Ivan Illich: Yet Again Revisited

Dr Lance A Box Ivan Illich: Yet Again Revisted 19 September 2014 Page 1

Ivan Illich: Yet Again Revisited

by Dr Lance A Box PhD (Education) Friday, 19 September 2014

Abstract Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society in 1970. The concept of deschooling has moved on from Illich’s initial definition. However, many of the ideas in his book are worth revisiting. This is a compilation of personal responses to quotes taken from Illich’s ground-breaking work. This is not an academic piece with footnoting and a bibliography. It is reflective, making comments on the implications of what Illich proposed back in 1970. Many of the ideas have been fleshed out, and they are being applied to real educational contexts. However, I hope that some of these reflections are helpful to some people newly discovering the work of Ivan Illich. In his latter years Illich lost favour with many of his earlier followers. Be that as it may, many of his earlier idea were good ideas, and deserve to be revisited from time-to-time.

Introduction Ivan Illich’s, (1970). Deschooling Society. Cuernavaca, Mexico: CIDOC, is freely downloadable from: http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html The booklet is not very long, but is compact in its ideas. The following set of quotations were lifted from the above text, and the page numbers relate to this edition of his work. These comments appear as blogs at my blog site: http://lanceaboxeducationresearch.com/ . They have been edited slightly, but most read as they were composed for the blog site. The ideas of Ivan Illich were a jumping-off point for the ideas in my PhD dissertation which can be read at: https://www.academia.edu/7970729/Deschooling_Unschooling_Australian_Biblical_Christian_Education

Home-Based Education Is Education In Community, Not In Isolation p. xix “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.”

http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html

http://lanceaboxeducationresearch.com/

https://www.academia.edu/7970729/Deschooling_Unschooling_Australian_Biblical_Christian_Education



Here, as in other parts of Deschooling Society, Illich identifies that schools and schooling, because of their very essence, are unable to deliver true education. Reformation of schools will not bring about the changes that are necessary to enable education to be accomplished. Schools are, fundamentally, anti-education. The thing that schools do best is school their attendees. No amount of reformation, according to Illich — adjustments to the ways schools are constructed and run, changes in teachers’ attitudes to students, the use of technology in the classroom, and even a change in how students are engaged — will alter the outcomes of schooling. Schools can only school. And they can only school, and not educate, because they are total institutions that are designed to control every participant and process within them towards a stated end: egalitarianism and unquestioning submission to the state or some other dominating institution, i.e. an organized religion. This is not an education, it is indoctrination. It breeds narrow-mindedness, and an incapacity to think independently. Schools are not to be reformed, they are to be abandoned altogether, and the vast resources that are taken from families and businesses (through taxation) to fund the schooling industry should remain with the families and the businesses to fund home-based education and more financially viable private enterprise. The proper context for education to take place, according to Illich, is living life: “the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.” And the support structures for a thorough education are “educational webs.” Education must be in a context greater than the family. The family is an essential base from which children move in and out. Parents are important gate-keepers, who must vet and monitor the kinds of influences that their children are exposed to in the marketplace. However, no parent is able to provide everything that the child needs for a well-rounded, reality-grounded education. There are three essential agents in an education, from a Biblical perspective. The three agents are: the family, the church and the marketplace. And the family needs to engage both the church and the marketplace as important sources of educational moments and experiences, not just lock their children away in a family fortress, as some (a small minority) home schooling families do.

Schools Don’t Just School The Kids, They School The Whole Society p. 4 “Everywhere not only education but society as a whole needs ‘deschooling’.”

When I was growing up, the most common comment made to a child when met by an adult was, “What are you going to be when you leave school?” It was assumed that children went to school. No one that I knew even thought of a possible alternative. Schools and schooling are a mindset, and a mental stronghold. And the stronghold pervades our western culture. Sure, there are small pockets of those who have thought outside the norm, and there is an even smaller minority who have actually applied themselves to the task of doing stuff that is not like school.


However, due to the pervasiveness of schools and schooling, the very fabric of western culture is schooled. Schools look very much like total institutions (as I argue in my PhD dissertation pp. 87-90), and the survivors of schools carry institutionalized thinking into the general culture. This spreads institutional thinking throughout the culture. Institutional thinking reduces human value and interaction down to systems, rationalization, pragmatism and utilitarianism, that is measured quantitatively. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall (to paraphrase Waters, of ‘Pink Floyd’ fame). This is in contradistinction to organic thinking. Organic thinking is creative, entrepreneurial, cooperative, relational and achieves quantity through qualitative measures. Institutional thinking is top-down. Organic thinking is top-up; and by top-up I mean the kind of leadership that serves and equips, rather than uses and rules over. Cultural change must begin with me and mine, and must start with a change of heart. Having a change of heart, we need to become educated after a process of deschooling. From my perspective, the best way to become educated is through unschooling, and the most powerful unschooling is that that which is done at the side of a caring and trustworthy mentor, who demonstrates and coaches, equips and encourages, and finally releases into joy and fruitfulness in life. Over time, this will leaven the whole of the culture with an unschooled mindset. It has to start somewhere.

Teaching Is Not All There Is To Learning, And It Is Not Restricted To

Schools And Schooling p. 13 “A … major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result

of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of leaning under certain

circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in

school only insofar as school, … has become their place of confinement during an increasing

part of their lives.”

