Re: [seul-edu] Ivan Illich tangent

[Paolo Pumilia <xpol@interfree.it>]

From Michael Hall, Dec 01:
 .David, don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate of kids sitting by
 .themselves in
 .front of computer monitors all day. Even taking Deschooling to an extreme,
 .I would still see education as very much as a social activity, just
 .organised differently. I would see education involving much more active
 .engagement with the world than most schools currently allow. Actually, I'm
 .happy with the idea of primary schools to a point. But I don't see why it
 .takes 13 years to teach literacy and numeracy. All subject content is
 .really just a form of literacy in the end.

I agree that the school system should be re-thought
Yet i think that computer aided learning would have two benefits, at least 
in high schools:
- students could spend much less time watching television 
- interactions with teachers could be less frequent (say every two or three 
  days, for a given matter), thus relieving teacher's burden and making each 
  meeting more effective, since it would involve a lower number of students 
  and didactic relations would not be time-constrained into ordinary classes.      

My consideations have been drawn after the reading, a few years ago, 
of Frederick Bennett's 'computers as tutors' (but his proposals are 
not exactly the same as mine):    http://www.cris.com/~faben1/   

I have tried to describe my ideal view, of course. 
The main problem is that software programs should be much more refined 
than today to show their benefits. 
They should produce exciting presentation of the matters, they should feature
'intelligent' performances, modifying their execution depending on the ability
of the student, they should be easly controlled and customizable by teachers, 
whose role can never be left apart. 

Well, maybe it is a long way. I wonder if open source projects will   
accept the challenge. 


 .Illich's Deschooling Society is on the web at a couple of places, this is
 .one of them:
 .http://philosophy.la.psu.edu/illich/deschool/intro.html
 .

I have appreciated such reading, too, many years ago. 

--
Paolo