Deschooling and the Web: Ivan Illich 30 Years On

In 1971 the anarchist philosopher Ivan Illich published a slim volume that advocated the unthinkable: ridding the world of schools. His arguments were so persuasive that the book caused many people to question the assumptions on which we base our ideas of education. Illich advocated the replacement of institutionalised schooling by community-driven "opportunity webs" that would enable learners to be in control of their own learning and teachers to offer their services in an entrepreneurial fashion. As persuasive as his ideas were, they were not really practical given the technology of the 1970s, but perhaps Illich was ahead of his time as today the World Wide Web has created opportunities for both learners and teachers to do exactly what he described. This paper examines Illich's propositions in terms of their antecedents in the free education movements of the past century and their potential in the global anarchy of the World Wide Web. Déscolariser l’école: 30 ans après Illich, le WEb . . . En 1971, le philosophe et anarchiste Ivan Illich, publia son fameux livre "Pour une société sans école" dans lequel il se faisait l'avocat du diable: éradiquer les écoles du monde. Ses arguments étaient À ce point convaincants qu'il amena bien des gens À remettre en cause les conceptions fondamentales sur lesquelles se sont construits nos systèmes éducatifs. Illich prÔnait l'abandon des formes institutionnelles de l'éducation au profit de communautés et de réseaux d'intérêts qui rendraient les élèves autonomes dans leurs apprentissages tandis que les enseignants offriraient leurs services sur un mode entrepreneurial. Bien que convaincantes, ces idées ne connurent aucune mise en oeuvre dans le contexte technologique des années 1970. Sans doute Illich était-il en avance sur son temps ... Mais aujourd'hui le Web crée les conditions pour réaliser ses prédictions en ce qui concerne tant les élèves que les enseignants. Cette contribution analyse le rÔle des propositions d'Illich dans l'histoire des mouvements de l'éducation libre et leur actualité par rapport au mode de fonctionnement non hiérarchique du WWW. Entschulung des Bildungssystems, das Web : 30 Jahre nach Ivan Illich. Der überzeugte Anarchist Ivan Illich gab 1971 ein dünnes Buch heraus, welches das undenkbare befürwortete : Befreiung der Welt von der Schule. Seine Argumente waren so überzeugend, dass das Buch bei vielen Leuten Zweifel an den Annahmen sähte, auf denen unsere Vorstellung von Erziehung basieren. Illich verwarf das institutionalisierte Schulsystem und skizzierte eine Lerngemeinschaft mit einem Netz aus unterschiedlichen Interessen. Dieses Netz würde den Schülern Autonomie in ihrer persönlichen Bildung einräumen, während die Lehrer ihre Dienste in unternehmerischer Art und Weise anbieten. Bei aller Ueberzeugungskraft seiner Ideen, sie waren praktisch mit der Technologie der 70er Jahre jedoch nicht umsetzbar. Ohne Zweifel waren Illichs Ideen ihrer Zeit voraus, denn das World Wide Web bietet nun Schülern als auch Lehrern die Möglichkeit diese Ideen in die Realiät umzusetzen. Dieser Beitrag analisiert Illichs Vorschläge bezüglich der Vorgeschichte von Bewegungen in der freien Bildung, und deren Aktualität in der globalen Anarchie des World Wide Web.     

Len Barton,inclusion and critical disability studies: theorising disabled childhoods

Len Barton has pioneered the sociological study of education in the areas of disability studies and inclusive education. This paper addresses an argument developed by Len Barton that social exclusion, of which disablism is one element, (1) has many compounding forms of differing exclusions, (2) is not a natural but a socially constructed process, (3) has no single factor that can remove it and (4) is in constant need of conceptual analysis. Our paper aims to address each of these four challenging themes in relation to the contemporary societal position of disabled children, their families and key professionals that work around them, with a specific focus on schools. First, we explore the ways in which disabled childhoods are imbricated with other forms of exclusion. Second, we consider the ways in which ‘disability’, ‘impairment’ and ‘child’ are consistently being reproduced in particular and often contradictory ways by disability discourses. Third, we consider the need to work with numerous forms of educational intervention that address the exclusion of disabled children. Fourth, we conclude with an appeal to develop disability studies in ways that build on the shoulders of (social model) greats – such as Len Barton – whilst being receptive to other transformative perspectives from queer, feminist and postcolonial studies.     

Distant Publics: Development Rhetoric and the Subject of Crisis

INVENTION AS A SOCIAL ACT. By Karen Burke LeFevre. Foreword by Frank J. D'Angelo. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987; pp. xiv + 173. paper $8.50.

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON POETRY. By Gerald F. Else. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Peter Burian. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986; pp. xi‐221. $27.00.

HUMANIST POETICS: THOUGHT, RHETORIC, AND FICTION IN SIXTEENTH‐CENTURY ENGLAND. By Arthur F. Kinney. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986; pp. xiv + 529. $35.00.

ORATORS &; PHILOSOPHERS: A HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF LIBERAL EDUCATION. By Bruce A. Kimball. Foreword by Joseph L. Featherstone. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press, 1986; pp. xix + 293. $19.95.

THE AMERICAN NEWNESS: CULTURE AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF EMERSON. By Irving Howe. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1986; pp. 1 + 99. $12.50.

DE LA METAPHYSIQUE A LA RHETORIQUE. Edited by Michel Meyer. Brussels: University of Brussels Press, 1986; pp. 1 + 208. Paper 1100 FB ($30).

INTRODUCTION TO RHETORICAL THEORY. By Gerard A. Hauser. New York: Harper &; Row, 1986; pp. xi + 209. paper $10.95.

ICONOLOGY: IMAGE, TEXT, IDEOLOGY. By W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; pp. x + 226. $20.00.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES. By Thomas L. Tedford. Foreword by Franklyn S. Haiman. New York: Random House, 1985; pp. 416. paper $16.00. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985; xvii + 493. $29.95.

MURDER, COURTS, AND THE PRESS: ISSUES IN FREE PRESS/FAIR TRIAL. By Peter E. Kane. Foreword by Franklyn S. Haiman. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. pp. xiv + 96. $10.95; paper $6.95.

IMPACT: HOW THE PRESS AFFECTS FEDERAL POLICYMAKING. By Martin Linsky. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1986; pp. xvii + 260. $19.95.

HOW THE PRESS AFFECTS FEDERAL POLICYMAKING: SIX CASE STUDIES. By Martin Linsky, Jonathan Moore, Wendy O'Donnell, and David Whitman. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1986; pp. ix + 373. $25.00.

THE MEDIA ELITE. By S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter. Bethesda: Adler and Adler, 1986; pp. ix + 352. $19.95.

COMMUNICATIONS DEREGULATION: THE UNLEASHING OF AMERICA'S COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY. By Jeremy Tunstall. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986; pp. xi + 324. $24.95.

PROPAGANDA AND PERSUASION. By Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986; pp. 1 + 244. $25.00; paper $12.95.

MEANING AND MODERNITY: SOCIAL THEORY IN THE PRAGMATIC ATTITUDE. By Eugene Rochberg‐Halton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; pp. xiv + 299. $40.00; paper $14.95.     

Building Bridges for Those Under Bridges: A Lesson in Civility

Four questions are presented: What are the historical roots of motor development; How can motor development be characterized; How should motor development be conceptualized; and How should motor development be organized? A brief history presents the psychological roots of motor development and emphasizes the individual researchers who have created the area of motor development since the 1960s. Motor development is characterized as a composite of the researchers, knowledge, application of knowledge, systems for delivering knowledge, and graduate programs in motor development. Motor development should be a perspective rather than a structure or subdiscipline. All courses in human movement should be taught from a developmental perspective, research should be done within the appropriate subdiscipline, and some of that research should be developmental. Motor development will be best served if researchers align with scientists within the subdisciplines and share developmental information in cross-disciplinary groups.     

REALITIES,VISIONS, AND PROMISES OF A MULTICULTURAL FUTURE

Religious education has changed considerably over the 100 years of the Religious Education Association (REA); urgency has increased for human communities to honor diversity. The focus of this article is realities, visions, and promises of cultural diversity. The article includes an overview of REA's recent history, exemplifying its efforts and limitations in diversity. It then turns to five commentaries on a multicultural future, drawing on autobiographical analysis, religious and educational literature, and empirical study. Authors explicate and argue for: engaging in post-colonial analysis, de-centering assumptions, searching for a story to claim, taking time, and entering deep waters.     

Virtual history: a socially networked pedagogy of enlightenment

Background:?Twenty-first-century undergraduates often find eighteenth-century culture difficult to access and, influenced by popular assumptions about the period in current media theory, characterise the century as individualist, underestimating the cultural significance of social networking in literary and political history.

Purpose:?This study set out to teach the history of social networking as culturally significant in the production of literary texts during the eighteenth century as well as to demonstrate the intellectual and compositional potential of today's social networking technologies. A virtual reconstruction of eighteenth-century London in Second Life and a semester project requiring the student recreation of 3D social spaces like coffee houses and gardens tested the uses of social networking tools to teach research methods and build disciplinary knowledge.

