apcampbell

I recently came across a March 2001 Salon interview with Camille Paglia:

The entire American school system needs to be stringently reexamined from primary grades through college. If high school has turned into a seething arena of boredom and competitive tension erupting in mayhem, it’s partly (as I told Interview magazine after the Columbine massacre two years ago) because modern schools have become dungeons for active young men at their most hormonally driven period of life.

Forcing restless teens of both sexes to sit like robots in regimented rows in crowded classrooms for the better part of each day is a pointless, sadistic exercise except for those with their sights on office jobs. This school system is not even 200 years old, yet most people treat it as if the burning bush floated it down from Mount Sinai. Too often, school has become a form of mental and physical oppression.

Exactly what is being taught? Certainly not wisdom or perspective on life.

Could Friends World, an experiential-based global education program, be a possible solution to this problem of authoritarian control and oppression?  In what way does sitting in chairs in a classroom week after week prepare young minds for being active members of their communities while cultivating direct experience with real world problems?  How can *anyone* learn in a personally meaningful and productive way when their freedom to decide what and how to learn is so limited?  It is high time for our educational institutions to recognize not only the value, but the screaming necessity of encouraging people to become independent, free-thinking, autonomous beings; fully in control of their own learning.  Experiential education - both at home and abroad - in combination with access to resources and guidance, and the freedom to explore is one possible solution.  That, with the support of the internet and its communication technologies, has the potential to truly transform our global society into a happier, balanced, and more aware entity.  Might a revolution be underway?