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Deschooling Society (1970)

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Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#191

Post by JoelMcCracken »

thu2111 wrote: post #181
JoelMcCracken wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are there many people who think 1% fatality rate is no big deal? I haven't seen many. But of course the illiterate would not be commenting much online. There are many who don't think COVID is a big deal, because it doesn't have anywhere close to a 1% fatality rate. But that's not quite the same thing.

Yes, I was referring to covid, but just an example. Initially experts thought thought 1% was correct for covid, AND people thought it was not a big deal.

Thankfully there have been reports that make us think the fatality rate is much less than 1%, but that doesn't change the fact that people though 1% was a tiny number.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#192

Post by silveraxe93 »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #191
thu2111 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there many people who think 1% fatality rate is no big deal? I haven't seen many. But of course the illiterate would not be commenting much online. There are many who don't think COVID is a big deal, because it doesn't have anywhere close to a 1% fatality rate. But that's not quite the same thing.

Yes, I was referring to covid, but just an example. Initially experts thought thought 1% was correct for covid, AND people thought it was not a big deal. Thankfully there have been reports that make us think the fatality rate is much less than 1%, but that doesn't change the fact that people though 1% was a tiny number.

I mean, 0.01 is objectively a tiny number. The problem is when you multiply by 328 million ;)

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#193

Post by JoelMcCracken »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #192
JoelMcCracken wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was referring to covid, but just an example. Initially experts thought thought 1% was correct for covid, AND people thought it was not a big deal. Thankfully there have been reports that make us think the fatality rate is much less than 1%, but that doesn't change the fact that people though 1% was a tiny number.

I mean, 0.01 is objectively a tiny number. The problem is when you multiply by 328 million ;)

Hence the need for numeracy. You need to be able to do a little bit of thinking for any given number, the context, etc. For example, think about all the people you know, and also how that 0.01 might not be a random sampling of the entire population, but "cluster" in certain cohorts like the elderly, and consider that 0.01 is the worst-case outcome, but in many situations more will still have really bad consequences.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#194

Post by thelightthat »

Jtsummers wrote: post #8
motohagiography wrote: post #4

Illich's concept of a "Radical Monopoly," is also immensely relevant to internet platforms. Radical monopoly is a concept defined by philosopher and author Ivan Illich in his 1973 book, "Tools for Conviviality," and revisited in his later work, which describes how a technology or service becomes so exceptionally dominant that even with multiple providers, its users are excluded from society without access to the prod…

Counter-counter argument. Fire can be produced by nearly anyone with a bare minimum level of competence and coordination required (flint and steel, two sticks and a string, various other methods). A car or college education cannot be provided by a person to themselves. They are reliant both on the thing to participate in society, and on society in order to obtain the thing.

Could you link to anti car HN discussions or articles? Thank you

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#195

Post by kazinator »

If we take the long-term historic perspective, society has been mostly de-schooled throughout history. Going to school was a privilege for the children of the haves; the have-nots didn't go to school, and that was one factor which kept them that way, generation over generation.

Deschooling will never happen across all social strata; the privileged will keep sending kids to school no matter what.

Only a complete idiot would fall for this hippie bullshit and not send his kids to school.

The anti-intellectual movements in America in the 1960's likely did in fact contribute to a kind of deschooling of the lower classes, resulting in ever larger economic inequalities fifty years later.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#196

Post by aahhahahaaa »

bananaface wrote: post #184
aahhahahaaa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't IQ a significantly more predictive factor than income?

Eh, there are a lot of legitimate questions around the validity of IQ tests in general

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#197

Post by ameixaseca »

SrslyJosh wrote: post #51

> "Today in the United States the black and even the migrant can aspire to a level of professional treatment which would have been unthinkable two generations ago, and which seems grotesque to most people in the Third World" "The black"? "The migrant"? Really? Instead of this "helping the poor hurts them" bullshit, learn about how white people in the United States stole from blacks, again and again, to keep them from…

It doesn't look like he is criticizing welfare per se, but the fact that the welfare system is built in a way to punish the poor even more. Or even the health system, which treats the poor but puts them in huge debt. The critique seems to be on the institutions that only serve the present structures of power.

To be honest, it's hard to disagree with him on this, even being in favour of welfare and/or socialized healthcare systems.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#198

Post by bananaface »

aahhahahaaa wrote: post #196
bananaface wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't IQ a significantly more predictive factor than income?

Eh, there are a lot of legitimate questions around the validity of IQ tests in general

Sure, but if they're predictive then by definition they're locally valid.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#199

Post by afarrell »

ksdale wrote: post #73
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…

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…

Sure, people should indeed become "sorta good" at multiple skills. In practice, they do. Many people know how to doodle or play charades or tell stories or sing sea-shanties. Otherwise, hobbyist Cessna pilots would not exist -- nor the word "hobby". In real life, statements like "he is even unable to entertain himself" are pretty false.

> the vast majority of real life is not D-Day or crash landing in the Hudson

Sure, but a significant portion of life is spent interacting with the results of other people's work. When you get into a car, would you rather that its microcontrollers were programmed by someone who

A: Felt continually distressed and defeated that he had not thoroughly mastered sailing, animal husbandry, military history, rhetoric, first aid, copy-editing, painting, masonry, carpentry, and several other skills.

B: Felt fulfilled that the only domains in which he had deep knowledge were microcontroller programming, cooking seafood to his wife's taste, and the emotional/medical meanings of their child's sounds -- yet that they had merely a hobbyists' knowledge of hiking, sketching, kites, anime, and the history of flight.

Because I'd rather a world with more of B and less of A.

Re: Deschooling Society (1970)

#200

Post by afarrell »

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.

Okay, just going off of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#Family_ba...

- conn a ship: It mentions no naval career. It does mention fishing, so there is a decent probability that he could handle a canoe. But if that is the standard for "conn a ship", then this whole argument is basically just "people should have hobbies" which...okay sure. And they already do.

- design a building: No mention of this. He attended West Point, which is also an engineering school, but that is very weak evidence. I went to MIT and the only building design I've ever done is that of a shed. Again, people should have hobbies.

- write a sonnet: Google searches for "poetry by Dwight D Eisenhower", "Ike sonnet", "Eisenhower Sonnet", and "Sonnet by Eisenhower" do not turn up anything. Maybe he wrote poetry to his wife, but we have no evidence of it. Again, people should have hobbies.

- balance accounts: I'm happy to just assume this to be true as part of his career's focus in being able to organize troops.

- butcher a hog: His father worked as a railroad mechanic and then at a creamery. They were not wealthy. There's no mention of his working in agriculture. He did like hunting, so its totally plausable that he could dress a deer. But he didn't work on a farm or in a slaughterhouse or meat-packing plant. Why would someone who owned pigs waste the meat/time/money to teach someone how to slaughter them as even a hobby?

- set a bone: Plausable, but I see a number of sports-related leg injuries.

- program a 1973-era computer: He died in 1969

I could go and try to research this more thoroughly, but it is hard to prove a negative and time is a global variable.

[1] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Washington/Pub...

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