“look first for cause of laziness, before punishment”

As KSU thinks about and realises
new ways of education, it’s wise to consider that we are of course not
the first ones to think about new forms of education (and we are not the
only ones doing this now – open links below). Some words from the
“anarchist prince” Peter Kropotkin, in The Conquest of Bread (pp.85) which seem relevant in the current discussion about financial punishment for socalled lazy 'langstudeerders':

This
is why a free society, if it saw the number of idlers increasing in its
midst, would no doubt think of looking first for the cause of laziness,
in order to suppress it, before having recourse to punishment [...] Do
not you see that by your methods of teaching, framed by a Ministry for
eight million scholars, who represent eight million different
capacities, you only impose a system good for mediocrities, conceived by
an average of mediocrities? Your school becomes a University of
laziness, as your prison is a University of crime. Make the school free,
abolish your University grades, appeal to the volunteers of teaching;
begin that way, instead of making laws against laziness which only serve
to increase it.

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Een bericht van Kritische Studenten Utrecht