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I agree. And it's such an easy target. Everybody hate schools. But the fact of the matter is that public schools were one of the prominent factors in reducing p

by mola 6y ago

I agree. And it's such an easy target. Everybody hate schools. But the fact of the matter is that public schools were one of the prominent factors in reducing poverty around the world. As in any institution, it may calcify and be corrupted. But that's just how systems are, injecting the right amount of innovation usually takes care of that. No need to throw the baby with the water, and rethink the whole paradigm. I think that usually the commodditization of social services is what actually kills these systems. They become a race to the bottom, where marketing gets to be more important than substance and genuine interest in quality. It's all about the middle path...

guidoism 6y ago
It's actually a pretty good time to rethink everything. The modern school was designed when most adults were illiterate, books were expensive, and we needed to train the population to work in our factories or join the military. Schools did a good job at that. But times are different. 1. Most adults are literate — When kids have questions about letters or words while they are teaching themselves to read they have a huge supply of adults and older children to get help from. 2. Books are so cheap to produce that we literally throw them away when we are done and the internet has provided the material for a lifetime of education for what is essentially free — And formats (like 3blue1brown animations that couldn't have been imagined a century ago). 3. We don't need to train the population to be obedient for factories or the military. Society can continue without so many people pretending to work. Let them continue to educated themselves until they discover something that benefits the rest of society.
- kiba 6y ago
  It's actually a pretty good time to rethink everything. The modern school was designed when most adults were illiterate, books were expensive, and we needed to train the population to work in our factories or join the military. Schools did a good job at that. Is this a historical reality that schools are built for factory style education? Citation is needed.
- JoBrad 6y ago
  Not sure to what extent we need to rethink primary education, vs refining it. Your points 1 and 2 are true _because_ the education system has excelled at increasing the knowledge of the average person.
- watwut 6y ago
  > 1. Most adults are literate — When kids have questions about letters or words while they are teaching themselves to read they have a huge supply of adults and older children to get help from. I had first grader during corona lock down and I can tell you that ability to read/write does not imply ability to help the kid to learn to read and write. This part about kids learning to read by themselves and by asking question of adults around of, frankly, complete nonsense for wast majority of kids.
aldendaniels 6y ago
Illich wasn't against school per-se. He was against compulsory school, centralized pedagogy, and other attributes of a "modern" (ala 1970s) schooling system in Western social democracies. He was particularly concerned with how the tenants of modernism affected developing nations (where he lived for much of his life) by pushing traditional methods into forced obsolescence in favor of ever-increasing reliance on social institutions. His views on policy may or may not be on point (he seems most comfortable in the area of principle and theory), but the conceptual core that relates his views on education to his views on cars and medicine merits consideration. He similarly wasn't against scientific medicine, but he thought the medical bureaucracy had outgrown its utility: that advances in specialized medicine were too expensive and served to prop up artificially unhealthy lives. A strong line of his argument is that past a tipping point of size/power, institutions will create the needs they serve. We create these artificial environments where it's hard for most people to thrive and then we create social institutions to compensate: a social prosthetic. The result in Illich's view is increasing passivity and helplessness: a petulant society composed of a disempowered citizenry. The argument no-doubt merits a balancing counter-argument, but I find it compelling and it goes deeper than a simplistic dismissal of school.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  > Illich wasn't against school per-se. There's a recording of a teacher asking how to infuse lessons from deschooling into her classroom and his response is basically "you can't". He's actually a bit rude about it tbh. Illich was opposed to schooling. He would have said he was in favor of "education". Nailing down what that would mean on the scale of a society, aside from learning webs, is a bit elusive. I think Illich provided a fantastic prognosis of certain problems but didn't develop workable solutions.
  - marnett 6y ago
    Most critical theory doesn’t come with a proposed set of workable solutions or policy suggestions. It is important to separate the expectation and allow critique to be just that. Anyhow, the first step to a solving a problem is identifying it; they need not be atomic operations.
watwut 6y ago
> I agree. And it's such an easy target. Everybody hate schools. This is not true. I dont hate schools. My kids dont hate schools. My friends did not hated schools and my kids friends dont hate schools. There are people, both adults and kids who hate school, of course. And then there are very crappy schools. Speaking to my collegues, they dont hate schools and only two hated school as a kid. And even these do like their kids schools, but they took more care about what is going on there (like they put more effort into selection of school). But I think that people HN are heavily biased against the schools, the way no other forum or social group I encountered is.
- mola 6y ago
  You are right, Of course I exggarated. But for a significant chunk of people I school is something you don't like. It's significant enough to be a cultural trope[0]. This makes it an easy target, and a useful hook to get support for any anti social institution criticism. [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuckySchool https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuckySchool
  - watwut 6y ago
    > But for a significant chunk of people I school is something you don't like. That is much milder sentiment through and I think the difference matters. And significant chunk of people perceives school positively or neutrally. > This makes it an easy target, and a useful hook to get support for any anti social institution criticism. My problem is that while I see this a lot on HN, I don't see it anywhere else. Including in people who loudly criticize this or that aspect of education or school. The positive attitude toward school is unrepresented on HN, despite being present in real life and in studies that measure attitudes. Similarly, the people on HN are way more pushing homeschooling then anyone else I know ... including people on forums for stay at home moms or general mom forums (who would be in position to do it and tend to be biased more toward family/children interests). Reading HN, one would believe that the only reason to not homeschool is that you cant afford one parent at home. And that those parents are unhappy for having kids in school and that those kids are unhappy. That sentiment is not present among people who are actually at home and could theoretically homeschool if they were inclined to. The whole thing seems to me political ideological. Some people here want everyone to hate the school, but it does not make it so.

