One growing alternative is unschooling<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling>. Unlike the popular home-schooling stereotype of parents sharing "classroom" duties at home, unschooling is mostly student-led (and I wince using the word "student"). Explaining it in any depth is beyond the scope of these lightweight invites, so please join this call and explore with us.
- What is the range of unschooling practices? How quickly is it growing? - How does the rest of the world respond to unschooling? Is that changing? - What are the main benefits the Net brings unschoolers?
Whilst in chully Dunedin , Leigh and I sat and discussed some of the
reading needs we both have to brush up on to truly inform anything we
happen to instinctively react or rant to.
I spoke of the BA in Education I'd attained by 1994 and the readings
we'd been drawn to focus on such as;
> One growing alternative is
> unschooling<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling>.
> Unlike the popular home-schooling stereotype of parents sharing "classroom"
> duties at home, unschooling is mostly student-led (and I wince using the
> word "student"). Explaining it in any depth is beyond the scope of these
> lightweight invites, so please join this call and explore with us.
> - What is the range of unschooling practices? How quickly is it growing?
> - How does the rest of the world respond to unschooling? Is that
> changing?
> - What are the main benefits the Net brings unschoolers?
> One growing alternative is
> unschooling<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling>.
> Unlike the popular home-schooling stereotype of parents sharing "classroom"
> duties at home, unschooling is mostly student-led (and I wince using the
> word "student"). Explaining it in any depth is beyond the scope of these
> lightweight invites, so please join this call and explore with us.
> - What is the range of unschooling practices? How quickly is it growing?
> - How does the rest of the world respond to unschooling? Is that
> changing?
> - What are the main benefits the Net brings unschoolers?
Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide
evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other services,
and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children
John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
"People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
stick."
"Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex range
of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he differed
from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and surrendering all
judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss of one's own
volition."
"This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
function in this participatory way."
"Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow piece.
If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to suppress
all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a highly
unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the network
will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you enter
into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into many
specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
courts and therapists of many varieties)."
"If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes of
finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create a
large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
need less."
---------------------
"Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
the escape routes from mass schooling."
"Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people to
associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
sufficient nutrients."
"Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is not
education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by
locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
parents."
"Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other, on
the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
"Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
---------
"Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
disconnection of the generations."
"Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
effect, anoint a machine our king."
"Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
employment. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to
defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the
national wealth to distribute to its personnel."
"It was this philistine potential-- that teaching the young for pay would
inevitably expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not
students-- that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in
ancient Greece."
"For 150 years, institutional education has seen fit to offer as its main
purpose the preparation for economic success. Good education = good job,
good money, good things. This has become the universal national banner,
hoisted by Harvards as well as high schools. The absurdity of defining
education as an economic good becomes clear if we ask ourselves what is
gained by perceiving education as a way to enhance even further runaway
consumption that threatens the earth, the air, and the water of our planet?
Should we continue to teach people that they can buy happiness in the face
of a tidal wave of evidence that they cannot?"
"What, after all this time is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be?
Reading, writing and arithmetic can't be the answer... It divides and
classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other,
and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying
them as "low-class" material. And the bottom line for the winners is that
they can buy more stuff!"
"An important difference between communities and institutions is that
communities have natural limits; they stop growing or they die. There's a
good reason for this: in the best communities everyone is a special person
who sooner or later impinges on everyone else's consciousness... However,
networks, like schools, expand indefinitely, just as long as they can get
away with it. "More" may not be "better," but "more" is always more
profitable for the people who make a living out of networking."
--------
"The culture of schools only coheres in response to a web of material
rewards and punishments. A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars, "good"
classes, access to a photocopy machine. Everything we know about why people
drive themselves to know things and do their best is contradicted inside
these places."
"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a
conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to
tackle the big challenges. What's gotten in the way is the theory that says
there is one right way to proceed with growing up. That's an ancient
Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top-- everyone is a
stone defined by its position on the pyramid-- it signals a worldview of
minds obsessed with the control of other minds, obsessed by dominance and
strategies of intervention to maintain that dominance."
"The humming of the great hive society foreseen by Francis Bacon, and by
H.G. Wells in The Sleeper Awakes, has never sounded louder than it does to
us right now. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an
invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with
bells and horns all the time and they will learn nothing is important; force
them to plead for the natural right to the toilet, and they will become
liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human
association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The
habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly."
"Individuality, family, and community, on the other hand, are, by
definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way."
The schools we've allowed to develop can't work because the structure is
held together by a Byzantine tapestry of reward and threat, of carrots and
sticks. Official favor, grades, or other trinkets or subordination have no
connection with education; they are the paraphernalia of servitude, not of
freedom."
"Sixty-five years ago, Bertrand Russell said mass schooling was a scheme to
artificially deliver
Recent, presentation by Nicholas Negroponte
Reinventing the Classroom: Social and Educational Impact of Information and
Communication Technologies in Education
September 15, 2009 - The seminar provided a forum to critically examine: (i)
Large scale efforts to incorporate Information and Communications
Technologies (ICT) into education; (ii) The impact of these efforts on
learning; and (iii) The challenges of evaluation and monitoring.
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Nancy
> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide
> evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other services,
> and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children
> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
> stick."
> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
> of one's own volition."
> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
> function in this participatory way."
> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes of
> finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create a
> large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
> need less."
> ---------------------
> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
> the escape routes from mass schooling."
> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
> sufficient nutrients."
> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
> parents."
> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
> on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
> ---------
> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
> disconnection of the generations."
> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
> continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
> lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
> effect, anoint a machine our king."
