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223 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Ivan Illich
95books417followersIvan Illich was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest and critic of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects of the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, and economic development.
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January 14, 2008
Illich questions the basic assumption that most liberal (or for that matter non-liberal) people in the US have: more educational = more gooder. Attacking the idea that compulsory schooling is constructive, Illich offers one of the more radical analyses of the educational system I've ever heard of of, much less read. What, after all, is the relation between schooling and learning, if any?
As someone who has spent a huge portion (like one over one) of their life in school and now teaches at a university, I found this book seriously compelling. You might not swallow Deschooling wholesale, but Illich shines the light on so many of the unspoken (I know I'm mixing metaphors here) axioms of the educational system---always a healthy endeavor---and challenges us to either defend or discard.
As someone who has spent a huge portion (like one over one) of their life in school and now teaches at a university, I found this book seriously compelling. You might not swallow Deschooling wholesale, but Illich shines the light on so many of the unspoken (I know I'm mixing metaphors here) axioms of the educational system---always a healthy endeavor---and challenges us to either defend or discard.
June 23, 2009
This book challenged my views more than any book I've ever read. Illich's case for the need to deschool society is not only compelling it is transformative. As a person who has become highly critical of public schooling, I was already familiar with where he was going, but to abandon every type of institutional school system including free/democratic schools as well as universities seemed a bit much to me, until he went into detail about the repressiveness of such institutions and how we learn mostly everything we know outside of schooling. He suggests an alternative type of schooling which uses social networking to pair up people with similar interests to form apprenticeship style mentoring. For a book written in the 1970's. It feels like he is talking about something similar to facebook as a way of bringing people with similar interests together to build learning atmospheres. Interesting read.
November 23, 2019
Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society (1971), like John Marsh’s Class Dismissed, Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster. worries that we confuse learning with teaching to our peril and questions the gospel that schools will save us or will have anything useful for us to prepare for future crises, fix inequality, and so on. Historical critiques of traditjonal education abound, but this is a thought-provoking one. There’s libertarian and anarchist impulses in all this work; he suggests we “de-school� to allow people and communities to actually spend the time doing the things they need to do.
“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being ‘with it,� yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.�
“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.�
“An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.�
“Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils� lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.�
This book is a kind of rant, and no one will agree with all his assertions, but it is provocative and useful to return to Illich. I did, with my grad class, having read Marsh and an article about Illich.
“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being ‘with it,� yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.�
“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.�
“An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.�
“Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils� lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.�
This book is a kind of rant, and no one will agree with all his assertions, but it is provocative and useful to return to Illich. I did, with my grad class, having read Marsh and an article about Illich.
April 19, 2017
My mum recommended this short but extremely thought-provoking book to me. She read it decades ago and found it life-changing. I wouldn’t necessarily say the same, but found it disproportionately interesting for its length. It is a critique of the formal, mandatory education system originally published in 1970. My thoughts on it can be roughly grouped under three headings: responses to the theoretical points advanced, reflections on my personal experiences with the education system, and thoughts on how the book has aged. On the first front, I initially found Illich’s hostility to organised education disconcerting. I’d never previously read anything so critical not just of specific aspects of the education system, but of formalised education in principle. If it ever was fashionable in heterodox economics, this sort of critique certainly isn’t now. Indeed, development economics places huge emphasis on education as a route out of poverty. Once I’d got past my surprise, however, I found myself sympathetic to many of Illich’s points. In particular, that school both trains children to be consumers and reproduces inequalities by qualification gatekeeping. In terms of his wider critique of capitalism, I liked this deconstruction of the ideology of progress:
I was particularly struck by this having been written prior to the triumph of neoliberalism/’End of History� period in the 1980s. On the other hand, I found some of Illich’s bitter criticisms of teachers and teaching less convincing. Potentially because I’ve always found school work manageable? I was one of those quiet kids who didn’t speak up much but did well in exams. Although in principle I think it’s ridiculous the level to which future life chances are mediated by exam marks at a young age, I also find it difficult to propose a better system as I test well. In fact, I systematically do better in exams than class work. That aside, what Illich’s discussions of school don’t really engage with are the potential purposes of education. I presume because he sees learning as an entirely open-ended, self-directed process, whereas ‘education� is inherently constraining and wrong. Basically, I think his critique of schools goes to extremes I found too libertarian, whilst also making some very good points and proving an interesting new angle from which to challenge capitalism.
One chapter in particular made me reflect on postgraduate education and the PhD process. Doing a PhD really is self-directed learning, although mine may well have been more so than most. I was given total freedom to shape my project and choose the methods and data I used, with very little input from my supervisor or indeed anyone else. Illich’s section on ‘the ritualization of progress� made me consider how I’d had to earn this freedom by getting through the preceding 18 years of mandatory educational instruction and exam-taking. Then, as soon as I’d earned this right to learn by myself, I was expected to turn around and teach others, controlling their learning and setting them up to pass exams. It suddenly seemed very cyclical, reproducing the importance of instruction. As Illich puts it: ‘In school we are taught that valuable learning is the result of attendance; that the value of learning increases with the amount of input; and, finally, that this value can be measured and documented by grades and certificates� This transfer of responsibility from self to institution guarantees social regression, especially once it has been accepted as an obligation. So rebels against Alma Mater often “make it� into her faculty instead of growing into the courage to infect others with their personal teaching and to assume responsibility for the results�.
This reminded me that both myself and a high school teacher friend feel like we need to justify any original teaching approaches we use (I always tried to slip in some critique of free market economics, for example) by also ensuring our students get good exam results. The most rewarding students to teach haven’t fully internalised the concept of education as merely a means of gaining qualifications, but also appreciate learning for its own sake. The space in educational institutions for non-exam focused learning seems to be small and shrinking, however. Indeed, I realise that there’s probably a link between my enjoyment of learning for fun & teaching beyond the syllabus and my ability to get good exam marks. If all my energy and time had been required to get decent exam marks, I wouldn’t have been able to learn beyond that and probably wouldn’t have wanted to do so. This seems profoundly unfair and illogical: being rewarded for exam ability by not having to use exam skills anymore! Instead, you’ve earned the right to try and convey exam skills to a new generation. I doubt I’m particularly helpful at that, in any case, as I don’t know exactly why exams are relatively manageable for me in comparison to others. Quite apart from the fact that exam skills have little to no relevance in the world of work, let alone the rest of life. I agree with Illich that practical tests (of typing, for example) are more useful to vet candidates suitability for a job than exam results. Indeed, such tests seem pretty common � but only if the candidates have also passed the exam results hurdle.
Whilst I’m on the general theme of higher education, I must mention Illich’s excellent analysis of motorway systems as ‘false public utilities�. If I’d come across this before I might have worked it into my thesis, as it’s so well put:
Update the language in that paragraph slightly and you have a summary of Urry’s ‘System of Automobility� theory. It remains a fundamental paradox of current transport policy that so-called private modes of transport require the massive public subsidy of a road system, whereas so-called public transport has been deregulated with the intention of getting its users to bear the full costs. I didn’t expect to find such lucid analysis of transport in a short book about deschooling society, I must say.
Moving on to how the book’s thesis has aged, I think it is fascinating to consider how Illich’s analysis fares in the internet age. Central to the entire book is the simple maxim that, ‘Most learning is not the result of instruction�. At several points, Illich attempts to describe systems that would enable independent, self-directed, peer-to-peer learning and comes up with essentially a pre-digital internet:
Although by no means everyone has internet access, these days an extremely powerful version of just such a network exists and is used by 40% of the world’s population. The fact that I found that statistic on Wikipedia clearly demonstrates the potential of the internet for quick and easy self-directed learning! So, given that Illich’s vision of information availability and opinion sharing has been achieved beyond his wildest imaginings, how do his ideas of the consequences hold up? This strikes me as a fascinating question worthy of much more in-depth answers than I can provide. Obviously, schools have not withered away as he hoped. Indeed, the totemic power of exam results has only increased with the marketization of education, both school and higher. On the other hand, parallel to and hidden by mainstream education are powerful counter-trends. Amongst my friendship group are a number of people who earn very good wages as coders � and, as far as I know, every one of them is self-taught. Indeed, I taught myself some limited coding in order to use R for statistics during my PhD, with instruction from Professor Google but no formal training whatsoever. However, my friends and I are all university graduates. Is it the case that we are more able to use the internet for self-directed learning thanks to our university training? Or is it the case (as one coder friend contends) that the contents of our degrees were pointless and the process only useful as a means of meeting people?
Then again, this is just the specific case of a skill that is increasingly relevant to the job market; Illich would not approve of such emphasis I suspect. The internet has undoubtedly made it much easier to learn practical and hobby-type skills like playing instruments, knitting, and cookery techniques. At the moment, these forms of learning parallel rather than replacing the school system, which appears very firmly entrenched. This may change in the future, although the internet is not the totally free and independent network that Illich foresaw. Large portions of it are controlled by private monopolies (good old Professor Google) and the whole contends with copyright issues (which prevent free sharing of the information in published books, for instance). Given the creeping privatisation of public institutions like schools, I find it easier to imagine a future in which online Google School courses were just as mandatory and specific as the current curriculum, rather than kids being set free to learning through doing. Equally, Illich’s ideas about learning to operate and repair technology appear antithetical to the current trends of manufactured obsolescence and strong defences of technological patents. Illich wanted all information to be set free; the internet cannot achieve that without substantial legal reform. Then again, laws protecting copyright are fighting a losing battle against the ease of spreading information. Moreover, open source software and Wikipedia demonstrate that learning and creation can thrive outside private monopolies.
To conclude, I should mention a reason why I was initially so disconcerted by Illich’s anti-school attitude: because his libertarian rhetoric of educational choice has been firmly co-opted by the right wing (which I bet he resented). Talk of free schools, of vouchers towards education, and of choosing between education providers smacks to me of privatisation. Specifically, it reminds me of Michael Gove’s reforms of the UK education system. Illich clearly did not intend his vision of educational freedom to be constrained within markets, but in the 21st century that is what choice has become tied to. If there are different providers of some service, they must be competing with each other within a market. Yet this will undoubtedly produce more of the same narrow, ideological teaching that Illich abhors, generally at lower quality. Depressingly, it is hard to see how education could be made freer and more self-directed whilst also defending it from further market incursion. Perhaps the most promising route is that outlined by Paul Mason in : neoliberalism will destroy itself because it cannot cope with information becoming an increasing proportion of GDP. That thesis links quite neatly to ‘Deschooling Society� � the institution of school produces consumers and workers, so capitalism cannot readily survive without it. Conversely, capitalism also relies on learning that takes place outside school. If Mason’s analysis is correct, school will become increasingly irrelevant as mechanisation destroys jobs and those that remain require coding skills, which can be gained through independent study and involvement with an online community of peers. So technology could yet undermine the school system and encourage a much freer model of learning, albeit in a manner that in 1970 Illich could not hope to foresee. Undoubtedly his book remains relevant and interesting nearly fifty years after he wrote it. It contains a density of provocative ideas that not many writers can match.
Not to go where one can go would be subversive. It would unmask as folly the assumption that every satisfied demand entails the discovery of an even greater unsatisfied one. Such insight would stop progress. Not to produce what is possible would expose the law of ‘rising expectations� as a euphemism for a growing frustration gap, which is the motor of a society built on the coproduction of services and increased demand.
I was particularly struck by this having been written prior to the triumph of neoliberalism/’End of History� period in the 1980s. On the other hand, I found some of Illich’s bitter criticisms of teachers and teaching less convincing. Potentially because I’ve always found school work manageable? I was one of those quiet kids who didn’t speak up much but did well in exams. Although in principle I think it’s ridiculous the level to which future life chances are mediated by exam marks at a young age, I also find it difficult to propose a better system as I test well. In fact, I systematically do better in exams than class work. That aside, what Illich’s discussions of school don’t really engage with are the potential purposes of education. I presume because he sees learning as an entirely open-ended, self-directed process, whereas ‘education� is inherently constraining and wrong. Basically, I think his critique of schools goes to extremes I found too libertarian, whilst also making some very good points and proving an interesting new angle from which to challenge capitalism.
One chapter in particular made me reflect on postgraduate education and the PhD process. Doing a PhD really is self-directed learning, although mine may well have been more so than most. I was given total freedom to shape my project and choose the methods and data I used, with very little input from my supervisor or indeed anyone else. Illich’s section on ‘the ritualization of progress� made me consider how I’d had to earn this freedom by getting through the preceding 18 years of mandatory educational instruction and exam-taking. Then, as soon as I’d earned this right to learn by myself, I was expected to turn around and teach others, controlling their learning and setting them up to pass exams. It suddenly seemed very cyclical, reproducing the importance of instruction. As Illich puts it: ‘In school we are taught that valuable learning is the result of attendance; that the value of learning increases with the amount of input; and, finally, that this value can be measured and documented by grades and certificates� This transfer of responsibility from self to institution guarantees social regression, especially once it has been accepted as an obligation. So rebels against Alma Mater often “make it� into her faculty instead of growing into the courage to infect others with their personal teaching and to assume responsibility for the results�.
This reminded me that both myself and a high school teacher friend feel like we need to justify any original teaching approaches we use (I always tried to slip in some critique of free market economics, for example) by also ensuring our students get good exam results. The most rewarding students to teach haven’t fully internalised the concept of education as merely a means of gaining qualifications, but also appreciate learning for its own sake. The space in educational institutions for non-exam focused learning seems to be small and shrinking, however. Indeed, I realise that there’s probably a link between my enjoyment of learning for fun & teaching beyond the syllabus and my ability to get good exam marks. If all my energy and time had been required to get decent exam marks, I wouldn’t have been able to learn beyond that and probably wouldn’t have wanted to do so. This seems profoundly unfair and illogical: being rewarded for exam ability by not having to use exam skills anymore! Instead, you’ve earned the right to try and convey exam skills to a new generation. I doubt I’m particularly helpful at that, in any case, as I don’t know exactly why exams are relatively manageable for me in comparison to others. Quite apart from the fact that exam skills have little to no relevance in the world of work, let alone the rest of life. I agree with Illich that practical tests (of typing, for example) are more useful to vet candidates suitability for a job than exam results. Indeed, such tests seem pretty common � but only if the candidates have also passed the exam results hurdle.
Whilst I’m on the general theme of higher education, I must mention Illich’s excellent analysis of motorway systems as ‘false public utilities�. If I’d come across this before I might have worked it into my thesis, as it’s so well put:
The highway system does not similarly become available to someone who merely learns to drive. The telephone and postal networks exist to serve those who wish to use them [not now they’ve been privatised!], while the highway system mainly serves as an accessory to the private automobile. The former are [were once] true public utilities, whereas the latter is a public service for the owners of cars, trucks, and buses. Public utilities exist for the sake of communication between men; highways, like other institutions of the right, exist for the sake of a product. Auto manufacturers, we have already observed, produce simultaneously both cars and the demand for cars. They also produce the demand for multilane highways, bridges, and oilfields. The private car is the focus of a cluster of right-wing institutions. The high cost of each element is dictated by elaboration of the basic product, and to sell the basic product is to “hook� society on the entire package.
Update the language in that paragraph slightly and you have a summary of Urry’s ‘System of Automobility� theory. It remains a fundamental paradox of current transport policy that so-called private modes of transport require the massive public subsidy of a road system, whereas so-called public transport has been deregulated with the intention of getting its users to bear the full costs. I didn’t expect to find such lucid analysis of transport in a short book about deschooling society, I must say.
Moving on to how the book’s thesis has aged, I think it is fascinating to consider how Illich’s analysis fares in the internet age. Central to the entire book is the simple maxim that, ‘Most learning is not the result of instruction�. At several points, Illich attempts to describe systems that would enable independent, self-directed, peer-to-peer learning and comes up with essentially a pre-digital internet:
’The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.�
‘What are needed are new networks, readily available to the public and designed to spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching� The money now tied up in TV installations throughout Latin America could have provided every fifth adult with a tape recorder. In addition, the money could have sufficed to provide an almost unlimited library of prerecorded tapes, with outlets even in remote villages, as well as an ample supply of empty tapes.
This network of tape recorders, of course, would be radically different from the present network of TV. It would provide opportunity for free expression: literate and illiterate alike could record, preserve, disseminate, and repeat their opinions.�
Although by no means everyone has internet access, these days an extremely powerful version of just such a network exists and is used by 40% of the world’s population. The fact that I found that statistic on Wikipedia clearly demonstrates the potential of the internet for quick and easy self-directed learning! So, given that Illich’s vision of information availability and opinion sharing has been achieved beyond his wildest imaginings, how do his ideas of the consequences hold up? This strikes me as a fascinating question worthy of much more in-depth answers than I can provide. Obviously, schools have not withered away as he hoped. Indeed, the totemic power of exam results has only increased with the marketization of education, both school and higher. On the other hand, parallel to and hidden by mainstream education are powerful counter-trends. Amongst my friendship group are a number of people who earn very good wages as coders � and, as far as I know, every one of them is self-taught. Indeed, I taught myself some limited coding in order to use R for statistics during my PhD, with instruction from Professor Google but no formal training whatsoever. However, my friends and I are all university graduates. Is it the case that we are more able to use the internet for self-directed learning thanks to our university training? Or is it the case (as one coder friend contends) that the contents of our degrees were pointless and the process only useful as a means of meeting people?
Then again, this is just the specific case of a skill that is increasingly relevant to the job market; Illich would not approve of such emphasis I suspect. The internet has undoubtedly made it much easier to learn practical and hobby-type skills like playing instruments, knitting, and cookery techniques. At the moment, these forms of learning parallel rather than replacing the school system, which appears very firmly entrenched. This may change in the future, although the internet is not the totally free and independent network that Illich foresaw. Large portions of it are controlled by private monopolies (good old Professor Google) and the whole contends with copyright issues (which prevent free sharing of the information in published books, for instance). Given the creeping privatisation of public institutions like schools, I find it easier to imagine a future in which online Google School courses were just as mandatory and specific as the current curriculum, rather than kids being set free to learning through doing. Equally, Illich’s ideas about learning to operate and repair technology appear antithetical to the current trends of manufactured obsolescence and strong defences of technological patents. Illich wanted all information to be set free; the internet cannot achieve that without substantial legal reform. Then again, laws protecting copyright are fighting a losing battle against the ease of spreading information. Moreover, open source software and Wikipedia demonstrate that learning and creation can thrive outside private monopolies.
