Jeffrey Alexander Martin

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...

I remember when I was eight and my father, your grandfather, had a talk with me one night. We were outside of the house on Nichols Rd. in Blue Lake. The firepit was just a little way from the house and made out of cement. When the fire would heat up enough sometime parts of the cement would explode, because of the expanding air bubbles in the cement. We had larger bonfires further away from the house, halfway to the barn, but this night we had a smaller fire by the house. Grandpa Roger explained to me that now that I was eight I was old enough to understand that I was responsible for my life. I knew I had choices, and I knew there would be consequences. A lot of people think eight is too young for that responsibility, but they are wrong. You make hundreds of choices per day about what you're going to work on and what you're going to ignore, how you're going to talk with people, what you're going to think about and plan, and more. So I give you this same advice, realize ...

At nine years old you're halfway to eighteen, so you're half of a legal adult. It's amazing how time sometimes seems to move slow, and sometimes it seems to move fast. When time seems to be moving slow it's because you're not interested in now. Many people spend their days wishing away their days. Wanting one thing to end, then another thing to end. Before they know it, they are old and have wished away their life without having really been there and lived it. You can find some value in anything. Humans are made with that unique ability. Discover what the value in the moment is and enjoy it. And, take that time to think about what you would be more interested in, and make a plan to do that. When time seems to have moved by too fast, remember that everything you've experienced contains an infinite amount of information. Even tiny things, like a piece of sand, have an infinite amount of information. When you look through a microscope at a piece of sand you can see...

A couple of weeks ago I had an AI transcribe my thoughts on a new educational model while I was walking. "It's a common question to pose the question of what should be taught or what should be learned. 'What should be learned' is a better question than 'what should be taught,' but there's an even more foundational level than this, which is: who should decide what should be taught and what should be learned? Now, in our modern industrial educational system, it is the government that decides what should be taught and what should be learned. But this is a complete negation of reason and history. There are three major stakeholders, and none of them are the government. Now, it's important to governments—we see it in the work of Rousseau saying that The Republic by Plato is not actually a political work, it's an educational work. We see it in Politics by Aristotle in Book 8, where he talks about the purpose of education being to create a good citizenry. A...

In early 2018 I wrote an article about a student that I had, named Angela. She was about 12 years old, and doing bad in all subjects in her school in China. Her family was moving to Australia soon and they at least wanted her to improve her English. They had tried other private tutors without success. Through word-of-mouth they had heard about me, and wanted me to give it a try. The parents said I could do anything, just improve her English. She wasn't interested in anything. She didn't care about anything. It took me a few sessions to convince her we could learn about anything she wanted. It doesn't matter what we study, because it'll be in English, since I only know English. Eventually she told me she's interested in dresses and fashion. I said we can learn about that together, because I don't know anything about it. Her parents had previously discouraged and banned her from learning about dresses and fashion because they wanted her to focus on school: Chinese...

For thousands of years humans have been learning about themselves and the world through stories. This type of learning is more foundational than any other, and will continue as long as humans are humans. There are two foundational types of stories that give humans ethical, moral, and spiritual truths: fables and parables. Fables normally deal with animals, plants, or objects that can talk like humans, and parables deal with things people are familiar with. Both are used to make a point. The best example of a fable maker is Aesop from ancient Greece, and the best example of a parable maker is Jesus. The simple power of these stories, that can be insightful and useful for thousands of years, and can explain lessons in a few paragraphs that dozens of books can't, is amazing. I think there is a fable situation that can be developed to help explain most of human society, including economics and politics, using three animals: wolves, sheep, and dogs. These archetypes naturally correlate ...

The US education system of mass industrial schooling has failed, and will continue to fail. That's not going to change anytime soon, the US government is far too corrupt to do even the most basic things for improvement. Instead of government schooling, what would be better for education and learning? The obvious answer is private schools. There are a few issues with this. One issue is that many private schools are based on the same things as public schools. Another issue is that private schools can cost quite a bit of money, and it's often more difficult to transport students to and from the schools. The next obvious answer is homeschooling. One issue with that is both parents often have to work and they don't want to leave the kids alone at home. Another issue is that the parents don't know what or how to teach. That's why they are outsourcing education in the first place, it's logistically easy because it's normal, it's cheap because government taxes p...