[p2p-research] On unschooling

Tue Apr 28 04:20:52 CEST 2009

added this as a comment at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/an-unschooling-manifesto/2009/04/27

I have to agree with Edward's feelings on this. Though I hated school
myself, I experienced that one of my children did not fit well in an
alternative and relatively unstructured school environment, and she wanted
to join a more disciplined learning environment, where she thrived, and she
was happy in public school all the way to graduation.

Less personal: public school, despite all its flaws, was instrumental of
social advance and equality of opportunity, and it worked rather well in
this until the advent of neoliberalism started to starve public education of
funds. What's wrong in my opinion, is not 'places' of learning, but rather
their centralized management, which discourages and demoralizes local school
establishments.

I think the debate echoes the old left/right divide, the left assumes that
people are naturally 'good', full of potential; the right that people are
naturally enclined to evil, unless strong institutions guide them. Why not
accept both truths, but above all create a system with broad freedom of
school, so that unschoolers can unschool, alternative education methods can
thrive, and those that prefer a disciplined method also have choices, with
the partner state authorities imposing only a minimal skillset requirement,
to insure equality of opportunity for all.

Like Edward, I would not trust that every human being would want to
naturally do the effort of learning, and also that especially those living
in less privileged social situations, would get larger doses of assistance.

Michel

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>
>
>
> --
> Sam Rose
> Social Synergy
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>
>
>
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> Do not imagine we are still chained to that rock...."
>
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