To conclude, I should mention a reason why I was initially so disconcerted by Illich’s anti-school attitude: because his libertarian rhetoric of educational choice has been firmly co-opted by the right wing (which I bet he resented). Talk of free schools, of vouchers towards education, and of choosing between education providers smacks to me of privatisation. Specifically, it reminds me of Michael Gove’s reforms of the UK education system. Illich clearly did not intend his vision of educational freedom to be constrained within markets, but in the 21st century that is what choice has become tied to. If there are different providers of some service, they must be competing with each other within a market. Yet this will undoubtedly produce more of the same narrow, ideological teaching that Illich abhors, generally at lower quality. Depressingly, it is hard to see how education could be made freer and more self-directed whilst also defending it from further market incursion. Perhaps the most promising route is that outlined by Paul Mason in : neoliberalism will destroy itself because it cannot cope with information becoming an increasing proportion of GDP. That thesis links quite neatly to ‘Deschooling Society� � the institution of school produces consumers and workers, so capitalism cannot readily survive without it. Conversely, capitalism also relies on learning that takes place outside school. If Mason’s analysis is correct, school will become increasingly irrelevant as mechanisation destroys jobs and those that remain require coding skills, which can be gained through independent study and involvement with an online community of peers. So technology could yet undermine the school system and encourage a much freer model of learning, albeit in a manner that in 1970 Illich could not hope to foresee. Undoubtedly his book remains relevant and interesting nearly fifty years after he wrote it. It contains a density of provocative ideas that not many writers can match.
July 2, 2015
This book is a lens that will help you re-evaluate the school system, by urging you to undo what you've been "taught", and explore what you want to "learn".
تلخيص سطرين المصوّر للكتاب (بالعربي)
تلخيص سطرين المصوّر للكتاب (بالعربي)
November 26, 2023
The core point changed my life: institutions often deny volition and agency to their clients, and this is perhaps the central fact to understand schools and children. In a nutshell, Illich is pointing out that we don't treat children as truly human when we deny them the most basic choices about what they'll be doing and where and with whom. This is typically true very nearly as much of progressive schools as it of more traditional schools.
I'm inclined to be dismissive of much of the politics in the book. But the core point has so changed my thinking that I'm also inclined to doubt my negative judgement of other aspects of the book.
I'm inclined to be dismissive of much of the politics in the book. But the core point has so changed my thinking that I'm also inclined to doubt my negative judgement of other aspects of the book.
November 22, 2009
Ivan Illich is one of our more interesting social critics. Schooled as a priest he became anathema to both the left and the right of the Catholic Church. He was Vice Rector pf the Catholic University of Ponce in Puerto Rico when he was ordered to leave by the Bishop. He went to Mexico where he founded the Center for Intercultural Documentation. In 1967 he was summoned before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to undergo a modern form of the medieval inquisition. One of the reasons for their distaste of his ideas was his reluctance to promote the Pope's strong move to help the underdeveloped countries. Illich was against the so-called development of underdeveloped countries arguing it was a "war on subsistence". At the time when he railed against it (the mid-sixties), it deeply offended the conventional wisdom. "Rich nations," he wrote, " now benevolently impose a straitjacket of traffic jams, hospital confinements and classrooms on the poor nations and by international agreement call this 'development.'" Development disabled their ability to seek alternatives and created "under-development as a form of consciousness" which occurs with " the translation of thirst into the need for a Coke."
In Deschooling Society [Illich:] identified schooling as the fundamental ritual of a consumer society. Schole, the Greek word from which ours derives, means leisure, and true learning, according to Illich, can only be the leisured pursuit of free people. The claim that a liberal society can be built on a compulsory and coercive ritual is therefore paradoxical. By designing and packaging knowledge, schools generate the belief that knowledge must be acquired in graded and certified sequences. And this monopoly of schools over the very definition of education, Illich argued, not only inhibits alternatives but also leads to lifelong dependence on other service monopolies. By the early seventeenth century a new consensus began to arise: the idea that man was born incompetent for society and remained so unless he was provided with 'education'. Education came to mean the inverse of vital competence. It came to mean a process rather than the plain knowledge of the facts and the ability to use tools which shape a man's concrete life. Education became an intangible commodity that had to be produced for the benefit of all, and imparted to them in the manner in which the visible Church formerly imparted invisible grace. Justification in the sight of society became the first necessity for a man born in original stupidity, analogous to original sin.
In the early 70's he wrote book:Tools for Conviviality|253076] in which he argued that being anti-growth would merely stabilize "at the highest levels of endurable output." He disliked the term 'technology' because of the confusion it caused, preferring to use the word 'tools'. The hammer, highways, the health-care system are all examples of tools. All tools go through a metamorphosis. First they are productive, then they become counter-productive and they become ends rather than means. For example, automobiles expanded our mobility but we have now become their prisoner. Some tools do not dictate how they must be used. Libraries, the telephone, bicycles can be used freely whereas a high-speed transportation system "compels our allegiance by adjusting time and space to its own dimensions." He liked austerity, as defined by Aquinas, "a virtue which does not exclude all enjoyments, but only those which are distracting from or destructive of personal relatedness." Austerity, according to Illich, is the only "alternative to intensified surveillance and management by technocratic elites."
The Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit" of 1992 represents the logical outcome of the failure to master tools. It was not about finding a better life that is simple in means and rich in ends; "it is about the equitable division of pollution optimums under the aegis of global monitoring." The idea of conservation must become intrinsic to the dignity of human nature and not just a requirement for survival. Illich was also critical of the power of dominant professions. In contrast to the old liberal professions like law and medicine, new professions have sprung up that have become protection rackets, licensed monopolies licensed to serve clients with services they insist must be recognized. "Grave-diggers did not become members of a profession by calling themselves morticians, by obtaining college credentials, by raising their incomes, or by getting rid of the odor attached to their trade by electing themselves president of the Lions Club. Morticians formed a profession, a dominant and disabling one, when they acquired the muscle to have the police stop your burial if you are not embalmed and boxed by them."
It was also in Puerto Rico that Illich came into contact with the first of the great secular bureaucracies whose pretensions he would make a career of puncturing, the school system. He sat on the board that governed the island's entire educational establishment and was soon engaged in a full-scale effort to understand what schools do. He came to the conclusion that compulsory education in Puerto Rico constituted "structured injustice." By "putting into parentheses their claim to educate," lie was able to see that schools focused aspiration on a mirage. In Puerto Rico, at the time Illich began studying the question in the late 1950s, children we' already required by law to have more schooling than the the state could afford to give them. The worst aspect of this Illich was that people also learned to blame themselves for failing to achieve the impossible. "Schooling," he concluded, "served ... to compound the native poverty of half the children with a new interiorized sense of guilt for not having made it" " you look around the globe at the most lethal conflicts convulsing the world, not one of them turns on race. Think about it. English vs. Irish, Croatians, Moslems, Bosnians and Serbs , Irakis vs. Kurds; the combatants are racially indistinguishable. The conflicts turn on difference of religion or ideology and the one thing we' learned very clearly, is that people of one race are fully capable of murderously exploiting people of the same race. Why do we get this so wrong in the United States, Why do we equate skin color with culture in the multicultural rubric, given what I just said. Given that it so ill-equips us to understand and of these conflicts I just mentioned. The answer is obvious. This is the only western country, to have abducted and plunger into its mists millions of enslaved people from Africa. . . . And blacks out of that dispossession had to create out of nothing an identity, plunged into this society yet kept viciously apart from it and the very rigidity of segregation actually gave some firm moral footholds because at least you knew what you were up against and black survival tools from black religion to jazz. . . cultural survival tools are among the richest treasures that this country has ever produced. The black quest to belong is the greatest example of unrequited love anywhere in the world."
In Deschooling Society [Illich:] identified schooling as the fundamental ritual of a consumer society. Schole, the Greek word from which ours derives, means leisure, and true learning, according to Illich, can only be the leisured pursuit of free people. The claim that a liberal society can be built on a compulsory and coercive ritual is therefore paradoxical. By designing and packaging knowledge, schools generate the belief that knowledge must be acquired in graded and certified sequences. And this monopoly of schools over the very definition of education, Illich argued, not only inhibits alternatives but also leads to lifelong dependence on other service monopolies. By the early seventeenth century a new consensus began to arise: the idea that man was born incompetent for society and remained so unless he was provided with 'education'. Education came to mean the inverse of vital competence. It came to mean a process rather than the plain knowledge of the facts and the ability to use tools which shape a man's concrete life. Education became an intangible commodity that had to be produced for the benefit of all, and imparted to them in the manner in which the visible Church formerly imparted invisible grace. Justification in the sight of society became the first necessity for a man born in original stupidity, analogous to original sin.
In the early 70's he wrote book:Tools for Conviviality|253076] in which he argued that being anti-growth would merely stabilize "at the highest levels of endurable output." He disliked the term 'technology' because of the confusion it caused, preferring to use the word 'tools'. The hammer, highways, the health-care system are all examples of tools. All tools go through a metamorphosis. First they are productive, then they become counter-productive and they become ends rather than means. For example, automobiles expanded our mobility but we have now become their prisoner. Some tools do not dictate how they must be used. Libraries, the telephone, bicycles can be used freely whereas a high-speed transportation system "compels our allegiance by adjusting time and space to its own dimensions." He liked austerity, as defined by Aquinas, "a virtue which does not exclude all enjoyments, but only those which are distracting from or destructive of personal relatedness." Austerity, according to Illich, is the only "alternative to intensified surveillance and management by technocratic elites."
The Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit" of 1992 represents the logical outcome of the failure to master tools. It was not about finding a better life that is simple in means and rich in ends; "it is about the equitable division of pollution optimums under the aegis of global monitoring." The idea of conservation must become intrinsic to the dignity of human nature and not just a requirement for survival. Illich was also critical of the power of dominant professions. In contrast to the old liberal professions like law and medicine, new professions have sprung up that have become protection rackets, licensed monopolies licensed to serve clients with services they insist must be recognized. "Grave-diggers did not become members of a profession by calling themselves morticians, by obtaining college credentials, by raising their incomes, or by getting rid of the odor attached to their trade by electing themselves president of the Lions Club. Morticians formed a profession, a dominant and disabling one, when they acquired the muscle to have the police stop your burial if you are not embalmed and boxed by them."
It was also in Puerto Rico that Illich came into contact with the first of the great secular bureaucracies whose pretensions he would make a career of puncturing, the school system. He sat on the board that governed the island's entire educational establishment and was soon engaged in a full-scale effort to understand what schools do. He came to the conclusion that compulsory education in Puerto Rico constituted "structured injustice." By "putting into parentheses their claim to educate," lie was able to see that schools focused aspiration on a mirage. In Puerto Rico, at the time Illich began studying the question in the late 1950s, children we' already required by law to have more schooling than the the state could afford to give them. The worst aspect of this Illich was that people also learned to blame themselves for failing to achieve the impossible. "Schooling," he concluded, "served ... to compound the native poverty of half the children with a new interiorized sense of guilt for not having made it" " you look around the globe at the most lethal conflicts convulsing the world, not one of them turns on race. Think about it. English vs. Irish, Croatians, Moslems, Bosnians and Serbs , Irakis vs. Kurds; the combatants are racially indistinguishable. The conflicts turn on difference of religion or ideology and the one thing we' learned very clearly, is that people of one race are fully capable of murderously exploiting people of the same race. Why do we get this so wrong in the United States, Why do we equate skin color with culture in the multicultural rubric, given what I just said. Given that it so ill-equips us to understand and of these conflicts I just mentioned. The answer is obvious. This is the only western country, to have abducted and plunger into its mists millions of enslaved people from Africa. . . . And blacks out of that dispossession had to create out of nothing an identity, plunged into this society yet kept viciously apart from it and the very rigidity of segregation actually gave some firm moral footholds because at least you knew what you were up against and black survival tools from black religion to jazz. . . cultural survival tools are among the richest treasures that this country has ever produced. The black quest to belong is the greatest example of unrequited love anywhere in the world."
February 7, 2020
نقد النظام المدرسي يمرّ حتمًا بـ"إيفان إيليش"، صاحب هذا الكتاب. وقد وصلت إلي� من خلال مقالين بعنوان "مجتمع بلا مدارس" للعزيز أنس غنايم في موقع �"ميدان".�
يشير الكاتب إلى فكرة "المأسسة"، التي تجعل من القيمة المطلوبة كالصحة والتعلي� خدمةً تؤدّى وتقدّم من خلال مؤسسات مثل المدارس والمعاهد. ويصير تحصي� العلم يعني "بشكلٍ حصري ومختزل" مجرد الإلتحاق بمؤسسة تعليمية. �
فيصير التعلّم تدريساً، ويصير الحقّ في التعلّم إجبارًا على التعلّم بصورة مقررة تتحدّ� معالمها القسرية على شكل (مدرسة- منهاج- عُمر- علاقات أفقية مع زملاء وعلاقا� رأسية مع مدرس وهيئة تعليمية- حجْر مكاني وزماني) . �
يرى الكاتب أنّ "مؤسسة" المدرسة هي الباب الذي يُدخل منه الفرد مدجّنًا إلى عال� مؤسساتي كامل، تختلط وتتداخل فيه القيم مع الخدمات، والإجراءات مع النتائج� والمطلوب من الإنسان مع الذي يطلبه!
والكاتب لا يلغي الفكر المؤسسي، لكنه يفرق بين المؤسسة المتاحة والمستخدَمَة، والمؤسس� الحاكمة المنتجة المستخدِمة للناس. �
لذا فإنّ المراد من الكتاب وعنوانه، ليس "مجتمعًا بلا مدارس"، بل نزع المؤسساتي� عن المجتمع، ابتداءً بحجر التدجين والقولبة الأوّل "المدرسة". لذا فرسال� الكاتب وأفكاره الأساسية هنا تصلح للاستخدام على نطاقٍ أوسع وأعمق.�
يطرح الكاتب بديلاً تعليمياً يقوم على نظام شبكي، يعرض فيه أحد الطرفين خبرته، ويحق� للآخر الوصول إليه والتعلّم منه. �
كتب "إيليش" كتابه هذا في مطلع السبعينات، وإن كانت أطروحاته متقدمة، إلا أنّ أمثلت� وحلوله كانت بنات واقعه. لذا، فالأمور اليوم تبدو أكثر قسوة من حيث تصلّ� النظام المدرسي والمؤسساتي، لكن الحلول-على الجانب الآخر- أكثر إمكانية خاص� في ظلّ التطوّر والتحوّل التكنولوجي وما صاحبه. ويبدو عالم الانترنت اليوم ه� المحيط الأمثل لمثل هذه الشبكة التعليمية المقترحة. ولم ينعم "إيفان" المتوف� عام 2002 برؤية نموذجه يتحقّق بشكلٍ أكثر شموليةً وفعاليةً عبر الإنترنت. �
كما أنّنا في زمن تفكّك صلابة المؤسساتية إلى عالم أكثر"سيولة" ومرونة. وهذا ما أعلم� عن خيارات تعليمية جد��دة في الغرب. �
بقي أن أقول أنّي وجدتُ عسرًا في قراءة الكتاب، وأنّ قراءته لم تكن بالسهولة المتوقع�. فعلى الرغم من وضوح أفكاره إلا أنّ أسلوب الكاتب كان غير سلسل بالنسب� لي. �
يشير الكاتب إلى فكرة "المأسسة"، التي تجعل من القيمة المطلوبة كالصحة والتعلي� خدمةً تؤدّى وتقدّم من خلال مؤسسات مثل المدارس والمعاهد. ويصير تحصي� العلم يعني "بشكلٍ حصري ومختزل" مجرد الإلتحاق بمؤسسة تعليمية. �
فيصير التعلّم تدريساً، ويصير الحقّ في التعلّم إجبارًا على التعلّم بصورة مقررة تتحدّ� معالمها القسرية على شكل (مدرسة- منهاج- عُمر- علاقات أفقية مع زملاء وعلاقا� رأسية مع مدرس وهيئة تعليمية- حجْر مكاني وزماني) . �
يرى الكاتب أنّ "مؤسسة" المدرسة هي الباب الذي يُدخل منه الفرد مدجّنًا إلى عال� مؤسساتي كامل، تختلط وتتداخل فيه القيم مع الخدمات، والإجراءات مع النتائج� والمطلوب من الإنسان مع الذي يطلبه!
والكاتب لا يلغي الفكر المؤسسي، لكنه يفرق بين المؤسسة المتاحة والمستخدَمَة، والمؤسس� الحاكمة المنتجة المستخدِمة للناس. �
لذا فإنّ المراد من الكتاب وعنوانه، ليس "مجتمعًا بلا مدارس"، بل نزع المؤسساتي� عن المجتمع، ابتداءً بحجر التدجين والقولبة الأوّل "المدرسة". لذا فرسال� الكاتب وأفكاره الأساسية هنا تصلح للاستخدام على نطاقٍ أوسع وأعمق.�
يطرح الكاتب بديلاً تعليمياً يقوم على نظام شبكي، يعرض فيه أحد الطرفين خبرته، ويحق� للآخر الوصول إليه والتعلّم منه. �
كتب "إيليش" كتابه هذا في مطلع السبعينات، وإن كانت أطروحاته متقدمة، إلا أنّ أمثلت� وحلوله كانت بنات واقعه. لذا، فالأمور اليوم تبدو أكثر قسوة من حيث تصلّ� النظام المدرسي والمؤسساتي، لكن الحلول-على الجانب الآخر- أكثر إمكانية خاص� في ظلّ التطوّر والتحوّل التكنولوجي وما صاحبه. ويبدو عالم الانترنت اليوم ه� المحيط الأمثل لمثل هذه الشبكة التعليمية المقترحة. ولم ينعم "إيفان" المتوف� عام 2002 برؤية نموذجه يتحقّق بشكلٍ أكثر شموليةً وفعاليةً عبر الإنترنت. �
كما أنّنا في زمن تفكّك صلابة المؤسساتية إلى عالم أكثر"سيولة" ومرونة. وهذا ما أعلم� عن خيارات تعليمية جد��دة في الغرب. �
بقي أن أقول أنّي وجدتُ عسرًا في قراءة الكتاب، وأنّ قراءته لم تكن بالسهولة المتوقع�. فعلى الرغم من وضوح أفكاره إلا أنّ أسلوب الكاتب كان غير سلسل بالنسب� لي. �
March 31, 2019
This book's ideas have stayed with me. Were I able to influence America's Schooling Institution, Illich would be a guru. He provides scholarly perspective on compulsory institutional schooling.
