Deschooling Society: Social Questions

Rating:
Summary: When Very Few of the Powers-that-Be Agree With You....
Review: ....and the 'Important People' of the world refuse to listen to you, you *must* be telling the truth.

Illich died this month. Maybe someone will come along and champion some of his many ideas and causes. But some of the things he has been talking about--the structuring of education in this world is ineffective for actual learning, but is designed for the maintaining of class strata, and that the rich gets the best schooling because they pay for it (not saying that they are exceptionally talented or intellectual or anything more than mediocre) has been debated for years and will be debated for years. Subtexted to his arguments is that the rich needs the poor to help define themselves. And any time 'the institution'
gets fired up about improving the conditions for the mass culture, it end up achieving the opposite effect, as the reviewer below noted. To me, this is reminescent of those two dystopia novels we were forced to read in high school, "1984" and "Brave New World" (somewhere there's a great irony in my feeling this way).

Anyway, Illich, even though he was an academician, became a great human rights advocate and champion of the poor and downtrodden all around the world. This great work of his should be read by anyone who believes in truth and freedom.

Rating:
Summary: These 120 pages will alter your perceptions
Review: I read this book 10 years ago and still find myself thinking about it.

If you're looking for material that will justify your worst suspicions as to the actual effectiveness of modern schooling while inspiring in you a desire for change, you're on the right track. But be warned. This book is far more than an essay on the failings of our educational system.

Education is merely the author's proving ground for one simple premise: it is the nature of the institution to produce the opposite of itself. This basic paradigm may be applied to any institutionalized need. You'll find yourself analyzing the role of healthcare in well-being, financial services in prosperity, the food industry in nutrition, and so on...

Find this book and buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Deschooling Society by Creating Learning Communites.
Review: Illich's goal was society not schools. He saw schools as perpetuating the status quo. This, and his other books, promotied living a convivial life. This is, one in harmonious collaboation with other people. Schooling, whether state, free, or home schooling, removes young peole from their families, their community, society and nature. Illich was for living convivially and simply in the "vernacular." That is with friends, community and the actual world that surrounds you and with the natural abilities with which you are endowed.
That is the kind of life promoted today by the book "Creating Learning Communities," Ron Miller, ed.