Jeffrey Alexander Martin

All organizations, like all organisms, are engaged in an existential struggle for survival. Schools are no different. However, there is a notable difference in the failure of private vs government organizations, and that applies to schools as well. Schools are difficult to run well, and even more difficult to fix, but it can be done. The movie 'Stand and Deliver' about high school math teacher Jaime Escalante is a true story. It's a good movie, but misses the important role of the principal in turning the school around. Escalante says this in his introduction to Henry Gradillas's book about the school turnaround, 'Standing and Delivering'. Escalante and Gradillas had to fight against the students, parents, other teachers, school district, school board, gangs, the state education department, and others. To help these kids go from a horrible school to a good school they had almost everyone work against them. And they still did it. They succeeded. But, when Gradill...

In 1776 Thomas Paine anonymously published 'Common Sense'. It helped support the cause for American independence. His eighth paragraph starts with this sentence: "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." It's a great sentence, and is a good start to how almost everyone gets government wrong. If we look at government as a necessary evil, then we have two parts, just two words. One group of people forget or ignore the word necessary, and another group of people forget or ignore the word evil. Both are wrong. Anarchists, libertarians, classical liberals, and individualists in general think that government is bad. They are correct. Logically they think, if th...

Leonardo da Vinci is considered one of the most intelligent humans to have ever lived. He was an illegitimate son who did an apprenticeship and went on to be a genius painter, scientist, engineer, and inventor. He has two sentences in his notebooks, that are similar, talking about learning. "Just as food eaten without caring for it is turned into loathsome nourishment, so study without a taste for it spoils memory, by retaining nothing which it has taken in." "Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in." This is something that everyone knows, you can't learn without interest and motivation. Yet, year after year, generation after generation, people send their kids to school to learn little to nothing because of lack of interest. Almost everyone knows this, because they can't remember the things they were supposed to have learned in school. Yet, what else do y...

A guy I know in Russia recently messaged me and asked if I wanted to write a short horror story for an anthology he's putting together and publishing in Russia. He'll translate my story into Russian. I previously helped him edit a horror anthology in English, 'Horror Without Borders: Volume 1', and was even interviewed in a Russian magazine about it. He needs it within a few days. I ran a couple ideas by him and he liked them. So, even though I don't normally create or consume horror, although I do like dark fantasy and science fiction, I shall create a short horror fable. It has to be just 100 words long, exactly. There will be 300 of these in the anthology. Slow and Steady Wins by Jeffrey Alexander Martin "This is ridiculous!" yelled Squirrel, "You can't beat Hare in a race!" "Calm down." said Tortoise, "Your thoughts are frantic. You have to think slow and steady about these things. Hare challenged me to a race, I accepted, ...

On October 28th, 1886, the Bartholdi statue of Liberty enlightening the world was unveiled in New York City, a gift from France to the United States. Chauncey M. Depew gave a speech generally called the 'Oration'. Two of his paragraphs help explain the rise and fall of the United States. "The marvelous development and progress of this republic is due to the fact that in rigidly adhering to the advice of Washington for absolute neutrality and non-interference in the politics and policies of other governments we have avoided the necessity of depleting our industries to feed our armies, of taxing and impovershing our resources to carry on war, and of limiting our liberties to concentrate power in our government." Over the centuries the United States has become more and more involved in politics in foreign nations, more and more involved in their wars, and therefore has concentrated domestic government power as well. This has many downsides, including what Depew noted abo...

Socrates was an ancient Greek soldier, philosopher, and teacher. Paulo Freire was a modern Brazilian Marxist philosopher and teacher. Both have had a massive impact on education and are copied by millions of teachers around the world, and yet both are bad examples of teaching. Socrates was the teacher of several famous pupils, such as the general Alcibiades. Most famously Socrates taught Plato, who founded the Academy and taught Aristotle, who was the teacher of Alexander the Great, who conquered Persia. Socrates is famously known for the Socratic method, which is using questions to get people to contradict themselves, especially focused on definitions. Questions and skepticism can be good in moderation, but taken too far are dangerous to mental stability. Questions are useful in teaching, but that's not really what Socrates was doing. Socrates was actually on a divine mission from the oracle at Delphi. He talks about this in his 'Apology' written by Plato, where Socrates w...

The most common answer to "Who should own the minds of children?" is, "The government." People wouldn't necessarily answer that way verbally, but almost everyone answers that way in practice by sending all of the kids to government schools. According to the United States government, through the National Center for Education Statistics, for the school year 2020-21 there were 98,609 government schools in 19,254 districts with 49,356,945 students and 3,032,471 teachers, and a pupil to teacher ratio of 15.4 to 1. With these being government institutions that means there is necessarily a political contest over control and influence. By definition the minds of the children are owned by the government in this case, but who is able to control that government can be different, this can be Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, communist, etc. This can be different at the local, state, and federal levels. In that sense a political party owns the minds of the childre...

Government schools generally promote propaganda that says their goal is to help kids. If that were the real goal, why wouldn't the government dole out money to parents to pay for their kids' learning in whatever fashion the parents choose? Often the first priority of parents isn't learning, it's that they need a babysitter for their kids and the schools are the best way to do that. If that was the real goal though, why wouldn't the government give money to parents so they can choose to stay at home with their kids, or send them to a babysitter of the parents' choosing? Realistically, these are just what people use to justify government schools, not the actual purpose. John Stuart Mill wrote in his book 'On Liberty' that "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a ...

Joost Meerloo was a psychiatrist who was part of the Dutch resistance against the Nazi's in WW2. His book 'The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing' is very insightful. Chapter 16 deals with education and morale. I'm going to quote heavily from this specific chapter on how it applies to schooling. Think about this in the context of schools. "...the enemy counted just as much on friendly gestures and special privileges to seduce the hungry, weakened P.O.W.s into confession. What the inquisitors especially require in order to succeed is that the enemy have a weak personality, that he be a dumbbell with a soldier’s need to conform, that he be ridden with anxiety and lacking in patience." Do kids in schools often have weak personalities with a need to conform, and are ridden with anxiety and a lack of patience? Yes, so these kids are ripe for brainwashing. "The child’s formative years are spent under the guidance of...

(What follows is Grok's evaluation of my articles on Tutoring Without Curriculum. Grok is a popular artificial intelligence. Overall it's pretty good. I would change some small things which it has slightly incorrect, although I've left Grok's evaluation intact without changes from me.) Overview of "Tutoring Without Curriculum" "Tutoring Without Curriculum" is an educational philosophy and practical approach outlined in a series of blog posts by Jeffrey Alexander Martin, emphasizing flexible, interest-driven learning that prioritizes collaboration among students, parents, and tutors over rigid, government-mandated structures. This model rejects standardized curricula in favor of personalized exploration, where a student's passions serve as the hub for integrating diverse subjects. It draws from classical education while critiquing modern industrial schooling, aiming to foster holistic development, critical thinking, and intrinsic motivation. The c...