91–100 of 205 posts
Educating humanity is difficult. Every solution has its flaws. Giving up on it is worse than every flawed solution, however.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert Anson Hein…
Yeah, I call BS. I don't know any insect with more than half a dozen specialized roles. Mankind surpassed that before we built pyramids. Just think about how many unique professions are required before your daily job even starts to make sense. Someone is being paid to monitor a tank of fluorine compound so that it can be used to etch silicon wafers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert Anson Hein…
Anyone ever figure out if even Heinlein himself accomplished those skills? Because, frankly, it makes a nice trope or whatever, but I question the literal seriousness Heinlein had when he wrote that. Perhaps as an early prototype of The World's Most Interesting Man, but not to be taken as a literal bucket list.
-to change a diaper
-plan an invasion (navy officer)
-butcher a hog
-conn a ship (navy, engineer)
-design a building (engineer)
-write a sonnet (writer)
-balance accounts (numerate)
-build a wall (engineer)
-set a bone
-comfort the dying
-take orders (officer)
-give orders (officer)
-cooperate (officer)
-act alone (probably)
-solve equations (engineer)
-analyze a new problem (engineer)
-pitch manure
-program a computer (engineer)
-cook a tasty meal
-fight efficiently (officer)
-die gallantly (officer)
15 / 21 ain't bad, and the remainder aren't implausible either. A little googling suggests he was born in 1907 in Missouri, so he probably gets butchering a hog and pitching manure. Cooking a tasty meal is a fairly low bar for any functioning human to meet - that's 18/21.
He didn't have kids, so I'm not willing to grant him diaper-changing without a reason to. I can't find any medic training, so I won't give him setting a bone. And I'm not sure anyone knows how to comfort the dying.
18/21 is quite plausible. The remaining three are possible.
"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…
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…
Foucault's explanation for why leprosy disappeared from Europe is pure psudoscience, along with the entirety of psychoanalysis (which he accepted at least partially). I don't like scholars who take the likes of Lacan as being serious instead of charlatans
Foucault had some good ideas in works like Discipline and Punish or A history of Sexuality but filtering between the noise and signal is extremely tough with him...
This is an instance of having very compelling writing that describes a problem eloquently.... and then proposes solutions that are disastrous and make things even worse. Educating humanity is difficult. Every solution has its flaws. Giving up on it is worse than every flawed solution, however.
The identified problems remain, as do all of the original problems that the outgoing system has solved. The aeons of tradition that have built up to the current solution will have to simply be rediscovered the hard way, perhaps with different window-dressing, but ultimately not that far off from their previous incarnation, especially if the deconstruction happens by those who haven't truly learned the lessons about what went well and what went badly before.
Sometimes this comes about because the wishful solutions we want to apply don't work; sometimes because reality is messier than we want to admit, and the solutions are messier still. Child discipline, for example, may always end up being harsher than we as gentle, respectful people would like it to be, particularly for unruly children. Institutions may always be slower to react and improve than we would like.
Much like in software, a full rewrite is often only a pathway to a new set of problems, compared to a refactoring that could solve the known set of problems that remain without losing any existing value.
"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…
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert Anson Hein…
I've heard this called "Defund the thought police."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert Anson Hein…
Anyone ever figure out if even Heinlein himself accomplished those skills? Because, frankly, it makes a nice trope or whatever, but I question the literal seriousness Heinlein had when he wrote that. Perhaps as an early prototype of The World's Most Interesting Man, but not to be taken as a literal bucket list.
I wouldn't take anything Heinlein put in Lazarus Long’s—or any other fictional character’s—mouth as representing his simple literal view unless Heinlein also said it directly in a nonfictional context.
My god, when I read stuff like this (and some comments here), I think -- only someone who grew up in a society which benefitted from all the supposed ills of education and useful institutions could even have the luxury to write or seriously believe something like this. This is like saying that because of a small percentage of (yes, I agree) non-ideal outcomes, one should dismantle the entire system that has gotten us…
Wikipedia [0] has a good summary of the idea IRT schooling in general - it's basically a philosophical position that people are better at learning when they actually have interest in a given subject, and that humans are also instinctive learners. Forcing people to consume curriculum without interest actually contributes to phobia of a subject.
There are many successful people who have been educated using the principles of deschooling. It's not about rejecting education at all.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling#Unschooling/Descho...