***
One of the old professors in grad school provided me with a useful insight ... when I asked why the state enforced compulsory education until age 18, he replied "To keep them out of the labor market."
Read
October 10, 2020I dalje, dan nakon čitanja, ne mogu da se odlučim sa koliko zvezdica da obeležim ovu knjigu, što ne znači da je ne preporučujem. Ivanov nazor je radikal te, za razliku od većine koji govore i pišu o nužnosti reforme obrazovanog sistema, autor potencira "raškolovanje" - ideju da je jedina prava reforma ukidanje celokupnog sistema. Razlog zbog kojeg treba pročitati ovu knjigu, odnosno njena vrednost, svakako nije sam taj koreniti rez(ni sam nisam u potpunosti saglasan sa njegovim stavovima), poziv na revoluciju, koliko zbog same premise, namere da se radikalno preispita nešto što je neupitno. Ima tu i raznih zanimljivih teza, poput one da postoji "spektar ustanova" od onih levo koje su, prosto rečeno, u službi samog stanovništva, do onih desno koje su, aj da tako kažem, u službi kapitala.
Ivan, između ostalog, uočava da je obrazovanje postalo roba, te da je škola kao institucija preuzela monopol nad znanjem. To nas dovodi do toga da se znanje stiče radi znanja, što poredi sa drugim fenomenima kojima je zajednička crta kapitalizam.
Slobodnija interpretacija nekih od njegovih predloga može nas navesti na pomisao da je predvideo pojavu raznih kurseva, sticanju znanja van institucija, kao i "mreže za učenje" - njegov sistem koji nalikuje onome što internet omogućava.
Uglavnom, posedujem knjigu u pdf-u tako da ako neko želi da čita neka šibne poruku.
Ivan, između ostalog, uočava da je obrazovanje postalo roba, te da je škola kao institucija preuzela monopol nad znanjem. To nas dovodi do toga da se znanje stiče radi znanja, što poredi sa drugim fenomenima kojima je zajednička crta kapitalizam.
Slobodnija interpretacija nekih od njegovih predloga može nas navesti na pomisao da je predvideo pojavu raznih kurseva, sticanju znanja van institucija, kao i "mreže za učenje" - njegov sistem koji nalikuje onome što internet omogućava.
Uglavnom, posedujem knjigu u pdf-u tako da ako neko želi da čita neka šibne poruku.
August 16, 2017
I thought this was mind blowingly good. Ivan is basically saying school is like a training ground for the perpetuation of a society to be the way it currently is. And remain that way. I barely remember anything I actually learnt from school which is not to say that I didn't learn much from the process itself but I dare say the years I spent in a well known fee paying grammar school could have been infinitely better spent. A community environment aligned to a mentorship setting I believe is the way forward not a system which assigns u grades so u can compete at school and then compete afterwards in the office.
July 9, 2012
This book made me acutely uncomfortable, thoughtful, sad, and angry--all in helpful ways. What made me sad and angry is that Illich's critique of the public school system in the United States still rings true today, after a generation in which there could have been positive change. I would say that 80% of the time I spent in public school prior to entering the university system was a waste of my time and intellectual/emotional resources as a young adult. And the university system, while a significant improvement for me as a self-directed learner, was still plagued by many of the same institutional problems.
Illich's main point is that people learn best when they can learn things in self-directed ways and learn them in the context of the world. Institutional schooling, in its focus on curriculum (and these days, standardized testing) and its disconnection from the everyday world of things, can prevent people from learning. It also places more importance on certification than actual skill-building.
"In fact, healthy students often redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This resistance is due...[to] the idea that one person's judgment should determine what and when another person must learn" (p. 60).
"Schools shut the learner out of the world of things in their meaningful setting" (p. 114).
"Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators...In this atmosphere the student too often uses the map, the lab, the encyclopedia, or the microscope only at the rare moments when the curriculum tells him to do so. Even the great classics become part of 'sophomore year' instead of marking a new turn in a person's life" (p. 115).
"The public is indoctrinated to believe that skills are valuable and reliable only if they are the result of formal schooling. The job market depends on making skills scarce and on keeping them scarce, either by proscribing their unauthorized use and transmission or by making things which can be operated and repaired only by those who have access to tools or information which are kept scarce. Schools thus produce shortages of skilled persons" (p. 129).
"School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man's trap...Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out of existence" (p. 159).
"School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is" (p. 163).
Illich's main point is that people learn best when they can learn things in self-directed ways and learn them in the context of the world. Institutional schooling, in its focus on curriculum (and these days, standardized testing) and its disconnection from the everyday world of things, can prevent people from learning. It also places more importance on certification than actual skill-building.
"In fact, healthy students often redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This resistance is due...[to] the idea that one person's judgment should determine what and when another person must learn" (p. 60).
"Schools shut the learner out of the world of things in their meaningful setting" (p. 114).
"Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators...In this atmosphere the student too often uses the map, the lab, the encyclopedia, or the microscope only at the rare moments when the curriculum tells him to do so. Even the great classics become part of 'sophomore year' instead of marking a new turn in a person's life" (p. 115).
"The public is indoctrinated to believe that skills are valuable and reliable only if they are the result of formal schooling. The job market depends on making skills scarce and on keeping them scarce, either by proscribing their unauthorized use and transmission or by making things which can be operated and repaired only by those who have access to tools or information which are kept scarce. Schools thus produce shortages of skilled persons" (p. 129).
"School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man's trap...Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out of existence" (p. 159).
"School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is" (p. 163).
June 17, 2022
Dense little provocation with a concluding chapter downright mythic in scope. While I never know whether radicals have adequately considered the potency of human sin to gum up the best-designed works of decentralized pro-social publicly-owned economies and polities (though I suspect Illich among them surely has), there is much explanatory power in Illich's theses, and, better yet, more than a few places to start.
December 7, 2022
Rereading for C4SS paper
November 26, 2019
Labai patiko septintas skyrius "Epimetėjinio žmogaus atgimimas". Galima skaityti kaip atskirą kūrinį.
November 24, 2015
Illich makes a radical critique of education, capitalism, statism, and almost everything that is both extremely focused and also directs slashes at nearly every underpinning assumption of society. Illich's most direct criticism is at the idea that formal education solves problems. Rather than being about skill acquisition or personal development, Illich identifies schools as the ideological wing of the consumption-production engine that is capitalism. The role of schools is to produce ignorance rather than insight, to create credentials and envy of credentials rather than mastery, to suck up surplus labor and intellect in the Promethean furnace of a culture consuming itself. The criticism starts with Dewey's ideas about education, and moves through Johnson's Great Society, international development, drawing heavily on Illich's personal experiences in Mexico, the Vietnam War, and the industrial design of the transistor radio. Don't mistake this for Marxism though; Illich calls out the Soviet system as another gear in the world-spanning educational system.
Against traditional classrooms and curriculum, Illich imagines 'learning webs', where computers would connect people who wanted to learn something to people who already knew it, forming tutoring pairings and affinity groups that meet in cafes and converted shopfronts. Mass production of tapes and audiobooks, along with appropriate technology in the developing world, will liberate minds. Most of Illich's criticisms are directed at the liberal consensus, and he's not afraid of citing Milton Friedman's voucherization of school systems as a positive example, but mostly it's the idea of any sort of formal, obligatory, schooling that is the enemy. There's a direct line between military discipline and educational discipline, and for Illich both are wasteful, anti-human, and evil. The institutional attempt to achieve a goal will always fulfill it's opposite.
As a historical artifact, this work was published in 1971, when for a brief glorious moment it seemed like the Counterculture would triumph, and that all the corrupt and evil institutions of a rotten society would crumble to be replaced by a new dawn met people where they were. Now, more than 40 years on, we know that this moment would last only a little longer. But Illich, even in his strident utopianism, wasn't wrong. Speaking as someone in the 23rd grade, too much education is useless credentialism that serves to indebt the ambitious working classes. Those with power and money have their own networks of private tutors to pursue actually effective education for their children, while basic skills like knowing how to do something, or how to think in a straight line for 500 words, are increasingly the privilege of the elite.
Against traditional classrooms and curriculum, Illich imagines 'learning webs', where computers would connect people who wanted to learn something to people who already knew it, forming tutoring pairings and affinity groups that meet in cafes and converted shopfronts. Mass production of tapes and audiobooks, along with appropriate technology in the developing world, will liberate minds. Most of Illich's criticisms are directed at the liberal consensus, and he's not afraid of citing Milton Friedman's voucherization of school systems as a positive example, but mostly it's the idea of any sort of formal, obligatory, schooling that is the enemy. There's a direct line between military discipline and educational discipline, and for Illich both are wasteful, anti-human, and evil. The institutional attempt to achieve a goal will always fulfill it's opposite.
