Deschooling+Society

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//Deschooling Society// Ivan Illich

Summary**: INTRODUCTION**
 * Today, when people consider “learning”, they equate it with the school system, which provides opportunities for them to learn. Thus, anything learned outside of school is ignored by society. Possessing good education means receiving a degree from school and therefore, the system of school monopolizes education as the only place of official learning and abolishes other learning. According to Illich, educational background shows only the process, what you are taught but not the quality of what you actually learn. Originally, schools were established to give people equal opportunities, however, they now create levels among people. These levels are determined by whether or not one obtains a diplome. Illich denotes the term “school” in chapter 1 as institutionalization in not only education but also the other institutions such as hospitals, welfare institutions, police and so on. As people depend on the institutionalized society, they become more dependent on its supposed value and start recognizing independent learning as irresponsible and uncreditable.**


 * In chapter two Illich delves into the reasons why society needs to be rid of schools. He begins by saying that the term “school” no longer holds any meaning and he goes into a lengthy definition of what he believes the term “school” truly denotes. In addition to his recreation of the definition of school, Illich puts forth his belief that the idea of school is based on several false premises. The first premise states that children need to be in school and secondly, that children undoubtedly learn while attending school, and the third premise that these children can only learn while in the confines of the school. In order to affectively refute these premises, Illich turns the discussion to focus on the nature of children. His discussion encompasses such topics as modern society creating the developmental stage of life known as “childhood.” The way in which we have created childhood is through school. Without school, there would be no childhood.**
 * Soon thereafter Illich informs the reader that most learning does not take place due to the act of teaching done by the teacher, but rather from life experiences. It is noted that most students pass school through the examination and reexamination of books, classmate’s notes, and their “wit,” never by the teacher’s ability to impart knowledge to his or her students. Then, Illich goes to great lengths to describe those things that teachers are, mainly, moralists, therapists and custodians. His thoughts reflect dissatisfaction with how we teach our children.**


 * Chapter three takes an in-depth look at the goals and practices of our modern day education system. Illich, during the first few sentences of the chapter explains that education is still a status symbol, that the amount that is spent on education can be easily correlated to the amount of prestige and socio-economic flexibility an individual will have in any given society. He compares the pupil to a consumer and schooling to a product. We are forever forced, if we intend to be successful, to be constant consumers. Just as any society before us that has existed it is necessary for the population to abide by certain rituals. School, in our society, and even throughout the entire world could be said to be the most prominent of rituals. It has allowed us to form a specialized hierarchy.**
 * Illich claims that most learning is not the result of instruction, but rather participation in a meaningful setting. Modern day schools force its students to identify their personal growth against a sliding scale of pretentious manipulation. The idea that a pre-set schedule of learning is detrimental is conveyed by the fact that we are eventually conditioned to institutional instruction, which is then carried to every part of life. We no longer have an our own original way of viewing ourselves in the world around us. We are forever inclined to wear the rose-colored glasses that an instruction based education has taught us to wear.**
 * Curriculum is sold to consumer pupils just as any other product. Like an assembly line, supposed experts decipher what is necessary to include in the final product and it is then shaped by time constraints and a monetary budget. The distributor teacher doles out the pre-planned curriculum and the pupils are carefully studied, so as to provide information for the next model of curriculum. As a society of consumer pupils we are constantly looking for the newest product, the most researched and carefully studied.**


