Talk:Deschooling

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2018 and 7 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MadisonLiggio, Emilychingle. Peer reviewers: Jknig38.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:21, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Deschooling

Hello Scott I write because I think the definition of deschooling is too narrow. The Idea I've had for 30 years is that schooling inevitably is a process of indoctrination. Ilich strived for an ideal which would avoid that. Neither he nor his followers have found a satisfactory alternative to schools. Home schooling is often more doctrinaire not less.

I think the concept of deschooling is useful and valid for adults, probably many years later in mid life. It's the unbundling of your original indoctrination, and re-thinking independent positions for yourself. A process that takes about 10 years if you are lucky. For adults much new learning involves some unlearning. I'm a dancer. Unlearning old habits is a long difficult task.

Deschooling yourself, examining your own indoctrination is difficult in the same way, because we can't "see it". It's part of us, sort of built in, and invisible.

```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnsveitch (talk • contribs) 12:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello Jonsveitch, I really appreciate your comments and the creation of this article as well. I strongly agree that deschooling is a concept for adults as well as children, and that it's important that the emphasis be on deschooling of _persons and thinking_ rather than on treatment of children solely. I base this statement on my own experience, and see that you have had a similar experience, but I can cite F. M. Alexander, who constantly reiterated that non-doing is more effective than doing, and that education in present Western society (he lived until 1950) induced rampant, dysfunctional "doing" and bad use of the self (The Use of the Self, F. M. Alexander). Also, SEMCO, a company in Brazil, which got rid of its rules, essentially, with the influence of a manager who had formerly been an educator at Summerhill (the free school in England and closest in essence to unschooling). The importance of deschooling as a concept, not simply a practice, is what I think needs to be addressed in this article more, since the question of "How do we educate children?" is a distraction from the more important question, "How do I thoroughly un-delude myself, both for my own happiness and sanity and also to avoid passing on falsehoods to others or misusing power over them for invalid reasons?"[[[User:Anonymous unschooler|Anonymous unschooler]] (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)]

As for the statement that "neither he nor his followers have found a satisfactory alternative to schools"--I think this is true to a degree, but it seems to imply that the alternative cannot be found simply because it hasn't been found yet. But of course, many things have been discovered that previously hadn't been in existence, such as the tungsten filament light bulb for example, and what there are in the meantime for learning are alternatives that, while not ideal, are better than the low standard set by formal schooling. In the future, there may be total integration of learning in life, and it may simply take time to develop a better model. Or, for the health of the general community to become great enough that the easy abuse of power over children ceases to look like an acceptable practice. It could be argued that no alternatives have been given a fully fair trial yet, since to give a fully fair trial to any system of education, you'd have to make it possible for the child to feel that her/his schooling is completely normal within the whole nation; otherwise there is an uncontrolled variable in the experiment, namely that an unschooler or free-schooler feels different and is somewhat out of place in the larger society. (In spite of this Sudbury Valley Schools and homeschoolers and unschoolers have all demonstrated greater intellectual preparedness and social adjustment than their public school peers in many cases and in surveys). The availability of information through the Internet today makes it possible for anyone who can read and get on line to get a rich education on many subjects. It's far easier than when you had to look up information in a library only, and the time delay between a desire to know something and an answer was greater. The publishing of information is far more accessible also, so that many more viewpoints are represented on the Internet than previously. Lastly, however, alternatives to schooling have existed for longer than schools, much longer, and still exist today; in the few remaining, undisturbed indigenous communities in the world there can be seen integrated education and initiation, allowing children full development and an absence of indoctrination through the form or content of any school (see Some, Malidoma Patrice, _Of Water and the Spirit_). [[[User:Anonymous unschooler|Anonymous unschooler]] (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)]

untitled

"Unforunately, neither Illich nor his followers have offered any real alternatives to schools"

"Among those who disagree with formal schooling, for whatever reasons, it refers to a supposed mental process a person goes through after being removed from a formal schooling environment, when the so-called "school mindset" is countered. No real explanation of this "mindset" nor the effects or results of such a process have been described"

Both of these are false and blatantly POV, if you ask me. Unschooling, deschooling, homeschooling, and so on are the alternatives offered; saying no alternatives to traditional schooling are offered by alternative schooling proponents in this article is like saying in an article on Communism that communists presented no alternative to capitalism.

