Plan for the School Revolution

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Goal

Abolish compulsory schooling by enacting the Declaration of Educational Emancipation

Plan

  • integrate numerous social media circles that oppose compulsory schooling
  • build massive support via social media and on-line petitions
  • establish D-day(s) of Global or Local School Strike(s)
  • refuse coercion at school

What you can do

Everyone who wants to see the end of school coercion should promote, in proportion to own convictions, the following concepts:

Students

  • promote the idea the Declaration of Educational Emancipation, and the school strike.
  • set up local or global social media initiatives that will allow of collective discussions and building up support.
  • on D-Day (to be established), refuse any form of coercion, e.g. waking up early for school, going to school, participating in tests, doing homework, attending classes of a bad teacher, studying a subject that you hate, etc.

Parents

  • promote the idea
  • listen to your children
  • support the participation of your children in the school strike
  • talk to politicians who can change the law
  • pressure politicians who need your vote
  • talk to lawyers about your rights and about protecting your children from coercion

Teachers

  • promote the idea
  • maximize freedom for children
  • get ready to move from teaching to tutoring

An average teacher must rise above the average and declare that he will never harm children again (as did John Taylor Gatto). He should support the Declaration of Educational Emancipation. As a consequence, he must also prepare to change the form of work. Instead of coming to school to handle a polite group of children, he must be ready for individual challenges: helping those who need a good teacher to achieve their goals. Struggle for survival at school is a guarantee of trauma at the time of the transition to free education. A good form of training for the teacher is private tutoring.

Politicians

  • promote the idea
  • incorporate freedom of education in your political manifesto
  • promote the incorporation of the freedom of education in your party
  • help change the law, including national constitutions

Opponents

  • find good science-based arguments for the value of coercion in learning
  • stay civil and reconcile with the ultimate defeat of your stance

Petitions

The first petition that we plan to submit is the petition to the Ombudsman of Civil Rights Prof. Marcin Wiacek (elected by Polish Parliament and be confirmed by the Senate on July 23, 2021):

Petition to the Ombudsman of Civil Rights Prof. Marcin Wiacek

We are proposing a constitutional ban on the use of coercion in education.

Forcing children to learn is a violation of their right to decide their own destiny.

Coercion is against the principles of the art of learning.

Compulsory schooling has a bad effect on children's mental health and underlies many social pathologies

Independent of the hoped for response from the Ombudsman, the petition will be a chance to build massive support in case we are to move to the next point: school strike

For details see: Petition to the Ombudsman to End School Coercion

School Strike

School strike requires massive and coordinate support. We are far from that point. Once we have millions of registrations, or thousands in a single country, we can establish the D-Day on which the coercion will no longer be accepted. It is possible that explicit non-attendance will be necessary to make a tangible statement. Half-measures may dilute the effect and dilute further support. Non-attendance may take a day, and then be repeated until success. It may also need to be continuous to prevent coercive countermeasures and intimidation. Details will be hammered out with further feedback from youth (and those who might oppose the rebellion).

School Reform: Evolution or Revolution?

Rationale

Having spoken to a thousand kids while writing Problem of Schooling (2017), I branded modern system of compulsory schooling a form of slavery.

I have since had numerous discussions with all imaginable representatives of social groups and circles of power. I spoke to dozens of teachers, parents, politicians, lawyers, journalists, scientists, etc. I have sent hundreds of e-mails seeking support for school reform. Of prominent politicians, only controversial Korwin Mikke expressed support for the end of compulsory schooling, but it seems the problem is way down on his priority list.

Legal battles of Peter Hartkamp, Marek Budajczak, Summerhill School, German homeschoolers, Swedish homeschoolers and more, tell me that the court system is more likely to adhere to own educational convictions of the judges than human rights, constitutions, or educational law. Lawyers are notorious crammers, and their bias in favor of the Prussian Model of Schooling is stunning.

In 2020, with Tom Durrie, and with support from Peter Gray, we have transformed the words of John Holt into the Declaration of Educational Emancipation. Over the last year, it became pretty clear: we cannot bank on sufficient adult support to produce rapid change. Adults just don't get it, and the main culprit is the deficit in educational empathy, which is a euphemism for abysmal educational ignorance.

