The public education system in many capitalist countries has been highly criticized for allegedly dumbing down students and/or killing their creativity. On the other hand, getting rid of schools would probably lead to a reduction in literacy and qualifications. Thus, it would be necessary to reform education somehow.
Here are some proposed options:
Socialist Values - Keep the current education system, but instead of teaching capitalist values, teach socialist ones. Grades, homework, tests, etc. remain a thing.
Montessori - Public schools all perform like the Montessori model: Students learn at their own pace, are encouraged to do student-led activites, and are guided by adults who act like mentors. Homework is minimal, if it is even assigned at all. Grades in Montessori exist but are done differently, instead of checking how well one has completed assignments, the mentor grades each student by how well they believe they are progressing.
Democratic Schools - Grades and curriculum are entirely abolished. Here, students are expected to be in charge of their own education and are even given the opportunity to decide many of the decisions made by the school. Children and adults are seen as equals to each other in this model. The most famous instance of this is the Sudbury School.
These are just the ideas I can think of right now. Which ones do you guys agree with, or do you have another idea not listed here?
My child is in a montessori school, it’s pretty good, but it relies on small class sizes/abundance of teachers and assistants and whether this is possible under a public system is doubtful - yes we pay for this education, call me a bourgeoisie scumbag if you want but we don’t own a car or have any luxuries other than this and we live in a developing nation where the public education system struggles to provide desks, is devoid of resources and has serious problems with bullying and violence.
There is an element of democracy, with the students holding meetings to make suggestions and vote upon them, teachers guide the process and will listen to the students where possible and give valid reasoning where this isn’t possible.
I think this model is pretty good for many children up to the early teenage years but perhaps there should be some more structured vocational options for older children, if we were to do away with grades perhaps a system of certification of competency in different fields could be available.
One of the classmates of my child was held back a year since they have failed to acquire basic literacy/numeracy skills and so I am somewhat worried about the validity of allowing students to advance at their own pace, this seems to have been a result of poor adaptation to remote learning during the covid restrictions and while I have many criticisms of the education that was given during that period I’m aware that it was something that many institutions had trouble in adapting to.
The work environment has changed much while traditional schooling has struggled to adapt, obviously we need to change many things in education and perhaps one model won’t fit all students.
I had a more traditionally academic schooling and honestly it was very painful and traumatising - homework often seemed pointless and I couldn’t understand why I was being punished for not doing rote tasks when my grades were good. Traditional schooling is said to be designed to produce factory worker automatons and with the rise of robotics it is questionable how valid such a model is.