Lesson59 Down with School!
　School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Normal children learn their first language casually, although faster if their parents pay attention to them. Most people who learn a second language well do so as a result of odd circumstances and not of sequential teaching. They go to live with their grandparents, they travel, or they fall in love with a foreigner. Fluency in reading is also more often than not a result of such extra-curricular activities. Most people read widely, and with pleasure out of school.
Everyone learns how to live outside school. We learn to speak, to think, to love, to feel, to play, to curse, to politick and to work without interference from a teacher. Even children who are under a teacher's care day and night are no exception to the rule. Orphans, idiots and schoolteachers' sons learn most of what they learn outside the "educational" process planned for them. Teachers have made a poor showing in their attempt at increasing learning among the poor. Poor parents who want their children to go to school are less concerned about what they will learn than about the certificate and money they will earn. And middle-class parents entrust their children to a teacher's care to keep them from learning what the poor learn on the streets. Increasingly, educational research demonstrates that children learn most of what teachers pretend to teach them from peer groups, from comics, from chance observations, and above all from mere participation in the ritual of school.

axiom 原理, 原则
orphan 孤儿
peer group 同年龄组，同年龄群体

打倒学校！
　　学校是建立在学习是教学的结果这一理念基础上的机构。学院理论继续接受这一理念，尽管有压倒性的证据证明事实刚好相反。
　　大多数知识是在不经意间学来的。即便是有意的学习，大多也不是有组织教导的结果。正常的孩子随意地就学会了他们的母语，虽然如果父母用心的话，他们会学得更快些。大多数第二语言学得好的人是在特殊的环境下学成的，而不是系统教学所致。他们去和祖父母一起生活，去旅行，或者爱上一个外国人。阅读流畅也经常是课外阅读活动的结果，大多数人们在课外广泛地阅读，并且得到很多乐趣。
　　每个人都是在校外学会如何生活的。我们在没有老师干预的情况下，学会说话、思考、去爱、感受、玩、骂人、谈论政治和工作。即使是日夜处于老师照料下的孩子也无一例外地适用该规则。孤儿、白痴和老师的孩子学到的东西大多是从为他们设置的“教育”过程之外得来的。教师尝试提高穷人知识水平的努力乏善可陈。没钱的父母把他们的孩子送到学校，他们更关心孩子将来取得的证书和报酬，而不是孩子能学到什么。中产阶级的父母把孩子托付给老师，是为了不让他们学到穷人在街上学到的东西。教育研究日益显示，孩子们是从同龄人、漫画、偶尔的观察，及更重要的是学校的活动，学到了教师假装要教给他们的大多数东西。