Deschooling Society

Citation

Illich, I. (1973). Deschooling Society. Penguin Education. (Original work published 1971 by Harper & Row, New York, and Calder & Boyars, London.)

Chapter Summary

Deschooling Society is a short polemic of about 116 pages in its Penguin, Harper & Row and Marion Boyars printings. The publisher's blurb describes it as a critique of compulsory mass education: schools and universities, the argument runs, support misleading notions of progress and act as recruiting centres for the consumer society, and the book closes with proposals for radical reform. The opening chapters are titled Why We Must Disestablish School, Phenomenology of School, Ritualization of Progress and Institutional Spectrum.

Context and Argument

Illich, an Austrian-born priest and scholar who worked in New York, Puerto Rico and Cuernavaca, wrote the book at the start of the 1970s, when it was one of a set of four books (with Tools for Conviviality, Energy and Equity and Medical Nemesis) that made his anarchist critique of modern institutions widely known. In the published review by Brian Hendley in the McGill Journal of Education (1972), the book is summarized as a sustained attack on schools as manipulative institutions together with a set of proposals for a new framework for learning built on action, participation and self-help. By "school" Illich means the age-specific, teacher-related process of full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum. The review adds that the book treats schooling as a kind of initiation ritual that teaches people the need to be taught and so separates learning from living.

Why We Must Disestablish School

The opening chapter states the case for removing schooling from its established place in society. Its title is the book's thesis in brief, and Hendley's review shows that Illich wants to replace the school with an educational network for the autonomous assembly of resources under the control of each learner.

Phenomenology of School; Ritualization of Progress

These chapters describe what schools do as institutions; the review cites pages 25 to 47 for them. According to the review, the argument covers the "hidden curriculum" that is similar everywhere regardless of national budgets, the idea that real value can be learned only through graded consumption in school, and the claim that most learning results from unhampered participation in a meaningful setting rather than from manipulation by teachers. A fourth chapter, Institutional Spectrum, follows.

Later Chapters: Proposals for New Learning Networks

The later part of the book moves from criticism to alternatives. Hendley describes four kinds of learning exchange: reference services to educational objects, skill exchanges, peer-matching, and reference to educated elders. The book also proposes access to things and tools in public settings, a durable-goods economy, and "edu-credit" for each citizen.

Key Concepts

Critique of Schooling

• School as an institution: a full-time, age-graded, teacher-led process tied to an obligatory curriculum.
• Hidden curriculum: the structure that teaches students the need to be taught and that value is obtained through graded consumption of instruction.
• Disestablishment: Illich's call to remove schools from their privileged position, rather than reform them.

Alternatives

• Educational network or web: a system of resources assembled by learners under their own control.
• Learning exchanges: services for access to things, skills, peers and educated elders.
• Convivial channels: non-manipulative, self-activating and self-limiting channels for learning.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear, memorable thesis. The review shows an argument that fits in a sentence (schools should be disestablished and replaced by learner-controlled networks) and is developed through a definition of school, an account of its hidden curriculum, and concrete proposals.
• It couples critique with proposals. Hendley notes the book is not only an attack on schools but also a set of proposals for a new institutional framework, which gives readers something to test as well as to resist.
• A short book. At about 116 pages it can be read in an afternoon and used to open a discussion.

Limitations

• Few concrete details. Hendley observes that many of Illich's proposals lack concrete details, and that the book does not consider what components of learning are necessary for social welfare.
• A contested premise. Hendley's main quarrel is with the premise that learning is the human activity that least needs manipulation by others, and he asks whether autonomy has prerequisites, whether differences in ability and background shape the choices people make, and whether new learning networks would simply form a new market.
• Abolition rather than reform. The book aims to replace the school, and Hendley, for one, prefers a reformation that keeps the institution's essential purpose; readers looking for guidance on improving teaching inside schools will need another source.
• Dated technology. The proposals involving computers to match peers date from 1971 and should be read as a historical anticipation.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the foundations-of-education list this is the radical, short polemic. Dewey's Democracy and Education offers a contrasting account, in which education is tied to preparing students for active participation in democratic life, and is a useful counterpart. Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and hooks's Teaching to Transgress are two other critiques of conventional schooling, both arguing for education as a practice of freedom, and share some of Illich's concerns while keeping the classroom as a site of change.

For a general orientation, Thomas's Education: A Very Short Introduction links philosophical and historical arguments to present-day debates about schooling, and Noddings's Philosophy of Education surveys the field from classical philosophers to current approaches. Illich is best read after one of these, or alongside Dewey or Freire.

How to Use This Book

The book is for undergraduates and general readers interested in the purposes of schooling and in critiques of institutions. No prerequisites are needed, though some knowledge of how schools are organized helps in following the argument.

A practical plan: read the first chapter, "Why We Must Disestablish School", for the thesis, then the chapters on the phenomenology of school and the ritualization of progress for the analysis. Treat the later chapters on learning networks as a thought experiment: for each proposed network, ask what problem it solves and what new problems it creates, using the questions Hendley raises as a starting point. Pair the book with Dewey or Freire for contrast, and with a recent source on online learning if you want to compare Illich's peer-matching idea with present practice.