[p2p-research] On unschooling

Tue Apr 28 03:58:18 CEST 2009

Kevin, there is much merit in your insights here, I think.

John Taylor Gatto explains the history of forced schooling, and the
attitudes that extend into Universities, in *The Underground History of
American Education* [1] where he argues that education in the US is largely
meant to create a caste system, and has largely succeeded in doing this.

2 page sumarry from Digital Youth Research by Mizuko Ito et al [2] also
outlines the problems with coercive education, based on research about how
kids actually go about learning.

Some of this education is already shifting to smaller networks of mutual
mentors, open research and development enthusiasts, and others. I am
directly involved in forming mutual mentoring for people interested in
creating commons-based and networked business systems. We are also engaging
youth by creating a mentoring network where youth realize their
possibilities beyond "jobs and careers", and realize how to employ open
knowledge networks, open license design, and open source software to create
new form of youth self-employment, rapid decision making, collaborative
intelligence and civic engagement. Adults mentor, but projects and energies
are directed by youth.

While traveling around and taking to students and teachers in schools, we
discovered that youths often have little awareness of their possibilities.
And, we discovered that teachers and administrators are focused on antiquted
problems, like "declining enrollment", and the assumed need to close
schools, cut back on "costs" etc. Our proposal to schools is to do exactly
the opposite of what they are currently doing:

   - Instead of closing and demolishing unused schools, use the spaces for
   indoor hydronic and aquaculture food production, and flexible fabrication.
   Students can use the spaces to found businesses.
   - Switch focus from training students for careers with corporations, and
   compliance, to giving students liberty to learn from each other, and from
   innovators in their community.
   - Destroy the misconception that the only way to make money is to charge
   people for abundant goods that can instead be released under an open
   license, and exponentially innovated upon. Instead, help students to learn
   how to innovate, to find and serve ever-emerging niches within their local
   systems (whatever local means to them).

   1. John taylor Gatto, “The Underground History of American Education -
   John Taylor Gatto,” http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm.

     2.   “digitalyouth-TwoPageSummary.pdf,”
http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-TwoPageSummary.pdf
.

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> I tried to comment on Dave Pollar's recent excellent blog post on
> unschooling, and got a 403 error message.
> http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/04/25.html
>
> Here's the comment:
>
> Andrew:  You're right that some people can't guide their own
> education, but it could be that "guiding" them against their will
> won't result in any real learning anyway.  On the other hand, if some
> kind of learning is needed the experienced lack may be what eventually
> drives people into self-directed learning.  Robert Pirsig's comments
> (as "Phaedrus") on the "Church of Reason" might be relevant here:
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/02/phaedrus-on-church-of-reason.html
>
> I can relate, from personal experience, to the scenario "Phaedrus"
> describes.  When I was in high school, I was signed up for
> Pre-Calculus Algebra against my wishes, with my complaints brushed off
> dismissively:  "Well, you need math to get any kind of a good job
> these days."  At the time I was interested in history and political
> philosophy, and read extensively in those subjects on my own time.
> When my own reading interests competed with the hated Pre-Cal for my
> time, I wound up dropping out of Pre-Cal with a failing grade, and
> hated math for years afterward.
>
> Then a few years ago I wrote a book defending the classical political
> economists' labor theory of value against marginalism.  My review of
> marginalist literature focused mainly on the Austrians because of
> their relative freedom from higher math apparatus, and largely
> neglected neoclassical econ after Marshall.  I sorely felt the lack in
> the first edition of the book, and decided it needed to incorporate
> the neoclassical version of marginal analysis.  So now, after more
> than twenty years, I'm reteaching myself algebra and trig so I can
> pick up enough calculus to read 20th century econ.  It didn't become
> interesting to me until I perceived its relevants to my own,
> self-determined needs.
>
> Another anecdote:  A couple years ago, I saw a sign at a local
> bookstore announcing it carried Watership Down and the rest of the
> public schools' summer reading list.  Thank God, I said to myself,
> that we didn't have mandatory summer reading lists when I was in
> school.  I first read the book when I was about 40 or so, and loved
> it.  But if I'd been forced to read it against my will, via an act
> that I regarded as school bureaucrats stealing summer time that was
> rightfully my own, I'd have hated the book and cursed it to my dying
> day.
>
> I can't count the number of instances when I was confronted with
> something before I was ready to assimilate it, and then turned around
> years later and eagerly absorbed it when it became relevant to my
> interests.
>
> The problem is that coerced learning based on someone else's agenda
> can be pretty efficient at instilling a hatred of "learning," as much
> so as if that was the actual goal.  But then I've almost always been
> the sort of person who instinctively hates anything assigned to me by
> some authority figure sitting behind a desk (genuine work is to jobs
> as genuine learning is to schools).
>
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
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