Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deschooling Society (1970)

davidtinapple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 205 posts

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#101

Post by QuercusMax »

mikestew wrote: post #74
rednerrus wrote: post #44

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.

You're not far off talking about "The World's Most Interesting Man". It's a quote from Time Enough for Love, which is about Lazarus Long, a genetically modified human who lives for 2000 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#102

Post by danans »

mieses wrote: post #94
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…

In that case it must also be a contradiction for BLM, Ilhan Omar and AOC to benefit from the "garbage country" they live in.

No, because none of them are calling for the abolishment of the country they live in. They are calling for its improvement, just as many of their reasonable opponents do.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#103

Post by sacred_numbers »

yongjik wrote: post #75
rednerrus wrote: post #44

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.

I don't think he's saying that a single species of insect will have specialists in many different roles. I think he's saying that there are millions of species of insects and each species usually specializes in one thing so that they can survive in a specific environmental niche.

I don't think specialization by humans is bad, but I agree that specialization can go too far sometimes. If the person being paid to monitor a tank of fluorine loses the ability to do their own laundry or hold a conversation because they are spending so much of their time developing fluorine tank monitoring skills it's kind of a waste. Part of the human experience is learning and doing lots of different things. Even if our economy rewards hyper-specialization that doesn't mean that a person's entire life has to be focused on their hyper-specialized job.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#104

Post by throw1234651234 »

yongjik wrote: post #75
rednerrus wrote: post #44

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.

Diversification is a huge luxury, which you can afford if you are worth over a 100 mil and focus your life on being diversified. Even then it's questionable whether you are able to bring it all together ala DaVinci, Alexander, Caesar, etc. Seems we are past that point in history.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#105

Post by throwawaygh »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #95
throwawaygh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"intellectual" sounding but certainly not actually "intellectual". 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 fi…

> "intellectual" sounding but certainly not actually "intellectual"

Sure. I was sort of intending to use the word in a way that didn't even make a distinction between those two things; i.e., I was using "intellectual" to refer more to the writing's style and tone than its substance :)

"Intellectual" doesn't necessarily mean "scientific" or even "correct". Maybe "academic" would be a better word for what I'm trying to get at.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#106

Post by throwaw4y-plate »

kweinber wrote: post #91

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.

That's basically Marx in a nutshell. Great diagnosis, impractical cure.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#107

Post by chongli »

afarrell wrote: post #54
jessmartin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ei…

You’re not looking at it radically enough. “How would a non-specialist survive in a specialized world?” is not the question the author seeks to answer. Rather, the question is “what would a non-specialized world look like?” and I think the answer is something resembling pre-agricultural society.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#108

Post by guidoism »

watwut wrote: post #63
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…

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 th…

Failure isn't a word that I would use to describe schools — They do an excellent job of doing what they are supposed to do. Like Illich says, a single model isn't work for everyone, but let's keep the models that work for the people who want them.

For what I'm looking for traditional school is a tremendous waste of time and energy. Primary school skills don't actually need to be taught in anyway that resembles teaching. They just sort of happen naturally when you go about the business of playing and interacting with other people and engaging with society. So, my kids can do the stuff they want during the day. It doesn't take really any effort on our part as parents, other than being around them all day, which — to be honest — sucks. But for us it's a tradeoff that's worth it.

I wish we had something like the Sudbury School where we lived. There's just not enough people — Except in a few pockets around the country — That want something different for their children.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#109

Post by supernova87a »

voisin wrote: post #90
supernova87a wrote: post #82

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…

> small percentage of (yes, I agree) non-ideal outcomes I think you are drastically underestimating the prevalence of non-ideal outcomes. I guess it depends on your definition of non-ideal, but if you think something like “reinforce class and racial boundaries” is non-ideal then surely you would agree the non-ideal outcomes are extremely prevalent?

Sorry, I don't agree. In fact, I think I'm quite objectively estimating the effects of our institutions. I think you're the one stating drastic estimations.

I would say that our education system is helping to free people to move across class and wealth lines far more than keeping people where they are. The amount of social mobility in the US ranks with the best of many countries.

Of course, tons of studies show this (mobility) has been slowly decreasing over time since the 1950s, etc. But you make it sound like the system is rigged in the exact opposite way, which is the problem with the many popular positions on the topic. But popular does not mean objectively correct.

The problem with what you want (I don't know you, I'm using your stated words as example of a certain position right now) is that you want a small number of bad overall outcome cases (or increasing number of cases) to justify any steps towards any institution even tangentially related to the perceived problem.

Even if the institution contributes only a small part of the outcome's determinants. Even if by dismantling the institution, you wouldn't be sure whether the outcome would be different. But you want to try, right? Just to see if it does something? Without proof.

I don't want you to have that nuclear option. I'm willing to work towards solutions to make things better, but I don't believe in the extent of systemwide conspiratorial reinforcement of class/racial boundaries that you believe causes these outcomes.

If I did, I'd be out protesting right along side you. But I'm willing to have my mind changed by better information.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#110

Post by eternalban »

supernova87a wrote: post #82

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…

The rich will continue to educate their children, as they have done from the beginning, for the obvious reason that "knowledge is power". So yes, let's deschool. O-K.

And why throw in the fear towel so quickly in context of today's shitshow? Have the conviction of your beliefs. To paraphrase the previous actor turned president, "One person's counter-revolutionary is another person's Revolutionary". Got that, comrade?

Post reply on HN