Deschooling Society (1970) • Hacker News Board

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#61

Post by tmaly » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #30

tmaly wrote: post #7

"Classroom attendance removes children from the everyday world of Western culture and plunges them into an environment far more primitive, magical, and deadly serious." I know it was written in 1970, but back then a family could still have one person working a good job on just a high school diploma. Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work.

> Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work. I have not found this to be the case. I'm not a professional educator. I'm not going to do as good a job at educating my kids as an experienced teacher. Looking at what our kids are learning, I'm impressed by the curriculum, which at least in our district has kept up with changes in day to day life and professional ex…

My wife and I supplement our kids education at home. It is my opinion that kids are capable of a lot more. The school is catering to the lowest common denominator.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#62

Post by pantaloony » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

guidoism wrote: post #50

pantaloony wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to do unless one parent is comfortable with, capable of, and willing to spend years facilitating homeschooling (property near good schools is expensive). Then it’s still incredibly expensive in lost wages (and greater income insecurity/risk, which is even worse in the US due to how healthcare and retirement works, plus it probably ties the other partner to secure corporate jobs for healthcare if nothing els…

I have to disagree with you on several points: 1. Schools are ranked by test scores mostly, which is 99% dependent on the education and income of the parents. Even then housing near schools with excellent test scores isn't expensive except in the most expensive cities in the US. 2. I totally agree about the healthcare system though it has become a lot better since ACA. Healthcare is still disgustingly expensive but a…

1. Unless all the stuff about how important peers are to future success is BS then it’s still a very good thing to have your kid in good schools, even if the schools are mostly good because of who’s there rather than instruction quality.

2. Yeah ACA definitely helps, but it certainly seems like yet another program with aid cutoffs far too low, leading to a largish doldrums income zone of paying a lot for “coverage” with no subsidy, but still having enormous risk exposure and high copays discouraging normal care. Maybe some day our HC system will not suck.

3. A society with normalized single-worker households might spend less, but one operates on the norms and market(s) one finds oneself in. And anyway even income covering 90% of expenses (with things like savings and retirement temporarily cut to zero) is better than income covering 0% of expenses, so I still think two incomes is more secure even if earnings are very unequal or expenses are higher than they would be with one income.

[edit] oh I should add to #1 that in my cheap city if you use bad schools as the baseline, OK-school areas are about 1.5-2x the price for a similar house, and good-school areas are another 25-30% above the OK-schools price. Not considering the city proper, since housing prices there are weird and anyone with money and a house there doesn’t send their kids to those public schools, ever.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#63

Post by watwut » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

guidoism wrote: post #26

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…

It’s true only because you and your kids weren’t prepared and didn’t have time to think through the situation. Trying to replicate school at home is a recipe for disaster. Instead, think about what an education means to you and what you want your kids to be when they are 18 or so. Then design your years and days around that. Nobody can fault you for the result of the pandemic homeschooling experiment. Nobody was prep…

But ... my kids did not ended badly. It was no catastrophe. There is no blame on me.

I just found that teachers know what they do better and that school is giving my kids more then I assumed before.

I could put in a lot of effort to design and plan years and days around education. But it would be awful lot of work for not much benefit. While the schools can be improved in a lot ot ways, they are much less failures then some people love to make them be.

Also, I know what it is like to be stay at home mom, I simply don't want that. It is profoundly unhappy situation for me and consequently imperfect for whole familly. I don't want it for myself and my kids don't deserved depressed stay at home me.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#64

Post by deburo » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #49

deburo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand a bit more on conviviality, what is represents?

Is it ok if simply I point you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality and urge you to read the book (it's quite short)?

That's good too, thank you.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#65

Post by cousin_it » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #30

tmaly wrote: post #7

"Classroom attendance removes children from the everyday world of Western culture and plunges them into an environment far more primitive, magical, and deadly serious." I know it was written in 1970, but back then a family could still have one person working a good job on just a high school diploma. Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work.

> Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work. I have not found this to be the case. I'm not a professional educator. I'm not going to do as good a job at educating my kids as an experienced teacher. Looking at what our kids are learning, I'm impressed by the curriculum, which at least in our district has kept up with changes in day to day life and professional ex…

You'll almost certainly do a better job than {an experienced teacher} + {an environment full of kids who don't want to learn}.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#66

Post by tmaly » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

the_other wrote: post #48

guidoism wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s true only because you and your kids weren’t prepared and didn’t have time to think through the situation. Trying to replicate school at home is a recipe for disaster. Instead, think about what an education means to you and what you want your kids to be when they are 18 or so. Then design your years and days around that. Nobody can fault you for the result of the pandemic homeschooling experiment. Nobody was prep…

My gut feeling is that this falls apart if you try to work in the current Western work culture and rent or pay a mortgage in the current land ownership culture (especially in a major city). The kind, pace and quality of work you would do whilst simultaneously homeschooling doesn’t mesh with the current work culture. I’m fairly sure that if you could successfully homeschool whilst working, you’d have to work/produce m…

I think if we had enough effort put into it like we mobilized with the Manhattan project, we could create some amazing supplemental online material.

We have incredible technology and a good understanding of psychology. Why could we not apply some Hollywood approach to creating amazing lessons that are engaging and fun to watch?

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#67

Post by tmaly » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

guidoism wrote: post #29

watwut wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online education does much less for small children then for adults. The difference between in person and online for small kids is massive. And in online version, parent does a lot of the education part. The elementary school kid can care about itself, even happily if allowed tablet. But won't learn even with zoom without parent.

I don’t think that anyone will be able to learn on Zoom. It sounds horrible.

You can learn, but it is just not the same. My daughter is doing her piano lessons over zoom now. If she was not able to read sheet music, it would not work.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#68

Post by wwweston » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:22 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…

The danger of confusing process with substance is definitely an interesting point. Everyone can probably think of an example where that's happened.

But as someone who learned unix and some CS among other things in public schools in a way that would have been impossible out of anything provided at home I'm definitely reluctant to throw that institution entirely under the bus.

And in general I'd think that a forum full of people who make process for a living (software is arguably nothing but process) should understand that while systems are often full of blind spots that doesn't mean they're without their utility.

What's needed is to figure out how to make services/systems/institutions with value.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#69

Post by jimduk » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

deburo wrote: post #46

throwawaygh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you expand a bit more on conviviality, what is represents?

Another take on conviviality is from its root - 'to live with'. Hannah Arendt (and I'm sure many others) argues that 'living with' other people, well, in a polity, where you inevitably have different views, is a key problem of modern life. If you are strong at sciences as a kid, it often takes you a while to understand this.

If you can get the BBC - this radio program (In our time) is a good introduction. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08c2ljg

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#70

Post by danans » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #55

danans wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> You can criticize a system while still participating in it

I agree with this wholeheartedly, but Illich called for the abolishment of social institutions altogether, not the improvement of them.

I'm quite suspicious of such calls for abolishing institutions rather than reforming them - whether from the right or left - because they are often just cloaked attempts to replace those institutions with their own preferred "purer" institutions. In the case of Illich, his preferred institutions would seem to be somewhat connected to his religious work as a priest.

> dislike the US health care system, and think we should move from private insurance to a single payer model

Single-payer/Medicare-for-all is just advocating for reform of the health care system by removal of the pathologies of private insurance, not the abolishment of shared risk pools altogether. It's an evolution of the current system, not the destruction of it.