Slashdot Mirror

From 1991: "Educating for a Peaceful World" http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm
"This article outlines a program of what schools can do to encourage the values, attitudes, and knowledge that foster constructive rather than destructive relations, which prepare children to live in a peaceful world. It describes four key components of such programs: cooperative learning, conflict resolution training, the constructive use of controversy in teaching subject matters, and the creation of dispute resolution centers in schools. ...
Families and schools are the two most important institutions that influence developing children's predispositions to hate and to love. Although the influence of the family comes earlier and is often more profound, there is good reason to believe that children's subsequent experiences in schools can modify or strengthen their earlier acquired dispositions. In this article, I outline a program that schools can follow to encourage the development of the values, attitudes, and knowledge that foster constructive rather than destructive relations, which prepare children to live in a peaceful world. ...
Many schools do not provide much constructive social experience for students. Too often, schools are structured in ways that pit students against one another. They compete for teachers' attention, for grades, for status, and for admission to prestigious schools. Being put down and putting down others are pervasive occurrences. Many of us can recall classroom experiences of hoping that another student, who was called on by the teacher instead of us, would give the wrong answer so that we could get called on and give the right answer.
In recent years, it has been increasingly recognized that schools have to change in basic ways if we are to educate children so that they are for rather than against one another, so that they develop the ability to resolve their conflicts constructively rather than destructively and are prepared to live in a peaceful world. This recognition has been expressed in a number of interrelated movements: cooperative learning, conflict resolution, and education for peace. In my view, there are four key components in these overlapping movements: cooperative learning, conflict resolution training, the constructive use of controversy in teaching subject matters, and the creation of dispute resolution centers in the schools. I discuss each briefly, with more emphasis on cooperative learning and conflict resolution because I have worked more extensively in these two areas and because they provide a valuable base for education in constructive controversy and mediation."

Twenty years later, how much of that do schools embody? Why keep giving schools second, third, and fifty-third chances? Why should we continue to hope, after decades of failures of attempts at reform, that a social system called compulsory public schooling that was very carefully designed to produce compliant soldiers for 1800s-era Prussian Monarchy could ever be reformed to fit the educational needs of healthily-engaged citizens of 21st century democracies? As opposed to, say, just providing the same amount of money to the public library system or even directly to parents?

Instead, almost all public schools still emphasize "grading", which Alfie Kohn explains to be destructive to human relationships:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm
"You can tell a lot about a teacher's values and personality just by asking how he or she feels about giving grades. Some defend the practice, claiming that grades are necessary to "motivate" students. Many of these teachers actually seem to enjoy keeping intricate records of students' marks. Such teachers periodically warn students that they're "going to have to know this for the test" as a way

From: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?"

From the article: "This work was funded by Grant No. N00014-08-1-0696 from the Office of Naval Research (ONR)."

How should your tax dollars be at work? Funding irony, or funding intrinsic mutual security by creating abundance for all?

That said, the robots sound cool ("the road to hell is paved with cool technology"?), and I liked that the article also said: "While there may be advantages to creating robots with the capacity for deception, there are also ethical implications that need to be considered to ensure that these creations are consistent with the overall expectations and well-being of society, according to the researchers. "We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications related to the creation of robots capable of deception and we understand that there are beneficial and deleterious aspects," explained Arkin. "We strongly encourage discussion about the appropriateness of deceptive robots to determine what, if any, regulations or guidelines should constrain the development of these systems.""

So consider my first link (and essay by me) as a suggestion towards that end...

I just finished reading (sadly) the last book the late James P. Hogan wrote (Migration) and central to the plot is the fact that a robot might be easily deceived and put to nefarious purposes because it did not understand the notion of deception. So, a complex issue. Still, I'd expect one can understand deception and illusion without engaging in it?

Also, again from the article: "A situation had to satisfy two key conditions to warrant deception -- there must be conflict between the deceiving robot and the seeker, and the deceiver must benefit from the deception."

They have left out a key third possibility -- there has to be no other way to resolve the conflict than competition, which is rarely (or perhaps even never?) the case. See also:
    "No contest: the case against competition" by Alfie Kohn
    http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
    http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm

"Who in their right mind would work if 90% of ever dollar earned went to the government?"

Citation needed. See also, for endless citations why what is implied in your first statement is wrong:
"Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

"It's those high income people who buy big ticket items that create jobs."

