The School Survival Movement: Abolish Compulsory Schooling

[GamerGurl]

(10-26-2014 04:18 AM)Hansgrohe Wrote:  After careful thinking and consideration, yes, I will officially lend support to the Abolish Compulsory Schooling movement, and it should be one of the many parts of School Survival and reviving the School Survival movement. I may not agree with the position of abolishing compulsory education immediately, but I can see that there is a large enough crowd to cater.

SirMarty, I think you should consider making a website for this, with it's own separate forum, etc. The thing is, School Survival is too vague to house your movement. The beauty of it all is that many of the people here who hate school have different positions on things, etc and different personalities, etc. I'm thinking we need to keep creating more sites, etc. SSN and ACS (Abolish Compulsory Schooling) should have different goals with different communities that are nonetheless parallel. We can cooperate with StuVoice, etc. What I'm thinking is that we need to divert as much as we can without being too disunified. It was a mistake to try to homogenize SS and focus on specific goals. The key to jumpstarting our movement and ideologies is to have a variety of options. Or else, we're shooting ourselves in the foot with the same one size fits all model.

I hope you do feel genuine about it, Hans, because you seemed pretty adamant about your stance earlier. All I ask for is that you support it if you really do support it, and not just doing so to give what some or most of us on SS might want to hear.

However, if what you say is true, I'm glad you're reconsidering your stance and want to give ACS a chance.

Now please allow me to address your points individually...

Quote:I will officially lend support to the Abolish Compulsory Schooling movement, and it should be one of the many parts of School Survival and reviving the School Survival movement.

I'm gonna try and avoid calling this a movement of SS in any sense. I know the title of this thread says otherwise, but it was mainly added there only because it kinda made sense in the terms of what people really thought of school here and because it looked good.

I would love for the terms to be synonymous, but for now, ACS is the movement and SS is the community that serves as a catalyst for it. I don't want another shitstorm to start because everyone thinks I'm speaking for them.

Quote:I may not agree with the position of abolishing compulsory education immediately, but I can see that there is a large enough crowd to cater.

Can you be more specific here? What I was really hoping was that we could get many parents, students and kids, and even educators possibly who'd want to endorse this and collectivize to the point where our elected officials will have no choice but to overturn these compulsory laws.

For the lack of a better way to say this, the same thing happened with gay marriage, right? Even voting for women and minorities? Unless something extremely radical were to occur in the event that our elected officials aren't of any help at all, all I can see right now is them voting on it.

Quote:SirMarty, I think you should consider making a website for this, with it's own separate forum, etc. The thing is, School Survival is too vague to house your movement. The beauty of it all is that many of the people here who hate school have different positions on things, etc and different personalities, etc. I'm thinking we need to keep creating more sites, etc.

I actually left this out, but another reason why we wanted SS in the name (even though it's only in the name of a thread and on the site...) is because DoA and I felt that we are the heart of this forum. We want to protect the interests of those who will succeed us, and in his own words, "Those people will, in all likelihood, be school students who are younger and more extreme than the jaded, older users that surround us." I agree with him there as well.

We feel that SS is a legacy. We want to maintain that legacy, and we want to embrace the legacy's progression rather than hogging or squandering it the way DnE did (I assume he's referring to the bit of time earlier this year when I was MIA from SS), and the way many of the current users are doing.

Hans, for the lack of a better way to say this, this is basically how I and how DoA would possibly feel on your idea. As blunt as it may sound, we want SS to serve as a catalyst for the ACS movement. We want SS to be a foundation in the sense that it would provide us an all-ready sustainable and formed website and forum, and that it would allow us to more easily market and progress this movement due to how long SS has been on the internet.

I'm pretty sure xcriteria did the same thing you're talking about by having SSN be its own website and forum—and now it's SS's sister site, so to speak—but in general I also don't really want that. I want this to stay organized and avoid SS into becoming a convoluted community that divides into several other subgroups.

Quote:SSN and ACS (Abolish Compulsory Schooling) should have different goals with different communities that are nonetheless parallel. We can cooperate with StuVoice, etc.

Well if you've read up this point, you can possibly see how I want ACS to remain both a different and same community alongside SS. It would be different in the sense that this targets a certain group of school-adverse learners within SS, but it would be the same in the sense that this is being hosted by SS and that we can coexist with those who may not share our same views.

I'm all for cooperating with other groups that do share our views, but I'm still quite hesitant to pursue StuVoice. I know xcriteria posted a thread on their FB that tagged me explaining how some of us want to dispose of compulsory schooling, and beside a couple of "likes" not much was really said (I don't think anything was said at all actually ). Would StuVoice not only acknowledge something like this, but would they accept it?

Quote:What I'm thinking is that we need to divert as much as we can without being too disunified.

I'm pretty sure everything I've said up to this point can explain why I disagree with that haha.

Quote:It was a mistake to try to homogenize SS and focus on specific goals. The key to jumpstarting our movement and ideologies is to have a variety of options. Or else, we're shooting ourselves in the foot with the same one size fits all model.

It may have sounded like I was trying to do such thing, but hopefully this page in particular explains why ACS isn't trying to homogenize SS. We're more or less trying to homogenize the individuals in SS who want to dispose of compulsory schooling.

And like the Democrats in the Senate, aren't we currently the majority subgroup within the forums? DoA did host a poll that asked for your real opinion on education, and a majority of votes chose an end to compulsory schooling, but I do know that that isn't enough. We need more than just a poll from any forum member. I do realize that many different people go on the IRC and/or FB group without ever registering on these forums, and that there are others who'll just lurk the forums without wanting to see how they feel whether they do agree with that stance or take a different approach.

In a sense, ACS is an option, but not everyone in SS is obligated to partake. I will try and make myself sound less like I'm trying to speak like everyone, but I think I've cleared that up already even with the social media pages. One of the first things I state in their descriptions is that we are a division of SS, so the reader doesn't get the idea that we represent SS as a whole.

And I agree, we are not a one-size-fits-all, but that is why with an end to compulsory schooling, those that do favor school and want to help that system can continue attending while those who, like ACS, want a choice to attend and feel free to withdraw to continue our way of life, whatever we may do and however we may do so.