DESCHOOLING SOCIETY

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DESCHOOLING SOCIETY

 

Complete Book:

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Illich/Deschooling/intro.html

 

IVAN ILLICH

 

 

Contents

 

Introduction xix

 

1 Why We Must Disestablish School 1

 

2 Phenomenology of School 25

 

3 Ritualization of Progress 34

 

4 Institutional Spectrum 52

 

5 Irrational Consistencies 65

 

6 Learning Webs 72

 

7 Rebirth of Epimethean Man 105

 

 

Introduction

 

 

I owe my interest in public education to Everett Reimer. Until we

first met in Puerto Rico in 1958, I had never questioned the value of

extending obligatory schooling to all people. Together we have come

to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the

obligation to attend school. The essays given at CIDOC and gathered

in this book grew out of memoranda which I submitted to him, and

which we discussed during 1970, the thirteenth year of our dialogue.

The last chapter contains my afterthoughts on a conversation with

Erich Fromm on Bachofen's Mutterrecht.

 

Since 1967 Reimer and I have met regularly at the Center for

Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Valentine

Borremans, the director of the Center, also joined our dialogue, and

constantly urged me to test our thinking against the realities of

Latin America and Africa. This book reflects her conviction that the

ethos, not just the institutions, of society ought to be " deschooled. "

 

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no

more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative

institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new

attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of

educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor

finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it

engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The

current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the

search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which

heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his

living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to

contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil

research on education--and also to those who seek alternatives to

other established service industries.

 

On Wednesday mornings, during the spring and summer of 1970, I

submitted the various parts of this book to the participants in our

CIDOC programs in Cuernavaca. Dozens of them made suggestions or

provided criticisms. Many will recognize their ideas in these pages,

especially Paulo Freire, Peter Berger, and JosŽ Maria Bulnes, as well

as Joseph Fitzpatrick, John Holt, Angel Quintero, Layman Allen, Fred

Goodman, Gerhard Ladner, Didier Piveteau, Joel Spring, Augusto

Salazar Bondy, and Dennis Sullivan. Among my critics, Paul Goodman

most radically obliged me to revise my thinking. Robert Silvers

provided me with brilliant editorial assistance on Chapters 1, 3, and

6, which have appeared in The New York Review of Books.

 

Reimer and I have decided to publish separate views of our joint

research. He is working on a comprehensive and documented exposition,

which will be subjected to several months of further critical

appraisal and be published late in 1971 by Doubleday & Company.

Dennis Sullivan, who acted as secretary at the meetings between

Reimer and myself, is preparing a book for publication in the spring

of 1972 which will place my argument in the context of current debate

about public schooling in the United States. I offer this volume of

essays now in the hope that it will provoke additional critical

contributions to the sessions of a seminar on " Alternatives in

Education " planned at CIDOC in Cuernavaca for 1972 and 1973.

 

I intend to discuss some perplexing issues which are raised once we

embrace the hypothesis that society can be deschooled; to search for

criteria which may help us distinguish institutions which merit

development because they support learning in a deschooled milieu; and

to clarify those personal goals which would foster the advent of an

Age of Leisure (schole) as opposed to an economy dominated by service

industries.

 

IVAN ILLICH

 

CIDOC

 

Cuernavaca, Mexico

 

November, 1970

 

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