 * Ivan Illich thinks that the future depends more upon our choice of institutions that support a life of action than on our developing new technologies. He thinks there are two types of institutions: the dominant type and the convivial. The dominant type is the manipulative institution, right of the institutional spectrum. The influential dominant, modern institutions specialize in the manipulation of their clients, like making societies feel that asylums are necessary to hold people who are crazy, rather than telling society that there needs to be another way to help them. The convivial end of the spectrum is the humbler and less noticeable, which models for a desirable future. The convivial end of the spectrum calls for unwilling consumption or participation, like mail routes, and telephone link ups. The different cost of acquiring clients is just one of the characteristics which distinguish convivial from manipulative institutions. Right-wing much of the elaboration**
 * and expense is concerned with convincing consumers that they cannot live without the product or the treatment offered by the institution. Left-wing institutions tend to be networks which facilitate client-initiated communication or cooperation. Most manufacturers of consumer goods have moved much further to the right like highways, and other institutions that exist for the sake of a product. Schools have not only been put to the right of highways and cars; but they have been placed near the extreme of the institutional spectrum. To put schools in perspective, highways are paid for in part by those who use them, since tolls and gasoline taxes are extracted only from drivers. School, on the other hand, is a perfect system of regressive taxation, where the privileged graduates ride on the back of the entire paying public. The author feels that schools are just there to manufacture and market students. That schools use tactics to scare society into believing that school is necessary, when they are truly not. Ivan Illich feels that societies need to start rethinking how they market schools and how schools are run. They should not be on the right side of the spectrum they should be securely on the left side.**


 * Chapter five talks about the idea of a publicly prescribed education. It mentions the origins of public schooling under the impact ofurbanization and "the cult of efficiency" in the united states. Illich explains how schools have evolved into something too systematic and rigid where the idea of freedom is having a choice of "packaged commodities" Illich says it is important for a new counterculture to rethink todays educational style. We should find the value in a more personalized**
 * unpredictable education.**


 * In chapter six, Illich talks about how to turn learning into a self-motivated process for the student, opposed to the teachers having to force or trick students into learning and taking time to learn. He says we need to know the differences between schooling and learning and he explains this through four different categories of educational institutions. First, reference services to educational objects, which allow access to resources used in formal education. Things like libraries, museums, theaters, airports, or farms are to be made easily accessable to students. Second, skill exchanges, which allows people to list skills and how they are able to help**
 * others to learn these skills and how they can be contacted. Third, peer-matching, which is a network of people who can easily interact with one-another in**
 * order to enrich the learning process. And last, reference services to educators-as-large, which is basically a directory to all those in the educational field and the services they can provide.**


 * In the last chapter, the author describes the development of the human race as a collection of societies that are based upon man-made institutions for needs fulfillment. The author compares current with ancient societies in terms of their fundamental dependence: whereas ancient societies directly relied upon nature for the fulfillment of their needs, modern society relies upon institutions. When hungry, the modern person visits the appropriate commercial establishment to fill the need.**
 * Furthermore, modern life has become despiritualized. Ancient societies depended upon the mystical, spiritual and religious to explain their world and its manifestations. Modern scientists have demystified these manifestations, and provided explanations for everything. The ancient dependence upon the mystical higher power has also been replaced by the modern dependence upon science.**
 * According to the author, this dependence has created the problems of shortage and eventual destruction that humanity faces today. In attempting to fulfill institutionally created needs, scientific institutions have driven humanity and the earth to the edge of destruction. This is ironic, as the very attempt to create subsistence have resulted in mortal danger.**
 * The article however ends in a hopeful tone. The author identifies a group of “elite” persons arising like Prometheus from the ashes created by modern scientists. Like the hindsight indicated by the name “Epimetheus”, Prometheus’ brother, humanity can learn from their mistakes in the past, and look into the future with a sense of hope that refutes the inherent negativity of expectation. While humanity can therefore never return to the innocence of their ancestors, they can use their newly gained knowledge – the “ills” released by Pandora – to reclaim lost hope.**

Key Passages**:**
 * Chapter1**
 * "The institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence" (1).**
 * "Everywhere not only education but society as a whole needs “deschooling” (3).**
 * "The increasing reliance on institutional care adds a new dimension to their helplessness" (3).**
 * "Rather than calling equal schooling temporarily unfeasible, we must recognize that is, in principle, economically absurd, and that to attempt it is intellectually emasculating, socially polarizing, and destructive of the credibility o f the political system which promotes it" (10).**
 * "Neither learning nor justice is promoted by schooling because educators insist on packaging instruction with certification. Learning and the assignment of social roles are melted into schooling" (11).**
 * "However, instead of equalizing chances, the school system has monopolized their distribution" (12).**
 * "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" (19).**


