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Thursday, May 5, 2005
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 Thursday, May 5, 2005
started 5/5/2005; 3:12:11 AM - last post 5/5/2005; 1:59:04 PM
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Doc Searls - Thursday, May 5, 2005 
5/5/2005; 7:12:11 AM (reads: 7137, responses: 4)
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Wonder why we just heard about it 
Here we go again
| | Amazon has a new patent that seems to cover past and future blogware, plus who knows what else. More over at IT Garage. |
The business of America isn't busyness
| | Republicans should not seem to require, de facto, what the Constitution forbids, de jure: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust." |
| | Americans really don't like busybodies telling them what to do. |
Long tale
| | Later last night, while the pan was soaking and the kids were sleeping, I returned to read Getting Flat, Part 2 from Linux Journal. Doc's piece, with references to works by Thomas Friedman and John Taylor Gatto hit me with its truth immediately, in a way that soaks into the soul. Although I had other duties that needed to get done last night, I wanted to post on it ASAP. While I sorted through piles of papers and evaluated bills, Doc's words continued to cook in my mind... |
| | I made some confessions in GFP2: that I was a miserable student, that by eighth grade I had an IQ score at the low end of the bell curve, that if my parents hadn't intervened I would have been shunted off with the other academic failures to learn a "trade" at the local vocational/technical high school. Now I'll make another one: I think GFP2 is the most important essay I've written in years — just because it might save, or at least change for the better, the life of some kid whose sovereign genius isn't suited for the mill we call school. |
| | We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, lib, erty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed. |
| | There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing. |
| | Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down." |
| | It's hard for those graced by success in school to see the mill for the absurd machine it is. Julie sees it, though. And she makes a confession of her own: |
| | Doc's piece impacted me enough that I am willing to reveal something I've been reluctant to write on this blog in the past. He begins with a critique of Microsoft's belief in the bell curve. |
| | What's wrong here isn't simply the focus on Microsoft in a country where open source is a huge phenomenon. It's that both Tom and Microsoft continue to believe IQ tests are important ways to measure citizens in a flat world. Because if there's one thing the world is flattening fast, it's the old caste system we call The Bell Curve. |
| | Although I've never worked at Microsoft, I may be able to understand part of the company's culture and values. Why? I attended the same high school founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen did... |
| | Lakeside did provide me with a challenging academic education. Teachers at the school played important support roles in my life when I needed other adults to care for me. For those two factors I am grateful. The private school helped me survive adolescence, mentally and emotionally. I also became active as a runner on sports teams, developing physical abilities I wouldn't have discovered if had I stayed in a larger school. |
| | But Lakeside is also a culture - or at least it was a culture - that emphasized the belief in the elite, rather than belief in everyone. With words the school may say otherwise, but de facto, by definition, it values intelligence that can be measured on tests, prizing and thereby preserving belief in the tip of the bell curve. |
| | By the way, all this might also help explain why I chafe at the caste system implied in labels like "Alpha blogger." |
| | What I love about blogging is that it isn't school. Instead it's a great way to discover how the long, flat tail features plenty of original and brilliant individuals. These good folks succeed by earning links, not grades. It's a much better, and a much flatter, system. |
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Patrick Misterovich - Re: Thursday, May 5, 2005
5/5/2005; 11:53:52 AM (reads: 464, responses: 1)
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When I read "Getting Flat" my first reaction was "I think I understand better why I quit teaching." I went into teaching with great enthusiasm. It wasn't that I wanted to change the world; I thought it would give me a chance to work in a creative environment. There were moments of creativity, joy, and fun. But by and large it felt like my soul was being sucked out of me 50 minutes at a time; I am sure the students felt the same.
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JTH - Re: Thursday, May 5, 2005
5/5/2005; 2:06:34 PM (reads: 602, responses: 0)
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Doc:
Man...You struck a chord
Many, many, thoughts triggered by your piece (and Julie's)
First read it 4AM, and have mulled it over for a while.
