i was talking to my student alex yesterday, who's thinking about an honors thesis in philosophy of education. he told me that several of the people he went to high school with have died in various ways: murder, od, accident. and then he said he thought one thing that was sad about these lives is that they were largely spent in american educational institutions. there was never a moment that encouraged reflection on their own lives or what they wanted. there was never a moment where they even decided what they themselves wanted to learn. there was only a mechanical, standardized inculcation, entirely instrumental, entirely preparatory; not a moment was supposed to be lived for itself; there was no notion that learning could be engaged in as a pleasure or an intrinsically meaningful activity. this is one thing to ask yourself: how would you want your kids to be educated if you knew they'd die at 18? (of course, if you succeed in your program - if the kid successfully capitulates - he'll be intellectually dead by then anyway.) 

one thing that is really important: childhood is not a mere preparation for adulthood. it is intrinsically meaningful in its own right. the idea that the basic reason kids should learn is to outcompete the children of china or something is bizarrely, horrendously wrong: a deeply evil approach, betraying only the inner emptiness of the people who put it forward, their negation of human life.

in all honesty, if i could, i would erase american education: kill its ideologies, level its buildings, vaporize its books and examinations, free its subjects, put its teachers in houses of detention (wait they're already in houses of detention; talk to teachers a bit and you realize they regard themselves as detainees). i'd use michelle rhee as a club to beat arne duncan to death. i actually sincerely believe we would be much better off after that.