Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?) - Seth Godin

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Most of all, go do something. Write your own manifesto. Send this one to the teachers at your kid’s school. Ask hard questions at a board meeting. Start your own school. Post a video lecture or two. But don’t settle. Thanks for reading and sharing. 3. Back to (the wrong) school A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults. Sure, there was some moral outrage about seven-year-olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work—they said they couldn’t afford to hire adults. It wasn’t until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place. Part of the rationale used to sell this major transformation to industrialists was the idea that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn’t a coincidence—it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child-labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they’re told.
Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists. Of course, it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now? Nobel prize–winning economist Michael Spence makes this really clear: there are tradable jobs (doing things that could be done somewhere else, like building cars, designing chairs, and answering the phone) and non-tradable jobs (like mowing the lawn or cooking burgers). Is there any question that the first kind of job is worth keeping in our economy? Alas, Spence reports that from 1990 to 2008, the U.S. economy added only 600,000 tradable jobs. If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do. Do you see the disconnect here? Every year, we churn out millions of workers who are trained to do 1925-style labor. The bargain (take kids out of work so we can teach them to become better factory workers as adults) has set us on a race to the bottom. Some people argue
Page 2 and 3: This edition is designed to be view
Page 4 and 5: if you don’t underestimate me, I
Page 6 and 7: 1. Preface: Education transformed A
Page 8 and 9: The two advantages most successful
Page 12 and 13: that we ought to become the cheaper
Page 14 and 15: The pursuit of knowledge for its ow
Page 16 and 17: 5. Column A and Column B Aware Cari
Page 18 and 19: Changing school doesn’t involve s
Page 20 and 21: Those who worry about the nature of
Page 22 and 23: Building a person’s character was
Page 24 and 25: 11. To efficiently run a school, am
Page 26 and 27: 13. Which came first, the car or th
Page 28 and 29: The results: Among girls, the resul
Page 30 and 31: Homework during the day, lectures a
Page 32 and 33: I don’t think it’s practical to
Page 34 and 35: 20. Life in the post-institutional
Page 36 and 37: Too often, all these constituents a
Page 38 and 39: 23.And yet we isolate students inst
Page 40 and 41: about the power of choice and free
Page 42 and 43: contract, once its contents have be
Page 44 and 45: Given the assignment of indoctrinat
Page 46 and 47: The problem is that individual pass
Page 48 and 49: e obedient helped us educate them.
Page 50 and 51: Fortunately for my side of the argu
Page 52 and 53: from the consequences of your actio
Page 54 and 55: Rebecca trained to be competent, ex
Page 56 and 57: Interchangeable workers were essent
Page 58 and 59: This is not the future of our econo
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39. Where did the good jobs go? Hin
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kind of insurance policy, diagnoses
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41. Judgment, skill, and attitude T
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didn’t do as well to spend time w
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45. Shouldn’t parents do the moti
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Then, as often happens to instituti
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School is still about obedience and
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And it certainly taught you to acce
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Nothing in the world is more danger
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52. The race to the top (and the al
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Fast, smart, and flexible are embra
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There are two things I take away fr
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59. The evolution of dreams Fairy t
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60. Dreamers are a problem And then
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The economy demands that we pick ou
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For the next half hour, I sat and l
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64. Connecting the dots vs. collect
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care about, he explains. “That’
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I’m concerned about fact ignoranc
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They weren’t sold on a forward-le
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NOW UV STARTED READIN DIS DUNT STOP
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One use will be that whatever you
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And most important, why settle for
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Want to see it worked out? That’l
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other teacher always has merely the
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76.Emotional labor in the work of t
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Those who run these organizations a
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three inches taller than the younge
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80. American anti-intellectualism G
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And the boss feels the same way abo
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Hence the question I ask to every t
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The challenge is that the connected
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90.Reading and writing In the conne
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She’s not a genius, nor is she gi
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Public schools were the great level
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95. The coming meltdown in higher e
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As a result, there are millions of
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The solutions are obvious. There ar
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Those are the only sorts of questio
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Some measures are: SAT scores GPA a
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problem: the thought that regimente
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A survey of first-year history unde
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No. But applying ever more effort a
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105.If you could add just one cours
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I don’t think it’s an accident
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more before they can do productive
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We’ve been spending a fortune in
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112.The schism over blocks Jean Sch
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In case you missed it, it involves
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The way we teach it actually decrea
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A running-back might learn from a f
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or Lampoon is a connection you will
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If then, on the interval If converg
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figure out what it is. We are strug
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Giving a presentation Handling a ne
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most parents just don’t have the
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And your kids? Your kids need a pla
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The next library is a place, still.
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Harvard, of course, is a good colle
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For starters, though, start using t
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The lesser-ranked schools are less
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In fact, according to research by G
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ought to/should/will create a unive
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experience. The right college is th
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But in the meantime, go. Learn and
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133.Bibliography and further readin
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Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?) - Seth Godin

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