Ivan Illich: Deschooling
1. Diagnosis
Especially in the consumer society, the school has become an industry, the diploma a product, education with its employees and employers, the largest job market, the market behind which a dangerous bureaucracy operates.
The school is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And conventional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We have all learned most of what we know outside of school.
Most of the time teachers obstruct the learning of study subjects as they are given in school.
2. Ideal school
Deschooling is a movement that calls for the disappearance of the school, as a radical reaction to the myth of the school as an institution that educates. The educational mission must be delivered to the coexistence and human society, which offers man the possibility of exercising the most autonomous and creative action, with the help of tools that are less controllable by others.
A true educational system must set goals:
- All those who want to learn must be given access to existing sources, no matter what time of their existence. Those who want to impart their knowledge must find another person who wants to acquire them. Such a system would suppose the existence of agreed constitutional guarantees of education., to avoid that the learner must submit to a compulsory program and segregation based on the possession of certificates and diplomas.
3. Teacher-student relationship
Since there would be no schools as we know them now, the teacher-student relationship would change for a relationship between equals (learning partners) and between said equals and those who already have the knowledge.
The relational system would work like this:
- Someone who wants to learn knows that they need both information and a critical reaction regarding the use of that information by another person. Information can be stored in people and things. In a good educational system, access to things should be available just by asking. the apprentice, while access to informants also requires the consent of third parties. The criticism can also come from 2 directions: from the same or from the elderly, that is, from learning partners or from those who will grant me a part of their superior experience. The latter can be guides regarding the correct question to ask between equals and the deficiency of the answers that come.
All these relationships would take place within Knowledge Networks, which would replace the schools.
4. Contents
All people can access all kinds of sources of knowledge at any stage of their lives. In other words, primary and secondary diplomas are not required to access university content, as it is now.
5. Methods
The approach of new educational institutions should not start with the administrative goals of a principal, nor with the pedagogical goals of a professional educator, nor with the learning goals of a hypothetical class of people. It should not start with the question, what should someone learn? but with the question: what kind of things and people might those who want to learn want to contact in order to learn?
Knowledge Networks
Although in the section “Teacher-student relationship” we describe the relational functioning, within the Knowledge Networks, between those who want to learn and those who already have knowledge, Illich also proposes the following elements, which would facilitate the operation of the system:
- Reference Services regarding Educational Objects: that facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these may be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories, and exhibition halls, such as museums and theaters; others may be in daily use in factories, airports, or on farms, but available to students as apprentices or on break hours. Skill sheets: allow some people to list their abilities, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as role models to others who want to learn those skills and the directions in which they can be found.a communication network that allows people to describe the learning activity they want to do, in the hope of finding a partner for the search. Reference Services for Independent Educators: which can be found in a catalog that indicates the addresses and descriptions - made by themselves - of professionals, for professionals and freelancers, together with the conditions of access to their services. Such educators may be chosen by surveying or consulting their previous clients.together with the conditions of access to its services. Such educators may be chosen by surveying or consulting their previous clients.together with the conditions of access to its services. Such educators may be chosen by surveying or consulting their previous clients.
6. Function of the school
None, this is replaced by the Knowledge Networks.
7. Pros and cons of unschooling
In favor:
- When the children are infants or adolescents, it would imply a more active role of the parents in the direction to give to the education of their children. The bureaucracy of teachers that Illich describes would disappear, each teacher, teacher, educator would have work within the Knowledge Networks but different from the current way It would increase the motivation to study with respect to current students, especially at today's secondary level Internet would facilitate the operation of Knowledge Networks
Against
- The task of quality control of the training processes emerging from the Knowledge Networks would be complex.Many people need to follow armed paths, receive orders and this system privileges self-organization, perhaps many would not adapt.There are many vested interests in the education industry, implies a political difficulty to implement such a structural change Internet, at least in underdeveloped countries, is not within everyone's reach
Other remarks
- There should be a state subsidy to the demand so that all those who wish to study in any Knowledge Network and do not have the resources to pay can do so; Unlike the current system based mainly on subsidies to the educational offer (subsidies to schools) The state should have a role of setting minimum standards, it is impossible for it to function without the participation of the state.
Bibliography
1. Bibliography prepared by the Theory of Education, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UNCuyo, Mendoza.