Sources of evidence:?Evidence of student learning outcomes is provided by three undergraduate courses in eighteenth-century culture, with 68 students total, that participated in Second Life re-enactment assignments on Island 18 during the autumn of 2008 and spring of 2009. The results of the student projects as well as student-completed evaluations and self-reflective essays about their experiences using virtual reality to learn history are consulted. Theoretical evidence by scholars of new media, eighteenth-century history and education provides a background for the study's impetus and goals.

Main argument:?Virtual reality provides an opportunity for educators of eighteenth-century culture to teach students, through the reflective and critical use of the social networking tools Second Life makes available, the significance of social networking in the history of ideas of that period. We dismantle the generalisations of scholars working outside of the period who characterise the eighteenth century as a solely individualist era, during which singular genius defined the enlightenment and propose a more culturally viable model of social collaboration, supported by communication technologies not so different from twenty-first-century instant messaging, blogging, twittering and emailing.

Conclusions:?Contrary to the recent findings of humanities educators who claim that digital social networking tools are distracting undergraduates from more valuable academic writing, we find that a task-oriented semester project requiring the construction of 3D historical social spaces teaches investigative research skills, deterritorialises disciplinary knowledge and promotes revision as an ongoing process.     

An essentialist methodology in education-related research using in-depth interviews

This paper introduces a methodological approach in in-depth interview projects with adult subjects which (1) attempts to see the nature and essence of the phenomenon under study appearing in the experience and consciousness of each participant, and then (2) endeavours to obtain more general insights regarding the phenomenon by trying to see an essence when looking across cases. The approach uses microanalysis of and identification with prosodic and other dynamic features of discourse, and empathy with and compassion for the object of study (the person interviewed, his or her experience, and the overall story in relation to the problem). In addition, considerable effort is spent to shape what is felt to be 'the essence of the phenomenon' in a particular individual or case (or 'the essence of the phenomenon in that case'), and to use literary devices to communicate this essence to a reader in a portrait.     

Sympathy and Cosmopolitanism: Affective Limits in Cosmopolitan Reading

This paper argues that contemporary understandings of cosmopolitan literature are significantly limited by their dependence on sympathetic attachments as constitutive of cosmopolitan practice. I trace a genealogy of the connection between sympathy, cosmopolitanism, and the novel that extends from Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant to Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah, in order to contend that contemporary models of cosmopolitan reading rely on problematically normative definitions of the ‘human’. J.M. Coetzee's Boyhood, I propose, suggests an alternative model of cosmopolitan reading that neither equates sympathy with humanity, nor precludes those who ‘feel apart’ from participation in cosmopolitan community.     

Antibody-independent isolation of circulating tumor cells by continuous-flow dielectrophoresis

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are prognostic markers for the recurrence of cancer and may carry molecular information relevant to cancer diagnosis. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) has been proposed as a molecular marker-independent approach for isolating CTCs from blood and has been shown to be broadly applicable to different types of cancers. However, existing batch-mode microfluidic DEP methods have been unable to process 10 ml clinical blood specimens rapidly enough. To achieve the required processing rates of 10⁶ nucleated cells/min, we describe a continuous flow microfluidic processing chamber into which the peripheral blood mononuclear cell fraction of a clinical specimen is slowly injected, deionized by diffusion, and then subjected to a balance of DEP, sedimentation and hydrodynamic lift forces. These forces cause tumor cells to be transported close to the floor of the chamber, while blood cells are carried about three cell diameters above them. The tumor cells are isolated by skimming them from the bottom of the chamber while the blood cells flow to waste. The principles, design, and modeling of the continuous-flow system are presented. To illustrate operation of the technology, we demonstrate the isolation of circulating colon tumor cells from clinical specimens and verify the tumor origin of these cells by molecular analysis.     

Intensity of Treadmill Training and its Effect on Body Composition in Rats

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine which of three intensities of treadmill training produced changes in body composition in rats as evidenced by body weight, percentage of fat and specific gravity. Subjects were 60 male Wistar rats 25 to 30 days old when obtained. They were randomly assigned to one of five groups: sedentary controls, spontaneously active controls, and three groups of rats forced to exercise on a treadmill at intensities of 75, 125 and 175 fpm. Forced exercise was applied three times a week for 8 weeks, after which measures of body weight, specific gravity, and percentage of body fat were obtained. Results indicated that the sedentary controls had significantly higher mean body weights than did those which exercised. Rats forced to exercise at 75 fpm had significantly lower specific gravity measures than rats trained at 125 fpm. Sedentary controls had lower specific gravity values than did all rats allowed to exercise. Intensity of treadmill training had no effect on percentage of body fat as determined chemically. However, exercise was effective in reduction of body fat.