> "Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
> unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
> has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
> service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
> employment. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to
> defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the
> national wealth to distribute to its personnel."
> "It was this philistine potential-- that teaching the young for pay would
> inevitably expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not
> students-- that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in
> ancient Greece."
> "For 150 years, institutional education has seen fit to offer as its main
> purpose the preparation for economic success. Good education = good job,
> good money, good things. This has become the universal national banner,
> hoisted by Harvards as well as high schools. The absurdity of defining
> education as an economic good becomes clear if we ask ourselves what is
> gained by perceiving education as a way to enhance even further runaway
> consumption that threatens the earth, the air, and the water of our planet?
> Should we continue to teach people that they can buy happiness in the face
> of a tidal wave of evidence that they cannot?"
> "What, after all this time is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be?
> Reading, writing and arithmetic can't be the answer... It divides and
> classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other,
> and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying
> them as "low-class" material. And the bottom line for the winners is that
> they can buy more stuff!"
> "An important difference between communities and institutions is that
> communities have natural limits; they stop growing or they die. There's a
> good reason for this: in the best communities everyone is a special person
> who sooner or later impinges on everyone else's consciousness... However,
> networks, like schools, expand indefinitely, just as long as they can get
> away with it. "More" may not be "better," but "more" is always more
> profitable for the people who make a living out of networking."
> --------
> "The culture of schools only coheres in response to a web of material
> rewards and punishments. A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars, "good"
> classes, access to a photocopy machine. Everything we know about why people
> drive themselves to know things and do their best is contradicted inside
> these places."
> "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a
> conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to
> tackle the big challenges. What's gotten in the way is the theory that says
> there is one right way to proceed with growing up. That's an ancient
> Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top-- everyone is a
> stone defined by its position on the pyramid-- it signals a worldview of
> minds obsessed with the control of other minds, obsessed by dominance and
> strategies of intervention to maintain that dominance."
> "The humming of the great hive society foreseen by Francis Bacon, and by
> H.G. Wells in The Sleeper Awakes, has never sounded louder than it does to
> us right now. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an
> invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with
> bells and horns all the time and
I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that Gatto
apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to see the
connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work to
compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who can
assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be found
in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Nancy
> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide
> evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other services,
> and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children
> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
> stick."
> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
> of one's own volition."
> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
> function in this participatory way."
> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes of
> finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create a
> large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
> need less."
> ---------------------
> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
> the escape routes from mass schooling."
> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
> sufficient nutrients."
> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
> parents."
> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
> on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
> ---------
> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
> disconnection of the generations."
> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
> continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
> lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
> effect, anoint a machine our king."
> "Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
> unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
> has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
> service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
> employment. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to
> defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the
> national wealth to distribute to its personnel."
> "It was this philistine potential-- that teaching the young for pay would
> inevitably expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not
> students-- that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in
> ancient Greece."
> "For 150 years, institutional education has seen fit to offer as its main
> purpose the preparation for economic success. Good education = good job,
> good money, good things. This has become the universal national banner,
> hoisted by Harvards as well as high schools. The absurdity of defining
> education as an economic good becomes clear if we ask ourselves what is
> gained by perceiving education as a way to enhance even further runaway
> consumption that threatens the earth, the air, and the water of our planet?
> Should we continue to teach people that they can buy happiness in the face
> of a tidal wave of evidence that they cannot?"
> "What, after all this time is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be?
> Reading, writing and arithmetic can't be the answer... It divides and
> classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other,
> and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying
> them as "low-class" material. And the bottom line for the winners is that
> they can buy more stuff!"
> "An important difference between communities and institutions is that
> communities have natural limits; they stop growing or they die. There's a
> good reason for this: in the best communities everyone is a special person
> who sooner or later impinges on everyone else's consciousness... However,
> networks, like schools, expand indefinitely, just as long as they can get
> away with it. "More" may not be "better," but "more" is always more
> profitable for the people who make a living out of networking."
> --------
> "The culture of schools only coheres in response to a web of material
> rewards and punishments. A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars, "good"
> classes, access to a photocopy machine. Everything we know about why people
> drive themselves to know things and do their best is contradicted inside
> these places."
> "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a
> conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to
> tackle the big challenges. What's gotten
Negroponte is a freak out! I'm sorry to generalise with insensitivity
towards those who share some of his traits, but his language and accent,
loaded with his narrow logic boardering on religious obsession, is quite
frankly frightening - horrible, yet nothing new, to be expected from his
class, gender and nationality. What frightens me most is that he is using
the issue and ideas of dechooling that I also subsribe to, and pushing his
overwhelming agenda with it. Suddenly I don't like the company on this
bandwagon.
What struck me in my short time in America (and that has struck me in the
years I have been interacting with Americans online) is how totally unaware
they generally are of things outside themselves. But I can understand that,
because what is inside most Americans I have met and interacted with is
quite frankly impressive and often amazing! (or ShitHot as Mike would say :)
Most English peaking people I have met are self absorbed like this to some
degree, but it becomes so nakedly bare for Americans because they have the
resources and technology to project themselves and all their flaws, all over
everyone else.
OLPC started as an experiment, and we were all excited by it to some degree
(although we should have known better). When the experiment started
returning evidence of failure or worse, they don't/won't take the
"scientific" view.
The best shut down to the OLPC experiment would have to be:
> I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that
> Gatto apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to
> see the connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work
> to compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who
> can assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
> liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
> anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
> desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
> I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
> so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
> All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be found
> in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
> supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
> views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
> A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
> does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
> workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> Hi Nancy
>> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
>> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
>> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
>> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner,
>> provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other
>> services, and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for
>> children
>> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
>> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
>> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
>> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
>> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
>> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
>> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
>> stick."
>> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
>> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
>> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
>> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
>> of one's own volition."
>> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
>> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
>> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
>> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
>> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
>> function in this participatory way."
>> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
>> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
>> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
>> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
>> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
>> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
>> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
>> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
>> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
>> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
>> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes
>> of finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create
>> a large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
>> need less."
>> ---------------------
>> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
>> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
>> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
>> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
>> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
>> the escape routes from mass schooling."
>> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
>> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
>> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
>> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
>> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
>> sufficient nutrients."
>> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
>> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
>> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
>> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
>> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
>> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
>> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
>> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
>> parents."
>> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
>> on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
>> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
>> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
>> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
>> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
>> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
>> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
>> ---------
>> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
>> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
>> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
>> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
>> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
>> disconnection of the generations."
>> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
>> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
>> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
>> continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
>> lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
>> effect, anoint a machine our king."
>> "Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
>> unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
>> has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
>> service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
>> employment. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to
>> defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the
>> national wealth to distribute to its personnel."
>> "It was this philistine potential-- that teaching the young for pay would
>> inevitably expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not
>> students-- that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in
>> ancient Greece."
Steven, In the same line as what you have been linking to- here is an interesting cyberpunk fiction series *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherland* Warm regards, Bee
I read Gatto using the word 'network' differently to how it's commonly used
this forum in relation to technology faclilitated communication and forming
connections. He's talking about schooling to push specialisation of
skillsets of knowledge to the point where an individual is impaired from
developing broad based knowledge and skills and is reliant on other
specialists. For example I know lots about Moodle but sod all about
carpentry and using a hammer/ saw, I need the yellow pages. The Network I
think he talks to relates to the interdepedence between indviduals in a
community with their silos of specialsed skills and knowledge through not
being fully educated at school and uni with broad based skills.
Specilaiation is based on economic efficiency (As is networked technology
i.e the brain chip, rfid, biometrics internet of things), Gato elucidates
on how this schooling specialisation then impacts on the cohesion of
community.
Gatto is about wholistic teaching and learning, alot of his work has been
documenting the impact on community and society from the schoolng system to
make specialists to this end:
John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Quote <http://liberty-tree.ca/>
"In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding
hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character
education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our
own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.
We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into
philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors,
educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists,
painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen
-- of whom we have an ample supply.
The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a
perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect
way."
Most educators I meet don't consider where the education system evolved
from ("An operating system for the mind". ) , it's something I need to
understand more, The home schooling movement refered to in the orignal post
form Nancy is a reaction to this JD Rockefeller/ Bankster mindset. I think
"Devil's Pact" is quite a fair term to use from what I've read has been
planned and is planned for individual's learning in the future in pursuit of
maximum efficiency and exploitng the worker bees thinking for the economy.
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 5:55 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com>wrote:
> I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that
> Gatto apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to
> see the connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work
> to compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who
> can assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
> liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
> anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
> desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
> I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
> so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
> All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be found
> in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
> supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
> views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
> A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
> does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
> workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> Hi Nancy
>> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
>> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
>> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
>> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner,
>> provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other
>> services, and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for
>> children
>> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
>> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
>> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
>> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
>> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
>> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
>> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
>> stick."
>> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
>> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
>> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
>> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
>> of one's own volition."
>> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
>> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
>> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
>> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
>> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
>> function in this participatory way."
>> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
>> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
>> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
>> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
>> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
>> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
>> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
>> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
>> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
>> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
>> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes
>> of finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create
>> a large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
>> need less."
>> ---------------------
>> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
>> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
>> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
>> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
>> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
>> the escape routes from mass schooling."
>> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
>> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
>> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
>> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
>> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
>> sufficient nutrients."
>> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
>> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
>> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
>> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
>> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
>> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
>> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
>> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
>> parents."
>> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
>> on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
>> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
>> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
>> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
>> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
>> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
>> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
>> ---------
>> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
>> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
>> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
>> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
>> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
>> disconnection of the generations."
>> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
>> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
>> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
>> continuous, well-articulated community. By
I'm re reading Illich's Tools for Conviviality. Personally I like reading
Illich more than Gatto. He goes deeper, or uses words that allow more of us
to go deeper. Illich would describe what you say Gatto means as,
industrialisation, institutionalisation and specialisation - I don't think
he would go so far as to say codependence is a bad thing. For example:
“...conviviality
= individual freedom realized in personal interdependence, and, as such, an
intrinsic ethical value”
I realise I come accross as an Illich fan boy - but it has more to do with
the experience of not meeting many people who actually read his work, or
people who rather than discuss his points, suggest I read something else
which more often than not has nowhere near the relavence or impact. Gatto
for example, is almost entirely drawing from Illich, but distracting from
the underlying principle. Network doesn't work, either causing my
misunderstanding, or eliciting a general misunderstanding. The real point I
wanted to make is the assumed value of family and community as Gatto's
counter point to networks.. as though they didn't need any further
explaination, when too easily one can question those on the same terms he
questions networks.
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Leigh
> I read Gatto using the word 'network' differently to how it's commonly used
> this forum in relation to technology faclilitated communication and forming
> connections. He's talking about schooling to push specialisation of
> skillsets of knowledge to the point where an individual is impaired from
> developing broad based knowledge and skills and is reliant on other
> specialists. For example I know lots about Moodle but sod all about
> carpentry and using a hammer/ saw, I need the yellow pages. The Network I
> think he talks to relates to the interdepedence between indviduals in a
> community with their silos of specialsed skills and knowledge through not
> being fully educated at school and uni with broad based skills.
