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A comment on Deschooling Society.

Re:Deschooling Society by Alex3917 on Sunday August 24, 2008 @10:23AM (#285169)
This is an interesting book. The thesis is basically that the way most of our public institutions are set up the government supplies the razor and the citizen buys the blades. This is bad because A) everyone pays for the razor but only the rich get the benefits because only they can afford the blades B) it forces everyone into the same "school" of education, healthcare, etc. "Deschooling society" is sort of a pun that refers to both public schools but also schools of thought.

Anyway the last time I submitted something from this book it was deleted. Not marked dead, actually deleted. But check out the section on learning webs, it's a cool vision of computer-mediated social networking from 1971.

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Re:Deschooling Society by whalliburton on Sunday August 24, 2008 @01:46PM (#285279)
Yes! Learning webs. Webs of all types.

I envision "the next big thing" as connecting needs with wants outside of the current economic and social structures, down to the smallest scale.

Teacher learns as much as the student.

Sue likes teaching cooking. Sally wants to learn and will bring food.

Grandma Bessy needs someone to help move a few things around the apartment and can pay $1. Joe is downstairs chilling on a stoop, could use a buck and likes helping people.

Will likes teaching programming and gets the bug for a little community hacking session. Scott and Joe and Sue and Larisa are dying to have a little mentoring and work on real cool problems, even if for a night.

Corner farmers market is nearing close and half the produce is about to be discarded. Community center has a nice kitchen and who wants fresh vegetable soup?

Connections and options that would never have occurred otherwise.

Throw in a recommendation engine and reviews of the participants.

Outsourcing on the micro scale.

Temporary autonomous zones.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Deschooling Society by omouse on Sunday August 24, 2008 @02:33PM (#285315)
What's sad about what you're suggesting is that it's exactly how a proper community is supposed to function! You don't even need the Internet to whelp with this, a community center bulletin board will do as long as someone's around to do the leg work and make it the place to check first.

sigh. There is a problem with our society when we have to re-discover what it means to be in a community.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Deschooling Society by whalliburton on Sunday August 24, 2008 @02:54PM (#285339)
Yes, but you work with what you have, and we have many a broken segmented community. This is just making the bulletin board virtual and helping out with the legwork.
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Re:Deschooling Society by Alex3917 on Sunday August 24, 2008 @02:08PM (#285291)
"Corner farmers market is nearing close and half the produce is about to be discarded. Community center has a nice kitchen and who wants fresh vegetable soup?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=67759

I'm pretty sure that I'm your future self :-P

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Deschooling Society by DanielBMarkham on Sunday August 24, 2008 @11:09AM (#285190)
Intellectual, provocative material. Certainly not flame bait.

I didn't have time to go through all of it. I'm assuming that the author doesn't claim to be Moses or start talking about armed revolution or anything radicalized. It looked like well-reasoned, but controversial opinions. Just the kind of stuff to sink your teeth in and practice your critical thinking skills.

So I voted it up.

Wonder why it was deleted last time? Did I miss something in my scan of the text?

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Re:Deschooling Society by jyothi on Monday August 25, 2008 @02:50AM (#285741)
I stumbled upon this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2005education_spending.PN...

Public spending on education in 2005 as a percentage of the top government (USA - $734,893,675,000)

Here is the worldbank report on how much every country top govt spends on education. (an old report but says it all) http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/...

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