I'm going to remove the passages for now. If anyone cares to defend them I'd like to hear the reasoning.24.3.229.31 03:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted the second paragraph several times in the last year or so. I wrote it originally, but someone keeps inserting their own POV into it. I've now reverted it again. If anyone has a problem with it, could they please bring it up on the talk page? -- Scott e<sup>iπ</sup> 07:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of this article, Scott, and editing out a strongly opinionated edit. What would make the article even stronger would be addressing these points of view, and acknowledging that this is what critics have stated (if they can find citations). Perhaps a description of what the "school mindset" consists of.

Found a citation for an alternative to school proposed by Illich:

"The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern." --Deschooling Society, p.

(Why hasn't this been implemented??? Meetups are about the closest thing, and they're a long way away from this. He wrote this in 1971!)

As a brainstorm I suggest the school mindset is "the superstition that an authority outside the self knows better than oneself what is in one's best interest, in the area of one's thinking, acquisition of information, and structuring of one's time".

As for the alternatives suggested, the context needs to be looked at, and the unlevel playing field for traditional and new schools. A "school" which is fully integrated into life, family, and community and respects the personhood of the children "attending" it would be an ideal and real, effective alternative, even if no one has managed to pull it off yet in modern society. As you say, a Sudbury school or unschooling are the alternatives proposed, but they haven't had a fully impartial trial yet.[[[User:Anonymous unschooler|Anonymous unschooler]] (talk) 16:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)]

Also it seems that the ideas of such thinkers as Dewey and Alexander of the vastly greater importance of experience in learning would be a valuable a adjunct to the source cited, Illich, even if they didn't use the term "de-schooling" , since they wrote about the identical concept. I don't have citations at the moment.[[[User:Anonymous unschooler|Anonymous unschooler]] (talk) 16:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)]

Peer editing

I tried to go to the links; however, these links were not viewable. Therefore, make sure that the links you use are valid and are able to be accessed. EmilycHingle and I added background information about deschooling to give information about who pioneered the term and what views they had about education that made them come to their conclusions. Also, added more details about how deschooling looks like to give a more in-depth information about how a deschooling society is to add to the information in the article already about what deschooling is and how it is practiced by people. Lastly, the links were removed because they were not accessible. Instead, we added scholarly articles/journals that shows were we got the information added and back up the information that was already there. --MadisonLiggio (talk) 04:30, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

MadisonLiggio and EmilycHingle's content was added back since it was reverted. The information added gives more details about Illich and Holt and how the concept got started. We decided to leave what was there about the meaning of deschooling. Therefore, we added a section that told about the thinkers behind deschooling (what they saw that made them want schools to be restructured) and how deschooling looks in context. --MadisonLiggio (talk) 03:01, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

JBaumgartner mentioned that additional links needed to be added when she gave feedback. Therefore, Emily and I took that advice to add a link to an article about Ivan Illich. Also, the phrase "Although the word sounds daunting" was taken out to minimize the sentence sounding like a opinion and sounding like a personal essay or argumentative essay. This edit suggestion was also mentioned by JBaumgartner. --MadisonLiggio (talk) 05:15, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Our peer edit mentioned the need for us to talk about what deschooling is and defining it. The article already had this information. As a result, EmilycHingle and I did not state a definition because one was already there. --MadisonLiggio (talk) 05:31, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

The peer editors of DAP noticed a mistake in the consistency of our tenses in the sentence: Rather than being forced to go to school, take a test before entering a school, be denied the opportunity to learn a desired topic, people would be free to choose how they learn. Therefore, we changed this sentence to be more consistent after the peer editors recognized an important grammatical error that needed correction. --MadisonLiggio (talk) 05:04, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Contributions from MadisonLiggio and Emilychingle:

1. The first article was heavily plagiarized. This was notified by emilychingle to Wikipedia. Soon after, somebody eradicated all evidence of plagiarism and rewrote a new article.
2. MadisonLiggio noticed that the links to this new article did not function properly.
3. MadisonLiggio & Emilychingle contributed to the "Background" portion of the article. The article gave no information about the people who pioneered the term "deschooling". Therefore, we wanted to give the history behind this term.
4. MadisonLiggio wrote the beginning of this section and Emilychingle added further information. This information further clarified the history of deschooling.
