UP-WINGERS

by F. M. ESFANDIARY

  —At the Child Center another group comprised of demographers—environmentalists—social scientists and others with the help of computers regularly advises the rate at which the country and the world can comfortably accommodate newborn life. Based on these assessments a certain number of the selected sex cells are fertilized.

  —The fertilized eggs are then implanted in the wombs of women who wish to carry babies and who have already been screened and approved by the Genetic Counseling Service at the Child Center. Later in the Middle Future fertilized eggs will be cultivated only in nonflesh wombs—under ideally controlled conditions to maximize the chances of creating the very healthiest babies. And to free women of the primitive ordeal of carrying babies for nine months. Still later stored body cells may also be carefully examined by Child Centers to decide which ones are best suited for cloning new life.

  —The newborn spends the first five to ten years of its life at Child Center Homes. A Universal Baby-Exchange Program can enable babies to grow up at different Child Center Homes around the planet. Warm—cheerful—comfortable, these Centers are open to men and women who wish to be with children. Every effort is made to provide children maximum opportunities to enjoy loving (but nonfixating) relationships with many women and men. To free the child and help it grow unpossessed and unpossessing it must be conditioned from its very first day out of the womb to develop a sense of security from non-exclusive relationships with many mothers and fathers. This pattern must then persist through childhood and adolescence. No child belongs to any one. All children belong to every one. Whose child are you? How many brothers and sisters do you have? How many children do you have? All these questions become irrelevant. You are everybody's child. Everybody's brother and sister. Everybody's parent.

  —When the child is around eight or ten years old the Child Center places it in a mobilia and until the youngster is around the age of fifteen or sixteen the Centers continue to supervise its development, facilitating the youngster's movements from one mobilia to another. Of course all this is done with the collaboration of the peoples within the various mobilias. The World Child Center also helps facilitate the youngster's movements around the planet.

  —Thereafter the youngster is on its own. It can move around singly or transmobilia. This youngster does not belong to any specific parents specific family group or nation. This is a child of the world at home everywhere belonging to all humankind.

  * * * *

  More than a century ago the Marxists launched a revolution to correct social-economic injustices. Today we are launching a more ambitious upheaval to redress the more basic biological injustices and monopolistic family systems which are at the root of social-economic wrongs.

  Communal approaches to child-rearing in some socialist states and the present trend to Day Care Centers in the United States do not correct basic flaws. Communality or multiple parenthood must begin in the pre-natal stage and persist full time throughout childhood.

  We must jointly decide how many new lives the world can accommodate every week every month every year.

  We must jointly participate in procreation by using our healthiest sex cells.

  We must jointly be involved in child-rearing.

  All this was not possible at one time. Today the Biological Revolution and the new global mobility make all the above accessible.

  We must settle for nothing less than —

  Universal Planned Procreation.

  Universal Parenthood.

  Universal Life.

  Don't be a biological purist. Don't be a psychological monopolist.

  Let every newborn have the best available genetic foundation.

  Let every newborn belong biologically and socially to the whole world.

  Only then can we end such primitive monopolies as my own mother my own father my own brother my own sister my own child my own people...

  Only then can we end the destructiveness of exclusive love the fragmentation of our world into exclusive groups sects nations.

  Only then will it be possible for all men and all women to be truly brothers and sisters.

  * * *

  beyond schools: universal teleducation

  The only way to modernize our educational systems is to do away with schools.

  School is as obsolete as family.

  Like the family the school is inherently conservative—insular—structured. It reinforces many of the problems the individual faces at home: exclusivity—competition—fragmentation.

  The school is a book-oriented system. It has no meaning in our electronic age.

  The school system is oriented to a slower, more structured world. In our rapidly changing world, by the time youngsters have graduated much of what they learned is outdated.

  The school is predicated on the stability and continuity of the community. It has no place in our world, which is increasingly fluid and discontinuous.

  The school system cannot accommodate students who are on the move. They are considered bad students. Yet it is precisely the mobile who are now in pace with a world itself on the move.

  * * * *

  All over the planet we are feverishly building more and more schools colleges universities. All along these schools are becoming superfluous.

  A new concept of education is steadily replacing the school system.

  Where is this new concept of education practiced? Where can it be found?

  It can be found everywhere. It is all around you. It is called Universal Teleducation: travel—television—transistors—radios—satellitephones—videophones—films—microfilms—cassettes—computers—international publications—telesessions—telenewspapers—communication satellites—encounter groups—mobilias—travel...

  This is the new education. It is the fastest growing educational movement in the world.

  Today's youngsters are more knowledgeable than ever precisely because of Universal Communication. Not because of schools.

