Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
"Everyone who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody beyond school age says it is. It's not polite. We all tiptoe around the truth because admitting it would make us seem cruel and would point a finger at well-intentioned people doing what they believe to be essential. . . . A prison, according to the common, general definition, is any place of involuntary confinement and restriction of liberty. In school, as in adult prisons, the inmates are told exactly what they must do and are punished for failure to comply. Actually, students in school must spend more time doing exactly what they are told than is true of adults in penal institutions. Another difference, of course, is that we put adults in prison because they have committed a crime, while we put children in school because of their age."
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"Everyone who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody beyond school age says it is. It's not polite. We all tiptoe around the truth because admitting it would make us seem cruel and would point a finger at well-intentioned people doing what they believe to be essential. . . . A prison, according to the common, general definition, is any place of involuntary confinement and restriction of liberty. In school, as in adult prisons, the inmates are told exactly what they must do and are punished for failure to comply. Actually, students in school must spend more time doing exactly what they are told than is true of adults in penal institutions. Another difference, of course, is that we put adults in prison because they have committed a crime, while we put children in school because of their age."
"كل من ارتاد المدرسة يعلم أن المدرسة سجن، لكن قلما تجد من تجاوز سن الدراسة يجهر بذلك. ليس من اللياقة. كلنا نتحاشى الحقيقة لأن الإقرار بها سيظهرنا بمظهر القساة، وسيوجه أصابع الاتهام إلى أناس ذوي نوايا حسنة يقومون بما يرونه جوهريًا. السجن، وفقًا للتعريف الشائع والعام، هو أي مكان للحجز القسري وتقييد الحرية. في المدرسة، شأنها شأن سجون البالغين، يُملى على النزلاء بالضبط ما يتوجب عليهم فعله ويُعاقبون على عدم الامتثال. والحقيقة أن الطلاب في المدرسة يقضون وقتًا أطول في فعل ما يُملى عليهم بدقة مما هو عليه الحال بالنسبة للبالغين في المؤسسات العقابية. وثمة فارق آخر، بطبيعة الحال، هو أننا نضع البالغين في السجن لأنهم ارتكبوا جريمة، بينما نضع الأطفال في المدرسة لمجرد بلوغهم سنًا معينة."
Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
"Agriculture brought to human beings more than a new way of procuring food. It introduced a new way of thinking about the relationship between humans an nature. Hunter-gatherers considered themselves to be part of the natural world; they lived with nature, not against it. They accepted nature`s twist and turns as inevitable and adapted to them as best they could. Agriculture, on the other hand, is a continuous exercise in controlling nature; it involves the taming and controlling of plants and animals, to make them servants to humans rather than equal partners in the natural world. With agriculture, I suggest, humans began to extend this idea of control over nature to other aspects of the natural world, including children."
Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
"Once compulsory systems of state-run schools were established, they became increasingly standardized, both in content and in method. For the sake of efficiency, children were divided into separate classrooms by age and passed along, from grade to grade, like products on an assembly line. The task of each teacher was to add bits of officially approved knowledge to the product, in accordance with a preplanned schedule, and then to test that product before passing it on to the next station."
Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
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