Deschooling Society (Open Forum)

Deschooling Society (Open Forum)

By: Ivan Illich  

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Keep the radical alive! - I just found out about this a couple of weeks ago, and it fits my anarchist/indigenous outlook perfectly. Strange because I work in education, but there are problems with education and society today, and a radical fix is what we need now. If you are a free-thinking person, this and others are must-read items.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Brilliant Founding Book of the Homeschooling Movement - This book is on my list of "The Ten Best." It does more than brilliantly advocate a turn away from education as an institutional product. It speaks for the adoption of a whole new worldview.

Illich eshews the usual reformers' clichés about our need for more schools, more school funding, etc., etc. He is much more radical and deep than that. He sometimes quotes and is often categorized with "deconstructionist" philosophers such as Foucault. However Illich is a thousand times more accessible and grounded than Foucault. And if after reading Illich, you feel the need for even more grounded advice about the benefits of homeschooling, I highly recommend you read the works of John Holt, starting perhaps with his "How Children Learn" and "How Children Fail." Holt brings the philosophy of homeschooling down to the everyday and individual.

But Illich looks at the big picture - at how our lives have been hijacked by a consumer mentality. It's not that he's giving suggestions about how schools could be improved. It's not that he's advocating any adjustments to our current teaching methods at all, and he's certainly not giving directions on how to transplant the pedagogical tools of the school into the "safer" environment of the home. It's that he's against the whole IDEA of schools and teaching in the first place. But wait! Before you gasp and turn away, read further.

Perhaps the most telling summary of his global objection lies in his pages on how schooling converts verbs into nouns in our lives. The modern mandatory educational system is created by and in turn promotes a constant reification, a constant restructuring of every intangible human capacity into a tangible need - into a consumer demand for service to be supplied by some institutional provider. Now we all wait on deliverance of those goods and services. So instead of bouncing out into the world thinking, "Whee - what can I LEARN today?" - a typical child soon settles into the dry demand of, "I NEED an EDUCATION." The active doing of "to learn" becomes the passive wanting of schooling. In an exactly parallel way, the child's once exuberant cry of "Whee - where can I GO today?" has become the perennially pouty, "I NEED WHEELS." And our whole society has been shaped into the circular driveway of requiring and accommodating only that latter demand.

Many of Illich's suggestions for creating an alternate environment conducive to learning rather than to being taught - were not particularly realistic, especially in the 1970s when this book first became popular. For example, some the computer-facilitated "learning exchanges" he advocated were attempted, but usually soon degenerated into casual meet-markets. Today, with the much broader scope of computer networking, the possibilities for some true learning interchanges to take place through that medium are much better. However Illich's ideas about apprenticeships and the like may still be hard to implement in our world, where so much of people's imagination and energy remains invested in standard educational institutions.

But however practical or impractical Illich's solutions may prove to be - his posing of the problem has the capacity to expand your thinking into an alternate universe. Then you might want to go on to read his critiques of our transportation industry, and of our health care system in such books as "Medical Nemesis."

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
"The Observer" was correct - This book is "Good radical stuff" - Ivan Illich, author of "Deschooling Society," presents a fairly radical view of education overhaul. I do not necessarily agree with all of his ideas, but I do support the foundation of his argument. The good thing about this book is that it has benefits for people who both agree and disagree with his philosophy. I think everybody who has been through the education system would agree that there is something, however big or small, fundamentally wrong with education. It was much the same in 1970 when Illich wrote this book. This book presents some problems that should be addressed whether with Illich's proposals or something else. A failing system should be fixed somehow and in someway. Illich just gives some fairly radical ways of doing so.

I do not agree with the "edu-credit cards" that Illich proposes, but it is an interesting idea. However, the "learning webs" are a great idea. These "skill exchanges" would not only provide the knowledge that people are seeking but also foster more social interaction and people would be forced to develop the social skills that seem to be less obvious and less important in the current age.

In summary, I think that "Deschooling Society" is a good work of literature that is a worthwhile read, especially for students in the field of education. I will remind you that it is radical, and many will probably not like this book because of the suggestions and implications Illich provides. However, the ideas are grounded and based on problematic areas of school and society. These areas deserve a second glance through this text or another.

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Sound basis, silly conclusions - Based on a few real insights on the problems with the educational system (the value of "progress" through grades instead of the value of learning), Illich takes his argument to its logical - which is not to say sensible - extreme. The book starts off with some persuasive, intuitive and troubling thoughts that any reasonable person who has spent a few years in the educational system should wholeheartedly agree with. But after throwing around some jargon and unsubstantiated facts, the author recommends throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The entire book seems to be based on the idea that since reform would be difficult, long, and expensive, it should not be undertaken at all. Instead, some sort of technologically-enhanced medievalism is advocated. Illich seems to believe that by giving people an option not to educate themselves (or, perhaps more accurately, the option when, where, and how to educate themselves) we will somehow overcome the current economic and political inequaliites that fall so disturbingly along the lines of educational "achievement". The book is worth reading if for no other reason than to witness how something so seemingly unassailable as "school" can be criticized and demonized. As for a model of HOW to revolutionize education, in my opinion, the reader is better off looking elsewhere.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Not necessary, but should still be a 'valid' way to learn - I don't totally agree that we should get rid of schools completely, but what Illich recommends should be a 'valid' way to learn. That is, we should be able to do what is now technologically feasible, which is to have networks of people with common interests who can communicate with each other (through mail, email, etc) and decide when/where they will meet to discuss something. An example he gives is a guitar teacher posting their contact information & availability somewhere, and someone interested in learning to play the guitar contacting them. Simple as that, and it would be a similar situation with anything. I think something like that could happen in a school environment, which is where I don't really agree with Illich, but the system would have to be changed radically for it to be possible. I don't think it would matter whether schools 'stay' in society but with a totally different system where students are encouraged to question everything & do what they're comfortable with, or done away with altogether though. Such an education situation wouldn't last long in a society based on authoritarian hierarchic institutions.

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