@cognazor without engaging with a toxic person, this does seem like a fruitful topic. I'm not a parent so I only have one side of this perspective. I'm sure you (and all parents) have a lot of perspective I lack on this.
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What is the first step? Healing and deinstitutionalising is a slow process, and fraught if we aren't certain of our own abilities. I don't have children and don't expect to for a while. What to do in the meantime?
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I wish I knew. I also don't (and most likely won't, for a long time if ever) have children. In the interim I've been recommending Ivan Illich "Deschooling Society" to everyone who I think will bother to read the thing. http://learning.media.mit.edu/courses/mas713/readings/DESCHOOLING.pdf …
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Could you possibly summarize it in a tweet length?
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haha ok that's a challenge, this isn't a summary but an impression to encourage you to read it. The institution of school, as we know it, does not serve the people and was not intended to. It is an institution of social engineering designed to produce obedience.
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It has its roots in Prussian and Anglo-American military industrial complexes and aimed to supply nation state powers with soldiers and workers who could empower the nation state at the cost of the people's autonomy, creativity, and spirituality.
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another great thinker and writer on this is John Taylor Gatto https://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
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I've read both of these (Gatto when I was in high school, I think - I very much felt like I was in a gilded cage). My thinking on this was to attack the institution of a prestigious college degree - because if that is out-competed, everything leading up to it doesn't make sense.
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yes, that seems like a useful vector to attack. not only does it seem like high leverage but the amount of obscene harm done to young people by student loan debt is now a full blown crisis in its own right.
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They are easy targets. We like easy targets.
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For years I worked as a face painter. The number of times a parent forcefully held their crying, unhappy child's face still astonished me. I always refused to paint them. You will forcefully restrain your child to get their fucking face painted?
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Face painting is supposed to be a fun activity FOR THE CHILD. The irony of that is beyond measure.
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Don't even get me started on parental manipulation and gender norms in the facepainting line...holy shit some parents take out their insecurities on their children...
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Yes they do. And they aren't even aware (if they were, they wouldn't do it). Imagine that---we have how many people on this planet who have lived beyond 30 years who still just do things because they do them? Or just because others do them? Unreal.
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I mean, in fairness, that isn't the bad part, the bad part is that they kept getting broken and taught bad things and have few if any true healing processes to access...
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Oh, of course. I understand that people act in ways that make sense to them. I understand that the ability to develop the sort of self-awareness required to break pathological patterns relies on all sorts of forces outside of one's control....
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Which is why, if we have something like public school, then why the hell does it not marshall those forces to produce such a self-awareness? If we have "politics," then why aren't we creating the social conditions to foster this self-awareness?
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Yeah, I was lucky, my parents protected me but also gave me the freedom to be myself (sometimes with some tension and negotiation). But I know many others are not so lucky.
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Yup. First of all, let me say that I have been lucky. Lucky to have anything & anybody pop into my life whenever it/they did. I am who/where I am because of luck. My childhood was a little crazy at times, but I had enough love AND freedom to feel good & to explore thru it all
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