 * Chapter2**
 * “If there was no age-specific and obligatory learning, ‘childhood’ would go out of production” (28).**
 * “School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching” (28).**
 * “Poor parents who want their children to go to school are less concerned about what they will learn than about the certificate and money they will earn” (29)**
 * “Teachers, more often then not, obstruct such learning of subject matters as goes on in school” (29).**
 * “ The safeguards of individual freedom are all cancelled in the dealings of a teacher with his pupils” (31).**


 * Chapter3**
 * “The man addicted to being taught seeks security in compulsive teaching. The woman who experiences her knowledge as a result of a process wants to reproduce it in others” (39).**
 * “In a schooled world the road to happiness is paved with a consumer’s index”(40).**
 * “Consumer-pupils are taught to make their desires conform to marketable values. Thus they are made to feel guilty if they do not behave according to the predictions of consumer research by getting the grades and the certificates that will place them in the job category they have been led to expect”(41).**
 * “If it teaches nothing else, school teaches the value of escalation: the value of the American way of doing things”(43).**


 * Chapter 4**
 * “A future which is desirable and feasible depends on our willingness to invest our technological know-how into the growth of convivial institutions. In the field of educational research, this amounts to the request for a reversal of present trends.”**


 * Chapter5**
 * "The American controversy over the future of education, behind its rhetoric and noise, is more conservative than the discourse in other areas of public policy. On foreign affairs, at least, an organized minority constantly reminds us that the United States must renounce its role as the world's policeman."**
 * "An educational revolution depends on a twofoldinversion: a new orientation for research and a new understanding of the educational style of an emerging**
 * counterculture."**


 * Chapter 6**
 * "The alternative to dependence on schools is not the use of public resources for some new device which 'makes' people learn; rather it is the creation of a new style of educational relationship between man and his environment. To foster this style, attitudes toward growing up, the tools available for learning, and the quality and structure of daily life will have to change concurrently."**
 * "A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known."**


 * Chapter7**
 * "The Greeks told the story of two brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus. The former warned the latter to leave Pandora alone. Instead, he married her. In classical Greece the name "Epimetheus," which means "hindsight," was interpreted to mean "dull" or "dumb." "**
 * "Primitive man had relied on mythical participation in sacred rites to initiate individuals into the lore of society, but the classical Greeks recognized as true men only those citizens who let themselves be fitted by paideia (education) into the institutions their elders had planned".**

Key Terminology**:** Chapter1 school: To systematize our society by industrialization and institutionalization, to confuse students “process and substance”(1) deschool: To be released from the institutionalized value and dependent on ourselves in learning

Chapter2 School: “the age-specific, teacher-related process requiring full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum.” (25) Children: “pupils.” (28)

Chapter3 valuable learning: we are taught this occurs as the result of attendance, the value of learning increases with the amount of input. This value can be validated solely by grades and certificates. instruction: institutional planning; young people allow their minds to be formed by curricular instruction and are as a result conditioned to institutional planning in every arena of their lives. subject “matters”: the institutional break-down of subjects into areas that do not directly correspond with one another. This allows us then to gauge the superficial progress from one population to another, causing the measure of personal growth to the standards of others. the American university: the final stage of the most all-encompassing initiation rite the world has ever known.

Chapter4 Institutional spectrum: An institutional spectrum is a plane to measure how the business or corporation works off society. Whether it taxes everyone who lives in a certain society, like school do to help pay for their expansions, revisions and upgrades, or if it is like Phone companies who tax those who use their particular brand.

Chapter5 irrational consistencies:The idea that students will benefit from and find value in a pre-packaged education not tailored to the individual needs of the school or student schooled society: A society where all valuable learning is the result of professional teaching. Illich calls this an "old dream"

Chapter 6 Skill Model: someone with a particular skill who is willing to share it with others

Chapter7 Pandora: In Greek Mythology, the first woman on earth, created by Vulcan out of clay Prometheus: In Greek mythology, the Titan who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to mankind Epimetheus: brother of Prometheus; despite Prometheus's warning against gifts from Zeus he accepted Pandora as his wife