pete wrote:
>
> "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >(1) Perhaps every child who is not destined to
> >become a professional (doctor, lawyer...)
> >should be taught a skilled
> >craft during their teen years. Something like
> >plumbing, carpentry, electrician, (and, God help
> >us...) computer programmer.
>
> I've always thought the
> apprenticeship model had great appeal as a means of education in
> high tech fields; I think part of the reason it is not more
> employed is the presumption of continually increasing demand,
> such that apprenticeship could not keep up, though I don't think
> that in practise our present system is any better: the education
> system accepts fees from a great many candidates, then filters
> them out, the winners then undergoing a process akin to apprenticeship
> in their grad school and/or subsequent employment.
Our society is fascinated with the so-called "social sciences"
(technologies of control of human beings treated as objects
of empirical methodologies -- see, e.g., Foucault's _Discipline and
Punish_, and his _Power/Knowledge_ -- which, incidentally, are
about the only post-modern books I've ever been able to
understand). Apprenticeship isn't *scientific*. Standardized
tests are (ETS as the most important cultural institution in Princeton
New Jersey...). And, as I've heard, if a Personnel Officer hires
somebody and the person doesn't work out, if the person was
hired because of the Officer's *personal judgment*, he's made
a mistake for which he can be held accountable, *but* if the
person was hired because they had all the correct officially
certified credentials, then the Personnel Officer's -ss is
covered.
I recently came across a very interesting article on a
French teaching guild of craftsmen, in the June 1996 issue of
Smithsonian Magazine. Les Compagnons.
>
> Which leads to:
> >(2) The model of remuneration of work by fee-for-
> >service (the plumber, e.g.), or honorarium (as
> >ancient Greek doctors were "paid" -- so I have
> >read).
>
[snip]
> These days my thinking runs to what may be the implications of
> the saturation of the planet with humans. I gave an analogy a
> few years back considering the technological advances which have enabled
> us to populate the world so successfully,
Remember the Sherwin-Williams house paint company's
advertising logo of a buck of paint pouring out
its contents over a globe (see a small pisture of it at:
http://www.sherwin.com/
look close!). Anyway, when I worked in a large programming shop,
back in the late 1970s, there was a GREAT VISION OF THE FUTURE
afoot: "improved programming technologies" (AKA deskilling
programmers). And *I* too had a vision: That no programming
project was so big that it could not be
smothered under a sufficiently large pile of warm squirming bodies....
The solution to the supply and demand problem of "labor"
is simple and it won't be done: Poor people have to stop
having children.
[snip]
> It seems to me we find ourselves in this sort of situation. We
> have generations of workers who have carried the load to bring
> our civilization to where we know find it. If they are no longer
> needed,
Whoever *needed* rich people's neer-do-well offspring? But
*they* don't get thrown overboard. Hummh....
> I don't see it as ethical that we throw them over the side,
> but I see a responsibility on the part of those who have the power,
> money, and control of the direction of society, to look after
> the rest of the population just as if they were the crew of a ship
> at sea. So I ask myself, were I a seacaptain with a large, potentially
> idle crew, what would I do? I believe I would ensure they were fed,
> clothed and sheltered, and then I would set them to work maintaining
> the vessel in the best possible operating condition. When this
> proved to still leave lots of idle time, I would set them to
> training for useful abilities which could be used in times of
> emergency.
I'd have them study and implement *in their own
workplace* self-accountable team work process. Les Compagnons.
Syndicalism. (The US Government once published a wonderful
study, chaired by Eliot Richardson: _Work in America_ (MIT, 1970?).)....
>
> So how does this analogy translate back to the real world? It seems
> to me that the future must necessarily involve more control over
> individuals, no matter how distasteful we may view it. Freedoms
> must inevitably curtailed as real space to exercise freedom decreases.
[snip]
It may indeed be true that persons will ultimately have sold
all their prospects for good things in life in exchange for
the one "freedom" to reproduce excessively (which is to be
distinguished from freedom for sexual pleasure, e.g., of course!)
How can France be GREAT if French women don'g have more children?
Remember Hitler awarding women who had 5 children a "Mother of the
Reich"
(or something like that) medal. Yes, to paraphrase Stephen Gould,
nations, like Nature, are in love with the *idea* of the individual,
but not with individuals in their specificity. "Dulce et decorum
est pro patria mori." Mama, make more!
>
> I have to say I don't necessarily like this model, but it seems to
> me the least painful alternative future I can successfully imagine.
> We will have no frontiers, so our entire paradigm of life must
> be reordered. We will still have the prospect of a vibrant life of
> the mind, of art and culture, which may well go a long way to
> compensate for the freedoms our success will have denied us.
The horizon of human potential is not bounded by the
simplistic neo-techno-feudalistic visions of vassalage in
flying fortreses which constitute the fantasy life of many of
our computer science PhDs (or at least some of the ones
with whom I have worked... Oh yes, they also liked
M.C. Escher...).... There are also such possibilities
as Matisse's art and Husserl's great lecture "Philosoophy and the
Crisis of European Humanity" (which he gave in 1935, when the
Fascist/Nazi danger was mounting)....
Space is *not* the final frontier.
>
> Then of course, there's this week's monkey wrench in the works,
> telomerase. If it turns out to be what it hints that it could be,
> well, don't get me started....
What is "telomerase"?
>
> -Pete Vincent
-Brad McCormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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