Quick one for Patrick
I too tried teaching, but had the same reaction, I saw, quite quickly, that I would not be able to hold up.
Excellent on the "Factory Factor" aspect of schools
Let's not call schools, education, other than "life skills" of dealing with others.
I covered some ideas in comment to Julie
Let's jump to IQ
True, tests are flawed, sometimes greatly flawed
But the ideas that the "Bell Curve" doesn't apply to the Flat World, in my opinion, are wrong.
If anything, it applies in spades.
Having dealt with a wide range of folks over the years, from being a day laborer to guest lecturing at a University, to my current positions with small companies and on Foundation boards, I've met many people from many walks of life.
Not all have the same capabilities, there are many who get by, but "just don't get it"
Job descriptions or positions are not the determinant. I've had friends and associates who were National Merit Scholars and Mensa members, partnered with PhD's, as well as those who barely got through school.
Note that Mensa designation doesn't connote life skills!
Degrees and schooling do not equal intelligence. Some of the absolutely brightest people I've had the pleasure to be friends with either never finished college or barely so. Some have chosen simple lives, mechanics and technicians.
But there is a difference, bright people can grasp new ideas and concepts, while some (most?) folks just plain can not.
I'm rambling, but the Bell Curve does exist.
The message Tom Friedman brings is both that there are bright people everywhere, and that there are many not so bright people in our midst.
Challenge going forward ... how to encourage and nurture all to be "the best they can be" ?
How to move beyond the "worker bees" model ?
(note - did a couple of edits as something is doing serious hash on some of the characters..)
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tuur - Re: Thursday, May 5, 2005
5/5/2005; 4:49:57 PM (reads: 991, responses: 0)
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On going forward:
I believe encouraging is not needed for childeren.
Nurturing is not needed for children.
Every human being is programmed with the will to learn.
We learn to speak spontaneously,
why wouldn't we be able to learn to write spontaneously?
If writing is seen as a mean to reach a certain goal,
children will learn it by themselves. Same for all other fields of knowledge. By leaving the initiative with the child - allowing boredom - it will be forced to think about what it wants to do. The child will come to realise that nothing changes unless it takes initiative. If children aren't being taught to be passive and helpless, they will create their own goals and overcome the (learning) challenges on the way. They will overcome these challenges from an intrinsic motivation, not because of external punishment or reward.
This is not just theory, it has been succesfully put in practice for over thirty years in the Sudbury Valley School (www.sudval.org) and the democratic Sudbury schools are steadily spreading over the world.
I myself,since I'm not satisfied with what university is offering, am educating myself by blogging and Wikilearning.
I'm really proud to be able to have teachers as Doc Searls, Christopher Locke, Dave Pollard, Dan Gillmore. And blogs like Corante and Nanobot, ... And you bet I will have more interaction with these people than I ever will with my teachers at university.
Keep it up! And visit my blog, www.mylearningblog.org
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jim - Re: Thursday, May 5, 2005
5/5/2005; 5:59:04 PM (reads: 575, responses: 0)
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Hi Doc,
I never posted here before, but have always been a lurker. I really
appreciate your candor and honesty. Last week I read a post by Kathy on Headrush about the differences in Asians and Americans
perceptions/thinking. What struck me was how Asians think with more
context and background in mind. I thought, Hey! that's me!
I was one of those kids that just could not sit still or stay focused
without having lots of context. Today, they call it AD/HD Dyslexia. I
learned that because I have three kids just like me. Yes, the school
system encouraged us to have them tested and subsequently wanted them
medicated. Ha! They are bright, creative and turbo charged. Perfect for the flat world and whippin around the long tail. Thanks for continuing to write such provocative stuff!
Here is the post I wrote, hehehe I called it Half Naked: http://www.advancinginsights.com/mybiz/?q=node/199
BTW Speaking of OSS (drupal) that you use for linuxjournal, I have contibuted odds and ends or bytes and bites.
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