> Specilaiation is based on economic efficiency (As is networked technology
> i.e the brain chip, rfid, biometrics internet of things), Gato elucidates
> on how this schooling specialisation then impacts on the cohesion of
> community.
> Gatto is about wholistic teaching and learning, alot of his work has been
> documenting the impact on community and society from the schoolng system to
> make specialists to this end:
> John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Quote <http://liberty-tree.ca/>
> "In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our
> molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and
> character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we
> work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.
> We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into
> philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors,
> educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists,
> painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen
> -- of whom we have an ample supply.
> The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a
> perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect
> way."
> Most educators I meet don't consider where the education system evolved
> from ("An operating system for the mind". ) , it's something I need to
> understand more, The home schooling movement refered to in the orignal post
> form Nancy is a reaction to this JD Rockefeller/ Bankster mindset. I think
> "Devil's Pact" is quite a fair term to use from what I've read has been
> planned and is planned for individual's learning in the future in pursuit of
> maximum efficiency and exploitng the worker bees thinking for the economy.
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 5:55 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that
>> Gatto apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to
>> see the connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work
>> to compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who
>> can assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
>> liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
>> anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
>> desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
>> I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
>> so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
>> All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be
>> found in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
>> supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
>> views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
>> A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
>> does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
>> workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
>> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>> Hi Nancy
>>> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
>>> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
>>> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
>>> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner,
>>> provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other
>>> services, and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for
>>> children
>>> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
>>> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
>>> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
>>> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
>>> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
>>> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
>>> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
>>> stick."
>>> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
>>> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
>>> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
>>> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
>>> of one's own volition."
>>> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
>>> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
>>> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
>>> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
>>> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
>>> function in this participatory way."
>>> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
>>> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
>>> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
>>> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
>>> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
>>> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
>>> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
>>> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
>>> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
>>> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
>>> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes
>>> of finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create
>>> a large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
>>> need less."
>>> ---------------------
>>> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
>>> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
>>> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
>>> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
>>> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
>>> the escape routes from mass schooling."
>>> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
>>> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
>>> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
>>> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
>>> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
>>> sufficient nutrients."
>>> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
>>> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
>>> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
>>> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
>>> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
>>> grade vegetables, network schools steal the
oops..I have posted my answer to the other thread as a reaction - conversation between threads - but it should go in here...so pasting it here again ...sorry
>Given that my entire family are school teachers, homeschooling will be very
difficult. But we will be looking for an active community.
Cuando éramos niños en la Patagonia - Google Books http://bit.ly/e2YUS reports on the lives of a group of Belgian families who emigrated to the Chilean Patagonia after WWII - with a doctor, a teacher and a priest and established themselves in Chile Chico for some decades. Like many others around the world, they started from scratch, lived on agriculture and all the children were schooled by and in the community. Later many moved to Santiago and did their higher studies there. I met the children and grandchildren from one of these families, who are now artists, dentists, journalists, doctors, engineers... http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.htm<http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.html>
The original families themselves, however, had been part of a well-educated elite in Belgium so they could pass it on to their children. What is terrible is when school (as it is) is the only way out for many kids and home does not provide them with the needed community and healthy environment. Warm regards, Bee
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com>wrote:
> I'm re reading Illich's Tools for Conviviality. Personally I like reading
> Illich more than Gatto. He goes deeper, or uses words that allow more of us
> to go deeper. Illich would describe what you say Gatto means as,
> industrialisation, institutionalisation and specialisation - I don't think
> he would go so far as to say codependence is a bad thing. For example: “...conviviality
> = individual freedom realized in personal interdependence, and, as such, an
> intrinsic ethical value”
OK, I'll make some time for Ilich study, I haven't read Gatto's book just
listened to his interviews on youtube etc.
While we're talking about people who point out how the education system is
based on determinely hijacking the mind for ulterior motives I recommend *
Charlotte* Thomson Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the US
Department of Education. A sassy lady who wrote the book
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ the video interviews
are historically enlightening...
(*http://tinyurl.com/izerbyt*<http://tinyurl.com/izerbyt>
*) *with* *No conspiracy stchick
**
> I realise I come accross as an Illich fan boy - but it has more to do with
> the experience of not meeting many people who actually read his work, or
> people who rather than discuss his points, suggest I read something else
> which more often than not has nowhere near the relavence or impact. Gatto
> for example, is almost entirely drawing from Illich, but distracting from
> the underlying principle. Network doesn't work, either causing my
> misunderstanding, or eliciting a general misunderstanding.
Yes it's not clear.
> The real point I wanted to make is the assumed value of family and
> community as Gatto's counter point to networks.. as though they didn't need
> any further explaination, when too easily one can question those on the same
> terms he questions networks.
Once the tribe (Family community) is gone who will stand up for you?
Debasement of Western culture and education is great from a social
engineering POV, Julian and Aldous Huxley discuss this subject matter onthe
net as a engine of Eugenics. This is a great thing for in removing any
barriers of protection between the individual and the power of the state a
la brave new world.
This little video on education is interesting in this regards.
"This video takes a brief look at the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization, established in 1945 to create a global
consciousness and world culture in preparation for the coming one world
government."
<http://conspiracyrealitytv.com/brief-history-of-the-uns-unesco-conspi...>
Of course there is value in family and community (Whatever that means in
the thousands of cultures across the planet). The family and community
are the basic building blocks of society without which there is no cohesion
and society falls apart. Under the specialised industrial education model,
the devil's pact is the reliance to be educated to function within the
system/ state. What will happen if the system falls apart?
