Mastodawn

An interesting post. I have a very different experience of math than most, being both a math major and a PhD in Engineering, and an Anarchist... To me, math is valuable for reasons outside of capital's reasons, but I do recognize that there's an aspect of mathing up economics and using it to justify power that's a super strong motive for capital

dieter Mar 17

Daniel Lakeland

"As I came to understand capital’s role in creating and shaping the world I began to see that such letter grades didn’t help students to learn mathematics and in many ways hindered learning. I saw that letter grades aren’t designed to help students in any way and in many ways they’re harmful. "

That's a powerful statement I agree with 100% grades are there to assort students into the needs of capital.

Coach Pāṇini ®Mar 16

@dlakelan @AdrianRiskin 🔥

"I believe the only solution is to abolish compulsory schooling.23 This argument is too much for a brief summary, but it’s based on the simple fact that I can’t see any possible moral justification for compulsory schooling enforced by police at gunpoint, not if my kids are being forced and therefore not if other people’s kids are being forced. I don’t mean we should abolish free public schools, just that attendance should be voluntary."

I agree with this as well

Though I disagree with what some might take to be the invitation for parents to decide that their kids shouldn't go to school for religious or personal family finance reasons, like wanting to extract labor from their kids.

In a functional society, kids and their parents would WANT to go to school, they would have strong control over the choices about what to study, and they would not have any grades, but rather feedback that ensures students progress at their own pace rather than a timeline of semesters and syllabi etc.

If that sounds like something you'd like to participate in follow my tag #anarchistuniversity as I try to set up infrastructure to make that more possible.

Coach Pāṇini ®Mar 16

@dlakelan @AdrianRiskin

https://chez-risk.in/2023/10/03/against-compulsory-schooling/

CassandraVert Mar 17

Is that similar to Montessori?

Sorry for the late reply. The potential for parents to exploit their kids in the absence of compulsory schooling is a popular counterargument to my position, and there's no question that it would happen to some extent. The abolitionist rejoinder, for schools as for cops, prisons, and other statist violence-projecting institutions, is to ask whether the harm is worth preventing at the cost extracted by the state. Obviously as an anarchist I don't think it's even close. I wrote something on this also, and my response to this particular point is as follows:

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For the sake of argument ... suppose that parents not having their kids’ best interests in mind is common enough to require state intervention in the form of compulsory schooling.

This idea is the basis for another class of benefits supposedly provided by compulsory education – the idea that children and parents sometimes have adverse interests and that the state can help kids by being ready to intervene in such cases. One such commonly touted benefit of compulsory education is that it gives abused, endangered children some contact with professional non-familial caregivers, who can detect danger and thereby save children. It’s ultimately better, the story goes, for the kids to be forced into schools at gunpoint so that they can be inspected and monitored by government officials and other professionals and helped independently of their families, who are seen as a danger.

That is, if they attend public schools, of course, but also of course it’s assumed that poor people are the ones who need their kids inspected. Very few parents of any social class would tolerate this kind of policy if it were explicit, e.g. if they had to bring their kids into the police station once a month to be interviewed by armed social workers.
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