Enjoying the view from Limbo
Five years ago, I posted my book, “The Case Against Public Education,” here in Limbo, both as an e-book download and in a readable online version. It made no discernible difference to anything, of course. Five years is rarely long enough for serious ideas to take root, particularly ideas which run counter to all the social conventions and intellectual trends of the day;...
The number one requirement for any serious intellectual growth is time alone — a lot of it. The thoughtful young person, full of the self-doubt of ignorance and always worried about disapproval and rejection, needs the freedom to stretch out and wander without fear of continually running into walls of social stigma and ridicule. School seeks to occupy this young person’s days with...
A student who has been reading a lot lately informs me of her latest book, a popular American novel called Wonder, “about a boy with a birth defect on his face. He goes to school, where some children are mean to him.” This story, she explains, reminds her of a cruel trick she played on another girl as a child, and of the...
Racism, if it means anything definable at all (and I have never been completely certain that it does), is strictly a description of a certain subjective attitude regarding racial differences, and in particular an attitude of irrational or illegitimate bias for or against people primarily on the basis of race, however race is defined. Racism cannot be treated as a crime, because it...
If you were educated in a modern school, public or private, secular or religious, for all or most of the period from ages four to eighteen, you learned several thought- and character-altering lessons which you have carried with you throughout your subsequent life. None of these most important lessons are directly related to “school subjects” — you have likely forgotten nearly all of...
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