Gatto makes the point that the community and hence the family and
individual is less resilient in the face of challenges under the curent
education system.
I tried to articulate my understanding of the subject this past FLNW
presentation
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> Leigh
>> I read Gatto using the word 'network' differently to how it's commonly
>> used this forum in relation to technology faclilitated communication and
>> forming connections. He's talking about schooling to push specialisation of
>> skillsets of knowledge to the point where an individual is impaired from
>> developing broad based knowledge and skills and is reliant on other
>> specialists. For example I know lots about Moodle but sod all about
>> carpentry and using a hammer/ saw, I need the yellow pages. The Network I
>> think he talks to relates to the interdepedence between indviduals in a
>> community with their silos of specialsed skills and knowledge through not
>> being fully educated at school and uni with broad based skills.
>> Specilaiation is based on economic efficiency (As is networked technology
>> i.e the brain chip, rfid, biometrics internet of things), Gato elucidates
>> on how this schooling specialisation then impacts on the cohesion of
>> community.
>> Gatto is about wholistic teaching and learning, alot of his work has been
>> documenting the impact on community and society from the schoolng system to
>> make specialists to this end:
>> John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Quote <http://liberty-tree.ca/>
>> "In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our
>> molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and
>> character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we
>> work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.
>> We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into
>> philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors,
>> educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists,
>> painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen
>> -- of whom we have an ample supply.
>> The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a
>> perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect
>> way."
>> Most educators I meet don't consider where the education system evolved
>> from ("An operating system for the mind". ) , it's something I need to
>> understand more, The home schooling movement refered to in the orignal post
>> form Nancy is a reaction to this JD Rockefeller/ Bankster mindset. I think
>> "Devil's Pact" is quite a fair term to use from what I've read has been
>> planned and is planned for individual's learning in the future in pursuit of
>> maximum efficiency and exploitng the worker bees thinking for the economy.
>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 5:55 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>> I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that
>>> Gatto apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to
>>> see the connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work
>>> to compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who
>>> can assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
>>> liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
>>> anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
>>> desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
>>> I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it
>>> is so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
>>> All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be
>>> found in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
>>> supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
>>> views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
>>> A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
>>> does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
>>> workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
>>> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>>> Hi Nancy
>>>> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
>>>> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
>>>> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
>>>> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner,
>>>> provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other
>>>> services, and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for
>>>> children
>>>> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
>>>> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
>>>> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
>>>> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
>>>> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
>>>> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
>>>> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
>>>> stick."
>>>> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
>>>> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
>>>> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
>>>> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
>>>> of one's own volition."
>>>> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
>>>> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
>>>> accepting what
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Barbara Dieu <beeonl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> oops..I have posted my answer to the other thread as a reaction -
> conversation between threads - but it should go in here...so pasting it here
> again ...sorry
> >Given that my entire family are school teachers, homeschooling will be
> very difficult. But we will be looking for an active community.
> Cuando éramos niños en la Patagonia - Google Books http://bit.ly/e2YUS > reports on the lives of a group of Belgian families who emigrated to
> the Chilean Patagonia after WWII - with a doctor, a teacher and a
> priest and established themselves in Chile Chico for some decades.
> Like many others around the world, they started from scratch, lived on
> agriculture and all the children were schooled by and in the
> community. Later many moved to Santiago and did their higher studies
> there. I met the children and grandchildren from one of these
> families, who are now artists, dentists, journalists, doctors,
> engineers...
> http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.htm<http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.html>
> The original families themselves, however, had been part of a well-educated
> elite in Belgium so they could pass it on to their children. What is
> terrible is when school (as it is) is the only way out for many kids and
> home does not provide them with the needed community and healthy
> environment.
> Warm regards,
> Bee
Sparks, read Illich's Tools of Coviviality with me!? I'm about 1/2 way
through. I'm doing a paragraph or two each day, reading slowly, tweeting
quotes for notes and reach out #illich. What you paraphrase about self
sufficiency is similar to what Illich means by conviviality. This read is
not as smooth as his Deschooling, but it has diamonds in its rough.
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Barbara Dieu <beeonl...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> oops..I have posted my answer to the other thread as a reaction -
>> conversation between threads - but it should go in here...so pasting it here
>> again ...sorry
>> >Given that my entire family are school teachers, homeschooling will be
>> very difficult. But we will be looking for an active community.
>> Cuando éramos niños en la Patagonia - Google Books http://bit.ly/e2YUS >> reports on the lives of a group of Belgian families who emigrated to
>> the Chilean Patagonia after WWII - with a doctor, a teacher and a
>> priest and established themselves in Chile Chico for some decades.
>> Like many others around the world, they started from scratch, lived on
>> agriculture and all the children were schooled by and in the
>> community. Later many moved to Santiago and did their higher studies
>> there. I met the children and grandchildren from one of these
>> families, who are now artists, dentists, journalists, doctors,
>> engineers...
>> http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.htm<http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.html>
>> The original families themselves, however, had been part of a
>> well-educated elite in Belgium so they could pass it on to their children.
>> What is
>> terrible is when school (as it is) is the only way out for many kids and
>> home does not provide them with the needed community and healthy
>> environment.
>> Warm regards,
>> Bee
> Sparks, read Illich's Tools of Coviviality with me!? I'm about 1/2 way
> through. I'm doing a paragraph or two each day, reading slowly, tweeting
> quotes for notes and reach out #illich. What you paraphrase about self
> sufficiency is similar to what Illich means by conviviality. This read is
> not as smooth as his Deschooling, but it has diamonds in its rough.
