Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich : Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

The Pioneer (14-05-2020)

The education scenario Post lockdown is unclear as of now.

As already seen in most of the developed and developing countries, the online courses are preferred and, in some countries, already the process had begun.

Against this backdrop it may of interesting to know the ideas of famous writer Late Ivan Illich who was in his lifetime was compared to Karl Marx.  

Ivan Illich who was born on September 4, 1926 (Vienna, Austria) and died on December 2, 2002 (Bremen, Germany) was an Austrian philosopher and Roman Catholic priest.  Mass education and the modern medical establishment were two of his main targets, and he accused both of institutionalizing and manipulating basic aspects of life.

Illich had a cosmopolitan upbringing. From an early age, Illich spoke several modern languages fluently and was also well versed in classical languages. He began his formal education in Vienna, and he also attended the University of Florence in Italy.

In Deschooling Society published in 1971, his best-known and most influential ground-breaking book, Illich articulated his highly radical ideas about schooling and education. Illich presented schools as places where consumerism and obedience to authority were paramount and genuine learning was replaced by a process of advancement through institutional hierarchies accompanied by the accumulation of largely meaningless credentials.

In place of compulsory mass schooling, Illich suggested, it would be preferable to adopt a model of learning in which knowledge and skills were transmitted through.

Rohan Roberts, Innovation Leader of UAE observed that the concept is a ferocious indictment of traditional educational institutions that seek to promote the status quo and convince us that we need society as it is today. He further said: “Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.”

Justin Wyllie a Teacher reviewed his famous book “Deschooling Society” thoroughly. Excerpts from his review which are very interesting are shared here.

Illich’s profound analysis of modern Western societies through the fulcrum of the ‘manipulative institution’ is as significant an analysis as that of Marx. Illich is concerned with human relationships at a fundamental level. He sees schooling, the mass, compulsory, public schools as providing an induction into a way of life which is consumerist, packaged, institutionalised and impoverished.

Illich claims it is false to claim that most learning is the result of teaching. Illich proposes instead a learning society, where skills training is widely available and divested of the ritualistic elements of schooling, and where citizens freely associate to develop a critical education, perhaps guided by masters. Illich sees in modern schools a false myth of salvation. He points to the fact that however much money is poured into public schooling it always requires more and the outputs do not increase. Illich sees schools as one case of modern institutions which persuade people to exchange their real lives for packaged substitutes.

Illich notes the irony that schools are allegedly a preparation for participation in a democracy but are run in ways which apply rules and sanctions to children which would not be acceptable to adults.

Illich also sees in schools a new world religion offering hope, a false hope, to the poor that their children might make it. In persuading the poor that this hope lies in consuming the products of educational technocrats this false promise robs them of their self-respect. The poor find new forms of discrimination in education which benefits the children of the middle-classes proportionally more.

Illich sees education as being about the consumption of packages, (produced by others at great cost). The distributor-teacher delivers the packages designed by technocrats to the consumer-pupils. Illich’s criticism of school is a criticism of the consumerist mentality of modern societies; a model which the developing nations are trying to force on developing nations. Schools promote the myths of this society especially those concerned with the never-ending pursuit of progress.

For Illich, schools offer something other than learning. He sees them as institutions which by requiring full-time compulsory attendance in ritualised programmes based around awarding credentials to those who can consume educational packages and endure it for the longest. It is thus a training in “disciplined consumption”. And this early alienation is more serious than labour alienation.

Illich’s practical vision for learning in a de-schooled society is built around what he calls “learning webs”. Illich envisages 3 types of learning exchange; between a skills teacher and a student, between people themselves engaging in critical discourse, and between a master and a student. This latter kind of relationship, which can occur in intellectual disciplines or the arts but also in crafts or skills such as mountain climbing is stifled in a schooled society where non accredited learning is looked at askance.

Illich’s programme is practical and thought out. He proposes new institutions of a convivial nature to replace the manipulative ones of the current schooling system. In these new institutions there is no discontinuity between ‘school’ and the world.  

It is transparently obvious that more and more education does not solve social ills. Increasingly while downplaying traditional authority the new left-wing elites are turning to more and more authoritarian measures.

Herbert Gintis, an American economist, behavioural scientist, and educator critiques Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, arguing that, despite his forthright vision of the liberating potential of educational technology, Illich fails to understand fully how the existing educational system serves the capitalist economy. Gintis evaluates and rejects the book's major thesis that the present character of schooling stems from the economy's need to shape consumer demands and expectations. Instead, he offers a production orientation which maintains that the repressive and unequal aspects of schooling derive from the need to supply a labour force compatible with the social relations of capitalist production. Gintis concludes that meaningful strategies for educational change must explicitly embrace a concomitant transformation of the mechanisms of power and privilege in the economic sphere.