Wow, @therealpaul, you've shared such a unique perspective with us today. I can't say as I've ever spoken with someone who's been through a school shooting before. Thanks for sharing your story and your views.
I'm sorry you had to go through what you did. I don't know how much I agree with your suggestion to ban public schooling, but as the interviewer said, you've certainly earned your right to that opinion.
As a society we must work together to protect children from tyranny. This includes tyranny from schools, but also from their own parents. It takes a village to raise a child. I don't endorse home-schooling not because it is not the parents' right (it certainly is and should be), but because it is not in the child's best interests. My opinion is this: "I support your right to homeschool, but unless you are a teacher, please don't do it."
I do think public schooling is way too focused on indoctrination. In the USA, children stand in the classroom every day and are taught to recite some meaningless words they have no idea about. How is that not brainwashing? However, I worry that many parents who homeschool do so in order to brainwash their own children, and I think this is unfortunate. Children deserve to grow up learning the truth, not some twisted version of it skewed by religion or a political agenda. The public schooling system is not perfect, but it does protect a lot of children from their own idiotic parents.
In an ideal world, schooling would be completely decoupled from government involvement and would instead be driven by communities. As for forcing kids to go to school, well, I think it is good for a child to be made to learn until they can actually formulate an opinion on whether they wish to keep learning or not.
However, regardless of what I personally believe, it should be the parents' decision when or if to enroll a child in school (though I don't think that decision should be immune to pressure and shaming by their community), and once they are capable of understanding, it should be the child's decision whether they want to continue to go to school or not. If a child does not want to go to school, and we force them to go anyway, we are committing a cruelty.
In the end, I am mostly sympathetic to what you're saying. I was certainly never shot at, thankfully, but I do share your other more minor complaints about school (it was never really my thing either). I just don't want a bunch of uneducated idiots running the world when I'm old.
I was told that I had 'earned' the right to my opinion, but even then I had to remind them that I had a right to an opinion already, that there was no need to earn it. :)
The difference in my opinion is that I've had 44 years to think about it, and instead of formulating it based on popularity, it is based on the actual results of the US public school system, both in the American student's academic results and in the predictable cultural ones. The USA ranks very low in educational scores around the globe, and very high in unwarranted military incursions around that same globe, and whether by design or not, those numbers are in.
I don't worry too much about wacko parents trying to instill ridiculous notions into their own children's heads, because I understand the rebellious nature of a being who's free will is being challenged in any way. Hardly any kids want to grow up to be like their parents, and now with information being the new gold in the world, there will be no way for those wacko parents to keep the truth from their children anyway.
There has been a popular interpretation of the idea of homeschooling that suggests that parents don't make good educators, and that an organized school system is a better choice, but whether true or not, things are changing now with new online programs for homeschooling which teach parents how to use the internet as a learning tool. Homeschooled children already tend to show better scores than Public Schools can boast, but the only 'homeschooler' stories we are likely to hear are the ones that have tragic, newsworthy headlines, and none of the positive results will be publicized.
It is definitely going to be communities that ultimately educate their young, and that will happen when we recover those same communities that I described in the article that are fractured by the local school districts. We have been divided for a purpose, but now the powers that have kept us divided are beginning to wane.
I certainly used the word 'banning' in my dialogue for shock value, and I don't truly expect school to be banned. I do see the system that I grew up in becoming obsolete, but even then I will always agree that it should be a parent's decision as to whether or not to enroll their children in anything. At some point the generation that birthed today's youth will find themselves making these choices, and there's no way that school will be cool for the newest generation- they are abandoning everything that the grown-ups have offered, and I'm cheering them on.
Well, it's funny to think that the history being taught to our children, the same history taught to us, was actually the truth. Ha! the victors write the history the way they want it to be. Sad thing is someone else is also raising our children while parents are trying to scrape together enough fiat to make ends meet. They spend most of their time in these places learning all the wrong things and losing their light.
You make very good points. I'm in cautious agreement with you, I think. I especially hadn't though about this bit:
This is something I hadn't thought of before. The children of today will find it harder and harder, as they get older, to remain within a closed system. Most of these crazy belief systems fall apart at the lightest touch of sunlight.
Thanks for giving me something to think about today.