The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG

The below is from the comments section of this post by Swithun Dobson. Aside from the layout making it a challenge to read, I found it highly enjoyable. It’s an important article. It’s an important issue. And if articles like this are not written or read or shared then things like this will happen without our even noticing them. I then thought about my own schooling. Not private, but state schooling. I don’t know all that many people who went to private schools, but the general feeling I get from those who have experienced both is that a) private schooling is immeasurably better, but b) that it can succeed in being rather more subtle in its indoctrination or dumbing down than state schooling. The replacement of that subtlety itself may indeed be imminent. Anyhow, what I’ve just said may be rubbish and what I write below actually has very little to do with the article in question. However, Sean thought it warranted a separate blog post and so this is it. I have omitted some of it and expanded in parts. 

Those of a certain age who perhaps attended a grammar school and have done moderately well ought to be forgiven for believing that, while the state system is now grossly inefficient and obviously dumbed-down, the students have never had it so good. They, after all, didn’t get the leisure that children have today. And the computerisation of at least one lesson per week cuts down on the amount of writing they are obliged to do. Not only this, but those on the outside of a state school are under the frequently given impression that the lessons are “fun”, the teachers are “caring”, and that the continual research into the special and varying needs of some students has made all “equal in opportunity”.

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