david on schools

david graeber on schools

via nika dubrovsky thread [https://twitter.com/nikadubrovsky/status/1700867402630631696?s=20] quoting david in lost people:

‘Schools … are ultimately a part of this apparatus of violence’ @davidgraeber 1/

Schools, anyway, are ultimately a part of this apparatus of violence: In Malagasy, one does not speak of education as conveying facts and information so much as skills: the word used, fahaizana, means “skills, know-how, practical knowledge.” 2/

The kind of fahaizana one acquires at school however was seen as an essentially foreign one, a fahaizana Vazaha, opposed, as such, to Malagasy forms of know-how. 3/

The techniques taught in school were seen as, essentially, techniques of rule. In part this is because the school system was itself part of the infrastructure of violence: it was designed primarily to train functionaries; secondarily, technicians. 4/

The style of teaching was entirely authoritarian, with a heavy emphasis on rote memorization, and the skills that were taught were taught with the expectation they were to be employed in offices, workshops, or classrooms organized around certain forms of social relation, 5/

what might be referred to as relations of command. —Lost People (2007: 27) 6/

to me.. any form of

measuring things ing,

accountable ing,

people telling other people what to do ing,