Shaun and Jon Try to Debate (Unschooling)
The premise of the episode is that Jon and Shaun will disagree with each other about unschooling. They pretend to disagree for a little while but resolve into their standard mode of agreeing with each other without realizing they are agreeing with each other. Spoiler alert: they both like schools in theory but not in practice...unless it's a Montessori school...unless that Montessori school is a virtual one because of pandemic concerns.
Jon and Shaun tease the audience with their imminent disagreement about unschooling. Jon takes an unschooling posture. Shaun defends the schools...but only if a person have sufficient privilege. Jon then realizes that Shaun is only going to defend privileged access to schools, but he was hankering for an argument against a standard public school defender. Realizing that Shaun was not going to take the stance, Jon had to shift his position to present the counter argument to his own argument. This all happens in the first few minutes of discussion. Shaun will remain oblivious to the fact that Jon has to now carry the entire argument they promised to have, and Shaun assumes his throne overlooking the quibbling in the commons below while sending his child (and soon to be children) to a magical school that only he knows about.
Shaun continues his rhetoric of superiority making absurd claims that basic reading need not be required until the age of 18. Jon tried to save the credibility of the podcast by claiming that Shaun is exaggerating. Shaun says, “maybe a little” - a clear dog whistle to the illiterati.
Jon, in his back and forth between the debate positions, challenges Shaun to join the unschoolers to which Shaun responds with a loud whistle to the authoritarians that “a little bit of oppression is good,” but even he understands his rhetoric might be a bit much there and backs off. I think his point is that pressure clarifies the motivation for learning, but he never says that.
Jon accuses Shaun of strawmanning unschoolers. Shaun agrees and then launches into a story about how some past experience did not inform his thinking on unschooling and was not relevant to the conversation at all.
Jon, always more focused but often less sympathetic, talks about how teachers are agents of the institution, and that he realizes that he is an agent for the institution. He says he know this, but then he contemplates his humanity noting how surprising it is that he never thinks of himself as the thing that he is. Shaun agrees.
Listen to this podcast if you want to hear two people try to disagree but who don’t really disagree with each other so much as they reveal their own cognitive dissonances. People, we need to stop crediting loud vocalizations as legitimate debate. Such behavior is the mark of confused men who cannot make sense of their stations in society.
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / CC BY-SA
Shaun continues his rhetoric of superiority making absurd claims that basic reading need not be required until the age of 18. Jon tried to save the credibility of the podcast by claiming that Shaun is exaggerating. Shaun says, “maybe a little” - a clear dog whistle to the illiterati.
Jon, in his back and forth between the debate positions, challenges Shaun to join the unschoolers to which Shaun responds with a loud whistle to the authoritarians that “a little bit of oppression is good,” but even he understands his rhetoric might be a bit much there and backs off. I think his point is that pressure clarifies the motivation for learning, but he never says that.
Jon accuses Shaun of strawmanning unschoolers. Shaun agrees and then launches into a story about how some past experience did not inform his thinking on unschooling and was not relevant to the conversation at all.
Jon, always more focused but often less sympathetic, talks about how teachers are agents of the institution, and that he realizes that he is an agent for the institution. He says he know this, but then he contemplates his humanity noting how surprising it is that he never thinks of himself as the thing that he is. Shaun agrees.
Listen to this podcast if you want to hear two people try to disagree but who don’t really disagree with each other so much as they reveal their own cognitive dissonances. People, we need to stop crediting loud vocalizations as legitimate debate. Such behavior is the mark of confused men who cannot make sense of their stations in society.
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / CC BY-SA