Adults do not understand the brain. They do not understand children. Most of all, they do not understand that they need to study and pay attention. They are too busy. Their children suffers at school, lose health, and get depressed. Their love for their parents suffers, there are wars at home and wars at school. Families get broken up, and still the status quo of school slavery seems untouchable.

The cultural transformation started, symbolically, in 1921 with the establishment of the Summerhill School. The understanding of education has then progressed in fits and starts. Today, less than 1% of children in the western world can pursue free learning. Most of children face coercion from an inhuman school system, in which millions of teachers try their best, and billions of students fail to live up to their potential. Most of adults believe the system is ailing, but fail to understand the main cause: the unfreedom. The adult population disagrees or does not care with the underlying idea of the Declaration of Educational Emancipation. The main claim is that students are lazy and need to be forced to learn. This myth has been hammered into their heads by the school system itself. This is how the system of coercion self-perpetuates.

I concluded that there is only one social group that truly understands the problem: teenagers. They do not need educational empathy to explain the pain of coercion in learning, the futility of the system, and the impact on their mental health. It usually takes me less than a minute to convince an average teenager than the declaration of freedom is the right pathway towards the future. As teenagers have no vote in democracy, they cannot change the education system using democratic means. They might fight to achieve a degree of freedom through democratic structures, but we have no good tradition of those, and adult interference and pressure would always make such structures inefficient. Only full freedom will provide for optimum education in the future.

This is why a teenage rebellion seems like the only plausible scenario for rapid change. Only teenagers will know how to best conduct the revolution. They need to group together and refuse coercion. They need to do it in massive synchrony to prevent being hit back by the rich array of tools of coercion and repression deployed by the school system. Social media has already played a fantastic role in many modern revolutions and school strikes. To group a large number of students in support of the declaration should be relatively easy. The toughest part is to coordinate action. The school system uses fear and intimidation. Luckily, we do not need Navalny's courage. We do not need to fear a backlash in Lukashenko's style. This will be a bloodless revolution. Lack of belief in success is sufficient to stifle all efforts. How to overcome fear and diffidence, I do not know yet. I like to learn and research. With some help from my teenage friends, I will find the answers. This page is just a starting point of the process. I will seek feedback and help from all directions.

Student rebellion seems like the only rapid way to free students from coercion at school

Contact

You can find my e-mail here. All forms of inspiration are welcome, incl. ruthless abuse. Warning! You may be quoted!

You can voice your support or opposition to the Declaration of Educational Emancipation on Facebook.

You can also use Twitter.

Links

I will list the best initiatives here. My bias for Poland comes from numerous local contacts and face-to-face discussions.

Further reading

History

History of prior similar efforts to end compulsory schooling in rich and discouraging. In Poland we had dozens of efforts that failed for very different reasons.

In 2014, Pawel Kasprzak argued that school coercion is unconstitutional. His appeals to the Obmbudsman of Civil Rights met with very unsatisfactory replies. Kasprzak did not plan for a school strike and was silenced.

Witold Zbijewski found it easier to build support than to convert it into practical moves. Marcin Stiburski with his Minimal School concept keeps making waves with his creative ideas, but his recent open letter to Polish constitutionalists, politicians and educators was largely ignored. The case of Christian Ostrowski is particularly interesting. Having garnered a great deal of support from experts, his rapidly growing initiative was destroyed overnight. Facebook took down his pages as too radical. Facebook is reputed to be a great medium to start a revolution. Not in the case of Ostrowski.

There are many great minds who support the change, but they are in minority. Without a positive word from human right experts or constitutional experts, school rebellion may be inevitable!

As of July 2021, I hope to support the effort focused around a Facebook page called Koniec Przymusu Szkolnego (in Polish: End School Coercion).

In August 2021, a new initiative emerged: SUSEN (in Polish: Student strike against the school system). The most encouraging part of that initiative is that it was born in the head of a rebellious 15-year old Kacper Borys, a homeschooler who believes in a free market of educational ideas.

Student Spring 2024

This text explains the reasons and strategies behind a school strike "Student Spring 2024" aimed at ending compulsory schooling

Hashtags: #WiosnaUczniow, #StudentSpring2024

More information: