Deschooling Society (Open Forum)

Deschooling Society (Open Forum)

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97 ratings, 4.14 average rating, 15 reviews (more data...)

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published

July 1st 1999 by Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd.

binding

Paperback, 150 pages

isbn

0714508799 (isbn13: 9780714508795)

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 164)

All ratings | 5 stars (33) | 4 stars (48) | 3 stars (13) | 2 stars (3) | avg 4.14

all | this edition

David

David rated it:

01/13/08

Read in January, 2008

recommended to David by: Graham

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...more

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Eric

Eric rated it:

11/17/08

Read in January, 2000

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 f...more 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 came to mean 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 societ76y became the first necessity for a man born in original stupidity, analogous to original sin. In the early 70's he wrote Tools for Conviviality 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. lie 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 focussed 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 becauise at least you knew what you were up against and balck survuival 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." ...less

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Jeremy Wineberg

Jeremy rated it:

08/16/08

bookshelves: culture, nonfiction, philosophy

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 c...more

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Andrew

Andrew rated it:

03/13/08

bookshelves: anthropology, pedagogy

Read in March, 2008

Didn't think I'd find myself in such agreement with Illich. Basically, what he's saying is that when you attempt to organize education from a top-down bureaucracy, lead by authoritarian teachers, organized into standardized cirricula, sanctified by abstract diplomas and certification and strictly confined by age.... the results are less than spectacular. Illich's counter-proposal, in short, is open-learning based on peer-to-peer networking (remarkably predicting of a world where people are linke...more

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Gea

Gea rated it:

02/20/08

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: A classic on what 'de-schooling' actually means

Ivan Illich, upon completing his PhD at University of Salzburg in 1951, began working as a priest in Washington Heights, New York for a period of his career. He is the author of many books that critique modernization and is the forefather of ‘deschooling.’ He notes that, in our current educational system, the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. Further, he suggests that people should control schools for their own learning advantage, not the other way around: schoo...more

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Stina

Stina rated it:

03/12/08

Read in March, 2008

Ivan Illich's main idea - that today's massive system of institutionalized education is detrimental both to the individual and society - is a perspective sorely needed in the education debate. Even more fascinating is his theory that schools are one of the most effective ways that people are being turned into consumers. The book, however, doesn't do a great job at presenting these ideas. It is a collection of essays and lectures, and some revision would have been useful. The book lacks structure...more

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Hschultz

Hschultz rated it:

07/15/08

Read in July, 2008

Some interesting and valuable insights, but overall a sloppily and lazily argued proposal for a "deschooled" society. Illich advocates for "Learning Web's", systems designed for learning that utilize networks, meetings, etc. that one may find by sharing an interest in a common subject or book title. Another "learning web" described be skill exchanges, here he proposes a network with a bank of skills, and as you teach your skill more, you earn more credits to learn o...more

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Edy

Edy rated it:

11/25/07

Read in July, 1995

Illich secara kritis mencermati dampak negatif dari pendidikan formal yang dilaksanakan secara kaku dan indoktrinasi. Telaah tentang dampak pendidikan tersebut cukup relevan dengan suramnya dunia pendidikan di Indonesia. Hanya saja usulan Illich untuk meniadakan sekolah formal kayaknya kurang realistis untuk dilaksanakan dalam skala makro, karena siapakah yang akan memfasilitasi proses belajar yang intens bila tiada bangku sekolah?

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Ronny

Ronny rated it:

(review of isbn )

11/15/08

bookshelves: sosial-politik

Ditulis tahun 1971, Illich sudah menyerukan pentingnya teknologi untuk mendorong terbentuknya learning webs/"jaringan-jaringan belajar" (Bab VI hlm 97-136)
Tapi ya itu, menurutku kita tidak bisa menelan mentah2 setiap kritik yg ditujukan pada masyarakat kapitalis maju, krn yg ada sekarang di sini: kita butuh lebih banyak sekolah dg kurikulum yg lebih baik lagi.

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Paco

Paco rated it:

03/06/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: Karson

Yes!!! Totally good and beautiful vision and good as hell. I recommend it to everyone. especially karson. its about what it sounds like. i would type more but the internet cafe is closed.

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2 comments

Bengjaw

Bengjaw rated it:

09/19/07

Read in January, 2000

recommends it for: anybody

Commercial formal education can be harmful for the society because it ensures the social gap, marginalize the poor. And so do the commercial hospitals, highways, etc.

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Autumnal Elizabeth

Autumnal Elizabeth rated it:

08/14/08

The normal brainwashing that occurs in school is debilitating to creativity, intelligence and cooperation.

I dropped out of hs two years later.

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Karim

Karim rated it:

11/22/07

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: schooled people

school tends to confuse formal education for learning, process for actual substance

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Nicholaus

Nicholaus rated it:

06/23/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Interesting and insightful so far....

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Josh

Josh rated it:

10/15/08

A solid book on the BS of school.

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Jeanette

Jeanette marked it as to-read

11/30/08

bookshelves: to-read

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Molly

Molly marked it as to-read

11/23/08

bookshelves: to-read

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Homeschoolmama

Homeschoolmama marked it as to-read

11/22/08

bookshelves: to-read

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Nathan

Nathan added it

11/19/08

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John

John rated it:

11/19/08

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