In my PhD dissertation (pp. 122 – 136) I argue that the office/ministry of teacher has a place in a society. However, teachers must function in their teaching roles as marketplace entrepreneurs, under the instruction of church officers, and engaging parents directly with free-market contracts. There must be no compulsion in the contractual relationship, no age or time restrictions and no restrictions to location. Teaching has a valid role to play in the education of a student, but there must not be a prescription around who is to be the teacher at what particular stage in the student’s educational journey. This must be determined by the parent, in consultation with the child (in the case of older children). But there should be no impediment to others being involved in the teaching events. When the compulsion is taken out of the equation, then teaching events also become learning events. When young people are engaged in things that they have a passion about,





then they will be much more receptive to the teaching that is taking place — if teaching is what is needed for learning to occur. It is true, most of the real learning that takes place is after the teaching has ceased. I think of driving a car, for instance. When I wanted to learn to drive a car, I sourced a driving instructor (a specialist teacher of a specific skill). This was a family friend who was willing for me to learn to drive in his car. He was not government trained, not government certified, not government supervised. He simply had a skill that he was willing to share with me, and my parents contracted with him to teach me what he knew. When he finished teaching me the basics, then I obtained my driver’s license, and then commenced to learn how to drive. It wasn’t until I was allowed to put the basics to unsupervised practice, that I then learned about driving in various conditions, at various speeds, with various loads, sizes of cars, etc. I enhanced my learning by adding personal experience and research to what I was taught. Why does this have to be restricted to learning how to drive a car? Could it not equally apply to learning how to read, learning how to numerate and apply arithmetic to real world applications (such as shopping, trading, designing, etc.)? Teaching does not have to take place in a school to be teaching. Teaching is not all there is to acquiring an education, but it is a valid part of the process. However, the validity of teaching is not realized by restricting it to the location of a school and the schooling process.

Why So Long To Do Such Simple Stuff (And Then Get It Wrong At The

End Of The Process)? pp. 13-14 “There are very few skills that cannot be mastered by intensive drill over a

relatively short time at a cost far less than the cost of 12 years of schooling.”

My initial training in schooling was as a Primary Teacher. I have qualifications and experience at every level of schooling: Diploma of Teaching (Primary), Bachelor of Education, Master of Education (Leadership), Doctor of Philosophy (Education) and Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (Vocational Training of Adults). I also have training in the teaching of reading and writing: a Certificate in the 4S Literacy Program, a Certificate in Spalding Phonics, and an Advanced Certificate in LEM Phonics. I have taught at all age levels from Pre-school, through High School, vocational education for post secondary students, and have tutored a very large number of university students, helping them with their undergraduate studies. I have taught in cross-cultural contexts people from a very large range of ethnic and language backgrounds: from China, Taiwan, Korea, Maldives, South Sudan, Singapore, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and other places. I have worked with Australian Aboriginal students, particularly from the Warlpiri nation, both in and through English and in and through their native language, Warlpiri. I think I


know more than a little about education and schooling, and what I am talking about when discussing these matters. Well, when I ran a small tutoring business, providing help to illiterate children and adults who had been going to school for many years, or who had left school after many years of attendance, it amazed me how very short a time it took to get the students to independently read and write using an Intensive Phonics method. I had one student, who had been ascertained Level 7 Learning Disabled, who had an attention span of only 2-5 seconds in the classroom, who could not read and write by the end of primary (elementary) school. Over a four-week period, while working with me, he developed an attention span of up to 20 minutes a session, and wrote beautifully crafted words, correctly spelled, in properly formed sentences, and then was able to read them back to me accurately. Why couldn’t seven years of primary schooling produce the result that I was able to produce in four weeks? I have the dated befores and afters in my files, for anyone who wants evidence. And yet, repeatedly, I have been persecuted, bullied, and forbidden to use in my school classrooms the techniques that I used successfully in my tutoring business. Anyone can teach children to read and write. It does not take a long time. It does not require complex resources, and years of study and preparation. I can teach anyone who wants to learn, how to teach their child to be an independent reader and writer in a matter of months for a younger child, and in a few weeks for an older child. It is not hard. It is not a mystery, and it does not take four years of teacher-training, and then 12 to 13 years (and even then a very large number of school graduates cannot read and write) of application in a school to produce the results. There is something wrong with schools–no, there are lot of things wrong with schools–and one of those things is the length of time it takes to do badly what really only should take a short time to do well.

What Good Do Licenses And Certificates Really Provide In The

Education Market? p. 16 “Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of licenses. Certification

constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.”

This quote addresses a couple of issues. The first issue that it addresses is the issue of licensing the holders of marketable skills before teaching can take place. Such licensing usually requires expensive, convoluted, and ever increasingly bureaucratic processes to procure the license. This robs the education market of many people, who are highly skilled, from entering the market and passing their skills on to others. The obtaining of a license does not necessarily mean that the holder of the license is the most qualified person to be engaged in the passing on of skills. And, when you add government incentives to the mix, it almost guarantees that skills will not be passed on. Let me provide an example. To protect the identity of the parties, I will change some of the facts, but the story is a true story. A very keen young man I knew desired to learn a trade. At the time, the Federal and State governments were offering employers monetary


incentives to train apprentices. Employers took on more apprentices than they could properly supervise, and so the young man found that he was being paid apprentice wages (the lowest in the trade), to perform a labourer’s tasks (labourers being paid a significantly greater amount than apprentices). The young man was not being taught the trade, but he did learn how to sweep floors, clean up after the tradesmen, and generally be used as a low-paid slave. This happened throughout his apprenticeship, which was conducted under several employers. The young man was made to work two years longer in his apprenticeship than formally required because the final employer said that he did not have enough trade knowledge and experience (despite working for three other employers prior to this), and needed more time (to sweep floors, clean up after the tradesmen, and generally work as a low-paid slave). And this was despite the fact that the young man was awarded prizes for being the top student (year after year) in his trade school training. Now here is the question. Were the licensed trade school instructors blinded by the fact that they were being paid according to the number of apprentices that they passed each year? And therefore they awarded prizes to their top student falsely, because he was actually a retarded apprentice who needed an extra two years to be added to his apprenticeship to be skilled enough to graduate? Or, were the employers so captivated by the free money that was given to them by the government, that they did not care to properly pass the trade skills on to the apprentice, just so long as they kept him busy enough so that they could collect the incentive money at the end of the apprenticeship? Before government incentives, and before licensed trade schools, employers took on apprentices because they wanted to pass their skills on to someone else, and they did so as efficiently and meticulously as they could. An apprentice who was trained under the older system graduated as a highly skilled tradesman. The young man I spoke of is now a broken man. He has a piece of paper that says he is a tradesman, but he has insufficient skills and experience to be able to practice his trade, despite having three awards for being the top apprentice each year in his trade school. In his mind he has wasted five of the most important years of his life, and they were ruined by government intervention in the trade, and government-licensed teachers at the trade school. The second point that is brought out in the quotation above is the issue of market manipulation by certification. Only a schooled mind is blinded by the smoke-screen of required certification. On p. 150 of my PhD dissertation I make reference to the fact that during the early stages of the so-called Global Financial Crisis, recent school and university graduates were either under-employed or unemployed. Many young people were graduating with certificates that were useless in the process of obtaining a job, but they were also graduating with un-repayable education debts that could not be forgiven. Entering school, it is not possible to know the employment market that will exist at graduation, and the certificates that students study for may be for jobs that no longer exist when they graduate with their certificate of competence. At the same time as this was happening to millions of students graduating from school with school certificates, unschooled teenagers, who had never obtained a certificate in their lives, had never darkened the door of a school, were pursuing their passion, privately accumulating marketable knowledge and skills and then making between $200,000 and “seven figure” annual profits from their internet-based businesses (during the Global Financial Crisis)–see pp. 149-150 of my PhD dissertation.




Certificates may be needed to get a job. They may be needed to commence a career (which is New Speak for being locked into an institution, and working your way up the meaningless ladder of success). However, certificates are not needed to become entrepreneurial, creative, passionate, and marketable. What is needed for these things is an education, not a schooling.

The Fuzzy State Funding Of Schools Versus Self-Funding Of

Unschooling p. 17 “… discrimination in favour of schools which dominates … discussion on refinancing

education could discredit one of the most critically needed principles for educational reform:

the return of initiative and accountability for learning to the learner or his most immediate

tutor.”

I served as an Educational Leader in a school, and was instructed by my superior to round up records of attendance, because in Australia schools are paid government money according to attendance statistics. The attendance figures generated on one day in the year, determined the level of funding that was received for the following year. If the period from which the snapshot was taken reflected poorly for some reason, even if it wasn’t a true reflection of attendance at other times in the year, then funding was reduced. So, I was required to round up, when checking attendance figures, so that the best possible attendance picture could be presented. It happens in many schools, and particularly schools with transitory populations. On the other hand, unschooling does not cost the public anything; it is self-funded education, and you don’t have to round up attendance figures to ensure that an education can take place. When learning decisions are made at the level of student and immediate tutor, they can be made realistically, and without having to fudge the books.

Drill And Education Are Not In Competition But Are Complementary pp. 17-18 “… (the) two-faced nature of learning: drill and an education. School does both

tasks badly, partly because it does not distinguish between them.”

This is a critically important distinction that needs to be embraced in the context of unschooling with a discipleship emphasis. Schools are very bad at distinguishing between drill and education, and very often swing to either extreme; i.e. fill the school day with drill and call it education, or fill the day with ‘education’, but neglect the importance of drill at critical times in the educational life of the child. Both drill and education are required. Both have their place, and one cannot substitute for the other. What then is meant by education, and what is meant by drill? How are they different, and how are they complementary? By education is meant the living of life for the purpose of learning how to live life richly and fully. An education needs to be liberal, in the older sense of being exposed to a very broad range of experiences and cultural expressions, and being able to engage in social intercourse around such cultural life. An education includes


exposure to good music, beautiful works of art, great accomplishments in architecture, reading of excellent samples of literature from a range of historical periods, and so forth. On the other hand, being able to live life requires the mastery of specific skills. Skills mastery often requires repetition, so that there are mental and physical stimulus-response tracks created in the brain and muscle fibres. Such drill could include the learning of algorithmic facts (i.e. times tables, addition/subtraction facts), phonics coding and decoding cues, geographical features such as rivers and mountains, and names of states and capital cities, lines of Presidents and Prime Ministers and Kings and Queens to create historical pegs upon which can be hung other historical facts, sport and athletic disciplines, and so forth. Mastery of such skills is not an education, but neither can an education be complete without the mastery of such skills. The two must be understood, their part in the unschooling process embraced, and their complementary nature fully appreciated. This does not happen in many school contexts.

Floating The Idea of Flexi-Learning Centres p. 20 “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.”

As I continue to argue, from my perspective, the best form of foundational education is unschooling with a discipleship emphasis. However, no family is able to pass on to the children everything that needs to be learned for the child to become a mature contributor to the welfare of the community. There comes a time (sometimes earlier, and sometimes later in the child’s education) where there must be recourse to learned and skilled others in the community. The question is: How is the access obtained? Illich’s suggestion is that there be networks or services that provided a clearing-house for those with passionate concerns to meet with those with the same passion and desire to learn. He is proposing a forum for connecting those in the community who are experts in a field of knowledge or skills-set, with those who want to acquire that knowledge and/or skills-set. This should not be institutionalized, where the financial remuneration for the exchange of knowledge and skills comes from government taxes, or even mostly from other institutions such as the church. These clearing-houses need to be privately managed, and the financial exchange be between the families seeking the knowledge/skills and the supplier of the knowledge/skills. I am calling these clearing-houses Flexi-Learning Centres. They are not to take over the role of the home. However, home-based education uses the home as a base, where learning is done in and out of the home, and such networks and services, as suggested by Illich, become a means of accessing a whole range of supplementary educational experiences.


A Flexi-Learning Centre would not be a school; there would be no compulsion, there would be no age-grade segregation, there would be no government-mandated curriculum, there would be nothing of school in the mix. Activity may take place at the Flexi-Learning Centre, if appropriate, but there is no requirement for this to take place if learning would be better accessed in another place. However, it would be a location where families could find out about what is available, where, when, and at what cost, and delivered by whom.

Learning In Life Ensures That Education Is Relevant and Real p. 23 “A deschooled society implies a new approach to incidental or informal education.”

In a formal schooling situation, learning is standardized and presented as a curriculum. However, much of the learning that takes place is learning for examinations, not learning for life. Very little of what is learned for examinations is retained beyond the examination. In fact, a whole lot of self-learning usually needs to take place, after schooling has finished, for young people to become useful in a vocation. On the other hand, learning in life (expanding knowledge from the events, situations and opportunities that present themselves as you go about daily routines) ensures that learning is anchored in reality. This incidental and oftentimes informal learning is usually the learning that remains. At this period in history, society tends to give more value to formalized school learning. However, those who have been unschooled, and especially those who have been unschooled with a discipleship emphasis, will prove to be the most useful and adaptive participants in the broader society, because their learning is relevant, and much more anchored in reality.

The Characteristics Of Schools pp. 26-27 “… I shall define ‘school’ as the age-specific, teacher-related process requiring full-

time attendance at an obligatory curriculum.”

Illich refers to the following elements as being defining characteristics of schools: 1. age-specific (and age-segregated) learning contexts; 2. teacher-related (teacher-centred) processes; 3. full-time attendance (compulsory attendance); and 4. obligatory curriculum (centrally determined, and obligatory for all to complete). Each of these characteristics militates against efficient and effective learning on the part of the students.


Firstly, age-specific and age-segregated learning ensures that learning will be pitched at the mediocre, with very little attention to the needs of those students at either extreme of learning capacity. Age-specific and age-segregated cohorts are created on the assumption that all children pass through the same stages of development at the same times, which is not true in all areas for all children. There are developmental differences that enable many children to be at different stages at different times in different areas of their lives. This assumption of equal development suppresses individuality, and creativity, and ultimately prevents most children from becoming excellent at anything. Secondly, teacher-related/teacher-centred processes focus on the interests, strengths and abilities of the teacher. Effective learning takes place when the student has a particular interest or passion that is being catered for. Learning should not be totally child-centred and child-focused, however, the individuality of the student needs to be taken into consideration, including favoured learning styles, previous learning, orientation, interests and passion of the child. All these need to be taken into consideration when facilitating learning opportunities. Thirdly, full-time, compulsory attendance does not take into consideration the powerful learning that takes place when spontaneous opportunities in the context of living life present themselves. It is important to have the time and the flexibility to respond to these learning opportunities. Finally, a centrally determined, obligatory curriculum does not take into consideration the myriad of variations of learning needs that are spread across families, communities, regions and so forth. No one person can learn everything there is to learn. And no one person or group of people can choose from the full range of possible things that can be learned, which are to be the universally required core learnings. These are local decisions.

Schools Are Ancient And Modern, And Perpetuate Childhood p. 28 “The school system is a modern phenomenon, as is the childhood it produces.”

School, as we know it in our era, has only appeared once before in history and that was in the Ancient community of Sparta. According to Flaceliere (1965) at the age of 7 a young Spartan boy was taken from his family, schooled in a state-controlled total institution, where he was indoctrinated to give allegiance and unquestioning obedience to the state until his death. Spartan girls were raised to be on equal footing with the boys, but the objective was with a militaristic end in view – breeders of strong Spartan boys for the Army. Schools and schooling were designed to create total dependence upon the state, and to form the citizens into military units that responded to the state’s martial objectives. In the case of modern schools, their original raison d’être was also militaristic. The German Kaisers wanted to created a powerful war machine in Europe, and saw state-compulsory schooling as a means of achieving this objective. When the concept of state-controlled education reached England, America and Australia, it was seen as a means of creating a large workforce of factory workers. In the words of Reynolds (2014):


“… the traditional public school: like a factory, … runs by a bell. Like machines in a factory, desks and students are lined up in orderly rows. When shifts (classes) change, the bell rings again, and students go on to the next class. And within each class, the subjects are the same, the assignments are the same, and the examinations are the same, regardless of the characteristics of individual students. … A teacher in a modern industrial-era school was like a factory worker, performing standardized operations on standardized parts. And the standardized parts–the students–were taught along the way how to fit into a larger machine. … the modern school system provided far less scope for individuality on the part of both its producers and its products. But the trade-off was seen as worthwhile: the modern assembly-line approach, in both settings, produced more of what society wanted, and it did so at a lower cost. If standard parts are what you want, an assembly line is better than a blacksmith” (Reynolds, 2014, Standardized Parts and Mass Production). So, the 19th Century objects of schooling were to create a ready supply of “punctual, obedient factory workers; orderly citizens; and loyal soldiers” (Reynolds, 2014). In the periods between Sparta and the experiment of the German Kaisers, education was a family and marketplace activity, and was not delivered in schools as we know them today. In that sense, the school system is a modern phenomenon. And since factories have shifted from the West to Asia, at least some of the reasons for schools and schooling have disappeared–i.e. training of piece-workers with no jobs at the end of the training process. I remember the first thing that I was told by my platoon sergeant, when I got off the bus and commenced my military training: “Don’t think, soldier! You are not paid to think, that is what officers are paid to do. You are paid to do as you are told.” Military training militates against maturity and responsibility. As a soldier, others make decisions about what you will wear, where you will live, what you will eat, whether you will sleep (or not), how you will behave, and so forth. Schooling that is based on a militaristic and factory model prevents responsible thinking, the essential prerequisite to maturity. Growing up requires real opportunities to make significant decisions, with actual consequences. Schools perpetuate childhood—particularly in the context of age-segregated cohorts, with age-oriented learning materials. Education for maturity, education for responsibility and productivity in life requires education in life under the guidance of loving parents, and in the company of supportive siblings. True education orients a child to the twin objectives: to love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself. This cannot be achieved in the context of a school, and is not the by-product of schooling; it is the fruit of unschooling with a discipleship emphasis.

The Anti-Dote To Perpetual Immaturity Is To Get Rid Of Compulsory,

Age-Segregated Schooling p. 29 “If there were no age-specific and obligatory learning institutions, ‘childhood’ would

go out of production.”

It is real responsibility, in real life situations, with real consequences that enables maturity to develop. Continuing to shelter young people beyond their childhood is to perpetuate


childhood. This is what compulsory, age-segregated schooling does; it perpetuates childhood into ever extending age groups. And how can this be measured? It is measured by the level of Social Welfare dependence. Children depend upon others to care for them. Adults take responsibility for their own lives. Institutionalized children, become dependent upon the institutions of the culture, the major one being the Social Welfare System, and an example of others would include the hospital system. This is why Illich insisted that there needed to be a deschooling of society. It is not just the institutionalizing of education that is the problem, it is the institutionalizing of everything in society. It all leads to dependence, which is a manifestation of immaturity at a whole range of ages beyond childhood. Maturity is taking responsibility for your own affairs, and not depending upon others or an institution to look after you. “Therefore let us … go on to maturity [taking on the responsibility for your own affairs] …” wrote the Apostle Paul (Hebrews 6:1).

The Messianic Character Of Mainstream Western Schooling p. 31“The most important role of schools is to create jobs for accredited teachers, no matter

what their pupils learn from them.”

p. 32 “The school teacher is a ‘secular priest’.”

In his book, The Messianic Character of American Education: Studies in the History of the Philosophy of Education, Rousas J. Rushdoony (1963) traced the educational development in the West that established schools as the new church in society, and identified ignorance (of political correctness) as being the new sin that children must be saved from. He strongly argued that the priests and priestesses of the new church are the teachers that indoctrinate in these schools. Illich summarised this idea by saying that,”(t)he school teacher is a ‘secular priest'”. On the other hand, schools are structured to meet the educational needs of one kind of child, and that is the child with the orientation to aural/oral/visual learning. This excludes a lot of boys (and some girls) who are tactile/kinaesthetic learners. It is the aural/oral/visual learners who make the best school teachers, and the tactile/kinaesthetic learners are not catered for adequately, if at all, in the schooling process. Therefore, the children who get the most out of schools and schooling are those who are destined to become the teachers in the schools. Hence Ilich’s comment that “(t)he most important role of schools is to create jobs for accredited teachers, no matter what their pupils learn from them”. Schooling is a huge industry that consumes inordinate amounts of public money. The evidence strongly suggests that the more public money directed towards schooling, the worse the outcomes from schools are. Hattie (2011) wrote:


Funding in the Australian school education sector increased by 41% between 1995 and 2006 ([EOCD], 2007) but student performance stagnated in mathematics and significantly declined in reading (Thompson, 2008). In Australia, Jensen, Reichl and Kemp (2011) estimated that per student expenditure increased by over 17 per cent during the studied decade, while student performance declined by 2.5 per cent, equivalent to about one-third of a year of schooling. They noted substantial variation between states, with the decline in performance in the ACT being over 50 per cent of the national average and the rise in expenditure being double the national average. They identified the largest increase in expenditure as being due to reduced student-teacher ratios, driven by class size reductions–with there not being an increase in teacher salaries over the identified period (p. 5). Government certification processes and Union protection of teachers, has ensured that very few teachers, once in the classroom, can be removed. Incompetence in performance is covered by the smoke-screen of clamoring for more and more government money to be spent on the schooling juggernaut. Decline in educational outcomes is blamed on government economic rationalism. Schools are not the temples of secular salvation. Education cannot save us. There is only one name given among men whereby which we must be saved, and that is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mums and dads, lead your children to the only wise God our Saviour. He, and He alone, is the only hope of salvation in this life and in the life to come. Hattie, J. (2011). Leaders Exert More Power When They Control the Topics of Educational Debates (Vol. 59). Adelaide, South Australia: ACEL. Rushdoony, R. J. (1963). The Messianic Character of American Education: Studies in the History of the Philosophy of Education. Nutley, New Jersey: The Craig Press.

The Ritual Of Schooling: More An Act Of Devotion Than A Way Of

Learning p. 39 “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.”

Religious ritual is a requirement to perform repeated devotional actions to appease a god. It is usually motivated by fear of sanctions if the rituals are not performed correctly. Schooling has its own religious liturgy and litany. Positive sanctions result if these rituals are followed according to the expectations of the priests and priestesses of schooling (the teachers–representing the god of schooling, the State). However, serious negative sanctions ensue when there is deviance from the required liturgy and litany. The mantra of the religion of schooling is socialization. Socialization, in a school context, is about being molded into a socialist mindset. Socialism is antithetical to individuality. The great social sin, according to socialism, is that some individuals may enjoy an advantage over other individuals.


On the other hand, socialism has never been able to address inequality. The more equal the State demands its citizens to be, the more disparity is created between the haves and the have-nots, and the greater the pool of have-nots is expanded. This is because equality is antithetical to reality. No one is equal to anyone else. Yes, the law should be impartial, and therefore the socially advantaged should not obtain a better result under law than the socially deprived. However, equality before the law does not require equality in opportunity and outcome. These are myths. The greatest social benefit is obtained when everyone is allowed to become the best that they can be, as an expression of their own individual uniqueness. Everyone is wired in a unique way, pre-ordained for a specific purpose; therefore, everyone has the potential and capacity to be an expert in something (but only if they are given room to grow in different ways and at different rates to others). No one is structured to be the same as anyone else. To try and artificially create equality between individuals is to militate against the bias of the universe. Schooling is unreformable. Schools are created on a premise of egalitarianism. What is needed is a reformation of education. Such a reformation will explore ways of delivering an education that does not fall back upon the failed schooling model. This will not happen until a greater number of the general population is deschooled (hence the title of Ivan Illich’s 1970 book, Deschooling Society).