  Schools are actually holding them back. Thwarting their potential for more rapid growth.

  Education has become too big for classrooms and schools. We have outgrown the school system.

  Education like family is developing into a Process—unstructured spontaneous universal.

  The whole planet is now a school.

  * * * *

  But people still cannot acknowledge this new concept of education. (Some reviewers and readers were disturbed at my contention in Optimism One that we do not need schools but more and more communication satellites and travel.)

  People are still fixated on the old assumption that education is obtained in classrooms with teachers—pupils—textbooks—curriculums. Anything else is not serious.

  The concept of Universal Teleducation is disturbing because it has no structure. After all where are the schools? they ask. What are the curriculums? What kind of degrees? Where do you all meet?

  The same old story of craving structures. Here again it is the fear of letting go of structures that slows down progress.

  * * * *

  In modern communities liberal educators still want to modernize the school system. Give students more autonomy, they urge, more voice in all school matters. De-emphasize grades and exams. Do away with the lecture system. Encourage informal open discussions. Make use of teaching machines etc....

  These are considered progressive reforms. I don't doubt that they improve the school system. But the fact is that the system itself is inherently conceptually unmodern and therefore these so-called progressive reforms are relatively superficial—piecemeal measures.

  * * * *

  In backward communities, too, valuable resources—time—energy are squandered building schools and emphasizing literacy—reading and writing. Early-industrial countries have an obsession for building new schools. More and more and more schools.

  Right-wing and Left-wing governments alike are caught in this school craze. Their officials proudly rattle off statistics on the number of new schools.

&n
bsp; This is considered progressive leadership. It is presumed to be the surest and fastest way of making progress.

  The fact is that these early-industrial countries are taking the long way to the future. In building schools they are feverishly adopting an archaic system.

  * * * *

  Leaders and educators in early-industrial as well as in advanced-industrial communities are all dragging their feet. They are crawling into the future at a time when they could take giant leaps educating more people with less money less waste less effort.

  Universal Teleducation offers a Big Push. In one neat sweep we can bypass innumerable problems: incompetent or inadequate teachers—student inequalities (in intelligence—talent—personality—economic background)—inadequate facilities—poor or outdated textbooks—competition—the tyranny of exams and grades—opportunistic attitudes to learning...

  In the age of global communication and automated instant learning, schools are an absurdity.

  Rather than squander time—money—effort building schools, governments and educators must vigorously deploy the new potentials. Here is a guideline.

  —Sponsor extensive education programs on television and radio.

  One new school can educate only a few hundred students at a time.

  One television channel can educate a whole country.

  One satellite network a whole continent.

  A couple of satellite networks all the people of our planet.

  —Set up centralized computer systems enabling people anywhere to retrieve any information at anytime.

  —Provide free or inexpensive education cassettes—learning kits and other audio-visuals to children and adults for instant education.

  —Jet youngsters across the planet. Busing them across the city is no longer enough. Provide numerous travel grants for children. Set up Children Exchange Programs. Arrange travel projects for children to travel singly or in groups all over the planet.

  —Convert all school buildings into instant People Centers. Cheerful—modern—transportable People Centers open day and night where people of all ages of all backgrounds from all parts of the planet can freely gather to meet—talk—play—eat—drink—discuss projects—make use of facilities or just sit back and watch fellow people come and go. People Centers should have microfilms—cassettes—videotapes—computer centers—recording and broadcasting studios—global communication facilities—gymnasiums—playrooms—playgrounds—gardens ... People Centers complement the mobilia in facilitating the flow of people and ideas.

  —Technical training within the professional field itself. For example a medical student will obtain theoretical education from audio-visuals and specialized training at telemedical centers. An astronomy student will obtain supervised training at an observatory and theoretical information through the programmed devices...

  —You the Up-individual can do much to dismantle the school system and reinforce the trend toward Teleducation —

  —Get out of school college university.

  —If you move, transmobilias help free the children from schools.

  —Having dropped out of the school trap you are now freer to tune into Teleducation. Whether you move alone or transmobilia, surround yourself with the most modern communication facilities. The more of these you have the more deeply you are involved in Universal Teleducation and Universal Life. In opening up to the world you maximize opportunities to grow and become part of humankind. To use the old jargon—you are then an “excellent student” attending the “best school."

  —Having dropped out of the school trap you are now also freer to organize discussion groups—research projects—play sessions—encounter groups and so on. It makes no sense to sit stiffly in formal classrooms when you could meet more comfortably and intimately in a house a garden at a People Center on a beach on a ship—anywhere. Social interaction in school is unavoidably structured and regimented. You meet the same students, the same teachers day in and day out for months, even years. You all pursue a specific academic course with specific goals specific curriculum at specific times at a specific rate in a specific place. You can now achieve far greater intimacy—variety—spontaneity in social interactions meeting with whomever you please whenever and wherever. Social interaction is most meaningful when it is an open fluid process.

