Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: [Fsuk-manchester] Richard Stallman talk - Manchester (1st May)]

[Dave Crossland]

On 17/04/2008, Ian Lynch <address@hidden> wrote:
>  On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 02:17 +0100, Tim Dobson wrote:
>  > I actually think that secondary schools and 6th form colleges are a
>  > better way for a wider audience. If you think, rightly probably, that
>  > "wayne" isn't going to give a shit about RMS's talk because he only took
>  > computing to go on myfacespacebook, then looking at independent schools
>  > might be an idea.
>
> Do you realise how bigoted that sounds? What you are saying is only the
>  5 percent from rich families who can afford school fees are worthy of
>  any effort because the other 95% are too stupid to take the message on
>  board.

I'm not sure Tim was equating intelligence with money or class, and
you have exaggerated his position to make it seem bigoted.

"Jean Anyon, a professor at Rutgers, recently examined four major
types of covert career preparation going on simultaneously in the
school world, all traveling together under the label "public
education." All use state-certified schoolteachers, all share roughly
common budgets, all lead to intensely political outcomes.

In the first type of classroom, students are prepared for future wage
labor that is mechanical and routine. Of course neither students nor
parents are told this, and almost certainly teachers are not
consciously aware of it themselves. The training regimen is this: all
work is done in sequential fashion starting with simple tasks, working
very slowly and progressing gradually to more difficult ones (but
never to very difficult work). There is little decision-making or
choice on the part of students, much rote behavior is practiced.
Teachers hardly ever explain why any particular work is assigned or
how one piece of work connects to other assignments. When explanations
are undertaken they are shallow and platitudinous. "You'll need this
later in life." Teachers spend most of their day at school controlling
the time and space of children, and giving commands.

In the second type of classroom, students are prepared for low-level
bureaucratic work, work with little creative element to it, work which
does not reward critical appraisals of management. Directions are
followed just as in the first type of classroom, but those directions
often call for some deductive thinking, offer some selection, and
leave a bit of room for student decision-making.

The third type of classroom finds students being trained for work that
requires them to be producers of artistic, intellectual, scientific,
and other kinds of productive enterprise. Often children work
creatively and independently here. Through this experience, children
learn how to interpret and evaluate reality, how to become their own
best critics and supporters. They are trained to be alone with
themselves without a need for constant authority intervention and
approval. The teacher controls this class through endless negotiation.
Anyon concludes: "In their schooling these children are acquiring
symbolic capital, they are given opportunity to develop skills of
linguistic, artistic, and scientific expression and creative
elaboration of ideas in concrete form."

The fourth type of public school classroom trains students for
ownership, leadership, and control. Every hot social issue is
discussed, students are urged to look at a point from all sides. A
leader, after all, has to understand every possible shade of human
nature in order to effectively mobilize, organize, or defeat any
possible opponent. In this kind of schoolroom bells are not used to
begin and end periods. This classroom offers something none of the
others do: "knowledge of and practice in manipulating socially
legitimated tools of systems analysis."

It strikes me as curious how far Anyon's "elite" public school
classroom number four still falls far short of the goals of elite
private boarding schools, almost as if the very best government
schools are willing to offer is only a weak approximation of the
leadership style of St. Paul's or Groton. What fascinates me most is
the cold-blooded quality of this shortfall because Groton's
expectations cost almost nothing to meet on a different playing
field—say a homeschool setting or even in John Gatto's classroom—while
the therapeutic community of psychologized public schooling is
extremely expensive to maintain. Virtually everyone could be educated
the Groton way for less money than the average public school costs."

-- http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/17r.htm

Tim is talking about the "3rd type" of schooling here, and his
assessment is correct IMO: The people attending independent schools,
grammar schools, the upper classes/sets of comprehensive 6th form
schools, and science/technology students at community colleges are
indeed the slice of society who go on to make decisions about IT
policy in the current economy.

But the people participating in the 1st and 2nd types of schooling are
just as intelligent, and indeed a much larger number of people; our
culture and their lack of access to resources inhibits their innate
abilities, though.

But with free software, if they can secure access to the hardware
side, which has only become easier, the software side is state of the
art. And people attending that kind of schooling are as capable of
running a business on the Cygnus Model as anyone (find a feature
someone wants, find two other people that want it, and charge all 3
half the total price). I suspect that doing so may be more socially
acceptable -  straying out of their predestined roles as employees is
harder for middle classes, because they think they have somewhere to
fall. As the recession bites down, the middle class idea of "job
security" is going to look even more silly.

-- 
Regards,
Dave