Citation needed. In reality, this suggests they plow their money into the "casino" economy of derivatives, etc.:
"Money as Debt II Promises Unleashed"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxo_XPdpI_s
Poor and middle class people usually spend every dollar they have in the real economy.

"You really think they are going to work 80-100 hours a week like most small businesspeople I know if they know almost everything they are working for is going to be taken away from them? They are going to shut down their business, or at least reduce them in size until they get down to a much smaller tax burden. That means a major loss in jobs for everyone else."

And if the work needs to be done, there will be twice as many 40 hour jobs. Citation to the contrary needed otherwise. Many people don't succeed in business because of this "arms race" of crazy hours. You're suggesting forcing people to work crazy hours and neglect their family and volunteer civic activities in their community is a good thing? It would seem to be something better engineered away. Maybe our society would be a lot better off if such businesses did shut down (in the context of a basic income, or a gift economy, or resource based planning, or stronger self-reliant local communities), since the families and communities of workaholics would be happier?

"The high tax rates are what dragged out the recovery from the Great Depression. The more you tax a person the less money he has to spend."

Citation needed, because progressive taxes work differently, as would a progressive tax redirected to a "basic income".

"The less money he has to spend the fewer products he buys. The fewer products that are bought the more the economy shrinks."

A "basic income" guaranteed to all through the government (along with a high tax on income beyond that) would ensure steady market demand, evenly distributed. That is where I'd suggest most of the tax goes -- back to the people to be more evenly distributed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

If 50% of the US GDP was taxed and redistributed evenly, it would still leave a GDP equivalent to what the US had around 1993 to motivate those who wanted more. The 1993 GDP was enough to motivate entrepreneurs then, why should it not be enough now?

"And since it is private business that creates jobs and funds government what's the net effect? Less economic growth."

Citation needed. Governments can get revenues from renting public resources like land, spectrum, and fishing rights; they can tax monopoly patents and copyrights; they can print money which is non-inflationary as long as what is printed is what is needed through economic growth, and so on. When a baby grows physically, parents are happy; when an adult grows physically, it may be cancer. We need to move to economics not so dependent on endless "growth" based on, essentially, a financial pyramid scheme of endless increasing debt.

"Think about it."

I have thought about it. A government with a sovereign currency works differently than the logic of finance for an individual, especially a government with rentable assets (which are often being given away now in corrupt sweetheart deals) and which also has a legitimate right to step in and deal with externalities (whether negative externalities like pollution and risk of war or economic collapse, or positive externalities like healthier peopl

Off to a good start. To build on it, see my other posts here and http://www.alfiekohn.org/ and http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html

Thanks for trying it. I appreciate any frank feedback. I agree it could be improved (we did make the source available under the GPL -- there is a lot under the hood, like the various models). We ran out of funds to continue it and had to take jobs at IBM to pay back money we had borrowed for living expenses to develop it (and that killed any momentum we had on it). As two middle class people, my wife and I poured more than six person years of our time into that to try to help kids have some better educational tools (back when people were still questioning why there were few non-violent simulations out there or stuff girls might like or even organic agriculture or environmentalism). There is a lot more to that program for teenagers and adults when you get into it (too much, really), and remember, this was written about fifteen years ago. I could do way better now. It was mainly just too ambitious -- it does all sorts of scientific-related things moving through three levels of increasing abstract representation (direct manipulation, inspecting, graphing). It's much more a simulator (microworld, see Papert) than a game (there is no score etc..)

PlantStudio is another program that came out of that approach, that also should run under Wine, and is a step forward in interface (for the time), and many people have liked, though again it is dated.
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/
Downloadable here:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/download_new.html
Between the two, PlantStudio, which uses the same basic algorithms but with a simpler interface focused on just one thing, generated much more excitement (but we were unable to follow it up much as we were busy working at IBM). Examples of user comments from back then:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/userssay.htm
"An excellent example of educational expertise.... It is an excellent adjunct for general modeling, especially in the creation of scenes."

So, we were learning. But it got cut off because, back then, it was hard to get any funders to see the value of educational computer simulations (especially ones that were open source). That's what's great about NASA finally putting money into these sorts of things.

I have Java ports of both those partially complete (don't know if they will ever be finished, because, as you suggest, the GUI could be improved, which makes a straight port kind of pointless, but means more work to redesign it).