As a historical artifact, this work was published in 1971, when for a brief glorious moment it seemed like the Counterculture would triumph, and that all the corrupt and evil institutions of a rotten society would crumble to be replaced by a new dawn met people where they were. Now, more than 40 years on, we know that this moment would last only a little longer. But Illich, even in his strident utopianism, wasn't wrong. Speaking as someone in the 23rd grade, too much education is useless credentialism that serves to indebt the ambitious working classes. Those with power and money have their own networks of private tutors to pursue actually effective education for their children, while basic skills like knowing how to do something, or how to think in a straight line for 500 words, are increasingly the privilege of the elite.
May 25, 2018
Illich’e göre, “okul� toplumdaki ekonomik sınıfların derinleşmesinin ve somutlaşmasının en önemli örneklerinden birisidir.
🍁
Okul; toplumun ekonomi-politikini,sosyokültürelgelişimini olumsuz anlamda etkileyen, öğrenciyi öğretmen-bağımlı ya da okul-bağımlı bir öğrenime zorlayan, onu okula hapsederek günlük yaşamdan soyutlayan, toplumsal yaşamı dizayn eden ve bilimsel rolü olsun olmasın çeşitli tasnifleri yaşamımızın temel dinamiği hâline getiren bir kurumdur. Düzen okullarını böyle açıklamakla birlikte İllıch'in deyimiyle "Okul, yaşadığınız topluma ihtiyacınız olduğuna sizi inandırmaya çalışan bir reklam ajansıdır." 🍁
Çocukluk ve gençlik olgusunu kazıyıp yerine sınav ve stres olgusuyla dolu yararlı bir vatandaş olma kaygısı güden edimi yükleyen standart eğitim modellerine ülkemizde köy enstitüleri modeli ile darbe vurmuştuk fakat her yararlı şeyin çağımızda tahribata uğraması sonucunda o modelde yok edildi şuan çocuklar dört mevsim dört duvar arasında okul müdürlerinin ve öğretmenlerinin yontup şekil vermesini bekleyen modeller olmaktan öteye geçmeyen nesnelere dönüşmektedir ki özgür iradeli insanlar yetiştiren öğretmenleri de toplum yontup yok etmektedir.
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Yeryüzü kaynaklarının tüketimi ve kirletilmesi insan imajının yozlaşmasının, bilincinde ki gerilemenin bir neticesidir. Bu neticeden kaynaklı olarak kapital sistemin betonarme düzeninde insanoğlunun yarattığı teknolojik kutuların içinde mahpus kalan sistem çocukları artık donuk bir yeryüzünden uzay gemileriyle uçacaklarının hayalini kurmaktadır."
🍁
Okul; toplumun ekonomi-politikini,sosyokültürelgelişimini olumsuz anlamda etkileyen, öğrenciyi öğretmen-bağımlı ya da okul-bağımlı bir öğrenime zorlayan, onu okula hapsederek günlük yaşamdan soyutlayan, toplumsal yaşamı dizayn eden ve bilimsel rolü olsun olmasın çeşitli tasnifleri yaşamımızın temel dinamiği hâline getiren bir kurumdur. Düzen okullarını böyle açıklamakla birlikte İllıch'in deyimiyle "Okul, yaşadığınız topluma ihtiyacınız olduğuna sizi inandırmaya çalışan bir reklam ajansıdır." 🍁
Çocukluk ve gençlik olgusunu kazıyıp yerine sınav ve stres olgusuyla dolu yararlı bir vatandaş olma kaygısı güden edimi yükleyen standart eğitim modellerine ülkemizde köy enstitüleri modeli ile darbe vurmuştuk fakat her yararlı şeyin çağımızda tahribata uğraması sonucunda o modelde yok edildi şuan çocuklar dört mevsim dört duvar arasında okul müdürlerinin ve öğretmenlerinin yontup şekil vermesini bekleyen modeller olmaktan öteye geçmeyen nesnelere dönüşmektedir ki özgür iradeli insanlar yetiştiren öğretmenleri de toplum yontup yok etmektedir.
🍁
Yeryüzü kaynaklarının tüketimi ve kirletilmesi insan imajının yozlaşmasının, bilincinde ki gerilemenin bir neticesidir. Bu neticeden kaynaklı olarak kapital sistemin betonarme düzeninde insanoğlunun yarattığı teknolojik kutuların içinde mahpus kalan sistem çocukları artık donuk bir yeryüzünden uzay gemileriyle uçacaklarının hayalini kurmaktadır."
October 10, 2013
"Institutional wisdom tells us that children need school. Institutional wisdom tells us that
children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself the product of schools
because sound common sense tells us that only children can be taught in school. Only by
segregating human beings in the category of childhood could we ever get them to submit
to the authority of a schoolteacher."
Ivan Illich masterfully deconstructs the idea of schooling and all of its perceived advantages. Illich, who was a great opponent of institutionalization, offers thought-provoking alternatives and suggests to informalize education in order to have a better functioning society. He attacks such paternalistic notions as the ritualization of progress and externally-directed education. Illich believes that an individual should be encouraged and given the freedom to develop freely, without confines of an institution. Learning, he argues, should be self-motivated and driven by genuine internal desire for knowledge. He proposes the visionary idea of "learning webs", which seems possible today with the existence of the internet, but was virtually unthinkable at the time this book was written (1971).
A great book that should be read by everyone who sees problems in our current education system(s) and is actively looking for answers.
children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself the product of schools
because sound common sense tells us that only children can be taught in school. Only by
segregating human beings in the category of childhood could we ever get them to submit
to the authority of a schoolteacher."
Ivan Illich masterfully deconstructs the idea of schooling and all of its perceived advantages. Illich, who was a great opponent of institutionalization, offers thought-provoking alternatives and suggests to informalize education in order to have a better functioning society. He attacks such paternalistic notions as the ritualization of progress and externally-directed education. Illich believes that an individual should be encouraged and given the freedom to develop freely, without confines of an institution. Learning, he argues, should be self-motivated and driven by genuine internal desire for knowledge. He proposes the visionary idea of "learning webs", which seems possible today with the existence of the internet, but was virtually unthinkable at the time this book was written (1971).
A great book that should be read by everyone who sees problems in our current education system(s) and is actively looking for answers.
August 29, 2017
Illich's critique of compulsory education in Deschooling Society is insightful and valuable to anyone who values learning and sees learning as part of the full development of human beings. Furthermore, he has some novel ideas for how a deschooled form of learning could be organized, and how the passion for learning can be stamped out by compulsory education.
However, his normative critique could be made in a far fewer words, and his analysis of educational institutions could be more thorough and detailed. It is not clear if he is making an apriori argument about educational institutions or if his claim is a contingent, historical one. It is clear that institutions of compulsory education cannot be conflated with learning, but the question of whether it is possible, in any world, to build compulsory educational institutions is not given due consideration.
Also, he does not directly consider the political question of how a society educates its citizens to be able to live together. If the answer is through the deschooled forms he elaborates than due consideration needs to be given of how this deschooled form deals with social/religious/ideological conflict in absence of a mediating common institution for education of the young.
However, his normative critique could be made in a far fewer words, and his analysis of educational institutions could be more thorough and detailed. It is not clear if he is making an apriori argument about educational institutions or if his claim is a contingent, historical one. It is clear that institutions of compulsory education cannot be conflated with learning, but the question of whether it is possible, in any world, to build compulsory educational institutions is not given due consideration.
Also, he does not directly consider the political question of how a society educates its citizens to be able to live together. If the answer is through the deschooled forms he elaborates than due consideration needs to be given of how this deschooled form deals with social/religious/ideological conflict in absence of a mediating common institution for education of the young.
December 23, 2014
For the first time in 12 years, I had my worldview rocked within the first few pages of a book. The last time this happened was when I read "Capital" as an undergrad. If I could give "Deschooling Society" 6 stars I would, it is a completely courageous, passionately, beautifully written and no-holds-barred assault on the very idea of institutionalized schoooling *in any form.* What I appreciated most about Illich's approach is he not only critiqued, but offered a vision of what a deschooled society could look like. He was prophetically ahead of his time in predicting social/learning networks that might be established through computers, although the current use of such networks is contrary to his wishes.
I am having trouble now thinking about my entire career as a college professor. Illich made me profoundly uncomfortable. And that is good. Now, what then?
I am having trouble now thinking about my entire career as a college professor. Illich made me profoundly uncomfortable. And that is good. Now, what then?
June 16, 2021
4.25-4.5 stars. I really, really enjoyed reading this, if only for the brilliant polemic writing style, radical ideas, and a Thoreauvian imagination (this really reminded me of Walden, but much more tightly written).
Now young people are prealienated by schools that isolate them while they pretend to be both producers and consumers of their own knowledge, which is conceived of as a commodity put on the market in school. School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition. And school directly or indirectly employs a major portion of the population. School either keeps people for life or makes sure that they will fit into some institution.
