that will look. "local communities should decide for their conditions" is not good enough. propose a model, do the hard work. if activism and agitation is your thing then fine i guess but it feels so odd to be so committed to a thing when you have no vision.
"Instead, the entire system must be ended and
replaced with resources and supports that genuinely meet people’s needs, as well as strategies that effectively address and reduce harm and violence."
and then the further solutions are never mentioned whatsoever.
I think im able to be more charitable to theory bc its more philosophy minded and i can grapple with principles rather than with more hard data stuff, which makes me go policy mode. And yeah sure plenty of theory stuff struggles with this problem, and thats an issue too
reading "prison by any other name" bc the abolitionist dsa reading group is doing it and its literally just a worse discipline and punish. i mean i guess its phrased easier and has more up to date data and language but meh zz the way they make the args annoy me
And yes, his use of “rational” is ableist and misogynistic, but not for the reasons you’re saying!! Like I’m no Kantian (yet 😏) but please oh my god try at least a little bit
I think I have found someone I actually admire in history, whereas before I never could. Harry Kelly, anarchist, Modern Schooler, seems like he was pretty decent guy actually. Avrich didn't hesitate to bring up the faults of other people within the Ferrer movement, but Kelly
It’s pretty incredible how fast my anxiety can go from 0 to like really high - extra school project, landlord stuff, social interaction stuff - it’s all like stuff I have minimal control over and I can’t really plan around, really stressful to me
oh! i should also add
4. Labor conditions - teacher pay, effort, time, also needs to be respected. while ideally learning would not be so restricted to few individual facilitators of education, that will likely be the reality in early prefiguration.
Counter institutions need to take care to respect those who labor, and need to ensure that that the situation is not child liberty at the expense of adult liberty. This is a massive challenge and clever organizational strategies will need to be discovered and negotiated
practice and data, etc. Obviously all of this is open to critique and revision, but pretending as if this information is irrelevant is foolish and prideful.
building the new within the shell of the old.
2. Parents - self selecting for people that want to get involved, need to find some way to allow children to flourish without excessive parental intruision. of course they can and should be involved, but should never be dictating
curriculum. Also not to mention how 2 parent model creates dangerous power relations.
3. Lack of pedagogical knowledge/understanding/experience - great theory of liberation, but there needs to be additional understanding of child psychology, historical pedagogy, current
Reading "The Modern School Movement" by Avrich and there are a few things that stick out to me as lessons from past attempts at liberatory pedagogy.
1. Money - often reliant on donations to stay afloat, which makes sense, ideally would be offered freely. Great challenge to
that takes a working class perspective where the relationship between men and women have changed, and turned that into something that powerfully subverts the dominant and repressive status quo. i hope im being clear with what comparisons im drawing lol
but yeah i think thats an interesting way of looking at it, that like in the process of one system of oppression seeking to expand its power it can actually undermine the project of another system of oppression. Im sure there have been plenty of others who have written about this
and potentially it is captured within "contradictions" (which tbh have always been a little loose for me) but yeah i just think an intersectional analysis of this stuff would be super cool to read
oh also just wanted to note that i actually have no historical basis for thinking thats how things actually happened, i just dont know enough. it seems plausible? but i wouldnt commit myself to that reading
yo just reflecting on communist manifesto and ethics of care. one objection to EoC is that it just reinforces and valorizes oppressed values rather than subverting them. But i think a good counter example is how efforts to squeeze more profit out of the working class involved
lessening the distinctions between women and men so that women could do similar labor. then in the CM marx talks about how communism isnt about further ownership and oppression of women but that they should be free. In a way i read this as similar to ethics of care perspective,
mom pushing me to do exercise n stuff is very funny (i want to do more exercise its just funny how unaware she is of weight/ana considerations, which is part of my problematic motivation :P)
approval but at least then ill feel more confident in myself like that my perspective has more validity. bc rn the experiences ive had have been either writing me off a bit(but i dont entirely blame her) or just accepting its logical validity but still confused and perplexed and
def not going to perform that with me. not that my parents would do that either ugh. kinda frustrating. only other person i could would be muz but idk, we dont really spend that much time 1on1 and i might feel uncomfy in front of chud zoomer friends
also coming back to in person classes n organizing n stuff i feel weird being gendered as male (man, guy, dude, boys) and i dont think its like i want to exclude masc pronouns or referents, but rather theres this frustration that that is assumed and i never get to experience
more gender neutral or femme compliments/referents. but ofc thats a really odd thing to ask for, and im personally uncomfy rn publicly being like any/all even, so i just leave blank. idk weird vibes, might feel better about it if i talk to parents not bc i need or want their
I mean like in the sense that I abdolutley engaged in thread 1 esp when a bit younger, and thread 2 was important for me to deal with that behavior. I don’t think I’ve adequately apologized to gail for T1 behavior still bc it took a bit to come to terms with.
allowed me to gain enough confidence to have opinions on things, because ultimately there arent as many *facts* as I thought, not everything i was taught was objective. which is ironic bc it also made me entirely unconfident in my ability to gain knowledge myself, and that i
I think my high school psych class was a massive turning point/ start for my political and philosophical perspectives. Very much informs my epistemic humility and first thing i experienced that was like "oh professional ppl in these fields thought this wacky stuff not long ago"
also recent discourse around school and bedtime abolition is fun because i had the unreasonable(ly based) positions before it started, feels great. also arguments over definitions/misunderstandings of words are primary and people dont really wanna look into stuff or be charitable
to be fair tho people rarely link good resources or clarify, but to be double fair its hard when people that are supposed to be with you take snobbish reactionary positions lol. also very funny to watch libs who want to seem woke on the latest discourse totally mangle what is
this day has felt so long, but in a good way. i finished 3 books. skipping lecture is so pog, and even going out wasnt totally a negative experience. being able to walk to shit feels really nice too
my YDSA meeting was so white lol. presenter guy was interesting about history of marxism, but discussion afterwards i could have had with libs lol. what an odd group, but i enjoy it i think. dont think im gonna find many other anarkiddies but what can ya do
Ok it seems like still some very salient criticisms, I really want to read his sociology of education but the PDFs online suck :/ only thing I’m unsure of is the dialectic stuff, he uses the thesis antithesis synthesis model which idk enough to criticize but I don’t think it’s
Lol fight back by being exploited locally with poor worker rights/pay. Exploit your own workers. Run your own life. Your carbon footprint is nothing compared to the corporations that run you, so instead of challenging this authority attempt to become it yourself.