Deschooling Society Online!

[arisbe]

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.

This appeared my first year of graduate school in education, and I took the opportunity of inviting Msgr. Illich to address the student body of Teachers College, much to the dismay of Professor Maxine Greene, the queen of political correctness, well described by a radical colleague as a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Comments

[fixnwrtr.livejournal.com]

Something I never understood is why most people stopped at the teacher's lectures. They were a jumping off point for me, a sort of sign post along the way to something much more interesting. And I have continued to expand my 'education' the same way. The Msgr. was right. Every movie, book, lecture, essay, newspaper report or article is a chance to look beyond what is written and expand on what is given. It's like learning to paint or play music. You study the masters, their intonations and brush strokes, their style and color, and you build on that. You learn how to move beyond what becomes muscle memory into a style and reality of your own.

Yes!

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

That's the way it should be, but too frequently isn't.