A Book Review

Illich, Ivan. (1971). Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row.

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I. Though I am a member of the educated public, I’ve come to believe the school system as we know it is irrevocably flawed.

II. Suffocated System
   a. Age
   b. Teacher & Pupils
   c. Fulltime attendance

III. Deschooling Self & Society
   a. “The discovery that most learning requires no teaching can be neither manipulated nor planned. Each of us is personally responsible for his or her own deschooling, and only we have the power to do it. No one can be excused if he falls to liberate himself from schooling.” – pp 47-48
   b. “I believe that the contemporary crisis of education demands that we review the very idea of publicly prescribed learning, rather than the methods used in its enforcement.” – p 65
   c. “In school registered students submit to certified teachers in order to obtain certificates of their own; both are frustrated and both blame insufficient resources—money, time, or buildings—for their mutual frustration…The alternative to dependence on schools is not the use of public resources for some new device which “makes” people learn; rather it is the creation of anew style of educational relationship between man and his environment.” – p 72
   d. “Contemporary man goes further; he attempts to create the world in his image, to build a totally man-made environment, and then discovers that he can do so only on the condition of constantly remaking himself to fit it. We now must face the fact that man himself is at sake.” – p 107

IV. Deschooling society starts with realizing the terms “schooling” and “education” are not synonyms.