P eter Gray writes in Psychology Today about evolutionary reasons why children resist school in its conventional form. This sheds light on what could be the core problem that underlies a need for totally changing the way schools work. If children are natural learners, as modern brain research indicates, why should they hate school?
Society goes to tremendous expense and trouble to provide schooling—lots of it!—for every child (whether they want it or not). Are these kids just spoiled ingrates? If so, then you and I—and essentially everyone else who ever attended school after schooling became compulsory—were also spoiled ingrates. We all protested it. In fact, back in the days when schools first became compulsory kids protested it even more than they do now, even though there was much less of it then. They had to be beaten with birch sticks to get them to stay in school and do what the teachers told them to do.
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