I got an email from my son's kindergarten teacher yesterday letting us know that they'll be sending little books home with the kids tomorrow so that they'll get used to having homework in the first grade.

That seems pretty reasonable, almost sweet, right?

Maybe not.

I've been doing a lot of study and thinking lately on the topic of compulsory schooling. When our kids are 4 or 5 years old, we take them to concrete buildings and peel them away from their parents as they cling to us, often with much crying and screaming, and leave them with total strangers so that they can be "educated."

Why?

That's just the way we do things. That's what we went through as kids, so that just must be what is done with kids when they are the right age.

Our panicked, crying kids are then forced to sit in uncomfortable chairs and be still and be quiet for 8 hours per day. They are taught to respect and obey "authority", resist their bodies' desires to move and stretch and run, their heads are filled with often useless data (when's the last time you factored quadratic trinomials outside of 8th grade Algebra or needed to recite the capitals of eastern European nations?), and slowly but surely, they are molded into... citizens? Consumers? Workers who won't question sitting in a call center or factory for 40+ hours per week while their souls mourn that precious spark of life that was stifled out of them when they were but a few years of age?

Forced schooling changed America. With it came consumerism and materialism and profit$ never before seen or imagined. Well, those profits *were* imagined. They were imagined by those who saw that forced schooling could shape generations. Forced schooling could simply eradicate native cultures and leave not a trace. Forced schooling could take wild, sovereign men and women and get them to do whatever you wanted.

Forced schooling could kill that untamable American spirit that founded this country and once brought the strongest of empires to their knees and replace it with... whatever it is we have today.

"Get them when they're young. Just give us eight hours a day... starting out. Then we'll slowly increase it. We'll introduce homework, exams, projects, performances, and so much extra work that they won't have any time to play, think, dream, or have any kind of family life to think of. We'll cut them off from other kids, we'll sort them into classes, we'll grade them and rank them and separate them and shame them if they step out of line. And after it's all said and done, we'll have them. We'll have them for life."

If you've never taken a good, hard look at what this system is and who designed it and why, these thoughts may be disturbing. Well, I'm disturbed. And angry. And the more I study what's going and what I went through and what I'm now allowing my kids to participate in, the angrier I become.

Education is broken. Too often, family is broken. Creativity and the love of learning is broken. So many things are broken and the breaking starts at such an early age.

But I also believe things can be made right. I believe we have it within us to fix what is broken. I believe we can go through a process of unschooling and awakening and with some work, regain what was stolen from us. But the indoctrination and domestication runs deep. They've been working on us from the moment we got to this planet. And some of the insidious things going on, we've never even questioned.

The more I learn about the modern education system, from pre-K to PhD, the more disturbing it becomes. But I'm also finding threads of hope. I'm finding all the ways people are awakening and seeing clearly and fighting back. I'm not against education. I believe it has positive aspects. I believe it provides opportunities to some who might not have had those opportunities otherwise. But I believe even more in its potential. I believe in what it will become, and I'm committed to contributing to that.

This isn't a doom and gloom post. This is a get ready post. I believe we're about to reinvent education in a massive way, in a way that will liberate this generation and the ones to come. I believe we're about to experience a revolution in how, why, and what we learn. There are many people doing incredible work on this right now all over the world. And if you've ever felt that school was off, wrong, or even destructive to the human spirit, know that you're not alone. And that change is coming.

The old system isn't just broken, it's collapsing. And we're laying the groundwork for something new.

For those that have taken the time to read, thank you. And I'd love to know: what was your school experience like? How much of it was worthwhile? How much of it was a waste?

If you could design a school from the ground up, what would it be like? How would it be different? What would kids learn?

Feel free to join the conversation.