----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Selma Singer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Barry Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2003 4:39 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Engineering and adjudicating the economy
> > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Barry Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2003 2:52 PM > > Subject: [Futurework] Engineering the economy > [snip] > >>Also, leisure will require the acceptance of automation into every > > > > possible part of the economy. Economic arrangements that don't use > > technology can't meet the want for leisure. All the alternative economies > > will use technology, and they will not need to grow in scale. > [snip] Brad wrote: > This item seems to me somewhat disturbing. I happen to > need things like fine hand-made pottery in my life (in > a pinch, yes, books and music and film CDs can distract me > most of the time, and "Bauhaus design", Enzo Mari, etc., while > machine-made, is not "just banausic/banal"...). > Why in the world would we not have hand-made pottery in a society where individuals would have a chance to learn what they love to do and the time and trainiing to do it? Why would this not be an important part of what people do and enjoy? I don't understand why you think that would not be possible, Brad. Brad: > I think there is a fundamental issue that engages > here: What should be part of the economy and what shouldn't? > > For instance, education. Insofar as education is part > of the economy, I think the reasoning here applies. You > can't easily increase the "productivity" of teachers, > although surely it doesn't take 12 years to teach > what we take 12 years to stuff kids in schools for. > > But I think that a large part of education (just one > example) needs to be removed from the economy and > seen as leisure. Liberal arts education would > fall into this category for me. Liberal arts teachers > would *want* to teach more than anything else > they would be economically free to do (or just rot > on the couch...). Ditto liberal arts students. Selma: It is my view that the entire system of education as we now know it would have to be completely changed. This is one of the most challenging and basically important parts of what would have to be drasically different if we are to have any hope of changing the direction in which we are now headed. I don't believe there is very much of our existing educational system that we should save. What we have now is a system that is subordinate to the economic sector. Our schools socialize our children into the distorted value system of competition and violence that is so much a part of the larger culture; the schools are set up primarily to train people to take their place in the ecnomic and political system that corporate powers and their political lackeys think they need and even at that technology and the information society is changing things so much that the schools can't even do that satisfactorily. This is where it becomes very, very tricky. Somehow, we're going to have to start trying to convince those who can exert influence (power?) over the insitutional structures that we need to change th entire socialization process from the instant a child is born. The only hope I hold out for that beginning to happen is the Internet.Right here, with the conversations we're having now. Selma > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
