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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

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Re: School or Prison

#91

Post by watwut »

jstummbillig wrote: post #64
torben-friis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I get what's the problem with schools and prisons looking the same. Prisons should look like the rest of the world after all, they're supposed to be places where you learn to function in society.

Fair enough. If our prisons end up looking open, warm and inviting, then that would be a very positive outcome indeed. That's not my takeaway, after looking at these photos though.

To me, they looked like buildings. Neither looked horrifying, they were just normal buildings. You would have to make prison intentionally bad looking from outside to make some effect. And i wild still strongly preferred to go to school rather then prison.

Re: School or Prison

#92

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

jamespwilliams wrote: post #46

In the UK our prisons often look nicer than our (state) schools. Many of our prisons are quite ancient, whereas many of our state schools are 1960s monstrosities. For example: * https://hidden-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/geograp... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/James_Ho... * https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1185483.ece/ALT... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com…

It’s unfair to compare CLASP [1] buildings with centuries old stone buildings... The CLASP system was a stopgap measure for cost-effectively building schools for the baby boomer generation given the economic constraints of post-WW2 Britain.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consortium_of_Local_Authorit...

Re: School or Prison

#93

Post by watwut »

scandox wrote: post #89
lldbg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foucault advocated for pedophilia, and that knowledge has tainted him for me. Can he still be a moral authority?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_... More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time for "the decriminalization of all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen". While I agree that seems extremely stupid, it is based on a morally tenable argument that people under that age could give consent. That may be incorrect but if accepted…

> More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time

Then the question is, how does one become intellectual establishement. Sounds like dissenters were somehow excluded from that nebulous subjective category.

Re: School or Prison

#96

Post by scandox »

watwut wrote: post #93
scandox wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_... More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time for "the decriminalization of all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen". While I agree that seems extremely stupid, it is based on a morally tenable argument that people under that age could give consent. That may be incorrect but if accepted…

> More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time Then the question is, how does one become intellectual establishement. Sounds like dissenters were somehow excluded from that nebulous subjective category.

Well I just meant that the roll call of names that signed the petition is fairly extraordinary:

Louis Aragon, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Leiris, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard, Francis Ponge, Bernard Besret

Re: School or Prison

#97

Post by tomc1985 »

jamespwilliams wrote: post #46

In the UK our prisons often look nicer than our (state) schools. Many of our prisons are quite ancient, whereas many of our state schools are 1960s monstrosities. For example: * https://hidden-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/geograp... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/James_Ho... * https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1185483.ece/ALT... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com…

Aww, I had grown to like that style of architecture while I was living abroad (in Holland, not England, but there was a lot of similarly built structures out in the suburbs where I lived)

It doesn't age particularly well, though

Re: School or Prison

#98

Post by watwut »

devnull255 wrote: post #33
noncoml wrote: post #3

What’s the point being made here? That if you take a picture of a building from a specific angle it’s difficult to tell the function of the building?

As referenced in the comment with the Foucault quote, the modern school and prison are both structures designed in a way that makes it easier for their authorities (wardens, guards, principals and teachers) to contain and control their captive populations (prisoners and students). In his book "Discipline and Punish", Foucault argues that in the establishment of the modern prison, the mission of imprisonment shifted f…

> The same organizing principles of command and control developed for "modern" prisons were applied to the "modern" school as well

You don't know much about prisons seems to me. As in, once one know just a little how it functions, the above sounds either extraordinary stupid.

Re: School or Prison

#99

Post by quietbritishjim »

musingsole wrote: post #80
foolfoolz wrote: post #77

my biggest complaint about schools at least in the US is they all are specially designed. they usually have an architect involved. it’s style is specific to the land it’s on. and each one is so expensive to build. then the community can show off its fancy school, great, it’s a snowflake i would rather the state appoint an architect group to design like 5 model schools that are modular. and then any time a city needs…

Schools are one of the most universal community hubs that the largest majority of a community will interact with regularly. No one wants a cookie cutter community center.

> No one wants a cookie cutter community center.

The specific point of the parent comment is that they do want a cookie cutter school. Saying "no one wants that" isn't really a substantial counter argument.

I suppose the problem with them all being so similar would be if you spent every day visiting a different one, you would tire of them all being them same. But no one does that - you spend many years in a single one, without much awareness of others. In the end it's important that it's effective to spend long periods in, and its uniqueness is basically irrelevant to the people that actually use it.

Re: School or Prison

#100

Post by ineedasername »

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges.

In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of time.

Seriously, it seemed like a revolutionary concept when I hit college and realized "Hold on, I can just get up & go?." Or that (absent computer labs) I could bring a cup of coffee or bottle of soda with me to class, and that common etiquette even allowed for a bit of food if it wasn't noisy to eat or have a powerful smell.

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