I've been hanging out at rigourous intuition a little bit recently, which is hard to do because that place will make you paranoid in about half a second but it got me thinking about the question of "are people ready" and "why is it so hard to get support" and even "people are idiots" and I dug around and found a link I had about just that. I've combed over multiple times over in the past, but how do we see this factoring into the 'mission'

Is it just CT-oid crap? I have a discussion saved somewhere about the dangers of equating education and knowledge in the first place, which strikes me as important.

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/education_index.htm

Anybody?

First, I disagree with the oft-expressed idea that the people are not ready, or that it is difficult to get support. What I see is that the support is there, but there is nothing to support; the people are ready, but the activists - the potential community leaders and organizers - are not. So I disagree with the premise.

Secondly, far more ignorant and more poorly educated populations have been successfully organized to overthrow tyranny in the past.

First, I disagree with the oft-expressed idea that the people are not ready, or that it is difficult to get support. What I see is that the support is there, but there is nothing to support; the people are ready, but the activists - the potential community leaders and organizers - are not. So I disagree with the premise.

Secondly, far more ignorant and more poorly educated populations have been successfully organized to overthrow tyranny in the past.

I don't think you have to lean either way on any of those questions to address this, because the thrust of it is reinterpreting the education system as the most entrenched arm of the sprawling propaganda machine.

Or at least that's I how take it.

EDIT: so in that context less 'education' would be better as it would just be less brainwashing that needed to be deprogrammed and less conditioning we had to break through for ourselves.

Education

27. Education is slavery, it enchains the mind and makes it a resource for class power. When the ruling class preaches the necessity of an education it invariably means an education in necessity. Education is not the same as knowledge. Nor is it the necessary means to acquire knowledge. Education is the organisation of knowledge within the constraints of scarcity. Education 'disciplines' knowledge, segregating it into homogenous 'fields', presided over by suitably 'qualified' guardians charged with policing the representation of the field. One may acquire an education, as if it were a thing, but one becomes knowledgeable, through a process of transformation. Knowledge, as such, is only ever partially captured by education, its practice always eludes and exceeds it.

28. The pastoralist class has resisted education, other than as indoctrination in obedience. When capital required 'hands' to do its dirty work, the bulk of education was devoted to training useful hands to tend the machines, and docile bodies who would accept as natural the social order in which they found themselves. When capital required brains, both to run its increasingly complex operations and to apply themselves to the work of consuming its products, more time spent in the prison house of education was required for admission to the ranks of the paid working class.

29. The so-called middle class achieve their privileged access to consumption and security through education, in which they are obliged to invest a substantial part of their income. But most remain workers, even though they work with information rather than cotton or metal. They work in factories, but are trained to think of them as offices. They take home wages, but are trained to think of it as a salary. They wear a uniform, but are trained to think of it as a suit. The only difference is that education has taught them to give different names to the instruments of exploitation, and to despise those their own class who name them differently.

30. Where the capitalist class sees education as a means to an end, the vectoralist class sees it as an end in itself. It sees opportunities to make education a profitable industry in its own right, based on the securing of intellectual property as a form of private property. To the vectoralists, education, like culture, is just 'content' for commodification.

31. The hacker class have an ambivalent relationship to education. The hacker class desires knowledge, not education. The hacker comes into being though the pure liberty of knowledge in and of itself. The hack expresses knowledge in its virtuality, by producing new abstractions that do not necessarily fit the disciplinary regime of managing and commodifying education. . Hacker knowledge implies, in its practice, a politics of free information, free learning, the gift of the result to a network of peers. Hacker knowledge also implies an ethics of knowledge subject to the claims of public interest and free from subordination to commodity production. This puts the hacker into an antagonistic relationship to the struggle of the capitalist class to make education an induction into wage slavery.

32. Only one intellectual conflict has any real bearing on the class issue for hackers: Whose property is knowledge? Is it the role of knowledge to authorise subjects through education that are recognised only by their function in an economy by manipulating its authorised representations as objects? Or is it the function of knowledge to produce the ever different phenomena of the hack, in which subjects become other than themselves, and discover the objective world to contain potentials other than it appears?



You have to read through the link to get the exact meaning of some of the terminology like 'pastoralist' but it shouldn't pose a big barrier to understanding this.

http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributo ... ktext.html (http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warktext.html)

I don't think you have to lean either way on any of those questions to address this, because the thrust of it is reinterpreting the education system as the most entrenched arm of the sprawling propaganda machine.

Or at least that's I how take it.

EDIT: so in that context less 'education' would be better as it would just be less brainwashing that needed to be deprogrammed and less conditioning we had to break through for ourselves.
Yeah I agree. Just wanted to get that stuff out of the way.

Education

27. Education is slavery, it enchains the mind and makes it a resource for class power. When the ruling class preaches the necessity of an education it invariably means an education in necessity. Education is not the same as knowledge. Nor is it the necessary means to acquire knowledge. Education is the organisation of knowledge within the constraints of scarcity. Education 'disciplines' knowledge, segregating it into homogenous 'fields', presided over by suitably 'qualified' guardians charged with policing the representation of the field. One may acquire an education, as if it were a thing, but one becomes knowledgeable, through a process of transformation. Knowledge, as such, is only ever partially captured by education, its practice always eludes and exceeds it.

28. The pastoralist class has resisted education, other than as indoctrination in obedience. When capital required 'hands' to do its dirty work, the bulk of education was devoted to training useful hands to tend the machines, and docile bodies who would accept as natural the social order in which they found themselves. When capital required brains, both to run its increasingly complex operations and to apply themselves to the work of consuming its products, more time spent in the prison house of education was required for admission to the ranks of the paid working class.

29. The so-called middle class achieve their privileged access to consumption and security through education, in which they are obliged to invest a substantial part of their income. But most remain workers, even though they work with information rather than cotton or metal. They work in factories, but are trained to think of them as offices. They take home wages, but are trained to think of it as a salary. They wear a uniform, but are trained to think of it as a suit. The only difference is that education has taught them to give different names to the instruments of exploitation, and to despise those their own class who name them differently.

30. Where the capitalist class sees education as a means to an end, the vectoralist class sees it as an end in itself. It sees opportunities to make education a profitable industry in its own right, based on the securing of intellectual property as a form of private property. To the vectoralists, education, like culture, is just 'content' for commodification.

31. The hacker class have an ambivalent relationship to education. The hacker class desires knowledge, not education. The hacker comes into being though the pure liberty of knowledge in and of itself. The hack expresses knowledge in its virtuality, by producing new abstractions that do not necessarily fit the disciplinary regime of managing and commodifying education. . Hacker knowledge implies, in its practice, a politics of free information, free learning, the gift of the result to a network of peers. Hacker knowledge also implies an ethics of knowledge subject to the claims of public interest and free from subordination to commodity production. This puts the hacker into an antagonistic relationship to the struggle of the capitalist class to make education an induction into wage slavery.

32. Only one intellectual conflict has any real bearing on the class issue for hackers: Whose property is knowledge? Is it the role of knowledge to authorise subjects through education that are recognised only by their function in an economy by manipulating its authorised representations as objects? Or is it the function of knowledge to produce the ever different phenomena of the hack, in which subjects become other than themselves, and discover the objective world to contain potentials other than it appears?



You have to read through the link to get the exact meaning of some of the terminology like 'pastoralist' but it shouldn't pose a big barrier to understanding this.

http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributo ... ktext.html (http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warktext.html)
Good stuff there.

It has really changed, especially in the last 30 years or so.

Did you know that at one time, back before the civil war, even at West Point they didn't study practical or vocational subjects?

Did you know that at one time, back before the civil war, even at West Point they didn't study practical or vocational subjects?

Me neither, that's why on my (non-existant) resume I list my work skill(s) as: ability to pump gas.

I guess this can all be rephrased on a personal level, although it risks sounding all guru-like. Are we sure we're ready to break out of this mold? OCD level consumerism? Exceptionalism in our own minds? I'm thinking of a particular PI/DUer who preaches minimalism and "if you don't need it don't take it" and 'back to the land' and blah blah blah but everytime you turn around hes talking about the latest movie he's seen or some shit.

If we're a bunch of hypocrites trying to break out we can admit that, right? I mean, we kinda have to because it will be pretty fucking obvious to everybody else.

College has become the farm system for corporate management. It is so bad, that I am reluctant to even start on it. Capitalism has completely corrupted and destroyed education.

I guess I am a little burned out on the subject. For forty years I have heard about "new paradigms" and "innovative approaches" and "re-thinking this and that." Upscale liberals want to "fix" everything - remake education, remake agriculture - it is all wrong, and we need to expand our consciouness and break out of the traditional ways of looking at things, and on and on. Workshops, seminars, new gurus, ground-breaking new concepts, blah blah blah.

The problem with agriculture, the problem with the environment, the problem with education, the problem with politics and government, the problem with the arts, the problem with children, the problem with health care and everything else that the liberals want to "fix" is this - it is all being destroyed by ruthless global corporate capitalism.

College has become the farm system for corporate management. It is so bad, that I am reluctant to even start on it. Capitalism has completely corrupted and destroyed education.

I guess I am a little burned out on the subject. For forty years I have heard about "new paradigms" and "innovative approaches" and "re-thinking this and that." Upscale liberals want to "fix" everything - remake education, remake agriculture - it is all wrong, and we need to expand our consciouness and break out of the traditional ways of looking at things, and on and on. Workshops, seminars, new gurus, ground-breaking new concepts, blah blah blah.

The problem with agriculture, the problem with the environment, the problem with education, the problem with politics and government, the problem with the arts, the problem with children, the problem with health care and everything else that the liberals want to "fix" is this - it is all being destroyed by ruthless global corporate capitalism.

Right, so I'm willing to abandon the traditional concept of the education system as what we are talking about here. Or what I'm talking about anyway. All of those things you mentioned - education, health care, politics/gov, child rearing - are fucked.

