Pros: decentralized, individualized, all the cool punk buzzwords.
Cons: drastic educational inequality (rich parents have lots more money to homeschool), bad/abusive parents, lack of accountability, lack of social cohesion.
Thoughts?
We have used an online school since COVID and it has resulted in flexibility, open mindedness, continuity, and opportunities that were not possible in other schools. We’ve seen our kids are above the fray on the playground, and better capable of resolving conflict. They are natural leaders. The school is platform agnostic, so the kids have an iPad and a Debian laptop and go to work.
Public schools: There is no Mandarin locally. The teachers locally are underpaid due to the political system, and it resulted in a brain drain of teachers. The local school board is in a culture war, and spends whatever money they have to fund studies on why books need to be banned. The other private schools are all Christian and still hit their kids as punishment. None of that.
- Francisco Ferrer, The origin and ideals of the Modern School
- Robert H. Haworth at PM Press
- ed. Mark Bray and Robert H. Haworth, Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader
- ed. Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore, Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces
- ed. Robert H. Haworth, Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education
- Akilah S. Richards, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work
- Judith Suissa, Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective
