tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-109937172024-02-08T01:32:06.672-05:00InfoAllpk on public information, record-keeping, on disestablishing special interests' management of information, on coercion: that is, on schooling / deschoolingpkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-3849691072896969422011-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:002012-11-23T14:27:35.856-05:00pKnatz blogInfoAll was my original deschooling blog, IonaArc was my original blog. InfoAll blog was supposed to supplement InfoAll.org, which spun deschooling materials off from Knatz.com. The fed censored all but my blogs. I've had great difficulty living let alone updating InfoAll or rescuing the domain materials. but now I'm finding a way to fit my <a href="http://pknatz.wordpress.com/">PKnatz</a> blog to the purpose. In time I'll move all these materials there: after recreating InfoAll.org there.<br />
<br />
2011 06 22<br />
I'm moving InfoAll's pk school stories to pKnatz blog starting today. I'll try to do them quickly. Then I'll delete them here, leaving one link to the menu there.<br />
Been real busy with developing pKnatz especially since mid March 2011.<br />
<br />
Just posted at pKnatz:<br />
<br />
Ivan Illich's editor at Harpers launched the word "deschooling." I tried to make it real by founding The Free Learning Exchange, Inc., 1970. Bob Price drew our logo:<br />
<br />
[caption id="attachment_178" align="aligncenter" width="175" caption="FLEX"]<a href="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/flex.gif"><img alt="Free Learning Exchange" class="size-full wp-image-178" height="71" src="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/flex.gif" title="flex" width="175" /></a>[/caption]<br />
<br />
I wanted to trim the title and expand the service by offering a politically free Information Exchange.<br />
<br />
[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="175" caption="FIX: Free Information Exchange"]<a href="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/fix.gif"><img alt="FIX" class="size-full wp-image-179" height="72" src="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/fix.gif" title="fix" width="175" /></a>[/caption]<br />
<br />
Here's a FLEX-related graphic:<br />
<br />
[caption id="attachment_185" align="aligncenter" width="356" caption="Nix Curriculum!"]<a href="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/curriculum.gif"><img alt="Curriculum" class="size-full wp-image-185" height="356" src="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/curriculum.gif" title="curriculum" width="356" /></a>[/caption]<br />
<br />
We're so <em>schooled</em> we don't get it. Where does the state get off thinking it has the right to dictate what we should study, when, where, with whom, or how much it <strong>must</strong> cost? (Even if I agreed that the state had the right to mandate say <em>literacy</em>, then I might conceivably concede the state's right to test our literacy, before say granting <em>the ballot</em> to an individual. But how does it follow that the state also dictates <strong>how</strong> the literacy is achieved? (And of course the state has multiply proved its incompetence in testing literacy: it's always the "whites" that pass and the "niggers" that fail! Furthermore, throughout my life the state has failed to demonstrate <strong>its own</strong> literacy! (as have also my universities! as have also the media!!)<br />
<br />
How should a <em>redneck</em> test an <em>Ivy Leaguer</em> that even the Ivy League is incompetent to test?<br />
We failed to pry the state's hands off our children: what right do we have to expect to survive?<br />
<br />
<strong>Any</strong>one, were <em>anyone</em> permitted to speak, could demonstrate that the school board bows to politics, not truth. (But then, neither did the church, neither do the universities, neither does the public.<br />
<br />
School history drawings:<br />
<br />
[caption id="attachment_187" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="Lecture as Publishing"]<a href="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lect.gif"><img alt="Lecture as Publishing" class="size-full wp-image-187" height="135" src="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lect.gif" title="lect" width="375" /></a>[/caption]<br />
<br />
Understand, as my article commissioned by <strong>Edcentric</strong> (1970-01) pointed out, medieval monasteries were <strong>publishing</strong> houses! The monks copied Christian documents. Where there was one copy of <em>The Gospel According to Mark</em> and seven monks, there would soon be seven copies of <em>Mark</em>, then fourteen, then twenty-eight ... When classical secular documents were found, the monasteries split: into <em>monasteries</em>, for sacred copying, and <em>universities</em>, for <strong>secular</strong> copying. The <em>lecturer</em> was the guy with the copy of Aristotle. He sat and read it aloud: that's what <em>lecture</em> literally means. His students gathered before him and wrote down what he read. One copy of Aristotle, seven university scholars, seven copies of Aristotle: then then fourteen, then twenty-eight ...<br />
<br />
A scholar with his own copy of Aristotle now <em>graduated</em>: he went off to a new university, one that lacked the book that he now had.<br />
[caption id="attachment_188" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="Graduation as Publishing"]<a href="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/grad.gif"><img alt="Graduate" class="size-full wp-image-188" height="142" src="http://pknatz.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/grad.gif" title="grad" width="375" /></a>[/caption]<br />
<br />
The <em>university</em> was its manuscripts, and its faculty, and its scholars: the scholars were its <strong>library</strong>, its publishers, its <strong>new</strong> copies.<br />
<br />
But of course state-run school boards know nothing of this: they're there to impede and regulate the information, not let it flow.<br />
I founded FLEX to let it flow. I got cut off at the ankles: so the retrograde institutions could re-entrench, and increase control, via this plagiarized internet: where pk, a lead inventor, is censored!<br />
<br />
A sensible people would have used type setting, mechanical printing, to upgrade both church and university: and state. But of course church, school, and government bureaucracies used their leverage to pervert progress, and shore up their sinecures.<br />
<br />
When I offered the world a cheap cybernetic internet-digital record keeper and publisher, a sensible people would have shoved all the sinecures, and the privileges (and perhaps too all the stolen klepto-properties) into oblivion, and lived as freedom-loving (if not God-loving) Christians. But of course what civilized society has ever had a sensible population? (And don't you dare think that my use of the common word "Christian" has anything to do with dogma: it means, to an Illich disciple, <em>valuing <strong>conviviality</strong></em>!)pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-45177720721348804062011-02-17T15:07:00.002-05:002011-02-17T15:07:38.583-05:00pk OnlineI had five domains, several blogs, thousands of essays and other text files, thousands of images on line. The fed destroyed all that, all but destroyed me.<br />
<br />
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.<br />
<br />
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.<br />
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /<br />
<br />
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.<br />
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-8771736806701737212011-02-16T13:41:00.000-05:002011-02-17T15:13:46.626-05:00Email pkPost a Comment: or,<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">EMail to: <br />
<a href="mailto:pk@Knatz.com"><br />
<address>pk@Knatz.com</address></a></div>pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-61659893118618472982011-02-10T14:05:00.000-05:002011-02-10T14:05:06.094-05:00Research: in a TerrariumThe assignment is to assess German involvement in the holocaust:<br />
The anthropologist will want license to dig up the earth all over eastern Europe in search of bodies to examine.<br />
The journalist will go to the libraries in major cities, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, to see what records the Nazis and their clients kept of Nazi atrocities. How funny is it how little such a journalist will find?<br />
The investigative journalist will know how inappropriate the former behavior is, but if he values his perks, he'll do the same.<br />
<br />
Existence is one question, in many guises:<br />
will the rats understand why they're dying before they die?<br />
Or will they die without a clue?<br />
<br />
Or, will they learn to become truthful in time to perhaps survive?<br />
<br />
My money is on death: and no learning.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-82438944451919449132011-02-05T13:06:00.005-05:002011-02-05T13:44:17.383-05:00Compulsion?<div style="text-align: center;">Compulsion?</div><div style="text-align: center;">Group <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Humility</span>, Group <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Ceiling</span></div><br />
<span style="color: purple;">No compulsory ritual</span>, said Ivan Illich.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">I've been seconding him as loudly as I can.</div><br />
<b>Bread and Wine</b><br />
<br />
The majority do not agree with me that the state has no proper business at all; yet I still wish more agreed that the state has no business mandating school attendance.<br />
<br />
Even if I agree that a state had the right to exist which set skill standards for the public (to vote, a citizen must demonstrate literacy, numeracy ...), it does not follow that the state has the right to dictate where one learns what, when, or under whose tutelage.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">(When we go to market, does the state dictate how much meat we must buy that day? which brand? at what price?)<br />
(When I entered school already knowing how to read, why wasn't I allowed to go home?)<br />
(When I demonstrated via the GRE that I could read better than 99% of the university faculty,<br />
why didn't they give me the damn doctorate and release me?<br />
(Such degrees are little more than fraternity initiation bullying anyway!)</div><br />
I've said all that – for over four decades. I've been jailed for it, censored, denied an income, my business and gifts from patrons destroyed. Today I try to add a clarification of a side point:<br />
<br />
In opposing state compulsion, I am <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> opposing compulsion. I grant the mother's right to pull baby back from the fire. I grant the father's right to smack those not pulling the plow in one direction. (I say it's their obligation.) And I concede the right of a family to hire a magician to feed them ritual bread and wine: never mind whether or not I see it doing any good.<br />
<br />
<b>Group Humility</b><br />
We are a social species. I don't object. But we've overdone the group power bit. I want us to back up on that issue, practice a little <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">group humility</span>.<br />
<br />
Below a certain threshold conformity is a friend to survival; beyond it, an enemy. I see small societies as having evolutionarily positive rights that large populations forfeit. I don't want to see a billion and a half Chinese telling a billion Indians what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and compelling obedience to this or that guild of professional service experts: all Chinese of course.<br />
<br />
I don't want a million Roman Catholics telling two thirds of a million Greek Orthodox how they must do something. Two hundred Cro-magnon telling one Cro-magnon that one must use the right hand to absturge the podex, while circling the left hand over the belly, is none of my business. The US with its media tools seeing that scholars who don't like to see napalm dropped on village girls get silenced is prescribing disaster for all.<br />
<br />
But then the public had long lost any right to complain: sitting passive while teachers are murdered, sucking their thumb while degenerate <i>authority <b>mislabels</b></i> everything.<br />
<br />
<hr width="66%"/>A word on distinguishing authority from degenerate authority I'll add at IonaArc.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-63566162930452047832011-02-02T14:42:00.000-05:002011-02-02T14:42:25.794-05:00School TeacherRemember to distinguish between <i>teacher</i> and <i>school teacher</i>.<br />
<br />
Without teachers civilization could not survive. Perhaps neither could the species.<br />
<br />
But under kleptocracy, teachers get hemlock poured into their ear, get crucified ... These days, crucifixion no longer being popular among kleptocracies, teachers get the rug pulled out from under them in a variety of ways: they don't get published, they get side-railed.<br />
<br />
Perhaps worst, they get replaced by school teachers.<br />
<br />
School teachers get mass produced by the state. They're so ignorant they don't even realize that they're not teachers; they're robots for the school board: and the school board is never made up of scientists, philosophers, scholars ... truth tellers. It's made up of politicians and political appointees: they'll say that the earth is flat: until told to say something else.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-14447994068941876162011-01-26T12:21:00.000-05:002011-01-26T12:21:00.199-05:00Record KeepingRecord Keeping<br />
Human Record Keeping:<br />
<dir>None too honest, none too bright, foaming with opportunism <br />
(and filtered by mass-ego).</dir>pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-11464405102616729472011-01-13T16:41:00.003-05:002011-01-13T16:54:37.878-05:00AuthorityThe mother warns the kid not to touch the hot stove. The father helps: he grabs the kid and wails the daylights out of him. Neither the mother nor the father invest time explaining the nature of their authority to the kid: or to themselves, or their neighbors. The neighbors share the same assumptions: all without rational analysis: all knowing perfectly well that rational analysis cannot establish itself beyond doubt by rational analysis: at some point we jump, and have faith: in the natural authority of parents.<br />
<br />
(If we can't trust our parents, it's tough; the state cannot do better. The Church had already failed.) <br />
<br />
So how does the above translate into Hitler and his Brown Shirts herding Jews, gypsies, queers, dissidents into gas chambers without resistance from the population? It don't.<br />
<br />
I don't trust mama or papa to be wise or fair, let alone infallible: still, I won't interfere with their wailing the kid who keeps flirting with the hot stove. But I do not support any right of the neighbor to wail my kid, whether he's near the stove or not. I don't support the draft board, the IRS, or the school board. I don't support the state telling my kid or your kid what to study, what to think, where to study it, what it should cost, how long it must take: which Miss Moron should supervise. I could read before my school brought it up: and I've never met a teacher up close and personal who could unequivocally read better than I. Where does the state get off assigning me teachers?<br />
<br />
Authority might be nice if it were reliable. The state assigned me a physics teacher: did she know physics better than I did? Yes, for sure. Did she know physics well? No. Once I'd read the text I saw that she didn't understand physics well at all: and when quantum mechanics was first getting rolling, neither did Einstein!<br />
<br />
If you went to Princeton, and said, "Einstein, please teach me physics," that's well and good. Falibility has nothing to do with your free market choice. Of course when Princeton gets in the way and won't let you see Einstein, that's different: that's authority interfering with authority: something fraudulent authority always winds up doing. And fraudulent authority is the only garden variety we have in kleptocracy. Jesus gets crucified, pk doesn't get published, Illich gets defrocked ... Bull-shiters grab all the marbles, and all the morons let them.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Authority</span>: Smart or Understanding<br />
<br />
Here's a delicious passage from a current best seller: Stieg Larsson's <b>The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo</b>:<br />
<dir>Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding; she had to protect herself from social authorities, child welfare authorities, guardianship authorities, tax authorities, police, curators, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and bouncers, who (apart from the guys watching the door at Kvarnen, who by this time knew who she was) would never let her into the bar even though she was twenty-five. There was a whole army of people who seemed not to have anything better to do than to try to disrupt her life, and, if they were given the opportunity, to correct the way she had chosen to live it.<br />
It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried to make someone aware of something in her life, the situation just got worse. Consequently it was up to her to solve her problems by herself, using whatever methods she deemed necessary.</dir><br />
<hr width="66%" /><br />
Knatz.com had loads of modules on Authority, as had InfoAll.org: all censored in the same backhand from the fed. I was thinking of reposting them at IonaArc, but perhaps they should all go here. I find temporal space for them in "2006 January."pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-58030963085353676962011-01-12T13:07:00.005-05:002011-01-12T13:42:53.768-05:00Teacher WarsJesus went to the Temple. Jesus, a Jew, called Rabbi (or Teacher), was surrounded by other Jews, also called Rabbi (or Teacher). Those other rabbis had a hierarchy: a Sanhedrin, with relations to secular hierarchies: a king, called Herod.<br />
<br />
Jesus came with something to teach: messages, from God. The other rabbis were supposed to teach messages from God. Jesus was supposed to have cleansed the temple. Obviously, the other rabbis just turned the money tables business-side back up again. They sandbagged Jesus, had him arrested, got rid of him; not without teaching him some severe lessons of their own.<br />
<br />
Kleptocrats are presented with institutions they are told, as children, are there to serve them, to educate them, to protect them. Universities, for example, are there to foster learning. Universities are full of teachers: and students, and deans, and administrators.<br />
<br />
Jesus' temple was a site of teacher wars: Jesus being imagined as the losing teacher, the teacher who was right.<br />
<br />
Universities too are sites of teacher wars. Do any right teachers ever win there? Sure.<br />
<br />
What percentage? All? Some? Few?<br />
<br />
How could we tell? Wait! See if anyone is left alive. If there's a surviving population, then sufficient learning took place: sufficient at least for the moment.<br />
<br />
But consider this: where new learning is involved, the wrong teachers will always outnumber the right teacher: and the population at large will always back the teachings they're familiar with; <b>not</b> the teachings that could help them survive.<br />
<br />
Don't think for one second that I'm blaming <i>leaders</i> for our fix. There is no belfry without a foundation.<br />
<br />
<hr width="66%" /><br />
I add a word to be further developed later: Don't imagine that I'm just talking about religion, or politics, or humans: the same applies to any phenotype of any species living in time, within evolution. The mosquito that mates with this mosquito instead of that mosquito, the heron that eats this fish instead of that fish, the leaf that gathers this light instead of the light a millimeter further away, is determining the future of its descendants: and the future of its entire ecology!<br />
<br />
<hr width="66%" /><br />
The following I don't doubt belongs in a post of its own: I scratch a note to be developed and perhaps moved at another time:<br />
<br />
One<br />
<br />
Was Jesus, entering the Temple, one? or many? Were his disciples with him? Thus: was he one? or thirteen? or some number in between<br />
<br />
Three Magi<br />
<br />
The gospels tell of three Magi coming to visit the infant Jesus. Was that three men fitting into a stable already occupying Mary, Joseph, Jesus and assorted sheep, cattle, goats? Or more?<br />
<br />
Magi were known never to travel without at least forty-thousand troops. Were there thus three armies, totally at least one hundred-twenty thousand men at arms? (and who knows how many camp followers, whores, and hangers on? all crowded into a tiny stable? Or did the magi's troops remain outside? in the court yard? or nearby, at the K-Kourt?<br />
<br />
Shakespeare's kings refer to themselves as "we." A second latter they call themselves "England": or "France." Feudal kings didn't think of themselves as <i>individuals</i> the way contemporary American individualists do<br />
<br />
Notice: these questions have a great deal to do with the idea of <i>mono</i>theism! Is God one? or three? Or <i>infinity</i>?<br />
<br />
When the terminator promised, "I'll be back," he meant himself, the cyborg, individually. When US General Douglas MacArthur said, "I shall return," he did <b>not</b> mean <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">alone</span>.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-15760747965995924142010-12-23T16:23:00.000-05:002010-12-23T16:23:58.780-05:00FLEX, Life, & TIMEWhew. I've not given quick versions of my stories about FLEX & IBM, FLEX & Ma Bell. At least some of what I told at Knatz.com / InfoAll.org is again <b>some</b>where. Here's a three syllable forecast of the most important of such stories:<br />
<br />
1971, 1972: <b>TIME-Life</b> hired a guy. The guy saw FLEX's cable show, listing FLEX community learning resources 24/7. <b>TIME</b> told their new guy: find that guy: "that guy" meaning me: find the guy who was implementing Illichian learning webs in real time, real space, in a real city: New York City. The guy found me: it was no trouble. All that data was on the cable show! (How stupid did <b>TIME</b> have to be not to have seen it themselves?)<br />
<br />
The guy interviewed me, got all excited. That got me all excited: it was about time that somebody recognized the revolution we were living. <b>Newsweek</b> had considered of giving FLEX seed money, as had IBM. But they didn't; not one penny. By this time NYSCA was stealing my (and Illich's) ideas. NYS was cringing from FLEX by founding pale imitations, run by the kleptocrats: schools without walls, school credit for life <b>experience</b> ... <i>Cheez</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>TIME</b>'s guy brings me in: to Madison Ave.: to introduce me to his bosses. He does. The bosses interview me: and shunted me out the back door: no trumpet blasts: not even the sound of a flushing toilet.<br />
<br />
Now <b>TIME</b> puts the founder of FaceBook.com on its cover! Forty years after betraying the human species, entrenching kleptocracy, protecting the owners from information revolution. There isn't any part of <i>FaceBook</i> that doesn't devolve from Illich's <b>Deschooling Society</b> and from my Free Learning Exchange. Ditto Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com ... It's all plagiarism! Kleptocratic-kleptocracy <i>encore</i>.<br />
<br />
I see it as simple. <b>TIME</b> wanted the information revolution. It wanted to <i>control</i> it. To ride it. To master it. I wanted to ride it, lead it, goad it, in a sense to master it; but <b>not</b> to control it. I didn't want <b>TIME</b> controlling the information any more than I wanted the school board controlling attendance, curriculum, costs ...pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-28756460020983180602010-12-23T13:50:00.050-05:002010-12-23T14:44:47.878-05:00Help! Ma BellThe first company I solicited to help FLEX was the phone company. Realize: in 1970 Ma Bell was a monopoly. But I addressed the phone company in the person of an elder in my childhood church, Mr. Kraus, the father of two of my public school classmates. Had I a budget, a paid secretary, stationary to spare, I would have made copies of all my proposals. But no: in 1970 I was proposing digital data keeping for the world, but still had none myself. I typed a letter on erasable typing paper: and mailed it. Take my word for the accuracy of what I report: or wait till Judgment: I've trusted all along that God will have copies: of <b>everything</b> (and that God can <i>prove</i> that they're uncorrupted.) (Such a cosmology may be naive, but I'm referring to pk (and US) in 1970!)<br />
<br />
My letter asked Ma Bell for seed money. My appeal to IBM was far more detailed. My phone company letter was my first draft of my first such appeal. I explained that the point was to implement Ivan Illich's design for a cybernetic learning web. I pointed out that the phone company would be instrumental in the operation of such a learning network: as would be the post office, local real estate ... People were <b>phon</b>ing <i>in</i> their information; we were <b>phon</b>ing <i>out</i> information.<br />
<br />
My letter suggested that the phone company could cooperate with me in designing a way to use the phone company's infrastructure to bill FLEX uses. I even proposed something analogous to a area code for such billing. In other words, I was proposing that the phone company co-invent with me 900 numbers! Call FLEX, agree to pay, and $3 gets added to your bill, Ma Bell depositing all the $3s to a FLEX bank account. My royalty from the phone company alone could have financed <b>every</b>thing!<br />
<br />
Mr. Kraus never answered my letter. Mr. Kraus never told me whether or not he forwarded my request to the powers. For all I know Mr. Kraus, sunday school teacher in our church, could have destroyed the letter, and proposed 900 numbers to the Ma Bell Powers himself!<br />
<br />
<hr width="66%"/>I've lots of details from Knatz.com yet to add to my Help! IBM post and many more never yet told anywhere. But I'm afraid there aren't many untold stories about my phone company letter of 1970. I never heard form Mr. Kraus or from anyone else in the phone company. You can speculate as freely as I can: depending on your interest, on your IQ, your power of imagination ...pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-73384485043228346202010-12-23T02:02:00.000-05:002010-12-23T14:45:29.566-05:00Help! IBMI founded FLEX, the Free Learning Exchange, in New York City in 1970. By 1971 I was asked major companies for help: the phone company, IBM. The details are marvelous in themselves and I'll sprinkle some below, but first, buff outline.<br />
<br />
I asked IMB for $100,000 seed money. The point was to extablish cybernetic, digital, community data bases.<br />
<div align="right"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">This is a </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">good</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> idea.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">I don't see IBM having much to do with good ideas.</span><br />
IBM, Director of University Relations, 1971</div><br />
A digital data base could serve a community cheaply; public schools taxed, enslaved. A voluntary (non-coercive) data base was all a society realy needed. The public could use cybernetics to pry the monkey <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Fraud</span> off its back.<br />
<div align="right"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Government is force.</span><br />
George Washington</div><br />
I got a response from IBM's Director of University Relations. I showed up for my appointment. The two of us sat at a conference table big enough to land a plane on. He asked me how I'd come up with the figure of $100K. I confessed that I didn't know what I was doing: I'd be happy with $10,000. $1,000 would be better than nothing. The point was to try to save the public the $50B the US was spending to enslave and defraud, leaving Johnny still unable to read. With FLEX Johnny could learn to read for much less (or remain illiterate) for much less (either way). I needed to live, to rent a space, to install phones, to pay the secretary (already long-working as a volunteer), to buy materials, to buy publicity ... the rent space on mainframes, to learn to write relational data base software ...<br />
<br />
The Director said that he thought that a realistic budget for what I intended would be something more like $20M a year! just for NYC! I told him I didn't doubt that he was right. But that in my first year (year and a half) I'd need to spend $100K before I could learn how to spend $20M well. If they wanted to give FLEX $20M, I'd take it. I'd certainly welcome anyone's advice, experience, expertise. $20M was nothing compared to what NYC's school budget. The point was to offer something better than the schools, an internet. The point was to become informationally free: for less than it cost us to be educational slaves.<br />
<br />
I didn't spell out all of the implications, but hinted in several directions. My 2010 vocabulary is different from 1970, 1971, as is all of our vocabulary: I didn't use the term "internet": what Illich and I were inventing wouldn't come to be called an internet for quite a few more years yet. CERN, the pentagon, Congress, the universities would plagiarize Illich and me for years, for decades, before the term for what Illich and I were proposing would come to be settled on as "internet." <br />
<br />
The Director told me that he'd present my proposal to "the Powers." He said I should hear within a few weeks. He warned me not to hold out too much hope, he himself was skeptical. He said, "You see, this is a <b>good</b> idea. I don't see IBM having much to do with good ideas."<br />
<br />
Sure enough. IBM's answer was a brief Thanks, but no thanks. <br />
<br />
Within months the IBM building had widow displays of cybernetics in classrooms. IBM had chosen to profit by working with Caesar, not with Spartacus, not with Jesus.<br />
<br />
<hr width="66%" />This and other such stories had been told at Knatz.com / InfoAll.org. The fed censored all my domains in 2007, destroying my business in the same fell swoop. Squashed, I still struggle to speak. The society's media still don't cooperate, still oppose. But God knows. And if we're wrong about that too, the Truth will still prevail: but perhaps in a world without Homo sapiens (or the defeated complex biosphere).<br />
<br />
Expanding the story is important, the details have been buried. I'll add some as I can after I tell related stories about Ma Bell and <b>TIME-Life</b>.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-1566640565623403662010-12-21T08:56:00.001-05:002010-12-21T08:59:49.160-05:00R Subvert IndependenceI'm gathering school purpose modules into 2010 January. I add this one and place it on the 12. I duplicate it here today as a way of pointing to it as new.<br />
<br />
Adding to Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / NoHier / DeDe / School Purpose<br />
<br />
Humans beings spread over the earth looking for resources: for food, for shelter, for a place with fewer enemies. Humans are born dependent: it's the parents' (and the group's) responsibility to train the kid to find resources on its own: as fast as possible: the parents, the group, never know when the earthquake is going to get them, or the lion, or the cold: maybe the kid will survive, maybe humankind will continue: the kid must learn, learn lots, learn well, learn fast.<br />
<br />
Good. I'm all for learning. But are schools good for learning? Do schools teach the kid to find food? fast? well? Or do schools keep the kid from learning what roots are edible? what's under that girl's breechcloth? Don't the schools schedule what's taught and what's learned without having any idea when the earthquake is coming? where the lion is? Don't schools prevent parents and small groups from training their children? Isn't a school the state as kidnapper revealed?<br />
<br />
Oh? But who's it for then? Why would parents and small groups let themselves be raped like that? Good question: but the super-groups, the major interest holders, <i>the Fortune 500</i> ... control the magicians who false deal everybody.<br />
<br />
The school doesn't train the child to find food but to conform, to wait till the school bell rings, to wait till the factory whistle sounds, to wait till some bureaucrat tells her what to do, to wait till Pavlov's bell steals his independence.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-46035598662798437992010-12-17T15:14:00.000-05:002010-12-17T15:14:00.125-05:00State CheatsThe state cheats the state: and of course cheats the people: not to mention god, the universe, nature, the biosphere.<br />
<br />
My beloved Jan just told me that school students were allowed to use calculators during tests. If they didn't, they wouldn't score well, and if they didn't score well, then the schools would not be entitled to quality funding by the state: so the state was cheating on behalf of the schools, so that the state would be cheated: as the students and population and marketplace, and god have been cheated all along.<br />
<br />
But why tell me? I'm the deschooler? I don't believe that the state should have <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">any</span>thing to do with education! with schools, with anything. Don't ask me if I believe the schools should forbid or allow calculators; I don't think state-run, state-interfered-with schools should exist. That's why I offered a cheap internet in 1970: as an alternative system for recording resources, one in which <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">nothing</span> was <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">compelled</span>.<br />
<br />
Jan, not surprisingly didn't see my point right away. In seeing me not support a state prohibition of calculators, she took me to be soft on learning. Not at all: I just don't see that it's the state's business either way.<br />
<br />
I went on to tell Jan that I saw nothing wrong with students using calculators, I use them myself. But if there was no electricity, then I could calculate with pencil and paper: and of course I believe that students should also be able to: but how and when and where they learn it should <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">not</span></b> be up to the state. Neither should how much it costs.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-74441401065372915992010-12-15T15:02:00.001-05:002010-12-15T17:54:42.992-05:00General DeDeIntroducing: General DeDe!<br />
<br />
This recent October I coined the term "DeDeDe" and offered it as a possible alternative to deschooling. Deschooling was only part of Illich's opposition to compulsory ritual in modern kleptocracies. He wanted us to De-License, and to De-Professionalize and to De-Regulate: all a part of DeSchooling.<br />
<br />
Today I offer a related coinage: General DeDe. I, Paul Knatz, long nicknamed pk, occasionally called other names, both good and bad, propose that you may regard all pk deschooling writing as authored by General DeDe.<br />
<br />
Picasso's name became a symbol of his powerful art: still, it was his surname, his patronymic surname. Pablo Picasso Ruiz became known as Pablo Picasso, then simply as Picasso! The likewise great Hokusai was not born with that name. He became known, loved, revered, by variations of his birth name, then dubbed himself Hokusai: which abbreviates Japanese slang which suggests "old man, crazy about painting." By golly, it means the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">same thing</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Picasso</span> came to mean!<br />
<br />
So, August Paul Knatz, Jr. I was born. Paul I was called, then pk. Now I'm the crazy old man, committed to Deschooling: to deregulation, to delicensing, to opposing the over-professionalization and the over-specialization of everything: all related to opposing government regulation of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">anything!</span></span><br />
<br />
The first part, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">General</span>, is itself a complex: largely a complex joke. I'm an Illich disciple but also a Bucky Fuller disciple. Bucky called himself a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">generalist</span>, taking a stance against over-specialization. I second that proposal (even if I'm far from the hundredth to do so: I one hundred and nintety-fifth it!)<br />
<br />
The term also recalls John Sutter to me: the first widely known white man that the expanding United States stole from. American settlers didn't give much of a damn what we took from the natives, we didn't much care how we treated the Irish or the Chinese let along the imported slaves. But we were typically less forthright the way we stole property from those we thought of as white. We stole Sutter's land, killed his livestock, and helped ourselves to his gold, all in violation of treaties with Sutter in which his New Helvetia was recognized as a sovereignty. (Now I don't believe in sovereignty, but neither do I believe in kleptocracy!) Anyway, Sutter promoted himself to Colonel once he discovered a route across the Rockies, first white man to do so, and developed the Sacramento Valley. A bit older he promoted himself to General: General Sutter. The same kleptocracy plagiarized my Free Learning Exchange and its offer of cybernetic digitization of resources both human and material, with peer matching and feedback. Illich's design, which I offered to implement at cost (enough for workers to live on being part of the cost)pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-21741344497936192852010-12-06T15:07:00.000-05:002010-12-06T15:07:48.280-05:00HierCon StoriesHierCon is a Knatz.com folder abbreviating concepts as well as words: the verbal references are to <i>NoHier</i> and to <i>conviviality</i>, the former being already a Knatz.com abbreviated reference to my censored domain AgainstHierarchy(.org) (meaning against politically imposed unnatural hierarchies). One idea of Christ is that Jesus taught us, or tried to teach us, how to live better together, better than humans were living in the Roman Empire, a Mediterranean kleptocracy under the Caesars: Augustus Caesar at the time. Jesus disciple Ivan Illich taught the concept of conviviality in that light. I, as a Christ / Illich disciple, try to teach the same: that's why my writing is mostly unpublished, why I'm blackballed by the schools I tried to displace with an offer of cybernetic social data basing, why I was jailed, bankrupted, censored.<br />
<br />
The deposed Knatz.com, a domino victim of federal censorship, gathered personal pk stories illustrating the non-convivial nature of our society's institutions, categorized by school, church, army, bureaucracy A, B, C. I'm locating my recreation of these censored stories in 2009 April. I've been telling these stories since they occurred, beginning in childhood. I wrote them at Knatz.com beginning around 1995. I recreated them at this blog this 2010.<br />
<br />
My domains, Knatz.com for example, organized materials by category (logical hierarchies, not unnatural, not politically imposed, not coerced). Blogs string materials in time. I relocate and re-title this blogs postings of such stories in an attempt to make their biographical chronology clear.<br />
<br />
This 2010 I've also started mounting Knatz.com / InfoAll.org posts on Reasons for School. They are being presented temporally in 2010 January (and will continue in February.)<br />
<br />
While I move the school stories I'll leave the "original" post in 2010 until I'm satisfied that the move is complete.<br />
Understand, stories of other institutions subversion of conviviality will follow.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-24785549449152485122010-11-30T13:35:00.000-05:002010-11-30T13:35:48.935-05:00Politics Trumps ScholarshipIn "education" politics trumps scholarship. The school board decides that Twain must be censored, not the English professors, or that Darwin and theories of evolution must be supervised by teachers colleges, not by biologists, zoologists ... scientists.<br />
<br />
But watch out: all the teachers college has to do is start mass-graduating <i>scientists</i>! trained by the same morons who trained your <i>Miss Tilly</i> to tell you not to split your infinities. Hell, it's what the fundamentalist churches do: they erect assembly lines to cobble tame science teachers: to address the children in the church.<br />
<br />
It won't matter what politics does so long as kleptocracy continues run by coalitions of selfish intellectual convenience.<br />
<br />
All I want God to do is wait till we're dead, then point out to any intelligence left over in the universe that we had chances, that we refused to consider them: preferring fake science, fake intelligence, trick decision making ... to real.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-79476659808149503452010-11-30T13:26:00.000-05:002010-11-30T13:26:33.196-05:00Bell Curve TeachersThe king can assassinate the critic. His propagandists meantime write speeches attributing such behavior to an enemy, denying that this administration would ever do such a thing. The Temple assassinates God while retaining authority in the name of God, the moron public in no position to challenge a thing.<br />
<br />
Given enough time a Socrates will arise, a Jesus will overthrow the money tables. But Athens simply had Socrates arrested, then condemned him. The Jews' political and religious figures simply broke their sacred laws to blind-side Jesus, enlisting the Romans to do it for them, their political overlords violating their own Roman laws to do the Jews' religio-social dirty work.<br />
<br />
In the US (and around the world) schools exhibit the same characteristics. The Temple pretended to represent God but actually side-railed, then murdered, God. The government imposed schools claim to represent "knowledge," but it's authority is political. Votes, appointments, determine who's version of facts, of knowledge, of evidence, of learning, gets fed to the helpless citizens' helpless children. Darwin is voted out, then voted in, then voted out. Twain is praised, then censored, then forgotten.<br />
<br />
It's not evil, like the gospels would make it seem. It's not stupid like the science propagandists would make Galileo's story seem. It's just social homeostasis and the bell curve at work.<br />
<br />
IQs Along a Bell Curve<br />
<br />
The state-school graduate is shuffled into Socrates' role after the false dealers have kangarooed Socrates. The professors are left over after the Church purges Galileo and his evidence. Priests are still left in the Temple after the elders have sandbagged Jesus.<br />
<br />
God makes a population of IQ 100, the population makes a faculty with IQ 110, God sends a Jesus with IQ 200, the 110-IQ faculty feels exposed, threatened, the 100-IQ public watches passively while the 110-IQ faculty suborn all witness to persecute the God-sent savior<br />
<br />
Man's only hope lies in the faculty after devouring Jesus achieving an IQ of 111.<br />
<br />
It would seem that they could have been raised way toward 200, but that's an illusion. If they settle for IQ-111 and if at the same time society continues to survive for another few years, it's OK, it's good, it's a gain. But the faculty average is just as likely to wind up at 109, 108, 107 ...pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-29390674459412856772010-11-30T13:08:00.001-05:002010-11-30T13:37:45.281-05:00Licensed AuthorityTemples, churches, schools always have to power to interrupt and correct; never the obligation to listen or to understand.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-10363116117475248512010-10-31T08:46:00.001-04:002010-10-31T08:52:44.957-04:00Money TablesJesus overturned the money tables in the Temple of Jerusalem.<br />
<br />
<div align="right"><span style="color: #3985f0;">Churches turn them business-side-up again.</span></div><br />
Ivan Illich tried to overturn the money tables in the Church.<br />
Ivan Illich and I tried to overturn the money tables in the schools (he with his <b>Deschooling Society</b>, I with my Free Learning Exchange, Inc). (With his <b>Medical Nemesis</b> Illich tried to overturn the money tables in the hospitals.) (My Free Learning Exchange, Inc. tried to overturn the money tables in government, in media, in our whole system of record keeping and market manipulation.)<br />
<br />
<div align="right"><span style="color: #3985f0;">Government, the whole society obeying, turn them business-side-up again.</span></div>pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-31472113114511115552010-10-30T11:57:00.006-04:002010-10-30T17:03:46.769-04:00Compulsory Education 1870Mises.org is currently emailing ads for EG West's <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Education and the State</span> (1965). The email says,<dir>West explores the views on education of the nineteenth-century British reformers and classical economists who argued for state education. He demonstrates that by the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Foster Act</span> of 1870 the state system of education was superimposed upon successful private efforts, thereby suppressing an emerging and increasingly robust structure of private, voluntary, and competitive education funded by families, churches, and philanthropies.</dir>Good. Now Mises.org would catch us up with advanced education consciousness in 1965.<br />
<br />
Mises.org is connected with LewRockwell.com. The latter published an article on Ivan Illich several years ago. That could have brought education consciousness in line with 1970 (but only early 1970, because it showed no awareness of what then happened in the rest of 1970, during and after the publication of Illich on the subject. And when I alerted them to their omission, they remained silent!) (Other good articles had appeared in the meantime: 1965 to 1970: Lauter & Howe's reverse engineering of "school's purpose. For example: the schools are commonly seen to fail in advancing literacy, numeracy: maybe, the author's hypothesized, advancing literacy and numeracy are not the real purpose of the schools: the schools succeed totally in making the majority of the children tractable morons who show up more or less on time and do what they're told: perfect fodder for industrial domination. Thus, the schools do not fail; they succeed: only too well.)<br />
<br />
But neither Mises.org nor LewRockwell.com have reported on the further work of the deschoolers: Illich followers: me, pk, for example. Illich suggested cybernetic data basing at the community level as a way around state dominance of secular rituals. I pk offered the Free Learning Exchange, Inc. in New York City. Similarly starting would be learning networks wrote me from all around the world asking for my advice. So too did state educational institutions. I answered them all: repeating Illich's basic points:<br />
<dir>Llist resources.<br />
Match interests.<br />
Publish feedback.</dir>and<dir>Don't tolerate state-coercive ritual<br />
Don't tolerate substitution of certificates for skill testing.</dir>I also encouraged these early learning networks to share resources. Thus, in that latter feature, I, even more than Ivan Illich (while standing on his shoulders) <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">invented</span> the internet. Illich invented social networking as a defense against state dominance of potentially free people: I proposed that digital public records be coordinated. I'd already spun a short story in the 1960s which had modeled an internet, and in 1969 offered for publication a short story in which banks had internet'd credit through modems, satellites, and voice recognition software.<br />
<br />
I offer my own history as evidence that the practice of sabotaging reformers and burying evidence is alive and well: the most liberal institutions following suit along with the most repressive.<br />
<br />
My AgainstHierarchy.org got censored by the US after they arrested me: my nearly three thousand other internet publications got eclipsed: my IS provider destroyed all my data in the wake of the court order to proscribe one section of one domain. My son rescued my data, the FBI having confiscated my equipment, but he didn't remount it. He kept Catfarmer.com alive, but not Knatz.com, not InfoAll.org, not Macroinformation.org.<br />
<br />
Research this. You won't find the truth in the records of any university that I'm aware of. I doubt you'll find much in the Library of Congress. Though while alive I could show anyone who visited me proof galore from my records. (I'd said online I had proof. The FBI arrested me, went through my stuff: and left much of my evidence unmolested! The repressors will <b>never</b> have intelligence robots, not so long as they use humans.)<br />
<br />
(Tell a dumb crook about fingerprints, and maybe he'll go back to the crime scene and destroy everything <b>except the fingerprints</b>!)<br />
<br />
An English Illich fan posted an article on Illich more than a decade ago. He said, "We should read the deschoolers." But I see no evidence that he's even aware of who the deschoolers are. I see no evidence that he even know who I am! He doesn't mention contracting Denis Detzel, founder of the Evanston Learning Exchange. Denis, according to Illich, was talking deschooling even before I was!<br />
<br />
<b>Deschooling Society</b> came out in 1970. It was a best seller. My Free Learning Exchange, Inc., Denis' Evanston Learning Exchange, started in 1970, mine only a week or two ahead of his. My deschooling writing has not been published, except by me, mailing it around the world, posting in online since 1995. I'd written voluminously to those teaching colleges which had contacted me. Was anything I wrote read by anyone who could read?<br />
<br />
I have no evidence: then or now.<br />
<br />
Dozens of people volunteered to help me. They must have understood something? Where are they now? We're further in the dark in 2010 than we were in 1970!<br />
<br />
By the way, that Mises.org mailing also touted a related book by Albert Jay Nock: <b>The Theory of Education in the United States</b> (1931). I wish I could afford to buy either of them.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-44947584150445121262010-10-21T14:15:00.000-04:002010-10-21T14:15:57.698-04:00Illich Points CommentaryIllich published his deschooling program in six points, some subdivisions necessary. The new world needs to be explained to the former world (which doesn't listen).<br />
<ol><li>No Compulsory Ritual<br />
<br />
Parochial cultures see nothing wrong with applying their customs among themselves. Problems arise when different cultures mix. We bump into a wall we need to back away from if we are to survive. If the Jews all start their Sabbath on Friday evening, that's fine. If the Jews kill all the Canaanites, they can still start their Sabbath on Friday evenings. But what happens when Jews, and Canaanites, and Greeks, and Egyptians all get squashed into Alexandria: then the Jews need to have their Sabbath any way they please, but leave the Canaanites and the Greeks and the Egyptians to themselves. In other words, in a Europe dominated by the Roman Catholic Church it rubbed few against the grain that the Church used its power to compel attendance at masses. The Protestant Reformation challenged that. Today's shrinking world needs to catch its secular side up to its sacred side: no compulsory school, no compulsory reveille ...</li>
<li>No Certification<br />
<br />
Confusions of logical type trip us up. If a businessman wants a secretary who can type, he has every right to test the typing ability of the job applicant. But business farms the testing out to specialists, in advance: to the schools. The job applicant arrives with a diploma from Tilly's Typing School. In the short run a step is saved; in the long run the confusion of map for territory has been institutionalized. The government has enforced this confusion to the convenience of business and to the destruction of the society's reliance on its own native wits. Overnight, being a Harvard graduate reintroduces our imperialist ancestor's class system: if Harvard bestows superior skills let it show in the sausage, not in the recipe. No, no: a free society would not tolerate the institutionalization of doubtful shortcuts. See if she can type yourself, witness the Harvard grad's skill in action, in an active career. In a deschooled society, asking for a diploma would not be illegal; it would be very bad manners: and not be done.</li>
Iteration: No compulsion, No Coercion: We're so dumbed-down by authority, invitations to liberty sound to the society's inmates like worse authoritarian regimentation! No. Illich unavoidably tiptoes near confusion here. He did after all join an authoritarian institution, the Roman Catholic Church, as a priest. He ascended to monseigneur. He knows hierarchical authority. (Not me, I have nothing to do with the Catholic Church, except to criticize it.) Illich helped me understand that I am an anarchist. I see him as an anarchist, as do others. (I wouldn't follow him if I didn't.) (Not a bomb thrower, understand, a would-be free man, who would live among other free men.) My son is an anarchist: he sees both Illich and me as authoritarian! Precisely ass backwards! My offering of Illich's program was made to those who would adapt it voluntarily, not under duress. There's a difference between pleading with prisoners to free themselves, and holding a weapon on the while mouthing the "same" invitation. Termites build mounds by synergy: the second termite drops a grain of sand onto the couple of grains that a different two termites happened to drop resting against each other. There's no foreman, no government.
<li>Publish volunteered information on resources.<br />
<br />
This is the area in which my presentation differs from Illich's: in detail, not at all in spirit. He distinguished between human and inanimate resources. I don't see the need as far as institutional structure is concerned. The same resource data base that lists English teachers could also list libraries. The same resource data base that lists stationary stores could also list plumbers.<br />
<br />
In a class society a government may combine with an AMA to give preference to MDs. The pregnant woman is thwarted from hiring a midwife: midwives don't get listed in the phone book. But I'll bet midwives have killed far fewer women in childbirth than obstetricians have.<br />
<br />
A free people would leave other people to be free to chose what they learn, how they learn, it, where they study, what it costs ... We wouldn't want to hold still while the state told us we couldn't buy rice, we must by potatoes; we may not walk, we must drive; we may not drive a bug, we must drive an SUV ... Why do we tolerate control over "education," over "health" ...?</li>
<li>Mutual Interest Matching<br />
</li>
<li>Feedback<br />
Expert Feedback:<br />
Client Feedback:<br />
</li>
</ol><br />
I'll edit these over time. Revisions, additions will cease when I'm dead.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-37747282938647537382010-10-21T13:29:00.003-04:002010-10-21T14:24:12.297-04:00FLEX 2 + 3In the forty years since I wedded my life to Ivan Illich's deschooling program I have come to see his four point learning networks as three points. The previous post, Illich 2 + 4, reviews his. This blog republishes his <b>Deschooling Society</b> of 1970 (online at InfoAll.org, restored here 2009 January once the fed destroyed my domains (2007 Feb) (and crippled me from getting them back up quickly).<br />
<br />
His political foundation I retain as "two":<br />
<dir>A. No Compulsory Ritual<br />
B. No Certification</dir><br />
His four points for his proposed institution can be simplified to three points. It also covers more ground:<br />
<br />
<dir>2.1. Publish Resources<br />
2.2. Publish interest matching results<br />
2.3. Publish feedback<dir>of the same two kinds (except that butchers and bakers and Indian Chiefs (and clients) could use the same two feedback tools):<dir>3.1. Resource people on resource people<br />
3.2. Clients on resource people</dir></dir></dir>The following post will comment on the parts of this and the preceding post: Illich Points Commentary.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-74877548783903056122010-10-21T13:18:00.000-04:002010-10-21T13:18:34.471-04:00Illich 2 + 4Ivan Illich presented his deschooling principles in six parts: two plus four. (I'm going to represent the parts with letters, reserving the numbers for my condensation.)<br />
<br />
<dir>A. No Compulsory Ritual<br />
B. No Certification</dir>(His <b>Deschooling Society</b>, 1970 is online here [2009 Jan], see Chapter Six especially.) Those first two parts constitute the political aspect: the institution proposed to take over the society's learning needs was offered in four parts:<dir>C. Publish volunteered information on human learning resources<br />
D. Publish volunteered information on material learning resources<br />
E. Publish peer-matching wishes<br />
F. Publish feedback on the human resources:<dir>that latter of two kinds:<dir>F.A. Resource people on resource people<br />
F.B. Clients on resource people</dir></dir></dir>See Illich's text for his explanations. See the following post, FLEX 2 + 3 for my version.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10993717.post-458123078972971712010-10-20T12:41:00.002-04:002010-10-20T16:34:48.146-04:00Political Impossibilitybk just emailed me <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/h/1ltmjuy7y7dz2/?v=c&s=a&th=12bc6ad0a50c97e4">this link</a>, hawking <b>Political Impossibility</b> by WH Hutt. "Should economists curb their rhetoric and prescriptions based on "political realities"? Should anyone attempt to conceal the truth about state intervention for fear of not fitting into the existing political culture?" asks the ad.<br />
<br />
My FLEX in 1970, in offering a cybernetic data base to the public — human resources, material resources, interest matching and a feedback data base on the resources, offered a tool by which anyone could publish their own ad at nominal cost (provided the intfrastructure was supported). Thus not only could economists express themselves freely, so could anyone else, and on <b>any</b> subject, in any discipline: FLEX was history's only true free-speech organ. The regular culture's "free press" is given over to leaving faulty facts and faulty assumptions unchallenged, as is the school system. (Never forget, curriculum is set by school boards, not by an intercultural coalition of scholars. <i>Flat-earth</i>ers rule. The culture rules, retarding change, preventing progress, growth, learning.)<br />
<br />
I'll say more later, but notice immediately the cultural truth of Hunt's thesis and the fact that my FLEX (Illich's design with some pk expansions), supported, used, defended, addressed and could have solved forty years ago!<br />
<br />
I answered bk: "Doesn't [Hunt's point] hold in All areas?<br />
There's never been a better proposal for freedom than my FLEX. And I<br />
see no better proof than FLEX that we've never had freedom, only<br />
rhetoric and compromise and cowardice.<br />
<br />
"Of course I have to admit that the fed could have taken over FLEX and<br />
regulated and changed it utterly, the way the Church takes over and<br />
perverts "Jesus," the way the fed did take over FLEX by creating its own meretricious Pentagon, CERN, university internet, then regulating it, crushing the inherent anarchism out of it. Still, some small increment of freedom might have escaped."<br />
<br />
Actually, I edited a word or two while quoting the latter.pkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10529618065608969091noreply@blogger.com0