  —Get out into the world. Just get out. The earlier in life the better. In insisting on class attendance the school system immobilizes the child at the very stage in life it could most benefit from travel. The earlier a child travels and lives in different cultures the better its chances of growing up fluid and universal.

  If you want to condition a child to love its fellow people let it go out into the world and meet its fellow people. Let it grow up with them.

  If you want to learn geography why languish in a classroom for months? Travel.

  If you want to learn history and anthropology why not experience them directly: in museums—ruins—monuments—homes—villages—cities all over the planet?

  If you want to study international affairs why not become involved in such affairs?

  The more you travel the more involved you are in Teleducation.

  Make the whole planet your school. Every person you meet is your teacher, every person your student.

  —Having dropped out of the school trap you are now at last free to learn and grow at your own pace your own rhythm your own time. Through the use of learning kits—cassettes—computers and other automated devices you can now learn in a few hours or days what the school took months and years to cram down your throat. Why must it take a whole academic year to teach an intelligent person that the capital city of Poland is Warsaw or that dinosaurs at one time inhabited the earth? Why must a child who does not like arithmetic have to suffer through it when pocket calculators and microcomputers can now do the computations? Why must a child squander twelve years festering in classrooms cramming what it could learn far more leisurely and meaningfully with a learning kit and pocket TV winging all over the planet? Why fritter away another four or seven or twelve years obtaining “higher education” which any intelligent person could more leisurely integrate in a year or two? Why thwart people's potentials for growth by subjecting them to irrelevant requirements—humiliating exams and degrees—emphasis on competition and opportunistic attitudes to learning—impersonal structures which make no allowances for individual aptitudes interests pace?

  * * * *

  The whole school system is now too slow too static too structured. It is founded on outdated premises and values not in keeping with the rhythm and the spirit of our times.

  Let us free our youngsters and ourselves from the tyranny of schools. Don't be afraid to let go. Tune into Universal Teleducation.

  * * *

  beyond industrialism: teletechnology

  Before the 1800s we had feudal technology: horse carriages—droshkies—caravans—gaslight—sailing ships—slave and serf labor—small towns—villages—town criers...

  Since the middle 1800s industrial technology: steam locomotives—steamships—electrical power—assembly-line production—subways—newspapers—telegrams—radios—telephones—automobiles—airplanes—cities...

  Since the middle 1900s Teletechnology.

  We are now at an epochal technological transition.

  Suddenly all around us the old industrial technology is falling apart. Advanced-industrial communities of Europe and the United States are suffering the full brunt of this breakdown.

  Telegrams take days to reach their destination. Mail service is slow. Subways and trains are rundown and undependable. Electric power systems fail. Cars jam streets and highways polluting—slowing down mobility—maiming—killing people. The big cities themselves have become giant ghettoes—ugly—dirty—overcrowded—filled with dingy rat-infested catacombs called apartments for which people pay exorbitant sums.

  This is the collapse of an old decrepit nineteenth-century technology no longer suited to the needs the expectati
ons and the rhythms of the late twentieth century.

  We must rejoice in this collapse.

  * * * *

  In urban communities however there is increasing clamor for improvement of technology. People want cars that do not pollute. Faster mail and telegram service. More fossil-fuel plants for uninterrupted electricity. Subways and trains that run on time...

  They want to shore up the old industrial technology.

  They are like the people of the nineteenth century who wanted better stagecoach service—cleaner droshkies—brighter gaslights—larger plowshares—faster spinning-wheels—more nimble town criers. They too could not see the emergence of a new technology. They were content with improving the old.

  Most urban dwellers today think along the same lines. They want to improve the old industrial technology.

  This is a costly losing battle. This is patchwork.

  You cannot regenerate a technology which is intrinsically obsolete.

  Cars for instance were fine so long as there were only a few. But hundreds of thousands of cars jammed into city streets designed for horse-drawn carriages create basic problems which cannot be solved by simply producing non-polluting cars.

  Fossil-fuel power plants (coal gas oil) were also adequate so long as urban communities were relatively small with modest electrical needs and so long as people lived in large family units collectively using a few electrical appliances. But today's metropolis is structurally dependent on massive electrical output. Then too our social systems are changing—millions of people now live alone in private dwellings, each privately benefitting from more and more electrical appliances and gadgets. Such mammoth and mushrooming demand on electricity can no longer be met by simply building more conventional power plants.