Being Schooled, And As A Result Being Credentialed, Does Not

Necessarily Indicate An Education Has Been Acquired p. 40 “Once we have learned to need school, all our activities tend to take the shape of client

relationships to other specialized institutions. Once the self-taught man or woman has been

discredited, all nonprofessional activity is rendered suspect. In school we are taught that

valuable learning is the result of attendance; that the value of learning increases with the

amount of input; and, finally, that this value can be measured and documented by grades

and certificates.”

One of the most significant indicators of someone having been schooled is a dependent mindset. Schools breed dependence. At the end of the schooling process it is commonly believed that only the credentialed, certified, registered and monitored person can make a valued contribution to society. The schooled person, who does not hold advanced qualifications, believes that he/she could never understand the mysteries of the guild, and therefore becomes dependent upon institutionalized services: the institutionalization of health, the institutionalization of child-raising, the institutionalization of a plethora of life-skills that once most men and women knew from participating in activities around the home, as part of a family. Grades and certificates, in many instances, are merely arbitrary benchmarks. They indicate that someone has remembered what the examiner wanted to appear on the test, but they do not reveal what the holder of the certificate really knows, and whether what they know is relevant to the current state of knowledge in that specific field. Schools are notorious for


being behind the times in the knowledge that they teach. Teachers go through school at the time textbooks are being written. They then go through University, using the textbooks that were being written when they were are school, and then they teach the children in the classrooms the things that they learned at university, which were written in textbooks that were written when they were at school. It is not attendance at school that ensures an education. Attendance at school ensures that you are schooled. Unschoolers, who are guided by parents who have been deschooled, are able to keep up with the cutting edge of knowledge in any field that they choose to become an expert in. There are no limits, in this digital age, to accessing knowledge that is current, relevant to the moment, and oriented to the interests and passions of the child. The self-taught unschooler is often the better educated person.

The Best Learning Takes Place When Contextualized, Not From

Instruction In A Hot-House p. 40 “Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered

participation in a meaningful setting.”

This comment by Illich does not negate instruction. Clearly, instruction is an important part of the learning process. I am a teacher, and instruction is one of the things that I do. I cannot help myself. It is how I am wired. However, it is the insistence that all instruction must be conducted by a state-trained, state-certified, state-registered and state-monitored teacher that is the issue in question. Classroom teachers are not the best people to instruct children. Loving, God-fearing, devoted parents are. Second to parents are the experienced custodians of relevant knowledge. And these are often not the state-trained teachers, they are the practitioners in the field who have years and years of practical experience. Just recently I heard a story from a friend who is a qualified Engineer. He holds a Masters degree in Engineering. However, he has discovered that in his field, the best custodians of relevant knowledge are the long-term tradesmen. He told me the following story: A newly graduated Engineer (not the one telling the story) was put in charge of a project. The Engineer instructed a tradesman to implement a course of action. The tradesman said to the Engineer, “It will not work.” The Engineer over-ruled the tradesman, because of his qualification. The tradesman then did what the Engineer told him to do. The project completely failed and wasted a large amount of money and resources. The tradesman was asked, “Why did you think it would not work?” The tradesman replied, “Because I have been working in this field for a very long time, and I just knew it would not work.” The Engineer’s mathematics, calculations, book learning, examination passing, and credentialing was no match for the knowledge gained from practical experience acquired through working in a field for an extended period. Yes, there are things that we would like people to have theoretical knowledge about before they start practicing: vital organ surgery, for example. However, simply being instructed in a field, and being exposed to a lot of theories, does not replace hard-earned, long-term,


practical experience. Credentialing often creates a pride that blocks learning from those who have worked in the field, but who do not have the pieces of paper hanging on the wall. Being exposed to a relevant environment, where real work is being conducted, is often the best context for receiving instruction, especially when that instruction is being delivered by someone who has mastered his field over a long period of time working in the industry.

Don’t Wait To Be Taught: Have A Go And Learn p. 48 “School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to

be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence;

they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life

offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.”

It has been very painful to watch someone I know struggle with the helplessness that they feel because their schooling has instilled in them the idea that unless they are taught, they cannot learn. Actually, this is the condition of a number of people that I know. They have been schooled, and they have been schooled exceptionally well. These people live less than satisfying lives because they are always blaming their lack of knowledge on not having been taught such and so. It is a debilitating condition to be in. I remember that I did not really start learning to drive until after I had been given my driver’s license. I was taught the basics, but the real lessons came from repeated practice on the open road, and having to learn how to adjust to the unpredictable as it unfolded before me in my ongoing driving experience. A proper education is like this. At the beginning we do need to be taught some basics, such as: moral precepts, decoding/encoding skills, mathematical tables, and some basic historical, geographical and scientific facts. However, if we are spoon-fed beyond the basics, then we lose the capacity to self-learn, and as a consequence become dependent upon others to teach us. Those who have been institutionalized by schooling and its spoon-feeding instruction model, are not able to cope with the learning opportunities that life throws up at them. The best context for learning is to have a go, fail, consider the lessons that can be learned from the attempt, then have another go with better insight. To wait until someone teaches you, before having a go, means that you are ever learning but never arriving at the truth, or never learning at all.

The Thing That Schools Are Best At Is Training Up Workers For The

Schooling Industry And Other Total Institutions p. 48 “School either keeps people for life or makes sure that they will fit into some

institution.”

