ivan illich

IVAN ILLICH*

1. INTRODUCTION

Ivan Illich is recognized as one of the educational thinkers. Ivan Illich is the father of ‘deschooled education’, who condemned the school system and the schools for exercising anachronistic functions that fail to keep pace with change and protect the structure of the society that produced them.

2. LIFE HISTORY

            Ivan Illich was born in Vienna in 1926. He studied a religious school for ten years (1931-1941) and completed his secondary studies at the University of Florence in Italy. After studying Theology and Philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome, he obtained his doctorate in history from the University of Salzburg. He served as an Assistant Christian Priest in New York from 1951 to 1956. He was the Vice Chancellor of Ponce Catholic University till 1960.

            Ivan Illich published his principle works in the field of education in mid 1970s. In his most famous article, ‘School: The Sacred Cow’ published in 1968, he criticizes public schooling for its centralization, internal bureaucracy, rigidity and the inequalities that it harbors. His most important work is ‘Deschooling Society’ first published in English in 1970 and later in Spanish in 1973.

3. CONTRIBUTION TO THE EDUCATION FIELD

3.1 Schooling

            According to Ivan Illich, ‘schooling is the production of knowledge, the marketing of knowledge, which is what the school amounts to draws society into the trap of thinking that knowledge is hygiene, pure, respectable, deodorized, produced by human heads and amassed in a stock. I see no difference between rich and poor countries in the development of these attitudes to knowledge.

3.2 Deschooling

            Liberating the children from the clutches of school education is called ‘Deschooling’. It is based on the needs of its environment, to the realties of people’s lives and to the efficient acquisition of socially relevant knowledge.

Ivan Illich is of the view that school education has no links with the requirement of the society. Only that education acquired by attending the school regularly is valued. The symbol of present day education is attendance, examination and certificates. Ivan Illich is against this education. Education or learning is one’s activity.

3.3 Four central ideas

In Deschooling Society, Ivan puts forth the central ideas that suffuse the whole of his work on education:

1.      Universal education through schooling is nor feasible. It would be more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools.

2.      Neither new attitudes of teachers towards their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software, nor finally the attempt to expand the teacher’s responsibility until it engulfs the pupils lifetimes will deliver universal education.

3.      The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse; educational webs which heighten the opportunity for learning, sharing and caring.

4.      The ethos, nor just institutions, of society ought to be ‘deschooled’.

4. IVAN ILLICH METHODS OF EDUCATION

v  An open system of education is necessary.

v  One should be given opportunity for education when it is necessary for him.

v  Outside the school, new learning opportunities should be provided.

v  One should be allowed to learn according to his own pace and will.

v  Alternative education system should promote humanitarian values and develop many skills.

5. MYTH CONCEPT

            According to Illich, the prestige of the school as a supplier of good quality educational services for the population as a whole rests on a series of myths. These myths are:

5.1 The myth of institutionalized values

            This myth is grounded in the belief that the process of schooling produces something of value. That belief generates a demand. It is assumed that the school produces learning. The existence of schools produces the demand for schooling. Thus the school suggests that valuable learning is the result of attendance, that the value can be measured and documented by grades and certificates. Illich takes the opposite view: that learning is the human activity that least needs manipulation by others; others learning is the result not of instruction but of participation by learners in meaningful settings. School makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.

5.2 The myth of measurement of values

            According to Illich, the institutionalized values school instills are quantified ones. For him personal growth cannot be measured by the yardstick of schooling but, once people have the idea schooled into them that values can be produced and measured, they tend to accept all kinds of rankings.

5.3 The myth of packaging values

            The school sells curriculum, and the product that is produced through the curriculum production process appears like any other staple product. Here the pupil is the consumer of that product and the teacher is the distributor who delivers the finished product to the consumer, that is, the pupil, whose reactions are assessed to provide research data for the preparation of the next model, which may be ‘ungraded’, ‘student-designed’ ‘visually-aided’, or ‘issue-centered’.

5.4 The myth of self-perpetuating progress

Illich talks not only about consumption but about production and growth. He links these with the race for degrees, diplomas and certificates, since the greater one’s share of educational qualifications the greater one’s chances of a good job. For Illich the working of consumer societies if founded to a great extent on this myth, and its perpetuation is an important part of the game of permanent regimentation.

6. TOOLS FOR CONVIVIALITY

            One of the major works of Illich that followed “Deschooling Society” is “Tools for Conviviality”. In this, he proposes a rival strategy that limits the growth of industrialized societies and suggests a new kind of organization for them, to be achieved through a new concept of work and ‘deprofessionalization’ of social relations including education and the school.

According to him, a convivial society “does not exclude all schools. It does exclude a school system which has been perverted into a compulsory tool, denying privileges to the drop-out. I am using the school as an example of a phenomenon to be elsewhere in the industrial world this claim is analogous to my observation on the two types of institutions of society. In every society there are two ways of achieving specific ends, such as locomotion, communication among people, health, and learing. One I call autonomous, the other heteronomous. In the heteronomous mode, I move myself. In the heteronomous mode I am strapped into a seat and carried. In the autonomous mode I heal myself, and you help me in my paralysis, and I help you in your childbearing. In every society and in every sector, the efficiency with which the goal of the sector is achieved depends on an interaction between the autonomous and the heteronomous modes”.

7. DEFECTS OF REGULAR SCHOOLING

            Deschooling society means the denial of professional status for the second oldest profession, namely teaching.

Ø  It is unnecessary to go to school and study for the development of the society. So the society should cut off its relationship with school education.

Ø  The present day schools, instead of removing inequalities, only increase the inequalities. When will an egalitarian society be formed? Equalitarian.

Ø  Regular educational opportunities are only suitable for upper class people. It is of no use to the poor people.

Ø  The lessons and concepts taught in schools at present ate not according to the demands of the time.

Ø  For a long time, in our schools, the same time-table, examination system, evaluation techniques are followed.

8. CONCLUSION

            Today, Illich’s thoughts have found their way into the education system under a variety of labels viz. non-formal education, lifelong education etc. It can never be denied that his ideas and thoughts on education influenced a considerable number of educators. Many of his ideas have universal validity, both for the school system and other related institutions.

Ivan Illich says that through Educational Resource Centre, Community Resources and Learning Groups students should be liberated from the control of the teachers and create and egalitarian society with a spirit of service to society.