by mola 6y ago

guidoism 6y ago

It's actually a pretty good time to rethink everything. The modern school was designed when most adults were illiterate, books were expensive, and we needed to train the population to work in our factories or join the military. Schools did a good job at that. But times are different. 1. Most adults are literate — When kids have questions about letters or words while they are teaching themselves to read they have a huge supply of adults and older children to get help from. 2. Books are so cheap to produce that we literally throw them away when we are done and the internet has provided the material for a lifetime of education for what is essentially free — And formats (like 3blue1brown animations that couldn't have been imagined a century ago). 3. We don't need to train the population to be obedient for factories or the military. Society can continue without so many people pretending to work. Let them continue to educated themselves until they discover something that benefits the rest of society.

kiba 6y ago
It's actually a pretty good time to rethink everything. The modern school was designed when most adults were illiterate, books were expensive, and we needed to train the population to work in our factories or join the military. Schools did a good job at that. Is this a historical reality that schools are built for factory style education? Citation is needed.
JoBrad 6y ago
Not sure to what extent we need to rethink primary education, vs refining it. Your points 1 and 2 are true _because_ the education system has excelled at increasing the knowledge of the average person.
watwut 6y ago
> 1. Most adults are literate — When kids have questions about letters or words while they are teaching themselves to read they have a huge supply of adults and older children to get help from. I had first grader during corona lock down and I can tell you that ability to read/write does not imply ability to help the kid to learn to read and write. This part about kids learning to read by themselves and by asking question of adults around of, frankly, complete nonsense for wast majority of kids.

aldendaniels 6y ago

Illich wasn't against school per-se. He was against compulsory school, centralized pedagogy, and other attributes of a "modern" (ala 1970s) schooling system in Western social democracies. He was particularly concerned with how the tenants of modernism affected developing nations (where he lived for much of his life) by pushing traditional methods into forced obsolescence in favor of ever-increasing reliance on social institutions. His views on policy may or may not be on point (he seems most comfortable in the area of principle and theory), but the conceptual core that relates his views on education to his views on cars and medicine merits consideration. He similarly wasn't against scientific medicine, but he thought the medical bureaucracy had outgrown its utility: that advances in specialized medicine were too expensive and served to prop up artificially unhealthy lives. A strong line of his argument is that past a tipping point of size/power, institutions will create the needs they serve. We create these artificial environments where it's hard for most people to thrive and then we create social institutions to compensate: a social prosthetic. The result in Illich's view is increasing passivity and helplessness: a petulant society composed of a disempowered citizenry. The argument no-doubt merits a balancing counter-argument, but I find it compelling and it goes deeper than a simplistic dismissal of school.

throwawaygh 6y ago
> Illich wasn't against school per-se. There's a recording of a teacher asking how to infuse lessons from deschooling into her classroom and his response is basically "you can't". He's actually a bit rude about it tbh. Illich was opposed to schooling. He would have said he was in favor of "education". Nailing down what that would mean on the scale of a society, aside from learning webs, is a bit elusive. I think Illich provided a fantastic prognosis of certain problems but didn't develop workable solutions.
- marnett 6y ago
  Most critical theory doesn’t come with a proposed set of workable solutions or policy suggestions. It is important to separate the expectation and allow critique to be just that. Anyhow, the first step to a solving a problem is identifying it; they need not be atomic operations.

watwut 6y ago

> I agree. And it's such an easy target. Everybody hate schools. This is not true. I dont hate schools. My kids dont hate schools. My friends did not hated schools and my kids friends dont hate schools. There are people, both adults and kids who hate school, of course. And then there are very crappy schools. Speaking to my collegues, they dont hate schools and only two hated school as a kid. And even these do like their kids schools, but they took more care about what is going on there (like they put more effort into selection of school). But I think that people HN are heavily biased against the schools, the way no other forum or social group I encountered is.

mola 6y ago
You are right, Of course I exggarated. But for a significant chunk of people I school is something you don't like. It's significant enough to be a cultural trope[0]. This makes it an easy target, and a useful hook to get support for any anti social institution criticism. [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuckySchool https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuckySchool
- watwut 6y ago
  > But for a significant chunk of people I school is something you don't like. That is much milder sentiment through and I think the difference matters. And significant chunk of people perceives school positively or neutrally. > This makes it an easy target, and a useful hook to get support for any anti social institution criticism. My problem is that while I see this a lot on HN, I don't see it anywhere else. Including in people who loudly criticize this or that aspect of education or school. The positive attitude toward school is unrepresented on HN, despite being present in real life and in studies that measure attitudes. Similarly, the people on HN are way more pushing homeschooling then anyone else I know ... including people on forums for stay at home moms or general mom forums (who would be in position to do it and tend to be biased more toward family/children interests). Reading HN, one would believe that the only reason to not homeschool is that you cant afford one parent at home. And that those parents are unhappy for having kids in school and that those kids are unhappy. That sentiment is not present among people who are actually at home and could theoretically homeschool if they were inclined to. The whole thing seems to me political ideological. Some people here want everyone to hate the school, but it does not make it so.