freedom. The military industrial complex promoting corporate training as a primary purpose of school avoids education for self direction. When self direction is not the goal of schooling, students are much less inquisitive, and frequently don't love learning and open inquiry. I strongly believe in mental stem learning one: "increase the tendency to allow events to happen rather than make them happen." yet too many teachers and professors cater to the pressure of teaching to the test and simply training. If a balanced Yin and Yang yields cooperative partners, each person must be their own authority yet we have allowed a small group to overly control, not only Wall Street, but also many aspects of our social and economic lives. Should you agree with what is said here, please write your senators, representatives and school boards about these matters.
Warm kind regards to everyone.