Down with Childhood, Part 2 of 3 – against school

Having discussed the history of our modern conception of childhood here, I’m now going to try to articulate the arguments for being against that pre-eminent institution of modern childhood, the school. I’m still not sure how fully I agree with her, but I’m going to inhabit her views like a new dress here so as to get a feel for them.

The first thing to do is clarify and qualify. I do not want to deny that never have so many resources been devoted to educating children as now are, nor that there has never been as much information made available to as many people as there now is. Nor do I want to suggest that there aren’t brilliant teachers and fantastic lessons sometimes. What I want to argue is that given this level of information and resources, the method of education, schooling, is an actively wasteful and de-informing method.

Down with Childhood, Part 1 of 3

This, and the next two posts in this series, will be an attempt to grapple with perhaps the most radical part of The Dialectic of Sex, the argument that our construction of childhood is oppressive, and that children have an interest in ‘liberation’ from it. I will proceed in three steps, two in this post and the third split between the next two.

Step 1: Make childhood conspicuous.