Vlad and I

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

This isn't the first time I've mentioned this quote from Lenin.  I just have a few thoughts to share about it today.

I know when most read that quote from Lenin about planting the seed that will not be uprooted, they think of early childhood or at least before the high school years.  Some think that 8 years (twice what Lenin requested) of "official" education at home should be more than enough to ground their children.  Sometimes there is the fear of teaching high school.  Teens might miss out on football games, proms, etc.  Whatever the reason, teens are sometimes sent to public school for the high school years. 

We don't stop to realize that in this day and age, those last four years are just as important in seed sowing as any other.

Just something to think about.

"Is it not ironical that in a planned society of controlled workers given compulsory assignments, where religious expression is suppressed, the press controlled, and all media of communication censored, where a puppet government is encouraged but denied any real authority, where great attention is given to efficiency and character reports, and attendance at cultural assemblies is mandatory, where it is avowed that all will be administered to each according to his needs and performance required from each according to his abilities, and where those who flee are tracked down, returned, and punished for trying to escape - in short in the milieu of the typical large American secondary school - we attempt to teach 'the democratic system'?"
-- Royce Van Norman
Source: "School Administration: Thoughts on Organization and Purpose," Phi Delta Kappan 47(1966):315-16