I have finally left school. I am nearly 58 years of age. The best years of my life were given to schools and schooling. However, when I took small breaks from school, I found myself


caught up in other total institutions, the most significant being four years serving in the Australian Army. I am living evidence of Illich’s words. Upon deep reflection, I have come to believe that schools are poisonous places, and many attendees of schools are wounded for life as a consequence of their schooling experience. The only real survivors of schooling are those who are oriented to the schooling process, and therefore are easily groomed to perpetuate the institution at one of its many levels (child care, pre-school, primary/elementary school, high school, university, post-graduate school, trade school, Bible school, etc.). But are these survivors really survivors at all. There is something satisfying about sharing knowledge with others. However, the total institution of school breeds workplace bullying, academic ladder-climbing, playground bullying, workload stress, and gives opportunity for despots to rise to the top of the bureaucratic pyramid. All of this is just not necessary for an education. It is necessary to keep an industry flooded with public money to fund: mortgage payments, extended paid leave, sabbaticals, superannuation, textbook writing, seminars, tenured university positions, research projects, education journals, etc. However, an education does not require anywhere near the amount of funding that public-financed schooling costs. A truly educated person is not institutionalized. An educated person knows how to live life to its fullest, is productive, creative, and knows how to think outside the boundaries set by schooling–an entrepreneur, an inventor, a pioneer. A schooled person thinks narrowly, and is trained to believe that there is only one answer–the answer required by the teacher on the test that is coming up. A schooled person is politically correct. A schooled person is passive, and expects others to provide for them–the well-trained dole recipient, or compliant worker in the top-down corporation. It is said that it takes at least one month of deschooling to counter each year that a person has been schooled. I have been deschooling for 15 months as of the date of this article. I only have three years of deschooling to go, and hopefully then I can start becoming a useful person in my community. What a waste of a life! A deschooled society will save the community an enormous amount of wasted money, and provide a much better educated community, as well.

The Radical Heart Of Ivan Illich’s Proposal: A Deschooled But

Educating Society p. 76 “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. Such a system would require the application of constitutional guarantees

to education. Learners should not be forced to submit to an obligatory curriculum, or to

discrimination based on whether they possess a certificate or a diploma. Nor should the

public be forced to support, through a regressive taxation, a huge professional apparatus of

educators and buildings which in fact restricts the public’s chances for learning to the


services the profession is willing to put on the market. It should use modern technology to

make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully

educational.”

Of all the quotes from Ivan Illich’s book discussed thus far, this is the most important. He is proposing a radically deregulated education system. A schooled society will struggle with this proposal. It is inconceivable that education can take place without centralized control, and lots and lots of public money being thrown at the bureaucracy. In fact, as it is more and more evident that publicly-funded, centrally-controlled education does not work, there will be more and more calls for greater controls and vastly increased amounts of money to be chucked down the black hole of the failed secular, free and compulsory schooling experiment. What Illich is proposing is that there be locally and privately owned educational portals, unfettered by government and other institutional interference through Constitutional guarantee. These portals are to become education markets, places of exchange where those who have expertise, and a passion to pass that expertise on to others, can meet up with those who have a passion to learn the knowledge and skills that are being offered. These portals will assist with due diligence in checking the backgrounds of those presenting themselves as education providers, however, at the end of the day the exchange of knowledge, skills and experience will be a free-market contract, without compulsion and requirement for government approved certification or qualification. Such markets will not necessarily provide enough remuneration for educators to survive without also having a real ‘job’. It will require teachers to be grounded in reality, as they deal with the workplace as well as engage in educating others. Very good teachers will be well patronized, but poor teachers will either have to improve their teaching skills, or go back to their day job. As I said, a schooled society will find this a very difficult concept to think through. However, until we take seriously Illich’s proposal, we will continue to subject children to the twelve year sentence*, and waste vast amounts of public funds, that could be spent elsewhere, on a failed educational concept. * Rickenbacker, W. F. [Ed.]. (1974). The Twelve Year Sentence: Radical Views of Compulsory Schooling. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

We Need To Consider The Wealth To Be Gained From Deregulated

Teaching In The Marketplace p. 91 “To guarantee access to effective exchange of skills, we need legislation which

generalizes academic freedom. The right to teach any skill should come under the protection

of freedom of speech. Once restrictions on teaching are removed, they will quickly be

removed from learning as well.”

Freedom can only be found in the Lord Jesus Christ: "For freedom Christ has set us free; ..." (Galatians 5:1). It is the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the Law of God which provide the constraints around freedom that prevents it from becoming license. To legislate for freedom, without first ensuring there is a change in heart of the majority in the community,


is only to entrench greater and greater measures of license. So-called academic freedom in the west has morphed into an unchecked attack on truth. Academic freedom has come to mean the proclamation of anything, without accountability. Being that, as it may, laws concerning libel and slander and inciting riot do place a measured check around license, therefore political censorship of all speech is contrary to the freedom that Christ has offered those who believe in Him. Furthermore, the notion of rights under girds all kinds of aberrant lifestyles and behaviours. The Bible knows nothing of rights. The Bible teaches privileges and responsibilities. Those who bear their responsibilities enjoy the privileges that come with them. Those who shirk their responsibilities lose their privileges. Without such a balance, the claim for rights, without a corresponding check, leads once again to unrestrained license. Having said all this, the point that Illich makes concerning the deregulation of teaching is a valid one. Teaching should not be limited to those who hold a state-issued license. The issue of false and dangerous teachers can be addressed with laws that prohibit the propagation of ideas that incite violence, riot, and promote degenerate and immoral lifestyles. The free exchange of ideas is an important part of community growth and development. New ideas, that are tested and weighed against old values, when they survive the debate, and blossom out of the trials, can lead to better conditions and enjoyment of life. New ideas should not be feared, simply because they are new. Untested, and unchallenged ideas cannot be embraced without due diligence. A free education market is the best place to ensure that such ideas do get considered, debated, trialed and either embraced or rejected by the community. It is the narrowing of curriculum, through the centralization of curriculum choice, that does the most damage to education. Centralized curriculum is indoctrination, not education. A free education market will guarantee a much broader curriculum in the marketplace. Local decisions will adjust curriculum to local need, and the sharing of educational content between communities will ensure that the best of ideas are generally accessed. This will allow individuals to follow their gifting, their passion and their interests more fully, ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to become an expert in something. This will result in a much wealthier community that is served by a plethora of experts in a hugely diverse range of knowledge sets, giftings and skills.