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> Barb recommend this awesome interview in relation to your post.
>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Barbara Dieu <beeonl...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>> oops..I have posted my answer to the other thread as a reaction -
>>> conversation between threads - but it should go in here...so pasting it here
>>> again ...sorry
>>> >Given that my entire family are school teachers, homeschooling will be
>>> very difficult. But we will be looking for an active community.
>>> Cuando éramos niños en la Patagonia - Google Books http://bit.ly/e2YUS >>> reports on the lives of a group of Belgian families who emigrated to
>>> the Chilean Patagonia after WWII - with a doctor, a teacher and a
>>> priest and established themselves in Chile Chico for some decades.
>>> Like many others around the world, they started from scratch, lived on
>>> agriculture and all the children were schooled by and in the
>>> community. Later many moved to Santiago and did their higher studies
>>> there. I met the children and grandchildren from one of these
>>> families, who are now artists, dentists, journalists, doctors,
>>> engineers...
>>> http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.htm<http://chilechicobelgas.blogspot.com/2005_11_22_archive.html>
>>> The original families themselves, however, had been part of a
>>> well-educated elite in Belgium so they could pass it on to their children.
>>> What is
>>> terrible is when school (as it is) is the only way out for many kids and
>>> home does not provide them with the needed community and healthy
>>> environment.
>>> Warm regards,
>>> Bee
> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide
> evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other services,
> and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children
> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
> stick."
> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex range
> of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he differed
> from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and surrendering all
> judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss of one's own
> volition."
> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
> function in this participatory way."
> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow piece.
> If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to suppress
> all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a highly
> unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the network
> will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you enter
> into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into many
> specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes of
> finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create a
> large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
> need less."
> ---------------------
> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
> the escape routes from mass schooling."
> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people to
> associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
> sufficient nutrients."
> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is not
> education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by
> locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
> parents."
> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other, on
> the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
> ---------
> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
> disconnection of the generations."
> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
> continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
> lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
> effect, anoint a machine our king."
> "Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
> unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
> has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
> service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
> employment. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to
> defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the
> national wealth to distribute to its personnel."
> "It was this philistine potential-- that teaching the young for pay would
> inevitably expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not
> students-- that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in
> ancient Greece."
> "For 150 years, institutional education has seen fit to offer as its main
> purpose the preparation for economic success. Good education = good job,
> good money, good things. This has become the universal national banner,
> hoisted by Harvards as well as high schools. The absurdity of defining
> education as an economic good becomes clear if we ask ourselves what is
> gained by perceiving education as a way to enhance even further runaway
> consumption that threatens the earth, the air, and the water of our planet?
> Should we continue to teach people that they can buy happiness in the face
> of a tidal wave of evidence that they cannot?"
> "What, after all this time is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be?
> Reading, writing and arithmetic can't be the answer... It divides and
> classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other,
> and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying
> them as "low-class" material. And the bottom line for the winners is that
> they can buy more stuff!"
> "An important difference between communities and institutions is that
> communities have natural limits; they stop growing or they die. There's a
> good reason for this: in the best communities everyone is a special person
> who sooner or later impinges on everyone else's consciousness... However,
> networks, like schools, expand indefinitely, just as long as they can get
> away with it. "More" may not be "better," but "more" is always more
> profitable for the people who make a living out of networking."
> --------
> "The culture of schools only coheres in response to a web of material
> rewards and punishments. A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars, "good"
> classes, access to a photocopy machine. Everything we know about why people
> drive themselves to know things and do their best is contradicted inside
> these places."
> "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a
> conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to
> tackle the big challenges. What's gotten in the way is the theory that says
> there is one right way to proceed with growing up. That's an ancient
> Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top-- everyone is a
> stone defined by its position on the pyramid-- it signals a worldview of
> minds obsessed with the control of other minds, obsessed by dominance and
> strategies of intervention to maintain that dominance."
> "The humming of the great hive society foreseen by Francis Bacon, and by
> H.G. Wells in The Sleeper Awakes, has never sounded louder than it does to
> us right now. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an
> invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with
> bells and horns all the time and they will learn nothing is important; force
> them to plead for the natural right to the toilet, and they will become
> liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human
> association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The
> habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly."
> "Individuality, family, and community, on the other hand, are, by
> definition, expressions of singular organization, never
> I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that Gatto
> apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to see the
> connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work to
> compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who can
> assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
> liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
> anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
> desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
> I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
> so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
> All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be found
> in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
> supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
> views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
> A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
> does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
> workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Nancy
> > Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
> > system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
> > Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
> > Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide
> > evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other services,
> > and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children
> > John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
> > "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
> > general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
> > its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
> > communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
> > solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
> > self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
> > stick."
> > "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
> > range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
> > differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
> > surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
> > of one's own volition."
> > "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
> > where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
> > accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
> > buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
> > real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
> > function in this participatory way."
> > "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
> > piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
> > suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
> > highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
> > network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
> > enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
> > many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
> > available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
> > successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
> > courts and therapists of many varieties)."
> > "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes of
> > finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create a
> > large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
> > need less."
> > ---------------------
> > "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
> > Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
> > because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
> > the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
> > entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
> > the escape routes from mass schooling."
> > "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
> > to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
> > networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
> > much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
> > who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
> > sufficient nutrients."
> > "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
> > not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
> > by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
> > ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
> > same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
> > grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
> > replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
> > humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
> > parents."
> > "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
> > on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
> > be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
> > "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
> > marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
> > no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
> > come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
> > synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
> > ---------
> > "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
> > mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
> > the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
> > the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
> > young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
> > disconnection of the generations."