5. Emilychingle included information about "What Would a Deschooling Society Look Like?" This is to show a practical side of deschooling, giving examples of how it could be implemented in societies (based on Illich's and Holt's ideas).
6. MadisonLiggio and Emilychingle edited the the article based upon the feedback received from professor and peers.
7. Emiychingle and MadisonLiggio changed the original title of "What Would a Deschooling Society Look Like" to "Deschooling Society". This is a concise title that allows us to encompass Illich's ideas rather than make it appear as though they were our own.
8. Emilychingle and MadisonLiggio collaborated on a decisive definition of "deschooling". The information in the lead section was focused on a different use of the term "deschooling". We decided to hold fast to the orthodox view of "deschooling", which was originated by Illich.
9. The title "Introduction" was changed to "Background" by Emilychingle and MadisonLiggio because the information fits this title better.
10. One of the sentences in the "Background" information ("Also, in Deschooling by Ivan Illich, they stated that schools were insufficient because they were curricular, and that improving one skill was related to another irrelevant task[3]. For example, they stated class attendance determining the students ability to use the playground[3]") was eradicated because it did not contribute to the development of the essay.
11. Emilychingle removed a reference because it was repeated.
12. MadisonLiggio and Emilychingle worked on the structure of sentences to make them less suggestive and more aligned to the tone of Wikipedia.
13. Emilychingle and MadisonLiggio added more citations and took out a sentence from the "Background" information because it was not necessary to include. Sentences that were more subjective were reworded.
14. Specifically, we decided to write a concise, accurate definition of deschooling to introduce the topic and allow the reader to understand what the term "deschooling" means. This was in response to our editors comment that we needed to add a clarifying statement about what deschooling is for the reader before going into the background section.To maintain consistent verb tense throughout the article, we made certain that the last paragraph's list of gerunds was parallel. This was in response to our peer editors comment about a sentence that was not grammatically consistent. The sentence that did not make sense to our peer editors was taken out completely because it did not contribute to the development of our article. The sentences was (Also, in Deschooling by Ivan Illich, they stated that schools were insufficient because they were curricular, and that improving one skill was related to another irrelevant task[3]. For example, they stated class attendance determining the students ability to use the playground[3]). It took away from the focus.↑ Lastly, we researched about how deschooling is being used in other countries. Unfortunately, there is lack of research for this. Instead of researching further about how deschooling is being used in other countries, we decided to look further into the history of deschooling.
15. We could not edit this article at first, so we wrote to the Wikipedia Help page. Finally, we were able to edit this article. We went back and re-linked the references to the citations.
16. One of our references was a blog post. To make this more scholarly, a source was found that stated the same inforamtion in a journal or book. A journal that told about the school system being a monopoly was found, so this was used in place of the blog post.
17. Added back in one of our citations to cite information in the article. The link that was originally on there was not working, so we redid the link to link to the pdf version of Ivan's book.
18. The second article was heavily aligned to this website- https://www.k12academics.com/alternative-education/deschooling. Ex: Some people extend the concept of deschooling beyond the individual and call for an end to schools in general(Wikipedia) Website: Some people extend the concept of deschooling beyond the individual and call for an end to schools in general. Thus, this must be reworded to avoid plagiarism. Also, this was plagiarized because their was no citation for the information and the links were inaccessible. Emilychingle and I decided that this statement and the lead section of the article did not fit with illich's (the main pioneer of the term) viewpoint, so we started the article from scratch and made sure our work was referenced and not plagiarized.
19. One of the parts we did reword was, ...in favor of fostering a less restrictive learning environment where the child largely directs his or her own learning. We used this, but added to it and reworded the sentence. Our new sentence is, Deschooling, a term rooted in the beliefs of Ivan Illich, is the shift from a traditional, government-influenced institution of schooling to a less-restricted method of learning that focuses on being educated by one's natural curiosities.[1].

--MadisonLiggio (talk) 23:59, 19 November 2018 (UTC) MadisonLiggio (talk) 03:59, 19 November 2018 (UTC) --Emilychingle (talk) 18:29, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello. I've moved and sorted your new posts to the bottom to organize things more a bit. See Help:Talk pages and Help:List on how to format your messages and lists properly. In a nutshell: please post new messages at the bottom, reply an existing message by indenting, and please use the "#" symbol to create numbered lists. Thanks. theinstantmatrix (talk) 22:10, 16 November 2018 (UTC)