What youtube educators don't get is every time a student suffers a setback some one has to take responsibility and sit there with them till they get over the obstacle. Views and Likes don't provide that signal of how many are lost or stuck.
Books and Libraries have existed long before Edu systems or Youtubers emerged, but kids and adults can easily get lost in that jungle if they don't have a feedback loop for guidance and support system when they stumble. Design of that system can be co-opted by Commercial and Political interests. Power corrupts all systems. But then there is always a counter reaction to pull the system back. Boundaries and balance emerge. It's a long slow process.
People maybe frustrated about how long it takes for trees to grow, but whether they are interested in designing a botanical garden or a healthy forest a good sign they will fail is when frustration starts turning into resentment.
The only way to prevent that happening is to stay humble at how complex it all is. Go into the garden. Get your hands dirty. Get one plant to flourish.
From their quoted section:
> We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embr}-o great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply.
And then the removed section, which effectively negates the (facial) point of the previous statement:
> We are to follow the admonitions of the good apostle, who said, ''Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low degree." And generally, with respect to these high things, all that we shall try to do is just to create presently about these country homes an atmosphere and conditions such, that, if by chance a child of genius should spring up from the soil, that genius will surely bud and not be blighted.
This is a really, REALLY common quote (with the latter part deliberately omitted) in lots of places complaining about the way the US education system works, as well as antigovernment movement people.
I certainly will not claim the US education system isn't broken, but using such a deliberate, malicious out-of-context quote casts a pall over anything else the author has to say, particularly given it's long, storied history in antigovernment propaganda.
duxup•2h ago
There are such random grandiose statements too like "There is no part of modern education that helps children." What does that even mean?