> > "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
> > aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
> > well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
> > continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
> > lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
> > effect, anoint a machine our king."
> > "Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
> > unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
> > has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
> > service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
> > employment. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to
> > defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the
> > national wealth to distribute to its personnel."
> > "It was this philistine potential-- that teaching the young for pay would
> > inevitably expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not
> > students-- that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in
> > ancient Greece."
> > "For 150 years, institutional education has seen fit to offer as its main
> > purpose the preparation for economic success. Good education = good job,
> > good money, good things. This has become the universal national banner,
> > hoisted by Harvards as well as high schools. The absurdity of defining
> > education as an economic good becomes clear if we ask ourselves what is
> > gained by perceiving education as a way to enhance even further runaway
> > consumption that threatens the earth, the air, and the water of our planet?
> > Should we continue to teach people that they can buy happiness in the face
> > of a tidal wave of evidence that they cannot?"
> > "What, after all this time is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be?
> > Reading, writing and arithmetic can't be the answer... It divides and
> > classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other,
> > and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying
> > them as "low-class" material. And the bottom line for the winners is that
> > they can buy more stuff!"
> > "An important difference between communities and institutions is that
> > communities have natural limits; they stop growing or they die. There's a
> > good reason for this: in the best communities everyone is a special person
> > who sooner or later impinges on everyone else's consciousness... However,
> > networks, like schools, expand indefinitely, just as long as they can get
> > away with it. "More" may not be "better," but "more" is always more
> > profitable for the people who make a living out of networking."
> > --------
> > "The culture of schools only coheres in response to a web of material
> > rewards and punishments. A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars,
> Negroponte is a freak out! I'm sorry to generalise with insensitivity
> towards those who share some of his traits, but his language and accent,
> loaded with his narrow logic boardering on religious obsession, is quite
> frankly frightening - horrible, yet nothing new, to be expected from his
> class, gender and nationality. What frightens me most is that he is using
> the issue and ideas of dechooling that I also subsribe to, and pushing his
> overwhelming agenda with it. Suddenly I don't like the company on this
> bandwagon.
> What struck me in my short time in America (and that has struck me in the
> years I have been interacting with Americans online) is how totally unaware
> they generally are of things outside themselves. But I can understand that,
> because what is inside most Americans I have met and interacted with is
> quite frankly impressive and often amazing! (or ShitHot as Mike would say :)
> Most English peaking people I have met are self absorbed like this to some
> degree, but it becomes so nakedly bare for Americans because they have the
> resources and technology to project themselves and all their flaws, all over
> everyone else.
> OLPC started as an experiment, and we were all excited by it to some degree
> (although we should have known better). When the experiment started
> returning evidence of failure or worse, they don't/won't take the
> "scientific" view.
> The best shut down to the OLPC experiment would have to be:
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that
> > Gatto apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to
> > see the connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work
> > to compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who
> > can assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
> > liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
> > anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
> > desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
> > I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
> > so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
> > All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be found
> > in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
> > supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
> > views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
> > A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
> > does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
> > workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
> > On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >> Hi Nancy
> >> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
> >> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
> >> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
> >> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner,
> >> provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other
> >> services, and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for
> >> children
> >> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
> >> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
> >> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
> >> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
> >> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
> >> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
> >> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
> >> stick."
> >> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
> >> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
> >> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
> >> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
> >> of one's own volition."
> >> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
> >> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
> >> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
> >> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
> >> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
> >> function in this participatory way."
> >> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
> >> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
> >> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
> >> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
> >> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
> >> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
> >> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
> >> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
> >> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
> >> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
> >> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes
> >> of finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create
> >> a large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
> >> need less."
> >> ---------------------
> >> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
> >> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
> >> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
> >> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
> >> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
> >> the escape routes from mass schooling."
> >> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
> >> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
> >> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
> >> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
> >> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
> >> sufficient nutrients."
> >> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
> >> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
> >> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
> >> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
> >> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
> >> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
> >> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
> >> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
> >> parents."
> >> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
> >> on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
> >> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
> >> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
> >> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
> >> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
> >> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
> >> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
> >> ---------
> >> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
> >> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
> >> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
> >> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
> >> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
> >> disconnection of the generations."
> >> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
> >> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
> >> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
> >> continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
> >> lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
> >> effect, anoint a machine our king."
> >> "Nearly a century ago, a French sociologist wrote that every institution's
> >> unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it
> >> has nominally staked out for itself. Thus, the first goal of the postal
> >> service is not to deliver the mail, it is to provide protection for
> >> employment. The first goal of a permanent
"........What struck me in my short time in America (and that has
struck me in the
years I have been interacting with Americans online) is how totally
unaware
they generally are of things outside themselves. But I can understand
that,
because what is inside most Americans I have met and interacted with
is
quite frankly impressive and often amazing! (or ShitHot as Mike would
say :) ...."
My god Leigh.....couldnt you have been a little more kind on your
hosts ?
On Sep 28, 6:26 am, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Negroponte is a freak out! I'm sorry to generalise with insensitivity
> towards those who share some of his traits, but his language and accent,
> loaded with his narrow logic boardering on religious obsession, is quite
> frankly frightening - horrible, yet nothing new, to be expected from his
> class, gender and nationality. What frightens me most is that he is using
> the issue and ideas of dechooling that I also subsribe to, and pushing his
> overwhelming agenda with it. Suddenly I don't like the company on this
> bandwagon.