By the way, on good parenting and education without too much "grounding" or "bribes" or very much forcing kids to learn stuff they don't want to study right then: :-)
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

It really sounds good at first, and indeed may result in better school performance, as measured by grades. But the end goal should be that children are motivated to learn and challenge themselves. It is somewhat counter-intuitive, but significant research (we're talking about empirical studies here) has shown that when you get children to do what you want by using rewards and/or punishment (including money, grades, timeout, etc.), they will be less motivated and less successful as adults (by almost any definition of "success"). I learned this from this guy: http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.php. His books, particularly the more technical ones, describe numerous scientific studies.

See: "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487

The primary reason school was created was to dumb people down as a form of social control to create factory workers (and soldiers) for a 19th century factory-based economy, according to NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
"""

Or:
"The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"""
Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And in later years it became the training shaken loose from even its own original logic -- to regulate the poor; since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling just exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to where it began to seize the sons and daughters of the middle classes.
"""

So, that's why pouring more money into schools does not work, because they just do this dumbing down process better. Oh, you may get kids stuffed with more facts, you may get kids with better grades, you may get kids who are better are regurgitating state doctrine, but you won't get good human beings who can have a happy whole life. A whole person comes from an engagement with the whole of life, not from doing paperwork all day in a minimum security day-prison from ages four to eighteen. The entire system must be changed from assumptions through practices, and school is so resistant to fundamental change that the best approach is probably just to shut it down entirely and start over in new ways using the same resources in entirely different ways.

For example, the central pillar of most schooling, grading, is harmful to children and communities in all sorts of ways:
"From Degrading to De-Grading"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm
"""
1. Grades tend to reduce students' interest in the learning itself. ...
2. Grades tend to reduce students' preference for challenging tasks. ...
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking. ...
4. Grades aren't valid, reliable, or objective. ...
5. Grades distort the curriculum. ...
6. Grades waste a lot of time that could be spent on learning. ...
7. Grades encourage cheating. ...
8. Grades spoil teachers' relationships

Deal with which structures? The structures in daily life? Or prison structures, like are found in most schools? What crime have children committed (besides being young) that they deserve to have to learn how to live inside a prison instead of learn to live inside a healthy family and healthy neighborhood?

From:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
"""
Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you. "School is prison." They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, "School is prison."
Let me say that a few more times: School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison.
Willingham surely knows that school is prison. He can't help but know it; everyone knows it. But here he writes a whole book entitled "Why Don't Students Like School," and not once does he suggest that just possibly they don't like school because they like freedom, and in school they are not free.
"""

How parents can best interact with their children is a complex topic, depending in part on the parent's temperment and the child's temperment. One resource:
http://www.motherstyles.com/
Another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles

I would agree that *some* unschoolers (especially "radical" ones with young children) tend too far to permissive parenting. But, that does not invalidate the general concept of "unschooling" as defined by John Holt decades ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
"""
Unschooling refers to a range of educational philosophies and practices centering around allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including child directed play, game play, household responsibilities, and social interaction, rather than through the confines of a conventional school. Exploration of activities is often led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child.
"""

Just look at this one essay on how harmful grading is:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm

Or this on how pointless homework is:
http://www.thecaseagainsthomework.com/

Or this on how people are punished by "rewards" in school:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

Or this on how the secret to a happy life is in part how we think about time in a balanced way (schools are unbalanced in that sense):
http://www.thetimeparadox.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studi

Deal with which structures? The structures in daily life? Or prison structures, like are found in most schools? What crime have children committed (besides being young) that they deserve to have to learn how to live inside a prison instead of learn to live inside a healthy family and healthy neighborhood?

From:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
"""
Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you. "School is prison." They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, "School is prison."
Let me say that a few more times: School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison.
Willingham surely knows that school is prison. He can't help but know it; everyone knows it. But here he writes a whole book entitled "Why Don't Students Like School," and not once does he suggest that just possibly they don't like school because they like freedom, and in school they are not free.
"""

How parents can best interact with their children is a complex topic, depending in part on the parent's temperment and the child's temperment. One resource:
http://www.motherstyles.com/
Another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles

I would agree that *some* unschoolers (especially "radical" ones with young children) tend too far to permissive parenting. But, that does not invalidate the general concept of "unschooling" as defined by John Holt decades ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
"""
Unschooling refers to a range of educational philosophies and practices centering around allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including child directed play, game play, household responsibilities, and social interaction, rather than through the confines of a conventional school. Exploration of activities is often led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child.
"""

Just look at this one essay on how harmful grading is:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm

Or this on how pointless homework is:
http://www.thecaseagainsthomework.com/

Or this on how people are punished by "rewards" in school:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

Or this on how the secret to a happy life is in part how we think about time in a balanced way (schools are unbalanced in that sense):
http://www.thetimeparadox.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studi

"...Democrats and their "Oh, everyone's a winner" crap...

Have you ever seen that? Really?

I doubt it.

My guess is that you, and others in this thread, base your comment (or ones like it) on some echo-chamber mythology you've absorbed. Or willingly slurped up.

I've had teachers, who in retrospect I realize were left of center, that were, with few exceptions, appropriately demanding in constructive ways. I can't ever remember seeing encouragement do damage. On the other hand I've seen (some) teachers, who in retrospect I realize were right of center, devastate kids in front of their peers, and, more importantly, erode that child's self worth. I am acquainted with, and have worked with, people who've never really gotten over either the poisonous assessments, or the twisted kudos, incompetent teachers often use to keep control in the classroom. How do I know? Because I see those people fall for the same bullsh*t at work from their pointy-haired managers. In school I was rarely caught in the crossfire because I'm smarter than the average bear and was fairly well behaved, but it made me feel terrible when I saw it and, if anything, it made me less likely be demonstratively smart where the teacher was liable to pit me against another student. In the workplace it's the sort of thing that tempts me to have a beer right after work.

Healthy education is not about competition, least not until kids are mature enough to manage their emotions well. Last thing you need is an authority figure such as a teacher sanctioning the pecking order, peck-to-death dynamic of the typical school environment.

As for this "Everyone's a winner" thing?

What's the alternative? Announcing losers? Highlighting their failures?

"Hey kids, let's look at the test scores. Oooooooo! Looook at the Losers! And you Cindy - why do you even bother? Guess you're gonna work in retail."

Sound helpful? Really? (Then consider what it'd sound like with a light ethnic, racial, gender, or class-based overtone thrown in.)

Most people when they really think about how life was as a child realize it takes a complete disconnect with reality to not naturally compare oneself to one's peers and notice one's relative ranking, then make an effort to improve or adapt.

My guess is, rather than education, that sort of disconnect is more likely rooted in one's upbringing or the onset of some religiously based dysfunction.

I suggest some of you read Alfie Kohn's "No Contest: The Case Against Competition".

As for a "Chinese moonshot"? Should we give a rat's ass? How well did that last effort go? Seems it blew a lot of money to prove a geopolitcal point and then, once the point proven, left space efforts twisted and barely sustainable for decades as well as a bunch of engineering types burnt on the employment front. (much like with the cancelled collider) Let's go back to the moon when there's a positive expected value in scientific terms. Jingoism is a poor motive for science. But it's an easy (lazy) way to light a competitive fire under some butts.

Examples: Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.

Scientific research referenced for almost every statement he makes.

Here's a description of the book on his website: http://www.alfiekohn.org/up/index.html

Highly recommended for any present/future parent.

Nonvilent parenting != permissive parenting

However, incentives don't work

That is a powerful claim. You did not provide anywhere near enough evidence to back it up.

I don't have time to document the claim, but I did provide a reference for those who are interested (which in turn has footnotes to studies backing up the claims). There has been plenty of research on the subject spanning at least several decades.

Regarding garbage men and electricians, to flip the argument around, would you suggest that you could create a system that would take your average garbage man or electrician and use incentives to make him/her a great teacher, programmer, or (to the point of this topic) doctor? And as for not needing 40 million electricians, do we not have that many because of incentives to do other work or is it simply a result of supply and demand?

Kohn (author of Punished by Rewards does note that the detrimental effect of incentives is more pronounced for tasks that are complex or require creativity, but that even in assembly line work incentives have a mixed record. Here is a link from his site that gives an overview http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/meritpay.htm/. He mostly writes about education, but Punished by Rewards covers a much broader scope (which is why I referenced it).

Yes! That is exactly it.

For those who want to read a whole book on the topic, see Punished By Rewards. It makes a very persuasive case that for a great swathe of human activity, reward systems look very appealing but actually undermine or wreck the behaviors you're trying to encourage.

No, the problem is that these behaviors are so deeply rooted that no one is willing to acknowledge them when they're pointed out. I submit that competition as a classroom motivational tool alienates girls. I've read at least one study regarding science education and cooperative groups versus competitive ones. Teachers are very intent on competition, and so are parents and therefore so are students. That's not going to change on a wide scale. It's not because no one pointed it out.

Alfie Kohn wrote a book about the detrimental effects of competition called No Contest, but his unwillingness to give any background on himself makes his ideas easy to dismiss since he has no credentials. People who don't already (on some level) agree with him translate this into a lack of credibility.

One more thing is that we must not restrict ourselves to thinking that only male teachers and students create gender inequities in classrooms. Female elementary school teachers who give girls answers and force boys to figure things out for themselves are doing the same disservice.

"Controlled and focussed aggression and competition are at the heart of our survival as a species and our great works of civilization."

Not really. See the writings of "Alfie Kohn".
    http://www.alfiekohn.org/

Like _No Contest: The case against competition_.
    http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security."

What the glorification of violence and competition may do is supply a justification for a small number of people to have most of the wealth in society though a form of "Social Darwinism".

There is no good research data with findings that support a correlation between homework and academic benefit. I believe the unspecified study that shows there "may" be some benefit if the last years of high school was flawed. At least if it is the one mentioned by Alfie Kohn in his book "The Homework Myth" http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/hm.htm. I'm sure someone out there has a reason to discount Mr. Kohn and his book. But personally, I found it a good read. A lot of emphasis on what makes for good research, and the limits of research.

Yeah.. at my high school you needed to get 4 years of math classes (that would be everything up to precalc), 6 years of english classes (in 4 years), and all kinds of stupid classes like PE. Not to mention the insane amounts of homework.

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching., that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools, as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution oveiwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic; it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

A youth who had begun to read geometry with Euclid, when he had learnt the first proposition, inquired, "What do I get by learning these things?" So Euclid called a slave and said "Give him threepence, since he must make a gain out of what he learns."

Quoting from Peopleware, second edition, chapter 28 "Competition", under the "Teamicide Re-visited" heading (pg. 183 in my copy):

"Internal competition has the direct effect of making coaching difficult or impossible. Since coaching is essential to the workings of a healthy team, anything the manager does to increase competition within a team has to be viewed as teamicidale."

DeMarco & Lister quote W. Edwards Deming's "14 Points", where point 12B says that annual or merit ratings and management by objectives should be abolished. Alfie Kohn's work focuses on the harm caused by the "Do this and you'll get this" mentality. Joel Spolsky's essay, "Incentive Pay Considered Harmful" is a quick read on the subject.

I'd say that computers are neutral compared to the damage that forced education does to children. This may be a bit off-topic, but I think it's something that people should learn more about.

Check out stuff by authors such as A.S. Neill, John Taylor Gatto, and Alfie Kohn. In fact, Alfie Kohn has a website devoted to his work, and the school started by A.S. Neill (Summerhill School) also has it's own website.

We all need to realize where the idea of public schools and everything involved with them (forced education, splitting the day into one hour segments, age separation, bells, assigned seating, raising your hand) originated, and it did not originate in the idea of creating a free-thinking society. John Taylor Gatto has an essay that deals with just this subject.

Here's an excerpt:

The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.

So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:

1.Obedient soldiers to the army;

2.Obedient workers to the mines;

3.Well subordinated civil servants to government;

4.Well subordinated clerks to industry

5.Citizens who thought alike about major issues.

Other things to look into are schools such as the "Sudbury Valley" schools, and even Montessori (although I don't find Montessori schools to be nearly radical enough in their teaching methods).

The whole idea of these schools (usually called "free", "democratic", or "modern" schools) is that children do not need to be forced to learn. Teachers should play a supportive role, and should involve themselves only when children initiate learning.

A lot of people say, "But then children won't learn anything," but that's not the case. Children are, by nature, very curious and willing to learn. If you've ever observed students going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd grade you see an incredible transformation from being absorbed by learning, to actively resisting it. This is because they're being forced to learn subjects and in ways that they're not comfortable with.

Before the Spanish Civil War, a lot of the anarchists (which totalled around 3 million out of Spain's 20 million) were strong advocates of modern schools as put forth by Francisco Ferrer (who later was killed by the Catholic Church), because they were opposed to the authoritarian methods that the Church used in their schools (which were the only ones available to poor children).

To summarize, authoritarian learning is not really learning, but instead obedience mixed with memorization. Libertarian learning, on the other hand, is much deeper, because it is based on what a child wants, and not what teachers and by extension, the state, imposes on them.

In other words, computers in the classroom are the least of these children's worries.


Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net