Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 18:47:33 +1000
From: P.Bains-AT-uws.EDU.AU (Paul Bains)
Subject: Re:Imprisoned in the Global Classroom


Should qualify wot I said about being pessimistic - i had toothache. It's
too easy to be pessimistic. In fact the university can offer a privileged
site for all sorts of inter-esting things. I'm just not sure that it can be
planned or organised. 

Illich has been teaching at an american campus during the last 10 yrs (I'll
check the details. all his books are as relevant (if not more so than 20yrs
ago). He's quite happy with uni's (not compulsory).

Cuernevaca (illich's centre in Mexico - it may no longer exist) was
apparently intense and interesting for language teachers/learners. the
spanish courses were quite hard - you apparently got dropped if you didn't
learn so many words a day. One school I liked was a private language school
in Paris based on the bulgarian accelerated learning technique - deck
chairs, Bach, and fun. Most schools slow you down. Teaching English as a
Foreign Language to Asian students in Australia is basically an industry -
including the courses to teach you how to do it. The certification of
everything. I did it for a while to pay the rent.
The non-compulsory is obviously essential - grades are less of a problem -
they can always be invented. Lecturers do this anyway with their bell
curves. You can't have too many people failing or doing well. There aren't
really any general rules that can be applied - my dentist brother, I'm  glad
he was examined!
The humanities school at UTS, (sydney, not far from frog hollow) seems to be
doing ok - lots of folk get to experiment with writing, video, radio, film,
philosophy.....then they vanish. The tenured lecturers seem to stay though...

See amongst others:
Illich, The Right to useful unemployment
Illich et al, After Deschooling What?
Illich, Deschooling society
Ilich, Tools for conviviality
Illich & Verne, Imprisoned in the global classroom
Illich & Sanders, The alphabetization of the popular mind.
Aries, Centuries of childhood. (the classic text - all about the invention
of schooling - mainly european).

Not to mention Illich's 'Gender', the book that died. I wonder if it ever
got translated into french. would have been snapped up by irigaray.
Whitehead's Process and Reality was only translated last year. Barbarians.

see yous
Paul.

"Among contemporary beings of the planet Earth a 'university' is just that
'hearth' on which everything acquired during decades and centuries by
preceding beings is burned,  and upon this 'hearth' one-and-a-half-day tasty
lentil soup is quickly cooked to take the place of everything attained by
the centuried conscious and unconscious efforts and labours of their
unfortunate ancestors." Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's tales to his grandson, second
book, p.300, chpter 38, 'religion'. 

Now there's someone I've yet to see listed in a 'textual studies' program.