Deschooling Society (1970) • Hacker News Board

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#51

Post by SrslyJosh » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

> "Today in the United States the black and even the migrant can aspire to a level of professional treatment which would have been unthinkable two generations ago, and which seems grotesque to most people in the Third World"

"The black"? "The migrant"? Really?

Instead of this "helping the poor hurts them" bullshit, learn about how white people in the United States stole from blacks, again and again, to keep them from building generational wealth and stability:

https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/128211865715026330...

I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are problems with modern schooling (quantity != quality), but this guy just wants to pretend white people and the wealthy/middle class have no obligation to build a healthy society that functions well for everyone.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#52

Post by throwawaygh » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

aldendaniels wrote: post #41

mola wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And it's such an easy target. Everybody hate schools. But the fact of the matter is that public schools were one of the prominent factors in reducing poverty around the world. As in any institution, it may calcify and be corrupted. But that's just how systems are, injecting the right amount of innovation usually takes care of that. No need to throw the baby with the water, and rethink the whole paradigm. I t…

Illich wasn't against school per-se. He was against compulsory school, centralized pedagogy, and other attributes of a "modern" (ala 1970s) schooling system in Western social democracies. He was particularly concerned with how the tenants of modernism affected developing nations (where he lived for much of his life) by pushing traditional methods into forced obsolescence in favor of ever-increasing reliance on social…

> Illich wasn't against school per-se.

There's a recording of a teacher asking how to infuse lessons from deschooling into her classroom and his response is basically "you can't". He's actually a bit rude about it tbh.

Illich was opposed to schooling. He would have said he was in favor of "education". Nailing down what that would mean on the scale of a society, aside from learning webs, is a bit elusive.

I think Illich provided a fantastic prognosis of certain problems but didn't develop workable solutions.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#53

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

minerjoe wrote: post #2

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fl…

E pur si muove.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#54

Post by afarrell » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

jessmartin wrote: post #35

minerjoe wrote: post #2

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fl…

This is echoed by Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America, published in 1977: "The disease of the modern character is specialization. Looked at from the standpoint of the social system, the aim of specialization may seem desirable enough. The aim is to see that the responsibilities of government, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture, education, etc., are given into the hands of the most skilled, best prepared pe…

But what is the real-life practical alternative?

It is makes lovely and invigorating fiction to imagine men who have learned to competently conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, butcher a hog, set a bone, and program a 1973-era computer. But life is short and any art takes long to learn to sufficient depth that you can solve dynamic complex problems.

How many more men would have died if Eisenhower had planned the D-day invasion without being able to delegate a huge number of urgent and important tasks like weather prediction to specialists like Meteorologist James Martin Stagg?

How easily could a hobbyist Cessna pilot land a passenger jet in the Hudson river?

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#55

Post by cortesoft » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #24

minerjoe wrote: post #2

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fl…

That whole argument is a massive straw-man in service of a libertarian attack on the funding of social institutions like hospitals and schools. I would hope that for consistency, Illich on principle refused to take treatment from Germany's health care system, populated by medical professionals who are the product of the education system he so detested. There is a lot to be critiqued with the way that medicine and edu…

I agree with your critique in the first paragraph, but I disagree with your second.

You can criticize a system while still participating in it; just because you think there should be a better system doesn't mean that the current system is worse than nothing.

I dislike the US health care system, and think we should move from private insurance to a single payer model. However, I still currently have private insurance and participate in the system, because I need healthcare and my only choice right now is private insurance.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#56

Post by throwawaygh » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

deleuze wrote: post #43

Read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.

Foucault's distinctly french and distinctly intellectual. The two are definitely touching the same elephant, and if you like Foucault you'll probably find something in Illich, but Illich appeals to a less intellectual and more American (religious?) audience that would turned off by -- or simply never get past the first page of -- Foucault.

Religious fundamentalist homeschoolers will read Illich and get something out of it, but would probably not have the patience/reading comprehension level to engage with Foucault. Or, if they did, would burn it.

So, both have their place.

That said, I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though. I think his reaction to schooling was something like "yeah that's so transparently a factory floor look-alike and so transparently training compliant factory workers that I'm not even sure it's worth saying much else".

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#57

Post by alex_young » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

pantaloony wrote: post #13

motohagiography wrote: post #4

Illich's concept of a "Radical Monopoly," is also immensely relevant to internet platforms. Radical monopoly is a concept defined by philosopher and author Ivan Illich in his 1973 book, "Tools for Conviviality," and revisited in his later work, which describes how a technology or service becomes so exceptionally dominant that even with multiple providers, its users are excluded from society without access to the prod…

His essay on (in part) cars drove (haha) me to run the numbers and despite being fairly conservative with how much closer-together my city would be without car infrastructure (esp. parking lots and massive, useless “green space” setbacks and margins to keep roads at a tolerable distance from people) and despite my being somewhat thrifty on car spending and having a relatively short commute—sure enough, I was right ar…

It's crazy for most of us to imagine, but huge modern populations in Europe have been doing this for thousands of years. Dense urban cores without cars is how cities were designed to work.

It's amazingly great to get around in these places, there are shops accommodating every need you can imagine in all parts of the urban core, and it reduces a lot of friction when considering to go out for something spontaneous.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#58

Post by Loughla » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

tharne wrote: post #18

watwut wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who absolutely want work and thus needs the kids somewhere during the day, the whole "school is just daycare" is crap. My kids were at home and I worked during covid and the hell they learn more now that they are back in school. And while I still am working from home and they were actually quite cool during day, the learning effects of school are massive and massively appreciated - by both kids and me. It…

You must have much better schools where you live compared to me.

Yes, the quality of education varies substantially from district to district, or even building to building, and is highly reliant on geography and local income in the United States.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#59

Post by jimduk » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #39

minerjoe wrote: post #2

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fl…

I loved Illich when I was in high school. I read all of his books, dug up old audio recordings, and even built a website hosting all of the hard-to-find stuff he wrote. Reflecting on his work now, I think Illich's anti-institutionism was extreme and his alternatives are genuinely not compelling. Deschooling Society 's critique is powerful, and Learning Webs is literally exactly how I learned how to program. But, it's…

Agreed both being very impressed by Illich, but it not being workable. I dimly recall The Alphabetisation of the Popular Mind arguing that possibly you shouldn't teach language. Maybe this has merit (on the lines of Lanier arguing the midi-fication of music is detrimental which is clearer), but is the analogy that musical notation shouldn't happen.

My Illich-worship hit a bump when talking to an Aussie English Phd who was much cleverer than me. After my first sentence she said "the problem with people who like Ivan Illich is they just want to talk about Illich". Touche

But well worth reading, and a convivial life is a good life.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#60

Post by deleuze » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #56

deleuze wrote: post #43

Read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.

Foucault's distinctly french and distinctly intellectual. The two are definitely touching the same elephant, and if you like Foucault you'll probably find something in Illich, but Illich appeals to a less intellectual and more American (religious?) audience that would turned off by -- or simply never get past the first page of -- Foucault. Religious fundamentalist homeschoolers will read Illich and get something out…

Totally, and French intellectuals don't usually go over well with the average reader of HN. But, if anyone finds the discussion in this comment section resonates strongly with them, just reading about Foucault's ideas would be a good place to start. Why limit ourselves to school. :) This is fertile ground for thought and I'm glad to see discussion here.

> I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though

Agreed. I think most schools were just broadly more authoritarian when he was writing. There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies.