Recall that the time period of this topic is three weeks, from Monday January 31st until Sunday February 20th. All students are expected to read the Illich text on my web site with care and do the following assignments within the time frame laid out in the assignments.
We will spend three weeks on the issue of deschooling society and the related material mainly in Ivan Illich's first chapter of DESCHOOLING SOCIETY.
The first item of business is for all to carefully read the text. I have posted it on my web site in unit two of the course.
The sum of the various assignments will total a value of up to 1000 points.
Assignment on the reading itself. Presume that you are reading this text and a friend comes along and comments that this is a very strange title and asks you the questions below. Answer your friend's questions within the following framework: The first 6 of these questions will be worth 50 points each. The last 2 are worth 100 each. This assignment is 50% of the grade for this unit, or 500 of the 1000 points.
This paper must be in Corbett's box no later than midnight on Wednesday/Thursday, Feb. 2/3, 2000. Otherwise it will be considered late and will only be eligible for significantly reduced credit. I will not post the papers of the group until Thursday daytime, and at that time I'll comment on the replies myself and the floor with be open for discussion.
Take these things into consideration:
Your friend who has been paging through chapter 1 asks:
How would he get rid of those aspects of social control? What would he do? He seems to want to do it by law. How?
Please, says your friend about questions 7 and 8 particularly, I know and you know that criticizing him because the idea is not PRACTICAL is no criticism at all. Even in glancing at the chapter I know Illich is much too smart to be proposing this as a PRACTICAL argument. What I mean is, which of his arguments makes the least sense even in some utopian and ideal world. Don't take any cheap out by criticizing him on practical grounds. We both know that is utterly irrelevant to what he's talking about.
(100 points). Submit 5 questions on the chapter on Illich.
Anything you want. The questions are expected to be genuinely thoughtful and reflect not only a careful reading of the text, but some serious thinking about the material. Please get these to Corbett as early in the first week as you can. 20 points each.
Four different times join in the discussion by replying to the post of another student, a post of Corbett, or by introducing a new discussion topic concerning the position and our discussion of Illich's work.
Each post should deal with some significant topic and do so using considered REASONS to make claims and defend positions. The place for question asking is either in assignment 2B or as extra posts. To just agree with another is not a significant thing to do. These four items should be substantial where you stake our a position critical of another person's, or adding substantially to someone else's position. Always your position should be carefully support by strong reasons.
No one post of these four should be less that 2000 bytes.
Any post received after Saturday, Feb. 19th will be considered late and not be eligible for more than 50% credit maximum.
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Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu