Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society/Notes

Use this page to keep notes while you investigate "Deschooling Society".

Mentioned in the introduction
See Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society/Introduction for discussion.
 * Everett Reimer
 * Erich Fromm
 * Johann Jakob Bachofen
 * John Holt

WHY WE MUST DISESTABLISH SCHOOL

 * Starts by making a case against "institutionalization".....is this an argument for "limited government", maybe a form of libertarianism?
 * But does not seem to be against all institutions. "We need research on the possible use of technology to create institutions which serve personal, creative, and autonomous interaction and the emergence of values which cannot be substantially controlled by technocrats." Would a mainframe computer be technology "substantially controlled by technocrats" while personal computers and Web 2.0 are more about tools that "average people" can use as they see fit? Are ideas like free culture based on "values which cannot be substantially controlled by technocrats?
 * Cites Milton Friedman and ideas about methods of educational funding by which: "Funds would be channeled to the beneficiary, enabling him to buy his share of the schooling of his choice".
 * Mentions Fidel Castro: "Fidel Castro talks as if he wanted to go in the direction of deschooling when he promises that by 1980 Cuba will be able to dissolve its university since all of life in Cuba will be an educational experience." See also: Education in Cuba
 * "even with schools of equal quality a poor child can seldom catch up with a rich one" About the time that "Deschooling Society" was published, court-ordered desegregation busing became a major issue in the USA. "the mere existence of school discourages and disables the poor from taking control of their own learning" <-- How do we account for the fact that so many poor people have taken advantage of public education to better themselves?
 * Cost. "The United States....is obviously too poor to provide equal schooling". According to the National Center for Education Statistics the United States spent 4.1 percent of its GDP on primary and secondary education in 2003.
 * Dr. Hutschnecker

Can we put Illich in context?
Institutions that make possible a system by which large numbers of children are sent to schools funded and run by the government first became popular in the context of industrialization and the development of modern forms of nationalism. Populations were shifting from farms to cities and and there was increasing need for a basic level of literacy and education. Also, a system of structured schooling can prepare and select for those students who are able to move on to higher education. With time, as nations and economies became more complex, the schooling institutions also became more complex while attempting to do more with a basic institutional structure for schooling that originally had a simpler mission. One way to understand the basic nature of schooling institutions is to use the analogy of the "factory school". Think of students as raw material fed into the factory school which stamps out useful parts for society. At the time Illich wrote, transformations had begun that were shifting some nations from basic patterns of industrialization to more information-oriented economies. Might new information technologies make it possible to abandon the "factory school" and replace it with new systems capable of more personalized education for increasingly creative and autonomous people?

Glossary

 * Deschooling