Ask HN: Is school essentially slavery?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996078

by amichail • 16 years ago

22 17 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Why does society tolerate this form of slavery?

Shouldn't students just learn on their own -- especially those who will pursue entrepreneurship?

tshtf• 16 years ago

In a world where there are an estimated 12 to 27 million actual slaves[1], none of whom are free to leave their servitude under penalty of bodily harm or death, I don't think it would be fair whatsoever to compare school (even compulsory schooling of children) with slavery. Slavery is a completely brutal and unacceptable institution, where one party has absolutely no rights.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

gdl• 16 years ago

I disagree.

This is like the inevitable comparison between the US government stealing our freedoms and China (or some other dictatorship). The argument isn't that they are exactly the same thing - it is that one is edging closer to the other than we would like, and we would like to draw attention to the bad similarities in an attempt to fix them.

If we never compare the way things are to the worst ways we know, how can we know if we're falling down that slippery slope until we get to the end and it's too late? Maybe upon reflection we'll realize that we're already several steps down a bad path, even if we're still far from "evil" territory.

mikecane• 16 years ago

Slavery is what happens to you when you don't go to school.

sjs382• 16 years ago

Ask HN: Is this the worst Ask HN we've ever had?

staunch• 16 years ago

Prison is a better analogy. It goes pretty far too, with some very important differences of course.

hardy263• 16 years ago

The problem with thinking "students can learn on their own" is that there is an autodidact culture here at HN, so that view is skewed a bit.

Most entrepreneurs have a different mindset from these people. They want to do something big like make a revolutionary product or impact the world somehow.

Most of my peers don't want to learn on their own. They just want to get the piece of paper that says "Bachelors of _________", get a well-paying job (>60k), and live a life happily ever after. They don't care about making a company, because being employed by someone else has far less risk than making your own startup.

liuhenry• 16 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I wonder if that's something that can be taught, though, or at least encouraged/nurtured. How did we, as entrepreneurs, get to be this way?

chc2• 16 years ago

"How did we, as X, get to be this way?" is a question the human race has been pondering for millennia without really cracking the nut.

chc2• 16 years ago

If you're talking about children, they are too young to decide whether they will "pursue entrepreneurship" and at what point in their lives. Depending on their age, they are very likely too young to decide much of anything — this is why they are in the custody of adults. School is preparation for whatever they decide to do. It is also unreasonable to expect children to "just learn on their own." If there were any indication that such a plan would work, we would all lovingly embrace such a huge cost reduction. But in countries without a primary education system, children just tend not to learn.

Higher education is not slavery because it's voluntary, which is the antithesis of slavery.

wallflower• 16 years ago

"Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things..."

More: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

zokier2• 16 years ago

Closest to slaves are public school teachers who get relatively small pay for their work, at least around these parts of world.

bigwally• 16 years ago

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

-- Mark Twain

zokier2• 16 years ago

Makes me wonder what kind of experiences spawn these kind of ideas.

jdietrich• 16 years ago

"For most of your school life, it doesn't make that much difference what subject you're taught. The real lesson is the method. The medium in school truly is the message. And the medium is, above all, coercive. You're forced to attend. The subjects are required. You have to do homework. You must observe school rules. And throughout, you're bullied into docility and submissiveness. Even modern liberal refinements don't really help. So you're called an underachiever instead of a dummy. So they send you to a counselor instead of beating you. It's still not your choice to be there. They may pad the handcuffs--but the handcuffs stay on.

Which particular subject they happen to teach is far less important than the fact that it is required. We don't learn that much subject matter in school anyway in proportion to the huge part of our lives that we spend there. But what we do learn very well, thanks to the method, is to accept choices that have been made for us. Which rule they make you follow is less important than the fact that there are rules. I hear about English teachers who won't allow their students to begin a sentence with "and." Or about high schools where the male students are not permitted to wear a T- shirt unless it has a pocket. I no longer dismiss such rules as merely pointless. The very point to such rules is their pointlessness."

http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030301studenta...

malandrew• 16 years ago

it's more like a prison.

go read the first chapter of Paul Graham's "Hackers & Painters" http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html

meadhikari• 16 years ago

A six year kid can not learn on his own and also most 20 years simply feel difficult to learn on thier own.

gentrysherrill• 16 years ago

The Twain quote is the best in my opinion... those of us who are passionate about learning will remove ourselves from the systems that impede us, or at least endeavor to minimize their impact on our lives. School, at least in its current implementation, is a supremely flawed model for many of the reasons discussed in this thread and elsewhere. The solution is not to just do away with it though - while for some of us this would be liberating, for a far greater number of people it would be harmful. Anarchy, be it political, economic, or educational, rarely generates cut and dry improvement.

As someone who has many issues with education, and has felt openly hostile toward it previously, for me adopting a relaxed attitude about it was the most important step. I realized I could go to classes, engage with professors and other students, and do reasonably well in terms of marks without allowing grades or assignments to impact my external intellectual curiosity. I've been much happier, and much more productive both inside and outside of school, since I let go of the frustration with "the system" and put the focus on myself.

Ask HN: Is school essentially slavery?

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