My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Live Reactions & Discussion)

Wait are these actually a thing? With the exceptions of pre-K and high school I've been in Christian schooling my entire life and we've always been taught math and science. Math because it's needed for everyday life and science because God wants his followers to be educated/science helps explain how God created the universe/the world.

It doesn't make sense to me that any school would refuse to teach math and science.

In America, some schools refuse to teach evolution, opting for intelligent design instead. Or they demand that both get equal attention and validation. I assume that that is what is being referred to.

I went to a Christian school, and we had Bible class, maths, and science (chemistry, physics, etc., but suspiciously, not biology, because Young-Earth Creationism).

EDIT: Ninja'ed. Exactly what said.

Edited by Rytex on Feb 11th 2019 at 12:15:51 PM

Context. Twilight's reasoning for why they need Cheerilee's lessons isn't because they need a formal education before attending Friendship School. It's because Twilight has nothing of value to teach to kids who are already masters at Friendship.

• Twilight: I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you can't be my students.
• Sweetie Belle: Why not?
• Scootaloo: Isn't this place for everycreature?
• Twilight: Yes, but we teach friendship lessons here. You already know all about helping ponies in need and being there for each other.
• Sweetie Belle: Can't you just give us a chance?
• CMCs: Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaase?
• Twilight: You need Cheerilee's classes, not mine. Hurry up. You don't want late marks on your permanent record.

As Cozy Glow and other background fillies◊ demonstrate, Twilight's taking in students of all age groups. So her school does replace EEA-accredited core-education, without offering an equivalent EEA-accredited core-education program to accompany its specialization.

The Friendship School can get away with this because it's not regulated and therefore under no obligation to comply with educational standards - a fact that is literally presented as a triumphant moment of heroism. The same reason they can get away with having unlicensed educators who regularly demonstrate complete incompetence in the educational field, but remain in their positions via nepotism.

Twilight's school is a profound demonstration of everything wrong with educational privatization. While at the same time winning the in-universe argument by default, because the democratically-elected leader of the EEA is Racist Dracula. The argument is basically

• Neighsay: Literally every possible thing about your school is terrible.
• Twilight: Yeah, but you're racist.
• Audience: Twilight's right!
• Twilight: Also I'm a wealthy monarch so you and democracy don't actually matter.
• Audience: Hooray for authoritarian plutocracy!

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 11th 2019 at 11:30:19 AM

So, what is it, then? It doesn't conform to public education standards so can it really be considered a public school?

I'm not knowledgable about this sort of thing so I'm not certain if it's that binary but if it's not a public school, what can it be?

He already said it but I already had this loaded: "bugger you, I'm a princess" is not a reasonable response at all to any situation, especially to when you have problems with the head of public education.

Wait, "wealthy monarch"? Where the bugger does Sparkles get her moolah from?

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 11th 2019 at 10:36:39 AM

I was gonna make a joke about her mining her own castle, but then remembered that you can find gems in the ground and there's already an entire crystal empire, so...

Tourism?

Given the different definitions of private and public education in England and the US, we should probably start by defining what, exactly, we mean by public and private schools.

Friendship taxes.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 11th 2019 at 7:40:16 PM

It's a charter school.

Charter schools are private schools that receive government funding, but that the government has no actual say or control over. They're privately owned and unregulated, but are also able to get away with not charging any kind of tuition fee because they're paid for with government funding despite their total non-conformity to public educational standards.

The Friendship School is privately owned and unregulated, but is able to get away with not charging tuition because it's paid for entirely by Princess Twilight and her seemingly limitless bank account that, given her station and lack of any real job, almost certainly comes out of the state treasury.

Charter schools are at the center of the public v. private education debate in the United States.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 11th 2019 at 11:42:19 AM

I wouldn't mind seeming more schools besides Cheerilee's. Teenage ponies are so rare in FIM that it'd be interesting to see if Ponyville even had other teachers. The CMC perpetually being 9-13 muddles things up.

We don't know if after graduating the school that they can't then have a standard EEA education. we don't know how long it takes to graduate twi's school. That's why I don't think of it as a replacement. For one, Twilight loves study of all kinds. I can't imagine she'd WANT kids to not ever learn math. That's the difference between this and your religious school comparison. Religious schools believe that science is full of shit, and are trying to replace them with their own teachings. Twilight does not believe that standard education is shit. She's shown no evidence of this. I refuse to believe that YOU think Twilight thinks that way, Tobias.

She may not think that way, but the show implies it.

But the show never condemns what the EEA teaches. Just it's ability to teach this specific subject. Which is only taught in this one school, to a student body mostly made up of teenagers and young adults.

Do we ever see schools or educational facilities of any kind from any of the non-pony races?

So, what, you leave ordinary school in second grade, attend Friendship School for five years, and then go back to third-grade ordinary school?

You don't see a problem with that?

EDIT: I agree that if we only ever saw young adults attending the classes, this wouldn't be an issue. Would also reduce some other issues involving condemning a child to rot in a hole until she dies over a first offense, but I digress. But that's not the Friendship School as written, which explicitly has children attending it in place of other educational options.

Twilight's school teaches friendship, the history of Twilight's adventures, and occasionally uses its kids for unpaid manual labor over at Sweet Apple Acres. While the show conflates government regulation with militant racism - which, ironically, is more of a motivating factor for why people send their kids to charter schools like Twilight's in place of public education. It gets them away from all the poor minority students.

