…Periot. Many of spindoc’s homeless vagrants experience the same world outside the conventional school system too. How does your child differ, pray tell? And again, Spindoc describes the world outside of the schoolyard admirable: What is so essential that a child must experience those negative social rigors as a pre-requisite for a rounded education, as opposed to an institutional alternative?

… Many institutional (public) schools are of excellent quality; but a child’s education can be easily tailored to his/her personality and ability outside the public school system if desired, (privately and with money of course). Many non-elitists do just that!

diver dan,

What negative social rigors?

My boy just learns and lives devoid of the covert actualities factored into mass education. So what? He's never worn a uniform, but he knows the meaning of cooperation. He doesn't judge himself by how well the kid sitting next to him is doing. He gets on with adults as well as he does with children, yet understands the respect owed to his elders. He's confident to approach adults and people in authority in shops and libraries, etc...it's those sort of things that ground a person's character.
He goes ahead of his own volition and researches those things that grab his interest.He doesn't have to be told what to pursue and how to pursue it...why do you think these things are wrong?

You are the one that can't see past the construct. When in history have young people being grouped together with age peers for the majority of their productive day?

I can't say we've run into any vagrants lately in our daily activities, but if we did we'd probably find that they're the flotsam washed up from a dysfunctional education system.

This article is complete rubbish. Our education system is full of left wing ideology and left wing people. It is so ingrained that people around university automatically assume that you are left wing. I was taught history and politics by communists, music by feminists, and employed by unionists. Students are taught to be reflexively cynical toward authority and suspicious of anything even remotely hinting at right wing. As a music teacher I see it as a solemn responsibility to instil some sense of pride in the achievements of Western Civillisation in my students who these days receive a barrage of propaganda about the evils of our civillisation. The incredible irony is that the left has simultaneously infected our education system with its own toxic ideology while selling the lie that it is dominated by the right wing. Quite frankly I see Ted and his supporters as the enemy, as they have made it explicitly clear they want to destroy civillisation.

diver dan,

The Professor Stanley report covers about 20 issues, mostly related to education, which I might point out is the thread topic.

Somehow, in order to evade the educational issues you “dan dived” into the topic of the homeless?

Could you please get back to the matter at hand and address this?

“In Australia, almost 30% of school children between the ages of 8 to 14 are on prescribed hard drugs such as Prozac, Ritalin and other “Speed” derivatives”!

Or perhaps you could address this?

More disturbing still is the data from the WA Education Department. “……they have seen a trebling almost every five years of children with quite significant behavioral problems; they have to be taken out of the classroom. These children are severely disruptive, very angry”. This report is referring to FIVE YEAR OLDS!!

Otherwise we might conclude that you are engaging in evasive maneuvers?

When you turn a nut anti-clockwise (left) you undo the thread that's holding it all together.
Instead of fastening every bolt, the education system unscrewed it all & now the bottom's fallen out.

Spindoc,

There are any number of societal issues affecting very small children and there ability to endure institutionalised schooling.

Many children (especially boys) display behaviours which come under the umbrella of autism or ADHD - some formally diagnosed, some not. At the high-functioning end of the spectrum these children have difficulty with concentration (especially on subjects that don't interest them), changes of routine, regulating their interpersonal relations and moderating their noise/behaviour. These children are regularly medication to enable them to "sit down and shut up" in a school environment. Many of them are also mercilessly targeted by their peers. Many also have difficulty with "sensory" issues that make learning in a rigid institutionalised setting almost impossible. They often react violently from sheer desperation. That is when their parents are encouraged to medicate them. These medications usually have side-effects such as weight loss and sleep problems.

My son was diagnosed with "high-functioning" autistism. He is at the very mild end of the spectrum and if you met him you wouldn't notice anything particularly unusual except you might note that he is more likely to be formally polite and a little naive for his age. This obviously was a factor in our decision to homeschool him, although I was philosophically in favour of that course of action as I already had an adult child who was schooled and had noted that most of her "meaningful learning" had emanated not from her school studies, but from her privately sought passions.

The upshot is that my son doesn't have the same sort of rigid pressure inflicted on him - he is respected and in turn understands a certain level of conduct is expected from him in return. He was never bullied in kindergarten or pre-school as he is overtly friendly but also more naive and gullible than his peers. He's an intelligent young man and I simply decided to give him the best shot at balanced development that I could.