Holt – 9. On “Help” and “Helpers”

“It is important that we try to understand how the idea of help has been so largely corrupted and turned into a destructive exploitation, how the human act of helping is turned more and more into a commodity, an industry, and a monopoly.” (P. 79)

In a sense, this cuts pretty deep. One time I ran into a student outside of the college and he asked me a question that no one else has asked me about homeschooling. He asked, “Why would you want to homeschool?” He caught me so off guard I didn’t know quite what to say. We have had so many people ask us if we were qualified that the question of why someone with the qualifications and worked as part of the extended system would, came out of left field. Later I explained to him that I hadn’t expected it and that I saw the obvious logic in why he had asked.

Whether or not he intended it this way, what I felt the question asked was, why would someone be working in the extended system if he didn’t believe in it. What he probably didn’t know is that, the system aside, my main goal in teaching is to show my students that they can learn on their own.

“The person whose main lifework is helping others needs and must have others who need his help. The helper feeds and thrives on helplessness, creates the helplessness he needs.” (P. 79)

This reminds me of our social safety net. I know of third generation welfare recipients. In theory, social assistance might be a good idea. In reality, for many people, it becomes a crutch. One of the problems with it is that it doesn’t provide them with enough money to get off of it. As this quote relates to education the way the classroom setting is carried out creates a helplessness in the students. There is no point in doing anything on your own if you don’t know what you are going to be told to do next.

“It should not surprise up that the Russian police state now puts in ‘mental hospitals’ those who strongly and publicly object to its way of doing things and there subjects them to ‘treatment’ until they think or act as they are supposed to. Or that the miniature police states of our schools are more and more using strong drugs such as Ritalin on those children who do not, or will not, fit smoothly into its regime.” (P. 84)

How many of us know someone whose children were put on Ritalin and once they were taken out of school no longer needed it? Andrea wrote at length about Ritalin here.

“The only way we can fully protect someone against his own mistakes and the uncertainties of the world is to make him a slave. He is then defenseless before our whims and weaknesses.” (P. 86)

This immediately brought to mind those who fight/lobby for ‘children’s rights’. The thing is, they are not fighting for the child to have rights, but for the state or some other agency other than the parent to make decisions for the child. I believe that one of the most detrimental aspects of the current public school model is that it leaves almost no planning up to the child. In the long run, it may be this that has produced a society dependent on experts.