We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata slogan of the day “…it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state — not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers — to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.”
– Ronald Reagan in Human Events, February 1979
(Quote via Nolo Consentire)
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Schoolchildren seem sincerely shocked when I tell them the main purpose of school is to drill them in turning up at a certain building for the same hours five days a week, and also to free their parents to do two paid jobs increasing GDP.
They’re even more disbelieving when I tell them that one year by themselves reading a couple of hundred books would educate them ahead not just of most school-leavers but most university graduates.
re Mark G’ post,
What sort of paid jobs can you do while your kids are at school for a few hours a day for 30some (?) weeks a year?
That’s what government-sponsored daycare is for.
Don’t forget the continual drop in compulsory attendance age (there’s now going for THREE in some localities, at which age I was not even talking yet (though they found out I could read).
I’ll back up Mark’s comment about the hundred books, although they have to be the right hundred. Reading every Nancy Drew Mystery, alas, will not get you through fifty-odd of the total. 🙂
I’ve always been a top scorer in both linguistic skills and IQ, usually to my complete surprise, but that’s because I read everything in sight rather than being especially intelligent, I’m convinced.
Speaking of government-schooled kids… if the responses to a piece I wrote on a book that seems to be “recommended reading” in some schools are any indication, then we’re in a world of hurt.
I, too, went about my childhood by reading “everything in sight”, and in the process – with the assistance of a few outstanding teachers – developed a respect for the written word (and its grammar, ahem).