In real life, Smolder, Yona, etc. would be attending Cheerilee's school, which is dramatically underfunded because half the educational budget has been reassigned to the fancy charter school that doesn't play by the rules and also only accepts ponies. The protagonists were written on the wrong side of this particular political issue.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 11th 2019 at 6:29:39 AM

So, the main problem, as I have seen from here (still haven't gotten to that point yet) and if I am correct, is that Sparkles's school does not provide standard education with learning how not to be a scumbag and that if you go to Sparkles's school, you only go to that school and can't go to another school at the same time, which wouldn't be done anyway because trying to handle the homework and exams of two different schools at once would be diabolic.

How anybody graduates from Sparkles's school is a worthy question. What are supposed to be the conditions of graduating?

As of yet, there aren't any. The Students literally saved the world with the magic of friendship and were still told "Nope, not good enough."

I feel like people are making a load of assumptions here. Like, do we know how long students will spend at Twi's school? Didn't said Militant racist become good without completely disbanding the EEA? Do we know that Twi's school is directly eating into the funds of Cheerilee's school when the VAST majority of friendship students attending wouldn't have been attending her school anyway? I feel like this is a "I'm trying to slam my square peg into this round hole" situation. Even though it requires a load of assumptions about how this fictional government works. In a system where people are born preternaturally amazing at the things they're passionate about.

Especially since, again, at no pooint does Twilight or ANYONE suggest that the EEA doesn't teach worthwhile things.

What it boils down to is that the show says

"Unregulated private schools paid for through government funding but with no expectation of compliance with educational standards are a wonderful thing! Anyone who disagrees is a racist."

While reality says

"Unregulated private schools paid for through government funding but with no expectation of compliance with educational standards are a useful tool for racists."

Indeed, how WOULD you graduate from a School of Friendship? It's not as if the teachers themselves have nothing left to learn about it.

Any sort of graduation would follow vague and arbitrary requirements, if not an entirely subjective assessment by the Princess of Friendship. As noted, saving the world through the Friendship Rainbow Cannon was not enough, not because of some guideline, however arbitrary, but because the Princess said so.

Don't be surprised if season 9 ends with the show coming up with some arbitrary bullshit reason why the students suddenly CAN graduate. If they come up with a reason at all, and don't just declare it time for graduation out of nowhere. This show dabbles in realism from time to time, but will happily skip over any logic gaps or pesky questions when neccesary for the plot. Twilight's ascension to princesshood is a case in point.

It seems the problem could be mitigated if Sparkles's school was light enough that you could attend another school and not be too hampered by handling either school at once.

If Sparkles's school didn't have the requirement to attend all of it's courses fully as a normal school would, it wouldn't matter that much if it only taught "how not to be a scumbag" because students would still get regular education at another school.

Technically, it says "Private schools CAN be a good thing, if they offer something valuable that regulation cannot."

Which doesn't feel like that problematic a mesage to me. Neighsay being racist wasn't why the school was failing. It was failing because Twilight and the friendship experts were trying to teach the subject in a way that didn't work for it. That didn't play to their strengths.

Again, I never saw it but are there not regulations for a reason?

Also, and again, I never saw it so what I'm saying is gleaned from the grapevine, but wasn't the core of Neighsay's arguments that Sparkles and her companions:

A. are not teachers?

B. have no experience in teaching children?

C. have their own lives and work to handle such as being a Wonderbolt or having three boutiques?

Edit: I'm probably digressing so you can ignore this if you wish.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 11th 2019 at 6:00:29 AM

Twilight Sparkle: Princess Celestia helped me reach out to all the kingdoms! When she hears you closed the school because—!

Neighsay: Because you failed to meet the EEA's standards?

Twilight Sparkle: What?!

Neighsay: Irresponsible teachers, students skipping class, endangering ponies! Your school is a disaster. Perhaps if you had had higher standards for who was admitted, this could have been avoided.

He considers Twi's friends unqualified. Which is true, they aren't qualified to teach in the EEA way. The other stuff though. The students only skipped class because of the boring, EEA-ified way the school had started to become run. They were enjoying it to start with. And them skipping class directly led to the endangering part. Which, I don't know how an acredited school would've prevented a giant changeling morph smashing into a building other than not letting them attend.

The way I read it, the regulations exist so that every school is in sync. Any school that teaches magic, or agriculture, will teach mostly the same things. Creating a mostly unified standard of quality.

Every private school thinks that "they offer something valuable that regulation cannot". That's pretty much the chorus line for them. "Public school isn't right for my kids, because I disagree with government regulations. So I'm going to send my kids to a different school that doesn't follow government regulations. And also steal money from the public education budget to fund that school, creating further distance between the educational quality of my rich kid school and their shitty public school."

I mean. Twilight's hypothesis was that her unqualified friends with zero educational experience would totally be able to become phenomenal teachers if they didn't have government regulations holding them back.

Further episodes like "Non-Compete Clause" and "The End in Friend" do not wind up supporting that hypothesis. It might just be that unlicensed educators with zero academic or professional credentials are poor teachers because they're unlicensed educators with zero academic or professional credentials.

Even Neighsay's criticism that Twilight and her friends might just abandon the school at the drop of a hat to dash off and do their thing proves true not once but twice in the season.