Helene Uppin

“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“Meaningful learning in a community requires both participation and reification to be present and in interplay. Sharing artifacts without engaging in discussions and activities around them impairs the ability to negotiate the meaning of what is being shared. Interacting without producing artifacts makes learning depend on individual interpretation and memory and can limit its depth, extent, and impact. Both participation and reification are necessary. Sometimes one process may dominate the other, or the two processes may not be well integrated. The challenge of this polarity is for communities to successfully cycle between the two.”
― Etienne Wenger, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities

“The military institution is evidently absurd. The absurdity of non-military institutions is more difficult to face. It is even more frightening, precisely because it operates inexorably. We know which switch must stay open to avoid atomic holocaust. No switch detains an ecological Armageddon.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“Life is too short to read a bad book.”
― James Joyce