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Deschooling Society (1970)

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Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#161

Post by askvictor »

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…

> If we deschooled, we would absolutely end up with a double-digit percentage of the population either illiterate, innumerate, or both.

This is already the case with our current schooling system; there double-digit percentages of school leavers who are functionally illiterate, and even more who are innumerate.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#162

Post by dls2016 »

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…

Reminds me of the book on professional jobs called Disciplined Minds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Schmidt_(writer)

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#163

Post by JoelMcCracken »

askvictor wrote: post #161
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…

> If we deschooled, we would absolutely end up with a double-digit percentage of the population either illiterate, innumerate, or both. This is already the case with our current schooling system; there double-digit percentages of school leavers who are functionally illiterate, and even more who are innumerate.

Not enough people understand this. It blew my mind when I first learned about illiteracy rates among Americans. And once you understand innumeracy you begin to understand just how vulnerable people are to coercion. And how people think that 1% fatality rates are no big deal.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#164

Post by aahhahahaaa »

guidoism wrote: post #17
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.

Families these days can still do it but they don’t because they are led to believe in paying for convenience and get into a cycle that turns everything in their life into something the market provides. The insidious thing is that once you get into debt it is very difficult to break this cycle.

While this is true, it's also true that significantly fewer families can do it now than could in 1970.

It's also true that the most predictable factor when it comes to student performance in school is household income.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#165

Post by fzeroracer »

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 feel like the concept of deschooling was written without taking into mind the actual humans behind the curtains. The idea of removing schools in favor of self-guided education seems like a good idea at first, but ignores the numerous factors that would make it hard for a lot of people to actually do so on their own.

For example most of my middle and high school life was spent being severely depressed due to various life circumstances. School was more or less a routine affair that allowed me to disconnect briefly from my home life and without that escape I likely would've simply stopped learning altogether.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#166

Post by pm90 »

rcxdude wrote: post #140
chongli wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and this gets into some very difficult questions of population ethics. What is the right amount of people for the world? Is it 7 billion or 70 billion or 700 billion? Or is it 700 million or just 70 million? Increases in economic output, agricultural and industrial, make it possible for more people to survive. If further and further specialization lead to more and more efficiency with ever growing population, is…

Apart from there being a 'right answer', there does appear to be an answer for how many people we will be: the world population is expected to level off at 11 billion or so as global birthrates drop off (mainly as most countries catch up to a transition a few have already gone through). Without substantial changes to our society it seems it will stay there or slowly decline.

And once we get there, there will be some very tough questions about how to ensure the rate of economic growth that we’ve come to expect to ensure a sustainable quality of life for people.

Perhaps there will be breakthroughs in preventing aging, automation etc. that will allow for sustainable living then? Maybe. It’s an interesting question.

OTOH, we could also simply descend into nuclear war and reset civilization.

Or have more deadly pandemics ravage our cities.

Strange times indeed.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#167

Post by waterhouse »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #151
ksdale wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are excellent things to keep in mind, but the vast majority of real life is not D-Day or crash landing in the Hudson. I'd go so far as to say that most people hardly ever even spend any time solving "dynamic complex problems." People being really, really good at stuff is important, but I don't think it follows that everyone should only do one thing. I have a hunch that Eisenhower himself was probably a…

> I have a hunch that Eisenhower himself was probably a person who could do most of the things on that list. Further supporting your point, that is perhaps why they are called “Generals”, IE: they have mastered enough areas that they are now generalists able to approach many subject areas and problem sets.

Wiki says: "The term general is used in two ways: as the generic title for all grades of general officer and as a specific rank. It originates in the 16th century, as a shortening of captain general, which rank was taken from Middle French capitaine général. The adjective general had been affixed to officer designations since the late medieval period to indicate relative superiority or an extended jurisdiction." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_officer

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#168

Post by alexashka »

marnett wrote: post #143
alexashka wrote: post #119

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.

Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this? I find it interesting, but philosophers have typically used long form prose to build up their logical theories and arguments. Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up. I do not know have an intimate enough understanding of linguistics to understa…

> Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this?

Not that I'm aware of.

This is one of few thoughts I consider novel and not yet implemented anywhere.

> Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up

Right. A picture is worth a thousand words. There is a hierarchy of beliefs everyone holds in their head to make sense of the world and yet nobody is drawing diagrams to represent them.

If I ever make enough money for a 10 year sabbatical, I'll take a stab at this problem.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#169

Post by jengleton »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #163
askvictor wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we deschooled, we would absolutely end up with a double-digit percentage of the population either illiterate, innumerate, or both. This is already the case with our current schooling system; there double-digit percentages of school leavers who are functionally illiterate, and even more who are innumerate.

Not enough people understand this. It blew my mind when I first learned about illiteracy rates among Americans. And once you understand innumeracy you begin to understand just how vulnerable people are to coercion. And how people think that 1% fatality rates are no big deal.

The illiteracy rate in the US is really quite incredible, with the federal government reporting something like 20% of the population to be "low literacy"

https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#170

Post by Melting_Harps »

John Taylor Gatto's work in this space is also worth noting:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss

I honestly could not be more happy that COVID is displacing Education once and for all and making it compete with the ED-Tech solutions, some from many from HN regulars. Because prior to that, it was always known how superior the product could be if adoption were possible, but now that its happening it really is hard to grasp how fast it started to disrupt the Industry and how quick students are to adapt to it. Granted, there are growing pains, but I just finished my exams and required readings for my Supply Chain course(s) for the rest of the month this weekend and most of today, something entirely impossible in the traditional model.

I wish I had the patience to have stayed in the few Honor classes I was forced to sit in when I was in HS, if only because so many here have said that this model is actually more apt to what is being promoted, which favours autodidacts. Instead, I got impatient at the idea of mandatory attendance and class participation, because I was already attending University level STEM lectures by my Junior Year in HS of my own volition (MOOCS/ED-tech weren't a thing, nor was wide access to broadband or wifi for that matter back then) and felt it was a waste of my time entirely.

Still, I'm glad there are more options for children to opt out and still have a solid trajectory for some profession instead of being seen as a delinquent, degenerate, or misfit as I was accused of despite still holding a 3.6 GPA and only showing up for the exams/quiz days. I tried my best to try and defund the school I felt was holding me in a mind prison, and that got me in a lot of trouble and almost delayed my graduation date because despite having had the grades the administration felt it was imperative I show up daily and on time, something I didn't agree with and would become entirely optional in University where I had become more focused as I divested out of the HS model and took my Education into my own hands at the age of 16.

The sooner we can decouple from the formal Education paradigm, the better we will be as a Society and can explore for more efficient modes of professional Education and training, and this includes the University model which is starting to eat itself alive the further COVID delays classes on campus.

Extinction Rebellion and it's large collective of School Striking Youth are an affirmation that this was bound to happen, but it should also not be forgotten that these kids are also not lost causes, but are instead highly motivated environmentalists just seeking alternative ways to finding solutions to the dire consequences they face and should be trained in professions and positions that suit their aims.

I'd love to be able to teach some of them Ag/Plant Science for regenerative and sustainable farms, and have them in turn be able to get an opportunity to undergo the same apprenticeship model I followed and eventually manage a farm of their own to help offset the CO2 emission and undertake carbon sequestering/negative business models. I'd probably also sign them up for Grid Alternatives, which taught me how Solar Panel installation and grid hookups were being done in the US, whereas I only knew how to do it in the EU. Grid Alternatives [1] is also an amazing non-profit that helps low income families offset the expenses of Solar Panel installation and helps them integrate into their own community.

If we had UBI I could probably also teach a few kids the basics on how to cook properly and help some of them be the dedicated culinary staff that helps feed the staff on site installing the panels.

1: https://gridalternatives.org/

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