The Hold of Authoritarian Education: an example

Here is a comment on a blog I found recently:

"Democracy in a classroom? Insanity. How can anything in the way of learning be accomplished other than in an instruct-recieve [sic] instruction environment?"

This opinion is an indicator of the power of authoritarian education to brainwash. This writer is clearly totally out of touch with his/her own learning experience. Did s/he need an "instruct-receive instruction environment" to learn how to post on the blog in the first place? Then there's the small matter of how s/he learned to talk in the first place, a feat of learning which happens almost universally without the benefit of "instruct-receive" instruction. Clearly the writer is not familiar with or confident about such strategies as cooperative/collaborative learning, project-based learning, problem-based learning, etc.

But what struck me about this post (and others there like it) was how strongly held is the belief in authoritarian education, to the point where more than one US Supreme Court Justice has attempted to enshrine authoritarian education into law. More about that next post...