<P> This is a small review about Ivan Illich's <A HREF="http://ournature.org/~novembre/illich/1970_deschooling.html">book</A>, Deschooling Society. One of the best books I've ever heard about the negative effects of the current educational system. <P> The author explains exactly what the book is about: <P> <BLOCKQUOTE> School groups people according to age. This grouping rests on three unquestioned premises. Children belong in school. Children learn in school. Children can be taught only in school. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE>I think these unexamined premises deserve serious questioning. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> Most of the text is dedicated to question, very skillfully in my opinion those premises. The author anarchist/libertarian tendencies show in the book, in the sense that most emphasis is directed to the free choice of the individual in detriment of institutions. But I think one would be wrong to say that Illich has an agenda other than point out the evils of a systematic enforcement of teaching: <P> <BLOCKQUOTE> To understand what it means to deschool society, and not just to reform the educational establishment, we must now focus on the hidden curriculum of schooling. We are not concerned here, directly, with the hidden curriculum of the ghetto streets which brands the poor or with the hidden curriculum of the drawing room which benefits the rich. We are rather concerned to call attention to the fact that the ceremonial or ritual of schooling itself constitutes such a hidden curriculum. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE>We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> Illich goes very keenly to the core of the damages that the paternalistic system of education do to a person. <P> <BLOCKQUOTE> The man addicted to being taught seeks his security in compulsive teaching. The woman who experiences her knowledge as the result of a process wants to reproduce it in others. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE>In fact, healthy students often redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This resistance is due not to the authoritarian style of a public school or the seductive style of some free schools, but to the fundamental approach common to all schools-the idea that one person's judgment should determine what and when another person must learn. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> From every single source about pedagogy I have ever heard, this book is <SPAN CLASS="textit">the one</SPAN> to learn about why the current situation is fundamentally broken, why it is harmful to society and to the individual. <P> <BLOCKQUOTE> But school enslaves more profoundly and more systematically, since only school is credited with the principal function of forming critical judgment, and, paradoxically, tries to do so by making learning about oneself, about others, and about nature depend on a prepackaged process. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> It is a very profound responsibility of the individual, to take charge of his own education, and you could say the same about freedom. It is hard work to be a free person, and you cannot be a free person if others control what, how and when you should learn something. <P> <BLOCKQUOTE> Only liberating oneself from school will dispel such illusions. The discovery that most learning requires no teaching can be neither manipulated nor planned. Each of us is personally responsible for his or her own deschooling, and only we have the power to do it. No one can be excused if he fails to liberate himself from schooling. People could not free themselves from the Crown until at least some of them had freed themselves from the established Church. They cannot free themselves from progressive consumption until they free themselves from obligatory school. </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> This is a life changing book, and I guess Illich's works will only increase in importance the deeper we go into the knowledge age. 2009-05-31T21:59:51Z 48 thoughts-on-deschooling-society 2009-05-31T21:59:51Z 1