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Deschooling Society (1970)

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Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#111

Post by supernova87a »

alex_young wrote: post #100
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…

Deschooling has a lot of material to consume, and the term is pretty strong sounding, so I don't think it's surprising, but your conclusion that Illich wants to "dismantle the entire system" is far from most readings of his work. 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…

I'll have to read more about that, thanks.

I will say the idea of "teaching to the test" which this sounds like, is of course not a good approach. But not everyone can have a Socrates as teacher. All the more so when we refuse to fund schools as they should be. And not everyone is a Plato and can handle an inspirational deschooled approach.

Either way, we should fund it correctly. As others have said, we pay now, or we pay later. I prefer to pay now. It's cheaper.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#112

Post by guidoism »

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.

"Giving up" is not a good summary of what Illich proposes. In fact, it can be argued that what we are doing right now is giving up on education. Education != Schooling. Education is a life-long process. Everybody loves to learn and loves education. This is true even for the "dumbest" most anti-intellectual people you know, you are just looking at learning and education through a very narrow lens. You don't need to force people to learn.

Not everybody loves to be forced to be sitting in a school classroom for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. And not everybody want to memorize state capitals.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#113

Post by a9h74j »

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 would hope that for consistency, Illich on principle refused to take treatment

If memory serves Illich tolerated (and perhaps died from?) a prominent tumor on his face which he refused to have treated.

(That I would remember him as an exception in part makes your point.)

Apparent confirmation: "His charisma, brilliance and spirituality were clear to anyone who encountered him; these qualities sustained him in a heroic level of activity over the last 10 years in the context of terrible suffering caused by a disfiguring cancer." From the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/09/guardianobituar...

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#114

Post by marnett »

throwawaygh wrote: post #52
aldendaniels wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Illi…

Most critical theory doesn’t come with a proposed set of workable solutions or policy suggestions. It is important to separate the expectation and allow critique to be just that.

Anyhow, the first step to a solving a problem is identifying it; they need not be atomic operations.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#115

Post by 082349872349872 »

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…

To get an idea of what experiences led to 1984, see Orwell's "SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS (1947)" http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part49 about his schooling at St Cyprian's.

"And above all, I believed Sambo and Flip when they told me they were my benefactors. ... from Sambo's point of view I was a good speculation. He sank money in me, and ... I won him scholarships when the time came ... But it is difficult for a child to realize that a school is primarily a commercial venture. A child believes that the school exists to educate ... Flip and Sambo had chosen to befriend me, and their friendship included canings, reproaches and humiliations, which were good for me and saved me from an office stool. That was their version, and I believed in it. It was therefore clear that I owed them a vast debt of gratitude. But I was not grateful, as I very well knew. ... But it is wicked, is it not, to hate your benefactors?"

Mr & Mrs Wilkes, or Big Brother?

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#116

Post by Ericson2314 »

doukdouk wrote: post #45
Ericson2314 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Illich's criticisms of car culture pushed him outside the Overton window of policy making. Then or now? Cars being terrible and destroying society is not a fringe view in many places.

No, but being "anti cars" is still extremely controversial, see for instance the "Yellow Vests" in France.

Yes it's controversial, but that controversy is not evenly distributed: there many places one can be openly anti-car and still get elected. (And that's not even counting proportional representation giving voice to minority views.)

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#117

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

supernova87a wrote: post #109
voisin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Study after study has shown that the US actually has some of the lowest social mobility in the developed world, and its poor educational systems and strictly rationed access to high quality learning environments are a direct contributor to that.

Part of the reason is because education is a political football. From school boards up to the presidency, everyone has an axe to grind.

Ironically - because there's so little awareness among the public of how empirical research works, and in some quarters there's a strong bias against facts and evidence - almost no one knows how to make it sharp and effective again.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#118

Post by 082349872349872 »

jimduk wrote: post #69
deburo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I appreciate how the french idea of education includes savoir vivre.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211

One should be able to be convivial even with those who aren't companions.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#119

Post by alexashka »

I wish people would think about the format they use to present their ideas more.

If you're presenting arguments based on empirical evidence and logic, you are building a directed graph. Using long-winded prose to represent it is the wrong data structure, which makes working with it (comprehending and contemplating its merits) difficult.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#120

Post by bigtechdataeng »

chongli wrote: post #107
afarrell wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wanted to call out that this would probably require most of us to never have existed. Specialization is more efficient at the macro level; this efficiency is why there are 7b humans instead of many fewer.
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