Comment by froh

Comment by froh 4 days ago

well, the German constitutional court thinks it does follow, indeed, and they are much smarter than I am in their argument:

https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rk200...

In a nutshell, only schooling forces you to confront other beliefs in a way preparing you for life in a pluralistic society and thus schooling as such is a cornerstone in education.

private schools German flavor are okay because their curriculum has to comply and their final exams are state controlled.

So for example even if you went to some evangelical creationist belief system school, you'd have to understand and know evolution. And every student gets sex ed no matter if the parents think that's a bad idea, including contraceptives, abortion rights and all.

And likewise every student is confronted with the Hollerith machine planned systematic mass deportation and mass murder of 6 Mio Humans for having a "wrong" birth certificate, using scheduled, planned trains and scheduled, planned mass murder factories. And every student learns how that came to be and how a weak democracy was overturned into a mind control oppression state.

And that makes a _lot_ of sense.

geye1234 4 days ago

Two points here:

1. Government schooling won't force you to confront other beliefs: it will deliver you a particular set of beliefs. Example: sex ed (which must, logically, be delivered from one or another moral perspective; there is no neutrality). Or history, which in many Anglo countries used to whitewash 19th-century crimes, and now goes to the other extreme of ignoring anything good.

Empirically, it is pretty clear that government schools do not produce, and are not designed to produce, children who are capable of examining things from multiple points of view.

2. Ultimately it's a philosophical question: who is ultimately responsible for the child's development? And, therefore, who has the right to make the final decision on this? The parents, or the state? That's obviously a much bigger question, but it will determine one's attitude to homeschooling.

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froh 4 days ago

do you see the difference of "government schools" in contrast to curricula elaborated by democratically elected boards? especially in a country with proportional representation, which reflects into said boards?
also the controversy is built into the curricula. "these are the positions, discuss"
and yes my top comment is exactly addressing the top point. and how it may be a good idea to think about how other cultures approach education and why.

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- geye1234 4 days ago
  
  > do you see the difference of "government schools" in contrast to curricula elaborated by democratically elected boards? especially in a country with proportional representation, which reflects into said boards?
  I don't think it makes much difference. Even if we grant for argument's sake that the people elected to school boards are likely to represent the majority of the people entitled to elect them, why should my children be fed the majority view just because it's the majority?
  > also the controversy is built into the curricula. "these are the positions, discuss"
  Presumably that doesn't happen with every topic. What is presented as factual, and what is presented as opinion, is significant and necessarily reflects a worldview.
  By saying "here is the pro-X argument, here is the anti-X argument, discuss", and then stopping there, you are necessarily teaching that X is something opinion-based and non-factual, or at least too trivial to matter. And I, as a parent, may think that X is factual and important. So somebody's views have to win out - mine or someone else's. There is no neutrality anywhere in reality.
  
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arkey 3 days ago

> only schooling forces you to confront other beliefs in a way preparing you for life in a pluralistic society and thus schooling as such is a cornerstone in education

That's absolute nonsense.

Public schooling grooms you to fit into a rigid, calculated mould for society. You learn which is the right way and things to think, and which ones are wrong and you're not allowed to think, according to the current government in place. Your comment exudes precisely that.

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