Schools Militate Against The Reality That We Are Not All Created

Equal p. 92 “At their worst, schools gather classmates into the same room and subject them to the

same sequence of treatment in math, citizenship and spelling. At their best, they permit

each student to choose one of a limited number of courses. In any case, groups of peers

form around the goals of teachers. A desirable educational system would let each person

specify the activity for which they sought a peer.”

In his essay, 'Human Variation and Individuality', from the book, The Twelve Year Sentence, H. George Resch (1974) argues that there is no such thing as equality in the universe. At


every level, every human being, and every other created thing, has stamped upon it individuality. The modern mantra of equality spits in the face of reality. We are not created equal. We should not be treated equally. The expectation of equal outcome from equal opportunity is a hollow expectation. It is demanding greater and greater resources for lesser and lesser result. Those who espouse equality despise the Sovereignty of God; they despise the idea that God has fore-ordained and pre-determined all things--including our roles and functions in society. It is true that some have used the idea of ordained roles and functions to suppress others and appoint them to positions of slavery. This is a perversion of the doctrine of Sovereignty. "For freedom Christ has set us free, ... do be not submit again to a yoke of slavery," Galatians 5:1 teaches us. No, God is an infinite God, and He has created an infinite variety in expression of the roles that He has ordained. This means that individuality needs to be nurtured, encouraged, and allowed to become an expression of expertise. This means that each person requires an intimately individualized education track. Sure, there will be core skills that many will share. However, not everyone will need all of those core skills to be the best that they can be in whatever it is that God has created them to be excellent in. Mandating core skills will inhibit the growth and development of some for whom such skills are not appropriate. The educational paths of individuals should touch and part, mingle and separate, and trace a learning dance across the community. Some will learn some things from this person, but then learn different things from a range of other people, in totally different contexts. This dance of learning will be encouraged and facilitated by parents, but be tempered with a consideration of the interests, gifts, passions, calling, abilities and other marks of individuality within the student. It cannot be centrally predetermined. It cannot be centrally administrated. It cannot be centrally certificated, regulated, and controlled. It is an expression of the creativity and providence of the Infinite Triune God.

Unschooling And A Flexible Learning Web: The Dangers Of Age-

Segregation In Schools p. 93 “The inverse of school would be an institution which increased the chances that

persons who at a given moment shared the same specific interest could meet–no matter

what else they had in common.”

One of the important defining characteristics of school and schooling is age-grade segregation. Age-grade segregation is justified on grounds of socialization and child-development theory. It is argued that children need to be exposed to peer-relationships so that they can learn how to relate to a cohort of children their own age. It is also argued that all children pass through developmental stages at the same time, and therefore they need to be related to, in an age-appropriate manner. These two presuppositions are fallacious at several points. Firstly, God places children into families. In most cases, families grow at the rate of one child at a time, with significant age intervals between each child. God is wisdom personified. The only wise God, our Saviour, would not ordain a process that is fundamentally flawed. Therefore, I argue that the best


learning environment is not age-segregated, but multi-generational, with a broad range of ages represented in the learning environment. I have worked in schools for 25 years. I can speak with a measure of authority. I have worked in Christian schools, state schools, private schools, schools for Aboriginal children, and the common factor between all these schooling contexts is that age-segregated children degenerate to the lowest common denominator. Children crave attention. If they cannot get it from the overworked teacher, they will look for it in their peers, and the peer that they usually crave attention from is the coolest dude--the naughtiest kid in the class. Their socialization is downwards through the pressure of wanting to conform to be accepted--even in the case of a good family, good kids are dragged down, in the school context, and many good families have lost their children to the pressures of socialization in schools. In an inter-generational, multi-age learning setting, the child will look for attention from the strongest role model--their socialization is upwards, into the lifestyle of the patriarch of the learning environment. Secondly, children are not equal. There may be general developmental phases, but not all children reach the same milestones at the same time in all areas of growth. Presupposing equality of development, leads to a holding back of those who are ready to move on in some areas, and forcing outcomes from those who are not ready in other areas, and generally trying to squeeze the cohort of children into a teacher-determined mediocrity. In this context, none of the children are fully developed in any of their strong areas, many of the children are crushed because too much is expected of them in their weak areas (and as a result of the crushing they lose confidence to learn in their good areas) and every one has the desire to learn taught out of them. Home-based education that is firmly grounded on unschooling principles, with a discipleship emphasis, is the best means of establishing individual learning needs in children. If there were local Flexi-Learning Centres scattered around the country, then a register of learning opportunities could be kept so that children could be connected with an appropriate local custodian of specific knowledge sets, skills, and experiences. Those who gather around this local expert will be there because they want to learn, not because they are of the same age. Such learning contexts may include multi-generational learners (whole families, for instance), and a distribution of a wide range of ages. No one should be excluded from learning simply on the basis of age. Older learners will be there to help younger learners, and learners who teach other learners will enhance their own learning--a fresh look at peer tuition.

Conclusion In conclusion, then, there is much to consider in Ivan Illich’s (1970) Deschooling Society. The issues he sought to address are still with us. There are those who have trialled his ideas, and there a many success stories that can be told about deschooled families applying unschooling principles and producing well-educated, well-adjusted, highly productive and entrepreneurial citizens. These ideas need to be more widely disseminated, debated in the market place more rigorously, trialled more creatively, and then examined to see if Illich’s claims are true or not. I am confident that they are true, and shall not return to schools. I am done with schooling.

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Ivan Illich: Yet Again Revisited

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