> What struck me in my short time in America (and that has struck me in the
> years I have been interacting with Americans online) is how totally unaware
> they generally are of things outside themselves. But I can understand that,
> because what is inside most Americans I have met and interacted with is
> quite frankly impressive and often amazing! (or ShitHot as Mike would say :)
> Most English peaking people I have met are self absorbed like this to some
> degree, but it becomes so nakedly bare for Americans because they have the
> resources and technology to project themselves and all their flaws, all over
> everyone else.
> OLPC started as an experiment, and we were all excited by it to some degree
> (although we should have known better). When the experiment started
> returning evidence of failure or worse, they don't/won't take the
> "scientific" view.
> The best shut down to the OLPC experiment would have to be:
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighblack...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > I didn't read all of Steven's mega dump, but found the connection that
> > Gatto apparently makes between school and networks curious. I struggle to
> > see the connection, when in very many schools these days, they actively work
> > to compliment the family and community values. Schools that have people who
> > can assist with housing, food, and meeting other parents, as well as police
> > liaison etc.. This doesn't mean I personally value or appreciate schools
> > anymore, I think family and community (if they as groups are in fact
> > desirable to people) can be complimented in many other ways besides school.
> > I think Gatto's critique of networks is interesting but a pitty that it is
> > so loaded with emotionally biased words. I mean "devil's pacts" really!
> > All those things human that he argues a network breaks, can easily be found
> > in notions of family and community. Consider the recent and continued
> > supression of women in such groups, homosexuality, transgenderism, counter
> > views on the religion or politics of the group.. on and on and on.
> > A networked relationship to the world is neither ideal or perfect, and it
> > does seem to disrupt localised groups like families, community and
> > workplaces.. but that might actually be a good thing(?)
> > On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Steven Parker <sparke...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >> Hi Nancy
> >> Some good links in relation to Gatto and his research on the schooling
> >> system. Particlualry interesting in relation to his comments on networks.
> >> Institutions Need Networks; Human Beings Need Communities
> >> Dumbing Us Down: This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner,
> >> provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, among other
> >> services, and would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for
> >> children
> >> John Taylor Gatto argues that 'We Need Less School, Not More':
> >> "People who admire our school institution usually admire networking in
> >> general and have an easy time seeing its positive side, but they overlook
> >> its negative aspect: networks, even good ones, drain the vitality from
> >> communities and families. They provide mechanical ("by-the-numbers")
> >> solutions to human problems, when a slow, organic process of self-awareness,
> >> self-discovery, and cooperation is what is required if any solution is to
> >> stick."
> >> "Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex
> >> range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human; in that he
> >> differed from Plato. What is gained from consulting a specialist and
> >> surrendering all judgement is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss
> >> of one's own volition."
> >> "This discovery accounts for the curious texture of real communication,
> >> where people argue with their doctors, lawyers and ministers... instead of
> >> accepting what they get... they frequently make their own food instead of
> >> buying it in a restaurant and perform many similar acts of participation. A
> >> real community is, of course, a collection of real families who themselves
> >> function in this participatory way."
> >> "Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow
> >> piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you to
> >> suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part-- a
> >> highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the
> >> network will deliver efficiency in the pursuite of some limited aim. If you
> >> enter into too many of these devil's bargains, you will split yourself into
> >> many specialized pieces-- none of them completely human-- and no time is
> >> available to reintegrate them. This, ironically, is the destiny of many
> >> successful networkers (and doubtless generates much business for divorce
> >> courts and therapists of many varieties)."
> >> "If we face the present school and community crisis squarely, with hopes
> >> of finding a better way, we need to accept that schools, as networks, create
> >> a large part of the agony of modern life. We don't need more schooling-- we
> >> need less."
> >> ---------------------
> >> "Yet compulsory schooling in factory schools is a very recent, very
> >> Massachusetts/ New York development. Now, it is much harder to escape
> >> because another form of mass schooling-- television-- has spread all over
> >> the place to blot up any attention spared by school. Mass commercial
> >> entertainment, as addictive as any other hallucinogenic drug, has blocked
> >> the escape routes from mass schooling."
> >> "Unlike communities, networks have a very narrow way of allocating people
> >> to associate... If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in
> >> networks is not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit
> >> much like the 'trout starvation' that used to strike wilderness explorers
> >> who ate only stream fish-- the eater gradually suffers for want of
> >> sufficient nutrients."
> >> "Networks, like schools, are not communities, just as school training is
> >> not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young,
> >> by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by
> >> ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the
> >> same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we
> >> grade vegetables, network schools steal the vitality of communities and
> >> replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their
> >> humanity intact, not kids, nt teachers, not administrators, and not
> >> parents."
> >> "Networks divide people, first from themselves, and then from each other,
> >> on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a task. It may well
> >> be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being alive."
> >> "Institutions, so say their political philosophers, are better at creating
> >> marching orders for the human race than families are; therefore they should
> >> no longer be expected to follow, but to lead. Institutional leaders have
> >> come to regard themselves as great synthetic fathers to millions of
> >> synthetic children, by which I mean all of us."
> >> ---------
> >> "Large cities have great difficulty supporting healthy community life...
> >> mostly because of the constant competition of institutions and networks for
> >> the custody of children and old people. By isolating the young and old from
> >> the working life of places, and by isolating the working population from the
> >> young and old, institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental
> >> disconnection of the generations."
> >> "Over ninety-percent of the U.S. population now lives inside fifty urban
> >> aggregations. Having been concentrated there as the end product of a fairly
> >> well-understood historical process, they are denied a reciprocal part in any
> >> continuous, well-articulated community. By redirecting the focus of our
> >> lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in
> >> effect, anoint a machine our king."
|
