196. The Systems Idea In Action: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

 

196. The Systems Idea In Action: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

 

 

The Systems Idea In Action 

 

      In Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-Of-Control (1989), Langdon Winner takes a  sobering look at modern predicament: 

 

      Society is composed of persons who cannot design, build, repair, or even operate most of  the devices upon which their lives depend.... In the complexity of this world people are  confronted with extraordinary events and functions that are literally unintelligible to  them. They are unable to give an adequate explanation of man-made phenomena in their  immediate experience. They are unable to form a coherent, rational picture of the whole.  Under the circumstances, all persons do, and indeed must, accept a great number of  things on faith.... Their way of understanding is basically religious, rather than scientific;  only a small portion of one 's everyday experience in the technological society can be  made scientific. ...The plight of members of the technological society can be compared to  that of a newborn child. Much of the data that enters its sense does not form coherent  wholes. There are many things the child cannot understand or, after it has learned

to  speak, cannot successfully explain to anyone.... Citizens of the modern age in this respect  are less fortunate than children. They never escape a fundamental bewilderment in the     face of the complex world that their senses report. They are not able to organize all or  even very much of this into sensible wholes.... An objection might be raised that  difficulties of the sort I have mentioned soon will have remedies. Systems theory,  artificial intelligence, or some new modern way of knowing will alleviate the burdens....  Soon there will exist tools of intellectual synthesis. I must report I found no such tools in  practice. I have surveyed the various candidates for this honor — systems theory and  systems analysis, computer sciences and artificial intelligence, new methods of coding  great masses of information, the strategy of disjointed incrementalism and so forth. As  relief for the difficulties raised here none of these offers much help.... The systems idea is  another — and indeed the ultimate — technique to shape man and society. 

 

      By allowing the existence of large bureaucratic systems under centralized control,  whether corporate, governmental, or institutional, we unwittingly enter into a hideous  conspiracy against ourselves, one in which we resolutely work to limit the growth of our  minds and spirits. The only conceivable answer is to break the power of these things,  through grit, courage, indomitability and resolution if possible, through acts of personal  sabotage and disloyalty if not.