Deschooling Society - Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich’s 1971 strident critique of the institutionalization not only of learning but of society and its values as a whole.

His thesis, much compressed: Learning—which individuals naturally pursue and derive from their physical and social environments—has been supplanted and monopolized by schooling, which not only demands that individuals not only spend most of their time in artificial, authoritarian settings, learning topics specified by others, but also makes them obediant perpetuators of a prescriptive social order in which only authority-certified knowledge is legitimate, and one must always be seeking more. Illich proposes a return to a more naturalistic decentralized learning environment in which people learn things they care about, in authentic environments, from peers and “masters” in their communities. But his proposal isn’t a simple “return”: he suggests social and technological systems which can coordinate these learning networks more effectively and give people the autonomous agency they need to pursue what matters to them. He hopes this “deschooling” will not transform not only learning but also society itself, replacing modernity’s all-consuming systematization with human-scale networks of care.

Some choice quotes

The current search for 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.

We are all involvedin schooling, from both the side of production and that of consumption. We are superstitiously convinced that good learning can and should be produced in us—and that we can produce it in others. Our attempt to withdraw from the concept of school will reveal the resistance we find in ourselves when we try to renounce limitless consumption and the pervasive presumption that others can be manipulated for their own good. No one is fully exempt from the exploitation of others in the schooling process.

Note an important contrast from John Dewey, also generally viewed as a reformer:

These pacified in society are well described by Dewey, who wants us to “make each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society, and permeate it with the spirit of art, history, and science.”
Both Illich and Dewey believe in learning in community, in a holistic approach to development. But Dewey seeks to construct isolated "enclaves" where this happens, in imitation of the real version. Illich wants to structure society so that learning happens in the real versions.

Our present educational institutions are at the service of the teacher’s goals. The relational structures we need are those which will enable each man to define himself by learning and by contributing to the learning of others.

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 those secrets.

The planning of new educational institutions…must not start with the question, “What should someone learn?” but with the question, “What kinds of things and people might learners want to be in contact with in order to learn?”

The totally destructive and constantly progressive nature of obligatory instruction will fulfill its ultimate logic unless we begin to liberate ourselves right now from our pedagogical hubris, our belief that man can do what God cannot, namely, manipulate others for their own salvation.

Questions

• My research, like education itself, has mostly focused on supporting skill and content knowledge acquisition. But as Illich points out, “education in the exploratory and creative use of skills … cannot rely on drills.” What might an Enabling environment which supports that kind of “education” look like? (see also Spaced repetition and creativity)
• I often meet people who say they don’t like “book learning”. They like learning through doing—for example, through projects. (People prefer doing to thinking) Illich writes: “Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather than unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.” So: when, and in what ways, is anything more necessary or useful? Is “mere” participation always enough?
  • Related: Illich writes, “For most widely shared skills, a person who demonstrates the skill is the only human resource we ever need or get.” This seems to work for Tacit knowledge, albeit slowly and imperfectly. When and in what ways is more necessary?
  • A corollary: what role, if any, is there for designers of learning tools and systems in Illich’s world? “Educational technologists” are authoritarian; but his four networks suggest that he thinks there’s a role for invention here.
• I’m interested in what I think of as “authentic adult learning”: people learning ideas and skills they need to do things that really matter to them. In what ways is this aspiration different from the “continuing education” which Illich criticizes?
  • One way seems to be that “continuing education” buys into the pedagogue’s monopolized authority of legitimacy, and into the consumption-oriented idea that the credentials it issues are valuable in themselves; whereas “authentic adult learning” isn’t tied to any particular institution or source, and it’s motivated by some intrinsically meaningful purpose.
• How to frame enablement decisively away from cold senses like efficiency and reliability? Illich writes: “The emerging counterculture…values the unpredictable outcome of self-chosen personal encounter above the certified quality of professional instruction.”

Q. What is “our pedagogical hubris”, per Illich?
A. “The belief that man can do what God cannot, namely, manipulate others for their own salvation.”