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