reading a string of long words…

(on Against school: an epistemological critique)

Including french….. ‘essence and raison d’être
of the school is, in fact, normalisation’, …..
In other words, the school, and education as currently conceived and represented by the school, as a site of equity, is a lost cause.

It’s interesting to read this while studying at school, in this instance, Massy University. Then responding to the readings, trying ever so hard to respond in academic language, the language of the school..  yet retaining one’s sense of self.. I decided to take this course because I am sick of not being listened to. I was thinking that if I had letters from the system, people might take what I say as the opinion of an educated person. A bit of the look at the letters after their name, they must know what they are talking about. The lack of recognition of an autodidact. Hypocritical?

I was excited to read an article against school… for the first paragraph. This article has too much academicese.. Maybe it says very little but in a way expressing its academic credentials – “we refute school, but check out how schooled we are.” hmmmmm.

I think some of the things the article is trying to say are:

People, money, and society are so invested in schools that they can’t let them go. Was I somewhat complicit in this as I partly chose teaching because these jobs are guaranteed as long as there are children and can be done in most places, including the country. (the role of the school as an economic centre?)

If you keep doing the same thing, you get the same results – people tutu around the edges and call it change, that they are doing something different, not realising it is still the same thing.

By having schools chosing the success criteria, defining what learning looks like/is, and what an educated person is, schools are now measuring themselves against something they are designed to fullful, therefore not only does this pioritise their success but it this doesn’t allow success in other forms because only their kind of success is counted as success – therefore instituting failure.

Schools function in normalisation. (I get this all the time as an anti homeschooling sentiment) Schools make us educated, cultured, grown-up, functional, …homo economicus

Against school – rests on a recognition of students as inde-
pendent ethical beings capable of reflection and decision-making and of taking responsibility for their identity and their social relations and at the same time accepting the necessity of failure, dissonance, and conflict – a kind of consequentialist pedagogy. CHOICE. I totally agree.

I’ve started reading Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society.-  so good, and I highly recommend it.

The thought experiment of thinking of a school as treatment and that the poor need more treatment as the cure of poverty is education, and education equals schools, equals treatment… but all this does is make the difference bigger! and what was on the news today? truancy. And more money to build more jails….

This book was published in 1971, and he was talking about pollution, excessive consumption, and what we were doing to the environment. So sad.