‘Lost Education’ Finds Replies

Lipton’s essay on her lost education is the story of many, but she misses the point when she blames experimental programs and tax reforms.

Compulsory schooling fails in its mission because the basic premises are anti-human and anti-learning. Children are incarcerated year after year, kept from the real world and real work. They are force-fed what someone else has deemed important, then tested.

They may respond as Lipton and I did, developing terrific short-term memories and good test-taking abilities. They certainly develop a warped sense of reality, then are thrown into that reality when deemed responsible at age 18 with few real skills and the thirst for knowledge revealed at early ages all but wiped out.

Real learning takes place in the real world. Children learn about job skills by seeing and being with people on the job. All the pretense turns kids off, ridicules their lack of power, stops the learning process. We need to take a hard look at the whole concept of education rather than continue the Band-Aid approaches.

NANCY FRIEDLAND

Goleta