I don't at all imagine that the only time kids learn something is at schools, and I guess I'll defer to the Manifesto thing I posted above because it runs with that idea alot better than I could verbalize it.

Maybe we are less predisposed to revolt than a peasant class with no formal education?

Right, so I'm willing to abandon the traditional concept of the education system as what we are talking about here. Or what I'm talking about anyway. All of those things you mentioned - education, health care, politics/gov, child rearing - are fucked.

I don't at all imagine that the only time kids learn something is at schools, and I guess I'll defer to the Manifesto thing I posted above because it runs with that idea alot better than I could verbalize it.

Maybe we are less predisposed to revolt than a peasant class with no formal education?
There are people who want to learn and people who want to teach. They are being prevented from doing so by the demands of the market.

What do you see as the tradtional concept of the education system?

Right, so I'm willing to abandon the traditional concept of the education system as what we are talking about here. Or what I'm talking about anyway. All of those things you mentioned - education, health care, politics/gov, child rearing - are fucked.

I don't at all imagine that the only time kids learn something is at schools, and I guess I'll defer to the Manifesto thing I posted above because it runs with that idea alot better than I could verbalize it.

Maybe we are less predisposed to revolt than a peasant class with no formal education?
There are people who want to learn and people who want to teach. They are being prevented from doing so by the demands of the market.

What do you see as the tradtional concept of the education system?

Go to school, learn your ABCs, the three Rs, learn to socialize and interact with your peers, learn that life isn't fair, learn respect for your elders and those who have authority, study hard for your AP exams and SATs, get into college, pick a major, .. , that's the pathway I mean.

Go to school, learn your ABCs, the three Rs, learn to socialize and interact with your peers, learn that life isn't fair, learn respect for your elders and those who have authority, study hard for your AP exams and SATs, get into college, pick a major, .. , that's the pathway I mean.
OK. Some of that is modern, not traditional. Liberal Arts model was once much more the standard.

You guys have read Gatto, right? I hadn't heard of him before someone posted about him at (I think) PI, but after I read his major book ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm ) I was very impressed. His problem analysis seems excellent to me, if also facile in spots. I totally disagree with his cap-lib conclusion that education should be made a commercial product, but I'm not sure that's an essential part of what he's saying.

I find it especially interesting to overlay his thesis on some of the problems periodically trumpeted by other people, such as boys not doing well in the lower grades while girls don't do well in the higher ones, etc.

You guys have read Gatto, right? I hadn't heard of him before someone posted about him at (I think) PI, but after I read his major book ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm ) I was very impressed. His problem analysis seems excellent to me, if also facile in spots. I totally disagree with his cap-lib conclusion that education should be made a commercial product, but I'm not sure that's an essential part of what he's saying.

I find it especially interesting to overlay his thesis on some of the problems periodically trumpeted by other people, such as boys not doing well in the lower grades while girls don't do well in the higher ones, etc.

Nope, I will have to check that out but I have read some stuff from Jonothan Kozol that is plenty disturbing

http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/g ... mepage.htm (http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/groups/2002/sites/kozol/Seevak02/ineedtogoHOMEPAGE/homepage.htm)

EDIT: whoa, Gatto's free-market stuff comes out of nowhere and is so half-baked it almost discredits him when he speaks in his field of expertise. And, yeah, that 'Janey might spit in your coffee because Teacher yelled at her' shit is off-putting.

You guys have read Gatto, right? I hadn't heard of him before someone posted about him at (I think) PI, but after I read his major book ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm ) I was very impressed. His problem analysis seems excellent to me, if also facile in spots. I totally disagree with his cap-lib conclusion that education should be made a commercial product, but I'm not sure that's an essential part of what he's saying.

I find it especially interesting to overlay his thesis on some of the problems periodically trumpeted by other people, such as boys not doing well in the lower grades while girls don't do well in the higher ones, etc.

Didn't want to double post but I saw this in one of the pictures from Gatto's book, don't know if he discusses it in detail in the book, since I didn't get completely through it yet. It's important thought:

7 Ways To Make Learning Happen (NOT to "teach")

1. Apprenticeships
2. Community Service
3. Field Curriculum
4. Independent Study
5. Parent Partnerships
6. Work/Study
7. Critical Thinking Exercises

Important stuff, thanks again for the link, its better than Kozol IMO who comes across as kind of a bleeding heart

In his Outline of History, a world history from the socialists perspective, he stated(this is from memory) that a successful socialist revolution required an educational system separate from the dominant system. There's a lot to that, only time is growing short, we must do everything at once. It's part of re-establishing human scale community, probably the one most important factor in our survival.

Some more Wells I found of interest:

http://www.panarchy.org/wells/conspiracy.1933.html

I like the Open Conspiracy tag, while it might not be exactly what we're about it is snappy.

This also is interesting:

http://art-bin.com/art/obrain.html

Wonder what he'd have thought of the internets?