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  Lance Box

  Feb 24, 2020 at 05:24 in Australia

  On p. 64 he writes: " ... teach only what will be used immediately in the real world ... it should ... encourage more activities. ... For example, math that is taught should be subsequently applied to managing a budget for a project and writing techniques that are demonstrate in class are employed in blogging news articles." This implies that much of the school work, and busy work that is done in schools - much of which is done simply to aid in crowd control has no educational purpose whatsoever - keep the children busy, otherwise they will get bored and then you will not be able to control them. Quality Education must, therefore, have real world application and the application needs to be immediate and with a positive, meaningful outcome in view.
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  Rita Juse-Cirkse

  Feb 24, 2020 at 08:11 in Internet

  agree

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  Lance Box

  Feb 22, 2020 at 18:28 in Australia

  The booklet is not very long, but is compact in its ideas. The following set of quotations were lifted from the above text, and the page number relates to this edition of his work. "Quality Education" is home-based education that is conducted in community, not in isolation. (p. xix): “Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.” Here, as in other parts of Deschooling Society, Illich identifies that schools and schooling, because of their very essence, are unable to deliver true education. Reformation of schools will not bring about the changes that are necessary to enable education to be accomplished. Schools are, fundamentally, anti-education. The thing that schools do best is school their attendees. No amount of reformation, according to Illich — adjustments to the ways schools are constructed and run, changes in teachers’ attitudes to students, the use of technology in the classroom, and even a change in how students are engaged — will alter the outcomes of schooling. Schools can only school. And they can only school, and not educate, because they are total institutions that are designed to control every participant and process within them towards a stated end: egalitarianism and unquestioning submission to the state or some other dominating institution, i.e. an organized religion. This is not an education, it is indoctrination. It breeds narrow-mindedness, and an incapacity to think independently. Schools are not to be reformed, they are to be abandoned altogether, and the vast resources that are taken from families and businesses (through taxation) to fund the schooling industry should remain with the families and the businesses to fund home-based education and more financially viable private enterprises. The proper context for education to take place, according to Illich, is living life: “the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.” And the support structures for a thorough education are “educational webs.” Education must be in a context greater than the family. The family is an essential base from which children move in and out. Parents are important gate-keepers, who must vet and monitor the kinds of influences that their children are exposed to in the marketplace. However, no parent is able to provide everything that the child needs for a well-rounded, reality-grounded education. There are three essential agents in an education. The three essential agents are: the family, compassionate social entities (i.e. churches, synagogues, foundations, trusts, etc.) and the marketplace. And the family needs to engage both these entities and the marketplace as important sources of educational moments and experiences, not just lock their children away in a family fortress, as some (even though a small minority) home schooling families do.
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  Rita Juse-Cirkse

  Feb 23, 2020 at 09:00 in Internet

  Agree

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  Lance Box

  Feb 13, 2020 at 23:51 in Australia

  According to Clark, Quality Education "should have extensive downtimes--that is stretches without scheduled activities and even without the context of impending homework" (to catch up on what was missed during the downtimes - LB). When I was teaching in a classroom I was taught to provide children with "busywork" (extra worksheets for those who finished before the others so that they could keep busy and not cause mischief through boredom). There was no educational advantage, just less messiness in the classroom to try and keep under control. How I would love to have my life over again, with the knowledge that I have now. I sure would have done a lot of things differently.

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  Lance Box

  Feb 12, 2020 at 22:46 in Australia

  https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=NW1BT1HEgVMC&lr=&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

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  Lance Box

  Jan 30, 2020 at 23:26 in Australia

  The seven innovations include: remotely controlled robot teachers; instructional playtime in a natural setting to develop natural curiosity; free tertiary education; 3D learning to make abstract concepts easier to learn; community-based intensive literacy education; teaching autonomy where experts are given the latitude to teach how and what they think is best, rather than being restricted by central bureaucratic decisions; and paperless education (almost).

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  Lance Box

  Jan 30, 2020 at 10:44 in Australia

  Well said, Karen.

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  Lance Box

  Jan 29, 2020 at 22:44 in Australia

  During the so-called Global Financial Crisis in 2008, over 50% of newly graduated university students in the USA, who graduated at a Bachelors or Masters degree, were unemployed or underemployed. Not only could they not get a job, they had an unpayable study dept that could not be gotten rid of through bankruptcy: slaves to the state with little to no hope of getting free. The situation in Australia was not as bad, but similar. Quality Education must include instruction in entrepreneurship and the capacity to get into the flow. At the same time as these graduates became jobless on graduation, teenagers between the ages of 14 and 20, who had never been to school in their lives, were earning between $200K-$1M/annum from internet-based businesses that they built as a part of their home-based education programs. We must think beyond the UN definition of 'Quality Education'. Surely we do not want to lead currently third-world countries down the Korean 'Hell Joseon'?
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    Rita Juse-Cirkse

    Jan 30, 2020 at 06:29 in Internet

    I agree

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  Lance Box

  Jan 29, 2020 at 01:33 in Australia

  The author acknowledges that this a divisive topic to explore, but draws on scientific evidence to suggest that spiritual development is a natural and normal part of the educational process, quite separate from indoctrination into a particular religious tradition. A very important consideration in the quest for an understanding of what is true 'Quality Education'.

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  Lance Box

  Jan 26, 2020 at 18:46 in Australia

  "... artificial intelligence ... offers the potential ... to deliver personalized learning strategies and offer analytics-based performance insight ..."
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  Lance Box

  Jan 26, 2020 at 18:52 in Australia

  There are at least five benefits of integrating AI into a Quality Education paradigm: 1. Automation of routine things which frees time for teacher interaction with the students; 2. Integration of technologies which enables individualised learning paths; 3. Acclimation which enables students to keep pace with technological change; 4. Delineation which enables the most up-to-date and relevant content to be included in the learning journey; and 5. Identification of the need for remediation and acceleration in the students' learning journeys. The future of AI in Quality Education would include: 1. Personalised performance; 2. Breaking of teacher bias; and 3. Aggregating assistance to free teachers to do what they do best: connect with the students. Dangers of the use of AI in Education include: 1. Security issues; and 2. Privacy issues.

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