I’m also not sure where you see the parallel to Brave New World, what I remember is that there weren’t a lot of truth-seeking change agents around? Quite the contrary, no?
I would appreciate any clarifications for personal reasons.
In the end, it is still a system for producing workers that fit in whatever the current regime needs, and I think there should be some space for "i dont want to be a part of this, there must be some other way to live"
The first few pages of brave new world gave me this vibe, thats why I said its in the eye of the beholder, you read as much into a book as out of it.
In the same time, my daughter is growing up to be critically thinking and self aware and independent and is enjoying the school very much.
Edit: a nice concise explanation of his view on pedagogy and montessori: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvpVXdhCQg
https://www.youtube.com/c/ForestAnon
you might be interested in this dude. he just walked away from society and built a hovel in the woods.
This is an important idea of course, but I don't think that a 5 year old is really equipped to make a principled and informed decision about whether to withdraw from society--the authority they will challenge is really just trying to get them to brush their teeth and learn the fundamentals of reading; the kid is not going to think up alternatives to capitalism.
I don’t understand what you are saying here. Montessori education focuses on developing independence from a young age.
> In the same time, my daughter is growing up to be critically thinking and self aware and independent and is enjoying the school very much.
Sounds like a Montessori education after all.
I guess I don't see the connection between acknowledging that children begin to learn from birth and you need to be aware of that in order to educate them, as well as understanding that education affects the end result on both a mental and emotional level and the jump to it being a system that produces workers that fit in whatever the current regime needs.
[...]
EDIT : > We note first of all that this technique must be implemented by the state, which alone has the means and the breadth to carry it through. But the rigorous application of the psychopedagogic technique means the end of private instruction — and therefore of a traditional freedom.
[...]
EDIT 2 : > despite all the pretentious talk about the aims of education — it is not the child in and for himself who is being educated, but the child in and for society. And the society, moreover, is not an ideal one, with full justice and truth, but society as it is.
ORIGINAL : > When a society becomes increasingly totalitarian (and I say "society,” not “state”), it creates more and more difficulties of adaptation and requires its citizens to be conformist in the same degree. Thus, this technique becomes all the more necessary. I have no doubt that it makes men better balanced and “happier.” And there is the danger. It makes men happy in a milieu which normally would have made them unhappy, if they had not been worked on, molded, and formed for just that milieu. What looks like the apex of humanism is in fact the pinnacle of human submission: children are educated to become precisely what society expects of them. They must have social consciences that allow them to strive for the same ends as society sets for itself. Clearly, when modern youth are fully educated in the new psychopedagogic technique, many social and political difficulties will disappear. Any form of government or social transformation becomes possible with individuals who have experienced this never-ending process of adaptation. The key word of the new human techniques is, therefore, adaptation, and we shall come upon it repeatedly as we consider each of these techniques separately.
P.S.: One of main gists of Ellul's thought is that the technoscientific progress results in an increasingly totalitarian society.
If you are reading them, make sure you take your time.