However, I do have some problems with the solutions offered by Illich. My qualm with his approach is that it is too skill-oriented: school, for me, should be a place where the civilisational culture of a person is formed - where they read Great Books, encounter the study of nature through science, et cetera. Illich’s idea seems to be too focussed on informal vocational training. This, I believe, would only further caste-based education and would discourage individuals whose hereditary professions do not involve knowledge from receiving an education in � perhaps the most important thing � the great works of humanity.
I am also wary of his emphasis on self-motivated learning. The problem with self-motivated learning is that motivation does not randomly strike us. It is only through some (admittedly coercive) submission to curricula that we can receive some motivation, something that can sparkle self-reading and discovery.
Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. Everywhere this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production will provide a better life. And everywhere it develops the habit of self-defeating consumption of services and alienating production, the tolerance for institutional dependence, and the recognition of institutional rankings. The hidden curriculum of school does all this in spite of contrary efforts undertaken by teachers and no matter what ideology prevails.�
But this is where this book shines. Illich recognises that school is the primary bondage of society, from which the modern consumer never recovers. All the falsehoods that even the most well-read of us share are inculcated into us by the schoolteacher. This is because it is in school that we learn to accept this comical idea of discipline, to take ourselves seriously, to privilege “hard work� for the pleasure of our masters, and simply to sit on our butts for 7 hours (something that humanity never did for millions of years). School normalises all unfreedom.
Illich refers to school as the "reproductive organ of a modern society" - this makes me wonder the relationship between school and natalism.
Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.
This reminds me of the relation between school and religion � those who believe in the gospel of hard work and the hustle-culture, those who are utopians, and those who believe in a god are all similarly deluded.
However, I think in his reliance on mass communication for education, Illich is too optimistic. The rise of social media and the corresponding decline in attention spans (leading further to the shift from text-based media like Facebook to image-based like Instagram, and finally, to countless loops of video-shorts a la Tiktok themselves being an example of this) shows that Illich is wrong to rely on mass communication � itself built on technological development. Sure, the internet has educational resources unimaginable by anyone in history, but it is doubtful that adolescents use them of their own volition.
Certification now tends to abridge the freedom of education by converting the civil right to share one's knowledge into the privilege of academic freedom, now conferred only on the employees of a school.
School does offer children an opportunity to escape their homes and meet new friends. But, at the same time, this process indoctrinates children with the idea that they should select their friends from among those with whom they are put together. Providing the young from their earliest age with invitations to meet, evaluate, and seek out others would prepare them for a lifelong interest in seeking new partners for new endeavors.
This is an important point. I think that people today lack the ability to make friends based on interests beyond the institutions with which they are associated. Too many of us only talk to people we met in school, university, or work; too few of us meet people based on common non-institutional interests.
Many persons now attracted to teaching are profoundly authoritarian and would not be able to assume this task: building educational exchanges would mean making it easy for people--especially the young--to pursue goals which might contradict the ideals of the traffic manager who makes the pursuit possible.
Almost Gandhian in its rejection of modern industry -
Modern agriculture poisons and exhausts the soil. The "green revolution" can, by means of new seeds, triple the output of an acre--but only with an even greater proportional increase of fertilizers, insecticides, water, and power. Manufacturing of these, as of all other goods, pollutes the oceans and the atmosphere and degrades irreplaceable resources. If combustion continues to increase at present rates, we will soon consume the oxygen of the atmosphere faster than it can be replaced. We have no reason to believe that fission or fusion can replace combustion without equal or higher hazards. Medicine men replace midwives and promise to make man into something else: genetically planned, pharmacologically sweetened, and capable of more protracted sickness. The contemporary ideal is a pan-hygienic world: a world in which all contacts between men, and between men and their world, are the result of foresight and manipulation. School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man s trap. It is sup-posed to shape each man to an adequate level for playing a part in this world game. Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out.
Now young people are prealienated by schools that isolate them while they pretend to be both producers and consumers of their own knowledge, which is conceived of as a commodity put on the market in school. School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition. And school directly or indirectly employs a major portion of the population. School either keeps people for life or makes sure that they will fit into some institution.
However, I do have some problems with the solutions offered by Illich. My qualm with his approach is that it is too skill-oriented: school, for me, should be a place where the civilisational culture of a person is formed - where they read Great Books, encounter the study of nature through science, et cetera. Illich’s idea seems to be too focussed on informal vocational training. This, I believe, would only further caste-based education and would discourage individuals whose hereditary professions do not involve knowledge from receiving an education in � perhaps the most important thing � the great works of humanity.
I am also wary of his emphasis on self-motivated learning. The problem with self-motivated learning is that motivation does not randomly strike us. It is only through some (admittedly coercive) submission to curricula that we can receive some motivation, something that can sparkle self-reading and discovery.
Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. Everywhere this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production will provide a better life. And everywhere it develops the habit of self-defeating consumption of services and alienating production, the tolerance for institutional dependence, and the recognition of institutional rankings. The hidden curriculum of school does all this in spite of contrary efforts undertaken by teachers and no matter what ideology prevails.�
But this is where this book shines. Illich recognises that school is the primary bondage of society, from which the modern consumer never recovers. All the falsehoods that even the most well-read of us share are inculcated into us by the schoolteacher. This is because it is in school that we learn to accept this comical idea of discipline, to take ourselves seriously, to privilege “hard work� for the pleasure of our masters, and simply to sit on our butts for 7 hours (something that humanity never did for millions of years). School normalises all unfreedom.
Illich refers to school as the "reproductive organ of a modern society" - this makes me wonder the relationship between school and natalism.
Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.
This reminds me of the relation between school and religion � those who believe in the gospel of hard work and the hustle-culture, those who are utopians, and those who believe in a god are all similarly deluded.
However, I think in his reliance on mass communication for education, Illich is too optimistic. The rise of social media and the corresponding decline in attention spans (leading further to the shift from text-based media like Facebook to image-based like Instagram, and finally, to countless loops of video-shorts a la Tiktok themselves being an example of this) shows that Illich is wrong to rely on mass communication � itself built on technological development. Sure, the internet has educational resources unimaginable by anyone in history, but it is doubtful that adolescents use them of their own volition.
Certification now tends to abridge the freedom of education by converting the civil right to share one's knowledge into the privilege of academic freedom, now conferred only on the employees of a school.
School does offer children an opportunity to escape their homes and meet new friends. But, at the same time, this process indoctrinates children with the idea that they should select their friends from among those with whom they are put together. Providing the young from their earliest age with invitations to meet, evaluate, and seek out others would prepare them for a lifelong interest in seeking new partners for new endeavors.
This is an important point. I think that people today lack the ability to make friends based on interests beyond the institutions with which they are associated. Too many of us only talk to people we met in school, university, or work; too few of us meet people based on common non-institutional interests.
Many persons now attracted to teaching are profoundly authoritarian and would not be able to assume this task: building educational exchanges would mean making it easy for people--especially the young--to pursue goals which might contradict the ideals of the traffic manager who makes the pursuit possible.
Almost Gandhian in its rejection of modern industry -
Modern agriculture poisons and exhausts the soil. The "green revolution" can, by means of new seeds, triple the output of an acre--but only with an even greater proportional increase of fertilizers, insecticides, water, and power. Manufacturing of these, as of all other goods, pollutes the oceans and the atmosphere and degrades irreplaceable resources. If combustion continues to increase at present rates, we will soon consume the oxygen of the atmosphere faster than it can be replaced. We have no reason to believe that fission or fusion can replace combustion without equal or higher hazards. Medicine men replace midwives and promise to make man into something else: genetically planned, pharmacologically sweetened, and capable of more protracted sickness. The contemporary ideal is a pan-hygienic world: a world in which all contacts between men, and between men and their world, are the result of foresight and manipulation. School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man s trap. It is sup-posed to shape each man to an adequate level for playing a part in this world game. Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out.
April 16, 2016
Bir kurumda (hastane) hayata gözlerini açıp, başka kurumlar aracılığıyla (okul, aile,işyeri vs) şekillendirilen bireye sunulan tüketim amaçlı, standart "herşey dahil paket bir yaşam"ın eleştirisi olmuş. Bireyin kendi seçimlerinden uzak olan "bu paket yaşamın" kabul edilmesinde kurumsallaştırılmış, tekdüze ve otoriter anlayışa sahip "okul"ların rolü sorgulanmış. Örneğin, mevcut sistemde, birey için doğumda giyeceği kıyafetlerin rengi dahil (pembe ya da mavi) herşey düşünülmüştür ve bu sistem varlığını/gerekliliğini "okul" adı verilen kurumlar aracılığıyla bireylere dikte etmektedir.
Kitapta inandırıcı argümanlardan ve bilimsel verilerden uzak, kişisel fikirlerin çoğunlukta olduğu bir anlatım hakim. İleri sürelen fikirlerin bir kısmına katılmamakla birlikte, haklı olduğunu düşündüğüm fikirler de mevcut. Örneğin mevcut eğitim sistem(ler)i;
1. paralı olması sebebiyle eşitlikçi değildir,
2. belirli bir müfredata sadık kalması nedeniyle tekçi bir anlayışa sahiptir; bu anlayış, standart
bir bireyin oluşmasına neden olmaktadır,
3. diploma-sertifika hedefli olması nedeniyle eğitimli bireyler yaratma amacından uzaktır,
4. "öğrenen kişiye-öğrenciye" bilgiyi doğrudan verir, haliyle öğrenen birey edilgendir. Bu durum, yeni fikir ya da bilgi yaratması beklenmeyen edilgen bir toplumun oluşmasına neden olmaktadır.
"Okul sonsuz tüketim miti 'nin de başlatıcısıdır...İnsan, bir kez okulun bir ihtiyaç olduğunu kabul ettiğinde, diğer kurumlar için de artık kolay bir av haline gelmektedir." (kitaptan bir alıntı)
"Bilginin belirli koşullar altında tüketilen değerli bir meta olmasına karşı koyamazsak, toplumumuz giderek bu uğursuz okul bozuntuları ve totaliter bilgi yöneticilerinin egemenliğine girecektir."(kitaptan bir alıntı)
iyi okumalar...
Kitapta inandırıcı argümanlardan ve bilimsel verilerden uzak, kişisel fikirlerin çoğunlukta olduğu bir anlatım hakim. İleri sürelen fikirlerin bir kısmına katılmamakla birlikte, haklı olduğunu düşündüğüm fikirler de mevcut. Örneğin mevcut eğitim sistem(ler)i;
1. paralı olması sebebiyle eşitlikçi değildir,
2. belirli bir müfredata sadık kalması nedeniyle tekçi bir anlayışa sahiptir; bu anlayış, standart
bir bireyin oluşmasına neden olmaktadır,
3. diploma-sertifika hedefli olması nedeniyle eğitimli bireyler yaratma amacından uzaktır,
4. "öğrenen kişiye-öğrenciye" bilgiyi doğrudan verir, haliyle öğrenen birey edilgendir. Bu durum, yeni fikir ya da bilgi yaratması beklenmeyen edilgen bir toplumun oluşmasına neden olmaktadır.
"Okul sonsuz tüketim miti 'nin de başlatıcısıdır...İnsan, bir kez okulun bir ihtiyaç olduğunu kabul ettiğinde, diğer kurumlar için de artık kolay bir av haline gelmektedir." (kitaptan bir alıntı)
"Bilginin belirli koşullar altında tüketilen değerli bir meta olmasına karşı koyamazsak, toplumumuz giderek bu uğursuz okul bozuntuları ve totaliter bilgi yöneticilerinin egemenliğine girecektir."(kitaptan bir alıntı)
iyi okumalar...
July 27, 2011
There is perhaps no better critique of he education system in it's essence, or a better explanation for why radical restructuring is absolutely necessary for any self-styled democratic society.
Illich, in his grandiose and yet somehow anti-universalist style, points out the fallacies, injustices, hypocrisies, and absurdities of western schooling. The "argument" (if you want to label it as such) is composed of somewhat incongruous anecdotes and musings that all orbit his central message but do not necessarily string together neatly.
The end result, though, is an impressive and blindingly insightful critique, and one whose importance has not faded in the 40 odd years since it's original publication.
Illich, in his grandiose and yet somehow anti-universalist style, points out the fallacies, injustices, hypocrisies, and absurdities of western schooling. The "argument" (if you want to label it as such) is composed of somewhat incongruous anecdotes and musings that all orbit his central message but do not necessarily string together neatly.
The end result, though, is an impressive and blindingly insightful critique, and one whose importance has not faded in the 40 odd years since it's original publication.
Read
July 16, 2020Kitabın en güzel yanı modern toplumdaki çocukluk kavramı üzerine araştırma yapmaya teşvik etmesi oldu.
September 17, 2022
This is a difficult book to categorize and one I'm still mulling over. The proposal is more than 50 years old (not that that makes it less relevant) and it is not confined to ideas about education. Illich truly does speak to the structure of society as a whole . . .
June 8, 2012
Illich's central argument is that institutionalizing social problems results in a subterfuge whereby people stop thinking about the social problem and instead ask why the institution is failing. If there's crime, what's wrong with the criminal justice system; if there's illness, what's wrong with the hospitals; if people are mistreated, what's wrong with the government, etc. It's a good point, and he is correct in looking at how this question is especially problematic with schools. By creating the idea that schools form a nation's knowledge, intelligence, health and so forth, every possible problem can be blamed either on schools functioning badly or on the lack of schools. Schools will never produce uniformly educated, happy, well-adjusted, work-ready people, because the world is complex. It's the same with every institution: you can't eliminate crime through incarceration, no matter how much you fund it; environmental destruction can't be eliminated through regulation and enforcement, traffic accidents will never be eliminated by handing out tickets. It would be like thinking that obligatory church attendance would eliminate sin. Illich's point is that all these institutions make people think that reality can be fixed by institutions, it messes up our thinking.
I realize he was writing during a time when many people believed capitalism would be overthrown, so i give him some leeway on this, but his solutions are incredibly myopic. If the problem is the scope of people's hope, imagination and work, then his solution is to take away the institutions, starting with schools. If schools cannot be immediately abolished, they should be defunded until people realize that a certified dentist is no better than an uncertified dentist, and a bachelor's degree is just a piece of paper. Social constructs are rarely transformed in short order, by just calling them bullshit. Social constructs are changed day by day as people modify their understandings. Social constructs also exist in a contex. Does anyone believe that in today's world, the abolition of shcools would not result in immediate increases in business activity which would take on many of the schools'previous functions?
Illich's ideas about computer-assisted, voluntary, anonymous study groups might have been a good idea if he, instead of talking about the elimination of schools, had begun a useful institution to rival it. Every student of pedagogy knows who Paolo Freire was because he actually put his ideas into practice.
I realize he was writing during a time when many people believed capitalism would be overthrown, so i give him some leeway on this, but his solutions are incredibly myopic. If the problem is the scope of people's hope, imagination and work, then his solution is to take away the institutions, starting with schools. If schools cannot be immediately abolished, they should be defunded until people realize that a certified dentist is no better than an uncertified dentist, and a bachelor's degree is just a piece of paper. Social constructs are rarely transformed in short order, by just calling them bullshit. Social constructs are changed day by day as people modify their understandings. Social constructs also exist in a contex. Does anyone believe that in today's world, the abolition of shcools would not result in immediate increases in business activity which would take on many of the schools'previous functions?
Illich's ideas about computer-assisted, voluntary, anonymous study groups might have been a good idea if he, instead of talking about the elimination of schools, had begun a useful institution to rival it. Every student of pedagogy knows who Paolo Freire was because he actually put his ideas into practice.
August 17, 2008
While there is a lot of outdated information here, particularly in the first few pages where Illich is setting up a context for his argument, the basic of tenants of his argument make incredible sense to me: school is not just a way to prepackage information that substitutes consumption for actual learning, but "an advertising agency which makes you believe that you need society as it is. In such a society marginal value has become constantly self-transcendent. It forces the few largest consumers to compete for the power to deplete the earth, to fill their own swelling bellies, to discipline smaller consumers, and to deactivate those who still find satifaction in making do with what they have. The ethos of nonsaity is thus at the root of physical depredation, social polarization, and psychological passivity." (p113)
The section on learning webs, which I was most looking forward to, was underwhelming, especially in light of everything that's happened since 1970. Not sure how much of Illich is behind all of that, but his understanding of how we learn and what place that has in our society makes one aware of the lack of unstructured time and how detrimental play is to learning.
The section on learning webs, which I was most looking forward to, was underwhelming, especially in light of everything that's happened since 1970. Not sure how much of Illich is behind all of that, but his understanding of how we learn and what place that has in our society makes one aware of the lack of unstructured time and how detrimental play is to learning.
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August 29, 2012Ivan Illich is an admirable intellectual in that he was willing to put his radical ideas into practice. Where my doubts are cast is whether or not his "deschooling" program could honestly be effected en masse, and whether or not they're even possible.
Do I agree with much of his analysis of education? Absolutely. But what seems to be the problem is that despite the deathly flaws in the education system, people still seem to be getting educated in the process. And to "open up" the education system in most any context would almost certainly lead to mass privatization and massive resultant inequity rather than lead to a liberation of thought processes. Illich's ideas are lovely, but ultimately impractical. Yet he's a charming writer, and I think he probably really does have something to contribute to discourse here.
Do I agree with much of his analysis of education? Absolutely. But what seems to be the problem is that despite the deathly flaws in the education system, people still seem to be getting educated in the process. And to "open up" the education system in most any context would almost certainly lead to mass privatization and massive resultant inequity rather than lead to a liberation of thought processes. Illich's ideas are lovely, but ultimately impractical. Yet he's a charming writer, and I think he probably really does have something to contribute to discourse here.
November 4, 2011
Illich takes on the last sacred cow: compulsory public education. Written in early 1970's, he was calling for the use of extended networks linking students to teachers. He was talking about the internet before there was one. I think he's largely correct that public education reinforces class differences and drains students of intrinsic motivation. It's painful to watch a child skip to school in kindergarten, but drag her feet by the time she gets to fourth grade.
June 24, 2009
anything by ivan illich will blow your mind
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